FirstEnergy’s New Racket
FirstEnergy’s New Racket Why screw just the customers? I saw your articles “FirstEnergy Profits Up” and “An Energetic Defense” [First Punch, February 23 and March 2]. You have answered the question so many people have asked: Why does their stock stay so high, when their reputation is so terrible? These people are outlaws who hide…
On View
NEW George Mauersberger — The Cleveland State drawing instructor reinvigorates the floral genre by forcing pretty flowers to share the attention, rather than hog it, in these large pastel and charcoal drawings. Unlike traditional still lifes, Mauersberger’s flowers tend to be just one of many elements to regard, and his settings are not of the…
The Prodigals CD release party
Celtic rockers the Prodigals like the Beachland so much, they named their new CD after it. In fact, they recorded Beachland Bootleg: Prodigals Live there last October 22. And if the Cleveland connection and St. Pat’s Day aren’t enough for ye, then trust the words of Irish Music Magazine’s John O’Regan, who wrote the liner…
Terror Treats
U.S. Senators George Voinovich and Mike DeWine want to make it tougher for regular people to declare bankruptcy. But they seem to have a special place — and a loophole — in their hearts for terrorists and murderers. A few years ago, the nutbags who bomb abortion clinics and shoot doctors discovered a cool legal…
Luck o’ the Beachcliff
Saturday night around eight in Rocky River, and we’re perched on bar stools, smiling down at the shamrocks drawn in the creamy white heads of our Guinnesses and listening to Jerry Lee Lewis on the jukebox. “Don’t fuck with the bartender,” cautions a buddy, leaning in close to my ear. Like I can’t see that…
The Decemberists
The danger in a project like the Decemberists’ — basically, the Portland band plays intellectual sea chanteys about topics both grim (unrequited love) and grimmer (murder-by-whale) — is the inclination toward the half-assed. In a post-Elephant 6 era in which gear is as affordable as it’s ever been, too many indie bands muck up their…
School of Mock
In Filmic Achievement (showing at the 29th Cleveland International Film Festival), a group of film-school students are asked to pitch a story, one at a time, to the rest of the class. The first guy throws out a tale about a kid cutting school, the principal on his tail, and the high jinks that happen…
Let Them Eat Steak
“Adapt or die” has long been restaurants’ rallying cry for surviving tough times, and XO (500 West St. Clair Avenue, 216-861-1919) aims to be a survivor. To that end, owner Zdenko Zovkic (pictured right) and Executive Chef Scott Popovic (left) announced last week that they’re ditching much of the restaurant’s edgy Euro cuisine and climbing…
Tweet
After scoring a top-three debut and one of the all-time great self-stimulation songs, “Oops (Oh My),” no one expected Tweet to fly the coop. But there went her skirt, and there went Tweet; except for a cameo in the film Honey, the last two years have been quiet for the Missy Elliott protégé. The restrained…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, March 17 After spending the day partying like your name was Fergus O’Feennaghty, why not spend the night taking in a Cleveland Orchestra concert? David Robertson (who joins the St. Louis Symphony as music director soon) conducts Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra — which you may recognize from the bone-throwing-apes scene in 2001: A…
Ashlee Blows
Ashlee Simpson sucks. A Yahoo search on that phrase generates 135,000 hits. Last December, we contributed to that chorus, writing that she had “dyed blandness black.” But we revised that opinion after witnessing Simpson’s compelling caterwauling during the Orange Bowl halftime show in early January. Despite her deceptively demure debut disc, Pieces of Me, Simpson…
Billy Idol
There are relatives of “Dancing With Myself,” “Flesh for Fantasy,” and “Rebel Yell” here, and Billy Idol hasn’t lost any of his drive or snarl. Is the material a progression from his earlier work? Maybe not, though the last three songs suggest a more mature Idol. Not only do the super-slick, catchy “Cherie” and the…
Green Scene
A third-generation mason, Sean Brogan works the graveyard shift, pouring concrete at construction sites until eight in the morning. After 12 years, he’s used to hitting the bars when the rest of the world is tackling morning rush hour. But every March 17, Brogan asks for the night off to be at the Union Club…
Surviving the Game
If Lemmy Kilmister moved in next door, your lawn would die. So says the Motörhead frontman himself, a 59-year-old rock and roll institution whose lifestyle is the only thing harder and dirtier than his band’s sweaty methamphetamine blues. He claims to have once gone three weeks on just two hours’ sleep, and he’s done enough…
Moby
Moby is far too wealthy to care about credibility in the dance-music world he left behind after 1996’s ill-conceived rock album Animal Rights and the mega-success of 1999’s Play. Dissed as a crass merchant of bogus blues, soul, and gospel retrofitted for the laptop generation, Moby earnestly guffawed all the way to the ATM. His…
Break On Through
FRI 3/18 After playing in a Doors tribute band for so long, Moonlight Drive guitarist Teague Purtell had to find out what it was like to write his own songs. So he founded the all-original foursome Trip Fuse. “Moonlight Drive is fun, because every night onstage I get to grow as a player with all…
Highland Soul
Scots and Americans have more than language in common, but a funny thing happens to music when you cross the Atlantic. Country music, our embarrassing old hat, assumes an exotic allure — Great Britain has magazines and radio shows dedicated exclusively to the stuff. And the traditional music of the U.K. — the jigs and…
T.I.
