Raise the Glass High
Oh, Cleveland! Uncle Stosh would hardly know you. Here, in what was once the land of perch, pierogi, and POC, a quiet revolution has taken place. No longer do underground sophisticates smuggle their Lambrusco past suspicious relatives. No longer is wine enjoyment the sole province of the snooty elite. Nowadays, practically everyone seems to be…
Fischerspooner
It’s funny how #1 is finally receiving a proper U.S. release, now that the electroclash backlash is raging. The album’s songs actually have been circulating since 2000, appearing in different versions on Germany’s International DJ Gigolos and England’s Ministry of Sound labels. The New York-based troupe (its membership can swell to over 20) has a…
Temp or Tantrum
As the Browns game ends, a ragged set of bodies assembles outside the Carnegie Avenue office of Minute Men Staffing, hoping for a day’s work. Some need money for food. Others need it for drink or drugs. If they weren’t desperate, they wouldn’t be here. Cleaning up the stadium calls for about 250 people, who…
End of Daze
Mudvayne’s four masked members have always had a flair for the mysterious, even the illogical. It starts with their appearance: The demonic makeup they wore on their first album bore no relationship to the music they played. It was image for its own sake: cool-looking, perhaps, but ultimately just a distraction. And maybe that was…
Waterband
The title of the Waterband’s debut provides the most sterling example of truth in advertising since Kim Fowley released an album called I’m Bad. In fact, this Aurora-based trio (quartet, if you count guest percussionist David Keen) is just a tad shy of great. For lack of a better way to pigeonhole these guys, we’ll…
Art Modell, The Sequel
Last week Athersys, a biopharmaceutical company trying to commercialize stem-cell technology, revealed that its prospects for staying in Cleveland are “bleak.” Unless, of course, Case Western Reserve, University Hospitals, and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation each pony up $25 million to keep the company humming. If not, Athersys would decamp to Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, or Raleigh, North…
Child’s Play
Even in the dark you can see Kiddo smiling. At La Cave du Vin, the candlelit Cleveland Heights wine bar where little more than silhouettes are discernible, the three members of Kiddo sip their drinks and playfully rib one another like schoolchildren, their grins more than implied by the perpetual giggling across the table. “That’s…
Infinite Number of Sounds
It’s tempting to dismiss Infinite Number of Sounds as just another post-rock outfit: Tortoise-inspired indie rockers awed by samplers and sequencers. But even if some of the styling sounds familiar, almost every song on Time Wants a Skeleton offers a varied mood and instrumental approach, as well as a playful sense of humor that makes…
Absurd at Any Speed
Craig Austin and Janet Meden probably never saw the car that killed them. The Mazda driven by Scott Leiendecker blew past a stop sign and slammed into Austin’s sedan along State Route 306. Geauga County authorities would charge Leiendecker with aggravated vehicular homicide, alleging that the three-time DUI offender had a blood-alcohol content twice the…
Nü Order
“The majority of the white-trash kids in the Midwest who are gonna listen to Korn or Limp Bizkit — they’re never gonna hear of us,” declares Glassjaw frontman Daryl Palumbo. “I don’t really care. That was never the goal.” Daryl deliberately sounds like something of an asshole. He has to. When you’re fronting a very…
Bull Fighting
If Gregory Temel were writing this story, he’d probably use a lot of words like “weasels,” “suckers,” and “screw-ups.” He’d surely poke fun at somebody. And he’d probably throw out a rhetorical question or two, something like: Which side of this gawdawful mess would you want to be on? As the founder of BeyondTheBull.com –…
Shut Up, Fred Durst
It has to have been the one and only time Pope John Paul II and Fred Durst will see eye to eye on anything. A few weeks back, as JP2 was making his official plea to the White House to avoid war with Iraq, Durst was throwing his sweat-stained ballcap into the political arena, offering…
Authority Problem
At the Northeast Pre-Release Center, the women’s prison on East 30th Street, she is referred to as inmate 35270. But in this courtroom, as she tearfully recounts how she told her mother that she was raped by a corrections officer, she is known as Linda Booker. It happened in the early morning hours of October…
Seeing Red
“In New York, that would have cost you $50,” said conductor Jonathan Sheffer, playfully chastising an audience member whose cell phone interrupted Sheffer as he introduced a selection at Red {An Orchestra}’s spectacular premiere of Celluloid Copland last Wednesday at Cleveland’s Masonic Auditorium. Red, a Cleveland-based orchestra that debuted in October, is all about dispensing…
Letters to the Editor
America needs compassionate leadership: In “A Commitment to Ignorance” [February 19], Andrew Putz assails Ohio’s eight Presidents for being weak and incompetent, calling one a “wuss” and another a “geek.” May God bless us with similar wusses and geeks in the Oval Office. They are our only hope. A weak executive and a powerful legislature…
Demolition Doll Rods
Detroit’s Demolition Doll Rods, a bare-bones trio featuring sisters Margaret Doll Rod on ramblin’ guitar and Christina Doll Rod on a skeletal upright drum kit, jettisoned the idea of an all-girl attack in favor of a secret cross-dressing weapon: singer-guitarist Danny Doll Rod. A former member of the infamous Detroit mayhem-makers the Gories, Danny has…
Great Escapes
It’s 1852 in the American South, and you’ve just been slapped on the auction block. Whips are cracking, insults are flying, and your will is breaking before you’ve even been bought. Welcome to your new life as a slave. At Hale Farm & Village’s weekend program A Fugitive’s Path — Escape on the Underground Railroad,…
