Cult of Personality
We’re almost to the point where we can forgive the Cult’s Ian Astbury for resurrecting Jim Morrison’s dead, bloated spirit for what pretty much amounted to a discordant Doors cover band with a couple of surviving band members a few years ago. Astbury’s now reunited with Cult co-founder and guitarist Billy Duffy for a tour…
Say It Proud
No pussies need apply: I cringe everytime I read stories [“Dear Cleveland,” March 1] about how Cleveland needs to become more “trendy” and “hip” to attract young people to make the city “vibrant.” It’s the same type of elitist crap that keeps me from moving to cities such as New York, Boston, L.A., or Chicago.…
Panic! at the Disco
Looking like terribly well-dressed Goonies, these supple-cheeked boys in velvet blazers strike serious poses and make such studworthy claims as “I’ve got more wit/A better kiss/A hotter touch/A better fuck/Than any boy you’ll ever meet.” Brendan Urie’s near-falsetto begs us to snap our fingers and tap our feet. And audiences are obliging with much more…
Sickness and Health
If you’ve ever written a little fiction — from a short story in college to that unpublished novel now wedged under the broken leg of a table in the attic — you’re probably familiar with the sensation of characters overtaking the author. Once you set a handful of made-up folks in motion, they tend to…
Lawyer Jokes
For 14 years, former attorney Mike Wypasek played straight man in the courtroom. But tonight, at Legally Roasted: The People vs. Mr. Sunshine, the veteran area comic goes on trial on charges that he’s bombed too many punchlines. “I deny all charges,” he says, laughing. “My accusers wouldn’t know comedy if it walked up and…
Beatific Love
Popular opinion among music critics holds that Coldplay is a minor annoyance but a major attraction — perhaps the most popular young rock band in the world, but likely, over the course of less than three more albums, to be barely remembered, with talk of its greatness the echo of a whisper. Rock fans don’t…
Robin Thicke
When he debuted in 2003 on the heels of several new blue-eyed soul men, Robin Thicke sounded like a talented singer without a plan. The son of actor Alan Thicke couldn’t decide whether to align himself with the urban present or an R&B past he was too young to remember, and Beautiful World suffered in…
AIDS and Pains
It has been said, “No good deed goes unpunished.” This is particularly true in theater, when a company produces a play that has its heart in the right place, but few other vital organs correctly positioned. So it is with Karamu’s Before It Hits Home, an effort by playwright Cheryl L. West to probe the…
Avast, Mateys!
Avast, Mateys! A ballet about dancing pirates docks at Playhouse Square. There are very few Captain Jack-style shenanigans in the American Ballet Theatre’s production of Le Corsaire (The Pirate). But the onstage spectacle — featuring a boat, marketplace, and cave on the lavish set — is still one of the dance world’s biggest and most…
Love His Way
“It’s a very depressing song, isn’t it?” asks Richard Butler with a rueful laugh. The longtime frontman of the Psychedelic Furs is referring to “Maybe Someday,” the final track on his solo debut, and he’s right. The nicotine rasp that burned itself into music history in such new-wave standards as “Love My Way” has softened…
Sonic Youth
Rescued from the out-of-print wilderness, Sonic Youth’s self-titled debut reveals itself as quite the opposite of the festering, tonal Hades delivered by such subsequent records as Confusion Is Sex or Bad Moon Rising. Instead, we find a diminutive blond Art Forum contributor picking up a bass, a pair of Glenn Branca-affiliated guitar soldiers, and a…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets — It’s exhilarating to find a short show that’s entirely diverting and worthwhile — not to mention free. The title of this George Bernard Shaw piece refers to the 24 sonnets by William Shakespeare purportedly addressed to a “dark lady,” who served as the bard’s muse for a spell.…
The Wright Stuff
After a quarter-century in the biz, comedian Steven Wright likens himself to an athlete. “My mind is trained,” he says. “I’ve done push-ups with that part of my brain so much, it’s in shape to see jokes around me.” Ever since his breakthrough in the ’80s, Wright — the world’s most deadpan comic — has…
Drinking at the Irish Well
Begorra! Time for twentysomethings to don their most garish green togs and plastic derbies, and get rip-snorting drunk in public — that’s a fine old Irish tradition, right? Actually, no. In Ireland, as a rule, folks don’t engage in such tomfoolery. In fact, until tourism became a major industry, the pubs in Ireland were closed…
Ray Davies
After his 30 years and 24 albums with the Kinks, and following a 13-year break, Ray Davies’ first solo LP unveils his best work since 1971’s Muswell Hillbillies. The 61-year-old’s return to form was foreshadowed in the bravura tour dates in support of his book, X-Ray, several years ago. Besides stripping out the showman sediment…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Ireland Collection — Youngstown photographer Dagmar Amrhein recently toured Cork and Dublin with her shutter in landscape mode. What she captured are lovely images of thatched houses, quaint storefronts, and historic castles and churches, with paths winding into the distance. Among the highlights is a wooden door set in a stone wall overgrown with…
Making Themselves at Homo
The last place you’d think you’d catch 300 professional gay guys in one place would be in a straight bar. But that’s the point behind G2H2 — or Gay Guys’ Happy Hour — on the third Friday of each month. “We avoid meeting at gay bars, which are more haphazard and random,” says club host…