Sometime last year, a short war of words broke out between T.I. and Houston’s rising star, Lil’ Flip. As claims escalated and disses piled up, the two rappers both began claiming King of the South status. Ludacris took this disregard for his three platinum albums personally and started clapping back. Meanwhile, G-Unit’s Young Buck slated…
Plane Crazy
FRI 3/18 When the American Airlines Gas Model Club of Parma approached Bev Patterson to host a late-night Midnight Madness Flying session, they fired up their model planes to show her what they could do. “The first time I saw it, I was in awe,” says Patterson, general manager of the Sports Dome. Each plane…
Killa Controversy
Carey Kelly only vaguely resembles his older brother Robert, known to millions of R&B fans as R. Kelly. Where Robert is thin and sinewy, Carey is built like a lumberjack, with a thick neck and hands that could palm bowling balls. Robert is famous for his bedroom eyes; Carey’s glare is cold enough to lower…
The Shuteye Train
Rip-snortin’ drunk on gin, the Shuteye Train is on a midnight ride from today’s mistakes to tomorrow’s misadventures, and it makes for some pretty good songs. The Kent trio comprises clean-cut rockabilly guys — on the album’s cover, singer-guitarist Clint Covey brandishes a cigarette, jeans cuffed, with no visible tattoos. Lefty guitarist Vince Menti plays…
Flute Point
FRI 3/18 Nestor Torres realizes that the flute is a hard sell in contemporary music. Any instrument that takes a ribbing from Will Ferrell (see last year’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) has got its work cut out for it. “It’s extremely difficult,” sighs Torres. “I began doing this because of my naïveté as…
7 Seconds
Like Bad Religion, 7 Seconds became punk legends through perseverance and attrition. Founded in 1980, the band came into its own as giants like Minor Threat were closing up shop. Often lumped in with the West Coast hardcore bands, 7 Seconds actually hail from Reno, Nevada — “Skeeno,” they call it, and singer Kevin Seconds…
Norse Law
Since its emergence four years ago, metal-thrashing-mad Viking rap troupe Norse Law has always been about serious camp, like John Waters in a bullet belt. But on the Law’s latest, hard times occasionally trump the humor. Since 2004’s Sweet Home Scandinavia, founder Valhalla Ice lost all his bandmates and his label. Now he goes it…
Exies Encore
SUN 3/20 The Exies wasted no time returning to the studio after they wrapped up a tour in support of their debut album, 2003’s Inertia. “When we got back, we wanted to capitalize on whatever momentum we had,” says bassist Freddy Herrera. “We took off only two or three weeks. We didn’t want to be…
Calling All MCs
Velocity Productions will film the fourth volume of its Hiphopbattle.com series Saturday, March 19, at the Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Cleveland Heights). Hiphopbattle.com: 5X4 City vs. City will feature MCs from Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cincinnati squaring off, pitting town against town in a rhyme contest that’s more than just heated jokes…
St. Patrick’s Day
Ace’s Bar and Grille: 6600 Biddulph Rd., 216-741-4911. Ace’s opens for food and drinks at 6 a.m., and we won’t stop until we close. Drink specials run all day, and our menu features corned beef, cabbage, potatoes, Reubens, and corned beef sandwiches on fresh-baked rye. Amber’s Cabaret: 13311 Brookpark Rd., 216-267-1234. Make Amber’s Cabaret your…
Longwave
Now that the initial furor over the N.Y.C. music scene resurgence is dying down, the original scenemakers need more than hype to shift units. Unsurprisingly, the jury is still out on whether these bands can actually remain popular in the absence of hipster buzz. While the Strokes and Interpol produced competent second records that neither…
Ghost and the Machine
The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu, offered sufficient closure that it didn’t exactly demand a sequel. The horror lay in wondering why a mysterious videotape kills viewers seven days after they watch it; to a lesser extent, there was the mystery of the creepy girl, face hidden under long black hair,…
OK Go
After building an impressive buzz in their hometown of Chicago through enthusiastic word of mouth and an aggressively witty street-poster campaign a few years ago, these sly pop-rockers made a great self-titled debut on Capitol’s dime in 2002 that went sorely underheard. Frontman Damian Kulash is an unapologetic populist, a guy who wonders why the…
No Film at 11
