Disease Land
The letter is more than a year old, but Ron and Laura Duncan still cling to it as a lifeline. Dated May 3, 2001, and signed by Robert Indian, chief of community assessments for the Ohio Department of Health, it provided the couple’s first piece of good news in a long time. For years, the…
DJ Shadow
It’s been so long since DJ Shadow released his last album, Endtroducing, that most fans are likely looking forward to The Private Press with mixed emotions: equal parts unrestrained joy and fearful suspicion. Will Shadow have moved on to tinker with new musical formulas, or will Press deliver the well-honed mixture of soulful sampling and…
Terror Island
People come to Kelleys Island to fish, play cards, drink, and watch the grass grow. That’s four things to think about, so why clutter the landscape with more? Not that change is frowned upon in this Lake Erie hideaway, once a summer resort for vaudeville stars. In recent decades, the police force has doubled its…
John Cale
Once again, time turns back on itself and yields an artifact of great cultural and artistic importance, and once again the agent of change is John Cale. The intrepid musician and explorer returns from the New York of the 1960s with a three-CD set that provides dazzling insight into what was really going on behind…
Church in the Lurch
St. Jerome’s is a school of love: I enjoyed Martin Kuz’s article [“Religious Eviction,” May 2] about St. Jerome’s Church, the Commodore Theatre, and Reverend Rucker. Though I know it is sometimes difficult to tell both sides of a story and maintain a neutral position, he was able to do this in the article. As…
Offbeats
“It almost makes you want to gag,” said one fanzine of the Offbeats’ early output, close to two decades ago. “They should be shot,” read another. Quotes like these are the stuff that punk rock legends are made of — especially coming from the early ’80s, when antagonism was still as much a part of…
Sloppy Second City
First, the great news: After three years of laborious struggle, Second City Cleveland has finally opened. The not-so-great news is that it’s only half as funny as it ought to be. No matter what, there is now a brand-new intimate and sophisticated theater filling a much-needed niche in Playhouse Square. The district’s lovely old theatrical…
Tit for Tat
It’s one of the great ironies of the modern-day smut biz that it took a boob burglar like Joe Francis to shake Hugh Hefner’s once-mighty empire to its creaky knees. Francis is all of 28, which means he wasn’t born the first time Hef bagged triplets on the merry-go-round bed. Just a few years ago,…
Southern Exposure
The elements are slowly falling into place at D’Ici de La, the new international food boutique in Beachwood. Husband-and-wife team Bruce Sommers and Patricia Cornejo opened the doors to their handsome little shop in early May, about a week behind schedule, and they’ve been playing catch-up ever since. But now, with CIA-trained chef Jim Bartel…
Alice’s Average Restaurant
Megadeth’s website says that founder Dave Mustaine must retire due to serious nerve damage. Television has proved that Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne is an addled old sot. And what of Alice Cooper, king of the shock rockers, the original punk? Despite his checkered past, the onetime devil incarnate is in neither a prison nor an…
Swede Emotion
Talk to the Hives, or talk about the Hives, and two topics are as unavoidable as an “it” band being forced to run the gauntlet of English music-press hype: Topic A: Are the Hives the “next” Strokes or White Stripes? Topic B: Are the Hives part of a Swedish invasion? The band itself doesn’t seem…
Trey Cool
“I was talking to Brad, our road manager, the other day, and Brad was saying that he wonders if it seems like this hiatus was my idea, because of everything I’ve done,” says Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, addressing the debate over whether he engineered the band’s break, which will soon be entering its third year.…
Fender’s Keepers
The 10-foot fiberglass guitar sat in the middle of David Deming’s studio, ready to be transformed into a football shrine. “It wasn’t so great looking [at first],” the Cleveland Institute of Art student explains. “But once I started, it just came to life.” With a $7,500 sponsorship boost from the Browns, Deming painted the 120-pound…
The Big Break