They Are Not Men
Devo’s a fucking joke. Seriously. The energy domes, Chinaman, Booji Boy — it’s all intended as some snarky postmodern riddle about how you and I are fat morons with few interests beyond jerking off and eating donuts. It was a pretty funny joke, too, until the band left Akron, did coke with Dan Aykroyd, and…
The Sounds
The glut of Swedish bands a few years ago offered only a nibble of what the Sounds had to offer. Their sophomore effort shows the kind of growth that any band with only one record should exhibit after garnering features in nearly every major music publication. In the four years since that recording, they have…
Hoop Dreams Come True
Through the Fire (Disney) He’s averaging just nine points in his second season for the Portland Trail Blazers, but considering where he came from and what he’s overcome, Sebastian Telfair is doing just fine, thank you. Jonathan Hock’s fascinating documentary takes us back to the young New York basketball legend’s pivotal senior year in Brooklyn…
Heavenly Bodies
Our solar system has dozens of what are called Binary Minor Planets, which are actually asteroids and comets. Derek Richardson, an astronomy prof at the University of Maryland, will discuss the heavenly bodies at a fact- and trivia-filled lecture tonight. “Since 1999, we’ve found 60 of them,” he says. “We’ve got binaries popping up everywhere.”…
Sound Advice
David Christopher, aka Deviant, is a resident DJ at Abbasso and a partner in Toes in the Sand Recordings. His HeadRush Music promotes dance events from Connecticut to Cleveland. How do you describe your music? We call it “journey music.” It’s a series of sounds and textures, mixed seamlessly. The tracks are arranged with a…
Christopher O’Riley
All 185 of the “String Quartet Tributes to . . .” combined aren’t worth the $15 a Christopher O’Riley tribute will run you. The pianist cut his teeth on Beethoven, Bach, and Stravinsky before moving on to the slightly less-lauded Radiohead. Now he’s turned his classically trained digits to Elliott Smith, the erratic, addicted singer-songwriter…
Our top DVD picks for the week of March 14.
All Dogs Go to Heaven/All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 (MGM) American Psycho (Lions Gate) Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers (Warner Bros.) Basic Instinct: Ultimate Edition (Lions Gate) Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo — The Little Black Book Edition (Disney) A Fish Called Wanda (MGM) Get Shorty/Be Cool (MGM) How to Lose Your Lover…
Green All Over
Little green men don’t always come from outer space. Sometimes, after a few pints of beer and extra helpings of corned beef and cabbage, you can catch the tiny buggers walking the streets — as part of Cleveland’s annual Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. Along with marching bands, bagpipers, and fancy floats, leprechauns — in the…
Money Where Your Mouth Is
Band: KB and the Riptides (www.kbandtheriptides.com) Hometown: Cleveland Sounds like: “Hyper surf rock and maximum blues.” Fun fact: “Official house band for the Wagner Surf Club, the crazy Cleveland group that surfs Lake Erie on the really nasty, windy, cold days, year-round.” Playing: The Hi -Fi Concert Club, Sunday, March 19 Why you should see…
Lawless
From its crisp modern honky-tonk to the band’s stage names, Lawless sounds like the kind of country-western band you hear on the radio, playing clean-sounding songs about dirty living. With an affable twang, singer John Dillon Hardy offers vivid tales of drinking, love, and drunken love at the bottom of the ladder, probably in a…
A Real Knockout
Gamers have a derogatory name for people who prize a game’s visuals above all: “graphic whores.” But sometimes great graphics can enhance game play — or even provide an experience that couldn’t have occurred otherwise. Fight Night Round 3 for the Xbox 360 is a perfect example. The boxers in the game — especially famous…
A Taste of India
India — home of Bollywood, that extravagant movie genre with over-the-top singing and dancing — boasts the world’s largest film industry. But you’d never know it here in the States, where Paul Walker and a middle-aged black guy in drag are considered stars. Characters who sing and speak in a foreign language, coupled with marathon…
Last Word
“The best Cleveland album doesn’t exist. But if it did, it would be a mixtape with all the Cleveland classics dating from Bone Thugs in the ’90s all the way up to current joints from Ray Cash and Fat Al. Mix it in with the best of Cleveland’s underground scene, and you’d have a winner.”…
Prism Theory
If nü metal kicked the bucket, word never reached Akron’s Prism Theory. The quartet matches its chunky riffs with enough clean vocals and gorilla grunts to make a serious run at active rock radio. The band has shared stages with WMMS faves Three Days Grace and prog titans Planet X, and on its second disc,…
The week’s best releases from the pop-culture universe
CD — Planet Rock: The Album: Afrika Bambaataa & Soulsonic Force’s second album — never before released on CD — is the cornerstone of so many genres, it’s easy to believe that the very foundation of modern music would crumble without it. The 1986 album — which includes the group’s most seminal work — takes…
Imitation of Strife
With its debut album, Avarice and Absolution, Virginia Beach’s Revery continues the chain of influence that started in the early ’90s with the tormented, flannel-wearing Nirvana and Pearl Jam. Power chords, angst-ridden lyrics, and a general sense of being simultaneously pissed-off and confused drip through the grooves of its songs. Sat., March 18, 8 p.m.