Everyone with a TV remembers President Bush in the flight suit, landing on that aircraft carrier, standing in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner, and triumphantly declaring that major combat operations in Iraq were over. Two years on, many people feel like asking what exactly he meant by that. Gunner Palace makes no bones about…
Cryptopsy
No genre is for everyone, but extremely technical death metal really separates the men from the boys. There are folks who can handle the lightning-speed tempo changes, the drumbeats that sound like a thousand locusts crash-landing on the roof of a corrugated metal shed, and the squiggly high-pitched guitar solos. Other people — and make…
Losing Steam
Katsuhiro Otomo’s Steamboy will be released nationwide in both subtitled and dubbed versions. At the press screening, both were shown simultaneously in neighboring theaters, leaving the reviewer to choose which one to see. Your critic went with the subtitled cut, not purely for reasons of cinematic snobbery, but mostly because the dubbed version has been…
Allison Moorer
Guitars crackle, bass throbs, drums pound. The sound is a classic rock and roll grind: thick and drenched with electricity. The vocals, however, come from a different tradition and are a restrained series of observations; emotions are held back until the moment when release will mean even more. Allison Moorer has merged her country soul…
Ford Tough Luck
Darnay Cheeks just won $30,000 — and he’s pissed. In 1998, he filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleging that his employer, Ford Motor Company, discriminated against blacks on a promotions test at its Walton Hills plant. Seven years later, Ford has finally agreed to settle, offering $9 million to make…
Macho Fairy
In a way, it makes perfect sense that the role of Peter Pan — the boy who doesn’t want to grow up — has always been played by an adult. If you ask most boys or girls, what they desperately want is to be older — it’s the grown-ups who, having learned what a fraud…
Johnny Dowd
True love is a blessing/True love is a curse, begins one song on Johnny Dowd’s 2002 disc The Pawnbroker’s Wife, and though he addresses emotional highs (largely in the past tense), he’s more comfortable scraping depression’s depths. After almost two decades of playing informally with friends and family members, including a cover-band stint that informs…
Titan on a Hot Seat
Shopping-mall magnate Dick Jacobs stood in the foyer of his brother Dave’s new home and wept. It was 1979, and the house was 8,000 square feet of pure elegance, sitting on a wooded lot in Bay village overlooking Lake Erie. Bonne Bell Eckert, then president of the Bonne Bell cosmetics company, was amazed. “This is…
Gospel Truth
Whether or not you go to church, you’ve been touched by African American gospel music in many ways over the years. Mainstream rock and R&B artists such as James Brown, Ray Charles, and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins took the rhythms, the melodies, and the spontaneous expression of wholehearted emotion that are the core of gospel music…
Jill Scott
For more than a few fans, neosoul remains synonymous with Erykah Badu’s headwrap and defiantly hippieish duds. But for others — especially those who remember vintage R&B from the first time around — the genre has been defined instead by Jill Scott, the Philly poetess who came to prominence after collaborating with hometown heroes the…
One Night at Verba’s
Browns offensive lineman Ross Verba is sick of the rumors and innuendo. “You want the truth?” he asks a reporter. “I’ll give you the truth. Sit down, you’ve got yourself an interview. I just got you promoted.” Verba is sitting in a small back room at The Cove, a popular dive in Geneva. He’s so…
On Stage
The Exonerated — Outside the friendly confines of Texas, some Death Row inmates are actually freed when unmatched DNA or belated confessions from real perps pop open the jail doors. This concert-style production, assembled from interviews with formerly doomed inmates by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, interweaves the stories of six people who spent from…
Rachel Z
A jazz pianist with a pierced nose, Rachel Z has worked with Peter Gabriel, Wayne Shorter, and Stanley Clarke. Now she fronts a trio, making songs like Gabriel’s “Red Rain,” the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” and Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” sound a lot different than they do when you hear them on the radio every…