The Eyeliners
Nothing drives conscientious punk rockers crazier than having their shtick absorbed by MTV. You might think the Eyeliners would be smarting badly right about now, what with tough-girl bubblepunk having come full circle from the platinum Go-Go’s to the underground Muffs and back into the Top 40 again with the Donnas and (ouch!) Kelly Osbourne.…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, March 13 This doesn’t look like the year the Mid-American Conference will bust the brackets of the NCAA basketball tournament, as Kent State did last season. But there’ll be plenty of quality hoops at the MAC Men’s Basketball Tournament at Gund Arena, where quarterfinal action starts today. Kent, which won last year’s MAC tourney…
Hot Rod Circuit
Hot Rod Circuit has always relied on keyed-up performances to reel in new fans. The Connecticut quartet is anchored on stage by singer Andrew Jackson, who possesses the perfect balance of calm, understated charisma and heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity; he’s the prototypical emo crooner. Lead guitarist Casey Prestwood acts as Jackson’s foil, tossing himself around the stage…
Raising the Bar
Ray Kelly didn’t leave the Irish rock band the Prodigals for the usual reasons. There were no creative differences. No urge to express himself. And there’s no animosity between him and his old bandmates. Nope. Ray Kelly quit the Prodigals last spring . . . to open a bar. “There was nothing vicious or glamorous…
Donald Harrison
Tap the mind of your average music listener, and the mention of New Orleans music would probably yield images of Dixieland bands, the Neville Brothers, or some inane version of “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Truth be told, there is a diversity of styles that goes beyond those emblematic stereotypes. Saxophonist Donald Harrison knows…
Lost Boys
You know how boys love to play soldier? How they get stern-faced and march out to destroy an enemy they believe needs destroying? Well, actors are into that too. Sometimes they soldier on even when Bruce Willis or Mel Gibson isn’t around to help them frown determinedly. Such is the case with Gerry, wherein two…
Mountain
“They were at Woodstock.” To anyone who was a teenager in the early 1970s, those four words together were holy. Any band or artist, no matter how pedestrian, was awarded instant credibility and respect if it was lucky enough to have been included in the festival that has come to define a generation. Mountain was…
The Stunted
The Hunted pits Tommy Lee Jones versus Benicio Del Toro in a battle of hand-to-hand, wit-to-wit fighting skills. Frankly, my money would be on Tommy Lee any day: He may be old, but he’s a tough geezer who looks like he could mop the floor with Benicio. (Also, frankly: No one else at the screening…
Joan of Arc
Pause for a moment, music fan, to consider advertising: Do 30-second TV spots reflect or determine the culture? Take one of TV’s most enduring commercial campaigns: Miller Lite’s “Less Filling/Tastes Great.” A group of people engage in a debate more concerned with the rhetorical possibilities of what they discuss than the thing itself. “Less Filling/Tastes…
Crimethinker
Most people bask in pleasurable things: sunshine, warm spring breezes, the afterglow of sex. Not Ales Hostomsky, a 25-year-old mixed-media artist from the Sunshine State. He basks in thoughtcrime. The artist who calls himself Bask uses his latest gig, 1300 gallery’s If You Can’t Join ‘Em, Beat ‘Em, to recruit rabble-rousers for his Orwellian club.…
Everclear
Art Alexakis thinks he’s saying some profound shit. For years, the Everclear frontman prattled on and on about his hard-knock life, until he eventually christened himself a spokesperson for all the downtrodden, abused, and forgotten American kids. Thing is, his big statements really don’t say much. The two-volume Songs From an American Movie (from 2000)…
Bloody Good
Sometimes a playwright just can’t win. When Suzan-Lori Parks finished writing In the Blood some three years ago, she stipulated the setting as “here and now.” Fat chance. In her play, a homeless unwed African American mother with five illegitimate kids is forced by a government health system to get her tubes tied. How was…
Pigface
For industrial rock aficionados, the name Pigface conjures up the image of a bandit collective: At some point, personnel from most of the genre’s heavyweights have taken part in the controlled chaos led by drummer Martin Atkins. And maybe this has been the group’s greatest limitation: With so many ideas going on, Pigface albums often…
Playing With Dolls
Try a Google search for “Barbie,” and your first option is the official Mattel Barbie website. Run the cursor over the image of Barbie on the home page, and Barbie enthusiastically proclaims, “I love art!” But Barbie likely wouldn’t love the art of Ophira Edut, whose adiosbarbie.com is the third site listed by Google. It’s…
Fabolous
On his sophomore turn, Fabolous sounds as if he’s sleepwalking through his Street Dreams. With a languid, stoned flow reminiscent of a less God-fearing Mase, Fabolous’s rhymes are hypnotic and enveloping at their best. But the 23-year-old Brooklyn MC seldom lives up to his potential here, and he seems to admit as much: “Thug enough…
Surveying Zagat
The 2003 Zagat Survey of America’s Top Restaurants is out and, as always, Cleveland’s listings make tasty food for thought. The good news is that, more than ever, Greater Clevelanders seem to be hip to the merits of locally owned, chef-driven restaurants: Of what are purported to be the city’s top 20 dining rooms, not…
Ani DiFranco
Self-confidence rules on the latest release from indie-folk tsunami Ani DiFranco. On the aptly titled Evolve, she ends her journey with a five-piece band, speeding back toward her roots as a solo singer-songwriter. Now 14 years into her career, DiFranco’s mastered the art of intellectual musing with her heart on her sleeve. She’s still hip…