Live From Cleveland
Case Western Reserve University radio station WRUW-FM 91.1 has announced the spring lineup for Live From Cleveland, an hour-long weekly showcase for local bands. After a 15-year run, the show went off the air in 2004, returning in late 2005. It now has a full schedule through July and plans to run year-round. “I wanted…
Exene Cervenka & the Original Sinners
On Exene Cervenka & the Original Sinners’ Sev7en LP, the former X frontwoman is back to doing what she does best, and she’s doing it better than she has in years — the rocking punkabilly set isn’t just catchy; it’s fun. Since releasing the previous Sinners disc, she’s replaced most of her backing band with…
Pump It Up
Every few weeks at Oberlin College, a group of conservatory students carries on a strange, noble, and increasingly popular tradition — the Friday Night Organ Pump. They meet at midnight at Finney Chapel, flip off the lights, and crank up the pipe organ for an hour of classical music laced with silly contests and sketch…
Mix Master Mike
He may be best-known as the Beastie Boys’ man behind the wheels of steel, but Mix Master Mike has scratched out an impressive career beyond that role. A native San Franciscan, Michael Schwartz was inspired by his uncle’s record collection and an in-concert taste of Grandmixer DST cutting up Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” Fresh out of…
Badfish (Sublime tribute)
I Love the ’90s, Part Deux: It’s 1996 once again at this night of tribute bands, a virtual Lollapalooza — but without the sunburn and a set by a critically lauded electronic act nobody really cares about. And let’s have a moment of silence for the late Brad Nowell, as we note the unfortunate irony…
Pick-Up Artist
Olympic skater John Zimmerman picks up women regularly. He calls it practice. Lifting his skating partner Kyoko Ina takes a lot of exercise, he says, and he prefers to be creative when it comes to keeping in shape. “I like to lift people up wherever we are and name that lift by the street we…
The Reverend Billy C. Wirtz
Most funny songs evaporate once the novelty has passed. (Listen to “Because I Was High” lately? How about Willie Nelson’s gay-cowboy song?) Great songwriters learn how to channel their maverick humor, turning out idiosyncratic songs that are both amusing and memorable. Some lean more toward comedy (like Tom Lehrer, Sarah Silverman in Jesus Is Magic),…
Goes Well With Beer
Saddle up and ride out to Ohio City. There’s a whole new world to revel in, and its point of entry is — of all places — the venerable Great Lakes Brewing Co. Not that Great Lakes hasn’t earned its share of kudos. Its top-rated microbrews — Dortmunder Gold, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter, and Burning River…
Where’s the Strangest Place You’ve Made Whoopee?