Michael Wagener isn’t used to working for free. Having produced or mixed records by such rock heavyweights as Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, and Metallica, the German-born Wagener normally commands fees the size of Lars Ulrich’s ego. He’s done work on spec — meaning he doesn’t get paid until the band lands a record deal or…
Omar Pops the Cork
“I never thought such a statement would cause so much [controversy],” Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel says about the hubbub that erupted upon publication of his autobiography, Omar! My Life on and off the Field. “I’ve been here long enough to know what to say and what not to say. I’m still surprised about all of…
Culture
Joseph Hill, the charismatic lead singer of Culture, entered the music business in the mid-’70s as resident percussionist at Jamaica’s renowned Studio One. There, he sang on a couple of tunes before forming Culture with his cousin, Albert Walker, and Ken Days. The trio’s gutsy roots-reggae rhythms and dissonant country-styled harmonies set against Hill’s raspy,…
Get Yer Ya-Yas Out
It’s no surprise that the Louisiana-born novelist Rebecca Wells has seen her wildly popular books translated into 18 languages, with no fewer than six million copies in print. She’s no deep-thinking stylist, but she has an unfailing gift for injecting Southern sentimentality, low-grade neurosis, and mischievous charm into stories that deftly strum the heartstrings of…
Mary Timony
Mary Timony has always dealt in dichotomy. She dubbed her brand of scabrous, noisy guitar riffage and vehement feminist rants Helium. When Helium fans expected more of the same in 1997, she gave them an airy, contemplative fairy tale titled The Magic City. When fans embraced Helium’s change of direction, Timony closed shop and went…
Halfpipe Dreams
The most compelling element of Dogtown and Z-Boys, Stacy Peralta’s valentine to a crew of footloose Southern California teenagers who set a radical new style in skateboarding in the 1970s, is the documentarian’s heartfelt belief in the lasting importance of the enterprise. As a member of the tribe and an advocate of their code, Peralta…
Elvis Costello
It’s striking how the career of Elvis Costello has mirrored that of another pop-intellectual idol who has also made his mark behind Buddy Holly glasses and a catchy stage name — Woody Allen. Both got an initial boost from an explosive scene to which they didn’t really belong (Costello from the ’70s punk-rock revolt, Allen…
Miscue 9-11
So this is what it’s come to: another week, another terrorist-with-a-suitcase-nuke movie. Last Friday, it was up to Ben Affleck to save the world from nuclear annihilation, an unsavory proposition; he succeeded, but not before the Super Bowl disappeared in a holocaust flash. This Friday, it’s Chris Rock’s turn to disarm a briefcase bomb, James…
Dead Low Tide
When it came to living fast, dying young, and leaving behind a good-looking corpse, the Murder City Devils got two out of three right. The hard-charging, hard-living Seattle quintet stuck together only long enough to drop three wounded, whiskey-soaked LPs, its demise forecast by the gruesome band photos that lined 2000’s In Name and Blood,…
Supercop
They call him Supercop, but Cleveland Police Officer Jim Simone doesn’t look much like an action figure. He appears the way movie stars do in person — shorter and more vulnerable. Though he’s still physically fit, at 54 he’s more like aging fitness guru Jack LaLanne than Jean-Claude Van Damme. Today, he is speaking to…
Eminem
Despite Eminem’s extraordinary intelligence and self-knowledge, the controversial rapper has always made his biggest splashes by instinctively thrashing against expectations with the desperation of a fish caught on a line. As his defenders and detractors both know, he’ll be reeled in eventually, hooked through the mouth and gills on pop’s suffocating fame, rap’s amoral “reality”…
Jagged Little Pilla
When James Pilla talks — which is often — he still has the rat-a-tat-tat delivery of a car salesman. Answers to questions are delivered in tommy-gun blasts of enthusiasm, a barrage of easy swagger punctuated only by self-deprecating asides — as if he’s stopping to reload. “I’m probably boring the hell out of you, aren’t…
David Bowie
Ground control to Captain Ziggy. Hello, Zig, are you there? It would seem that with Heathen, David Bowie has invited not only old aliases like Major Tom and Ziggy Stardust to the party, but also familiar collaborators like producer Tony Visconti and Pete Townshend. Heathen is Bowie’s most Bowie-sounding album since Scary Monsters and his…
