Far From Loverly Lady
Most patrons will go to a theater to see a certain show. Yet they will make a pilgrimage to Carousel Dinner Theatre because of an ambiance that recalls a lost world. Anyone seeing My Fair Lady at this institution, the largest dinner theater in America, need hardly be reminded that the rewards have little to…
An Irish Charm
In Ireland, there’s no lack of things to do. You can scuba dive in Skelligs. Tee up at the Knockanally Golf Club. Tour a 15th-century parish church. Or visit a former feudal castle. But for all of its splendor, there’s one thing you can never, ever do in Ireland, and that is celebrate St. Patrick’s…
Business as Usual
Being the singularly self-conscious town that it is, Cleveland has always had a chip on its rock and roll shoulder about bands from the area “breaking out” or “making it.” This is, after all, the self-anointed Rock and Roll Capital, and it seems only appropriate that someday someone would slip out of the Rust Belt…
House Party
It’s been over 10 years since house music was first heard on the dance floors of the predominantly gay, black clubs of Chicago. Halo Varga and Justin Long, two Windy City natives who grew up together spinning at high school house parties and local raves, were there at the start. Since then, house music –…
Be Nice to Spider
Former Pogues singer Shane MacGowan was the kind of lush who puts all lushes to shame. It’s hard to read a review of any of the English’s band’s early performances without encountering a reference to the toothless singer’s affinity for alcohol. MacGowan reportedly also experimented with Valium, acid, and even speed, and was frequently missing…
Cartoonist Gone Mad
Cleveland Heights native and comic artist Peter Kuper is in good company in his hometown. “Cleveland has always been a hotbed for comics,” he says, pointing out that Superman creators Siegel and Shuster lived here, as did Robert Crumb, as does Harvey Pekar. Kuper — now living in New York City, where he teaches at…
Dan Curtin
Cleveland native Dan Curtin has been almost single-handedly putting his hometown on the international techno map since 1992, when he first began releasing hard yet intelligent tracks on labels such as 33 RPM and Buzz. Early Curtin releases, including the EPs “3rd From the Sun” and “Tales From the 2nd Moon,” reflect his love of…
Stand-Up Guy
Parents don’t always find their budding-comedian offspring very funny. Luckily for Dave Chappelle, his parents not only laughed, they carted him off to the clubs of Washington, D.C. At age 14, he was honing his comedy in the limelight; six years later, Chappelle made his film debut as Ahchoo in Mel Brooks’s Robin Hood: Men…
The Donnas
The Donnas have never denied the debt that they owe to the Ramones, and with each successive album and tour, the California girls reinforce that debt by playing louder, brattier, and smarter than ever before. The punky quartet is riding high after the recent release of its excellent fourth album, The Donnas Turn 21, which…
Bad Aim
To keep it simple, Enemy at the Gates plays like a cross between the PlayStation game Medal of Honor, a World War II Nazi shoot-’em-up viewed through a sniper’s scope, and a Harlequin romance novel. It’s history lesson as video game, video game as soap opera, soap opera as highbrow drama, highbrow drama as softcore…
Bob Dorough
For decades, composer/pianist Bob Dorough has been one of the most delightful entertainers in jazz. Born in 1923 in Cherry Hill, Arkansas, Dorough was boxer Sugar Ray Robinson’s music director for a couple of years, when Robinson was trying to establish himself as a nightclub performer. In 1956, he cut an album for the Bethlehem…
Portrait of the Artist
Van Gogh was a lunatic who cut off his ear. Picasso was a self-absorbed cur who abused women. Warhol turned out to be a desperate loner, Basquiat a doomed junkie. Try as he might, shriveled little Toulouse-Lautrec failed miserably at romance. As for El Greco’s explosive affair with that Spanish firecracker . . . Have…
Brassy
Not since Chrissie Hynde stormed into the U.K. and unleashed the Pretenders has an American punk chick showed up on British soil and caused such an unqualified commotion. Muffin Spencer, lead singer and chief irritant for the punk/hip-hop quartet Brassy, left home four years ago in search of something different, which she found in Manchester…
Heart of Darkness
I Stand Alone, a punishing, brutally misanthropic new film by the young French filmmaker Gaspar Noe, comes at you like a piledriver. Conceived as a sequel to the adventures of the character from Noe’s 1991 short Carne, the movie focuses on a man known only as the Butcher. Played with fearsome intensity by Philippe Nahon,…
The Soft Boys
Music history tends to stake its claims through hindsight. Two decades after the fact, this reissue is another attempt to revive a band that should have never fallen into these circumstances in the first place. The Soft Boys’ Underwater Moonlight is a lost recording of unequivocal and dazzling talent. Although it was, at the time,…
The Wrong Guy
In the gallery of a Cuyahoga County courtroom, Jerry Majewski waits for the judge to enter from the wings. Majewski’s feet tap to anxious rhythms, his lap a nest of cold palms and jagged fingernails. He is about to be sentenced for possessing crack cocaine. Last summer, a Cleveland patrolman watched Majewski idling his pickup…
Wynton Kelly
Along with Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, and Red Garland, Wynton Kelly was among the most influential jazz pianists of the ’60s and ’70s. Though he was an original stylist, Kelly wasn’t an innovator; he made a synthesis of existing styles that had a major impact. His initial influence was bop great Bud Powell, but his…
Captain Crunched
A day of skiing, a steak dinner, and all the beer you can drink was, at $50, a bargain for droves of Northeast Ohio firefighters who hit the slopes of Brandywine Ski Resort on a Sunday afternoon in 1995. The muscular dystrophy charity event — exclusive to area fire crews — was the social event…
Jimmy Scott
Little Jimmy Scott is one of Cleveland’s great musical treasures. The 75-year-old singer rarely performs in the area, but he’s had an illustrious career and overcome great obstacles in the process. Scott suffers from Kallmann’s syndrome, a hormone deficiency that has kept his voice from deepening. It hasn’t stopped him from becoming a distinctive jazz…
Know Your Accordions
Frankie Spetich could have chosen the Americanized piano accordion as his instrument, but instead he went for its gypsy cousin, the button box. Those who can’t distinguish between the two instruments probably never lived in a remote mountain town in Europe, nor did they have a crazy Uncle Slavko who liked to slide around on…
Oleander
On its second major label album, Oleander takes a nostalgic look back at generic ’80s corporate rock. The Sacramento-based quartet may wrap some of its chunky, clunky songs in post-Nirvana angst, and singer Thomas Flowers may claim to strive for a state of eternal slackerdom, but the band really misses the days when Night Ranger…
Grilled at the bar
Even after he stopped working as the house DJ, Scott Jones and his friends still liked to hang at Panini’s in Lakewood. It’s close to home, and the combination dance club/neighborhood joint has a comfortable feel. Then, around Halloween, two friends, Mark Elliott and Jason Reynolds, were booted from the bar. The pair had been…
Up the Academy
Gil Cates takes a long, deep breath before answering the question: Is producing the Academy Awards show the ultimate no-win situation? Cates has produced nine of the past 11 Oscar telecasts, and he returns March 25 after a year’s layoff; for those scoring at home, Cates is not to blame for last year’s epic, four-hours-plus…
Running Out the Clock
Does J.J. know he stinks? I just finished reading your article on Jimmy Jackson [“Fade Away,” February 22], and I must say it made a person who never responds to anything run to the computer. The article is one hell of a good piece of writing! I know it must have taken a lot for…