With his booming baritone and infectious chuckle, “Big Daddy” Keating makes like an overweight Bob Barker at the weekly Game Show at gay-friendly club Twist. Tonight, the former cruise-ship lounge singer hosts a couple rounds of the ’70s daytime-TV staple Tattle Tales, in which couples are sweet-talked into dishing dirt on each other. The pair…
DJ Cash Money
Long before bling began its domination of hip-hop, long before there was a record label that shared his name, you could bank on DJ Cash Money’s turntable skills. Inducted into the DMC-Technics Hall of Fame in 1998 as “The World’s Greatest DJ,” the Philly pioneer has outlasted most of his old-school contemporaries, building a legacy…
Gringo Juice
Next time we drop by Abuelo’s Mexican Food Embassy (26100 Harvard Road, Warrensville Heights, 216-360-9030), we may skip the well-appointed dining room and head straight for the bar. Not that the food at the Texas-based chain isn’t good. Ultra-sheer tortilla chips are killer, in fact, arriving at the table still warm from the fryer and…
Behind the Music
When indie-rock smartass James Dewees formed Reggie and the Full Effect at the end of the ’90s, he built an entire backstory around the band. It involved a lost bluesman, legendary unreleased recordings, and a debut album titled Greatest Hits 1984-1987, which came out in 1998. Since then Dewees — a former member of the…
Blackstreet
As the creator of new jack swing, the late-’80s hybrid that revitalized R&B and gave hip-hop a leg up on its way to world dominance, Harlem native Teddy Riley is one of the most influential producers in history. Yet he’s also made his mark as a performer in two different groups. Guy, his pre-fame trio,…
See Also: Vexing
The posters for V for Vendetta read “An uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.” Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multilayered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify, and it’s certainly not feasible to expect producer Joel Silver to keep things subtle.…
Dream Weaver
Like most first-time filmmakers, Jonathan Sajetowski wrote about and directed what he knew: his life. And while he admits that part of Donnybrook, his debut feature — which makes its premiere today as part of the Cleveland International Film Festival — parallels his own life, he’s quick to add that it’s not entirely autobiographical. “I’ve…
Flop Jocks
Brian Stark is a firm believer in success. He reads aloud from self-help books and keeps a poster listing “21 Suggestions for Success” framed in his sunlit office. On the WERE-AM radio show he hosts with his brother Paul, he advises listeners how to succeed in real estate. The two insist that property is a…
Wreckless Eric
Back in the ’70s, Wreckless Eric (born Eric Goulden) was part of Stiff Records’ stable of new-wave eccentrics, along with the likes of Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, and Ian Dury. While achieving some success in the U.K. and Europe, he barely qualified as a cult figure on this side of the Atlantic. And that’s a…
Rug Rat
So wait. It’s a movie about the longest criminal trial in U.S. history, it’s directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, and it stars . . . Vin Diesel in a wig? In a role originally intended for Joe Pesci? Can Lumet be serious? Actually, no. The characters may be based on real people, with much…
The Man Show
For the first time in its eight-year history, the Cleveland Contemporary Dance Theatre gives its male hoofers center stage this weekend at The Men’s Project: Men in Motion, part of Cleveland Public Theatre’s DanceWorks series. “We rarely see full-length evening concerts devoted to the male dancer,” says Michael Medcalf, the troupe’s founder. “It’s even more…
A Dangerous Mind
A dark figure in Timberland boots lingered at the change machine. He had been there for half an hour, each minute punctuated by the tink-tink-tink of quarters cascading steadily from the machine. The customer washing his car nearby didn’t know what the man was up to, but he knew it was no good. After the…
Moondog Coronation Ball
Novelty was the concept behind what’s been called the first rock-and-roll concert, DJ Alan Freed’s notorious Moondog Coronation Ball on March 21, 1952. Famous for popularizing black music among whites and later scandalized by the first payola trials, Freed wanted to reach a new audience: kids. There were some established performers on the bill, like…
Because of the Dixie Win
If the Confederacy had won the Civil War, would blacks still be enslaved? Would women vote? Would the United States have colluded with Hitler — or at least pledged noninterference? If the Emancipation Proclamation had been merely a rhetorical gesture from a president who would soon be exiled to Canada (after being captured in blackface),…
Monkey Business
We’re really not sure who’s clamoring to see Lilya 4-Ever, one of the films showing at the Cleveland Cinematheque’s All-Request Weekend (which actually runs two weekends). Frankly, Lukas Moodysson’s 2002 downer — about a 16-year-old Russian girl who turns to prostitution after her mother abandons her — bums us out. It’s unrelentingly sad and offers…
What Rape?
When he woke up last Wednesday, Cavs guard Damon Jones was the most booed athlete in Cleveland [“Always Open,” March 8]. By day’s end, he was also a pervert. “Jones implicated in sexual assault,” a Plain Dealer headline announced. The Akron Beacon Journal reported that a 23-year-old Arizona woman, who recently visited Cleveland, alleged that…
Dream Theater
Prog-metal’s Dream Theater could be the heir apparent to Rush’s throne. Its latest release, Octavarium, finds the band members testing their songwriting skills with shorter pieces, rather than the endless intricate jams the group is known for. “We kind of did that formula to death,” says drummer Mike Portnoy. “So we wanted to challenge ourselves…
Nuts to You
Hollywood’s a sucker for cross-dressing. When the American Film Institute chose the 100 greatest comedies of all time, a pair of drag films — Some Like It Hot and Tootsie — earned the top two slots. From Operation Petticoat to White Chicks, slapping falsies on a dude is the fast road to Chuckletown. Women dressing…
