Good Scouts
Girl Scout leader Victoria Williams is a brave and resourceful outdoorswoman. When a bat flew in her tent, she bravely led her troop in a series of bloodcurdling screams. Then she resourcefully beat a path to the nearest cabin, where they all slept soundly on the bat-free floor. “I’ve had enough camping,” she sighs, none-too-wistfully…
Various artists
Various artists The Crow: Salvation (Koch) Various artists Million Dollar Hotel (Interscope) How does one define a good soundtrack? Is it the effective use of music to increase the emotion of the story or just a publicity tool to attract more moviegoers? Hopefully, a little of both. The Crow: Salvation has the added burden of…
Emergency Measures
On a typical Thursday evening at the Free Clinic, Nurse Manager Dena Young cuts off admission at 5 p.m. By then, some 80 patients are packed in the Clinic’s waiting room, squeezed into worn chairs close enough to fear each other’s contagion. Many have come fresh from low-paying service industry jobs, still dressed in their…
Bill Weita
Bill Weita Subsidized Time (Heliocentric) The second album from Bill Weita, the visionary behind Kent’s psychedelic/ electronica band Fuzzhead, doesn’t spell the end of Fuzzhead. Rather, Weita, who released his first solo album, Substance D, three years ago, merely uses his solo material to test the limits of his keyboards. And without the rest of…
The Edge
Turnabout! Death row inmate Anthony Apanovitch caught a break at the Sheppard trial last week, when county prosecutors put Linda Luke on the stand. A trace evidence expert in the coroner’s office, Luke admitted that, prior to 1990, there’s a good chance DNA samples stored there were contaminated, due to improper handling. Prosecutors were trying…
Disengage
Unlike past years, the main focus of this year’s South by Southwest — the annual convention that draws thousands of music industry types and hundreds of bands to Austin, Texas, for five days of beer and barbecue — was on the Internet and how it is going to change the nature of the record business.…
Letters to the Editor
The Verdict: Guns Kill PeopleMy daughter was a friend of Penny Chang. It is with great sadness that I read more and more information about this tragedy. I feel your article [“Fatal Flaws,” by Mike Tobin, March 16] was remiss as it played up the fault or errors played out by the Cleveland Clinic and…
It’s All in Your Head
The current group show at Spaces is called Atmospheric Conditions, but it’s not as rarefied as all that. It’s simply an exhibit that uses common materials in unpredictable ways, and the results can be thought-provoking. But the viewer is so aware of the novel use of these materials that the message sometimes gets lost in…
Prize Catch
Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Twelfth Night totally eschews Kenneth Branagh’s Irish roguery and Merchant-Ivory’s gleaming Edwardian finery. It commences, instead, in near darkness, on what looks like a theme park dedicated to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” Enter a squad of ghouls waylaid from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, holding candles under their bloodless Gothic…
Side Dish
Dawn of a New Century Look for the Ritz-Carlton’s newest restaurant, Century, to highball it into town on Friday, March 31. The posh dining room and sushi bar is named after the 20th Century Limited, a luxurious New York-to-Chicago train, and will offer a fine view of The Avenue at Tower City as well as…
A House Divided
I first became acquainted with the House of Brews over a thick, luscious pork chop, slathered with a soy-molasses-and-thyme marinade, and served with fruity chutney, a wedge of buttery scalloped potatoes, and four slender stalks of asparagus. At the modest price of $14, the meal was a deal, and I made a mental note to…
Roots Rock Weirdo
Talk to Robbie Fulks and you think his songs are like his speech — strong, but subject to change. “My accent kind of tends to go in and out, depending on how drunk I am,” Fulks says via phone. “I kind of speak normally, kind of Pennsylvania.” His tunes, too, seem to vary according to…
What About Hob?
It’s fitting that Hob celebrated his 40th anniversary of sobriety this week in Cleveland. This is where he was born and raised, and even though he became a serious drinker elsewhere, Cleveland is the city that started him on the road to health. Now a resident of southern Colorado, Hob — that’s what he goes…
Voodoo Childish
When you’re the number-one R&B loverman, it’s hard to fit the little things into your life (since you’re, you know, sexing up the ladies and doing all that stuff that lovermen do). Little things, like sitting down for 15 minutes for an interview to promote your new album — your crucial second album and your…
A Marriage to Dye For
If someone you know is getting married this spring, she’s probably already thought about flowers, music, and a white tiered confection complete with plastic fountains and miniature Doric columns, and a lilliputian bride and groom perched atop. But others are adding a unique touch to their celebration by adopting a more ancient tradition — that…
Sin City or Bust
When they started their tour a couple of weeks ago in Florida, the Genitorturers, an industrial band known for a sexually explicit stage show, encountered what has come to be commonplace at its concerts — groups of fundamentalist Christians huddling in prayer outside the venue. Well-versed in the politics of pissing off their detractors, the…
Turning Japanese
The gun is a coward’s weapon — always has been, always will be. Likening it to the sword is like equating rape to romance. However, for reasons that can only be attributed to collective insanity, Hollywood loves to romanticize the gun, serving as an adjunct advertising agency for the firearms industry. The celebrity glares down…
Marc Anthony
Marc Anthony Allen Theatre March 16 If Ricky Martin stands for sex, Marc Anthony represents love, and we all know which lasts longer. Sure, skin sells, but it’s time to forget about the smiling Martin and his commercialized salsa, Vegas glitz, and much-hyped arena tour that came through town last fall. Martin might be trendy,…
Love Gets New Life
O! Sweet vulture of love! Picking through the bones and sinew of doe-eyed fools the world around! How exquisite is thy rending, how blissful the release! Yeah, the drug of romance and its rotten hangover are nothing new to stage, screen, and stereo. Yet it doesn’t matter how well you prepare, how many amulets you…
Mix Master Mike, Rahzel, Choclair, DJ Curry
Mix Master Mike Rahzel Choclair DJ Curry March 19 Agora Talk about stereotypical crowds. Most of the audience at the “Electric Boogaloo” concert, which featured Rahzel and Mix Master Mike, looked like high school and college-age white boys, and virtually every one of them was wearing his hat backwards. But despite the relatively small crowd…
Jet Set
Is America ready for the Hong Kong action style? Certainly there are many fans of the more balletic, guns-and-martial-arts, fly-through-the-air movies that have inspired everyone from Quentin Tarantino to the Wachowski brothers. And yet Hollywood still seems to have had trouble marketing the concept. Things have been looking up recently, however. With the smash success…
The Rachel’s Shannon Wright
The Rachel’s Shannon Wright Speak in Tongues March 14 A packed Speak in Tongues on a Tuesday night with a $7 ticket is not a common occurrence, but the Rachel’s are anything but common. They’re not a rock band, but they play mostly in rock clubs. They’re a chamber music ensemble, but they never play…
Whatever
Even the press kit is up front about it: Whatever It Takes is less a film than a product of marketing research and demographic considerations. It might as well have been written on a bar graph, so fetishistic is it about making sure it appeals to teens and their parents — hence, the setting (high…
Fishbone
Fishbone Fishbone & the Familyhood Nextperience Presents the Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx (Hollywood) From the first funky track (“Shakey Ground”) on the new Fishbone album, there’s a sneaky notion that somehow this labyrinthine-titled disc is going to pay tribute to Sly & the Family Stone (even though it’s a remake of an old Temptations hit). That…
Face Lift
How do you repair an aging latticework structure like the Columbus Road Bridge, one of the distinctive movable bridges that have become the trademark of the Flats? Very carefully. Besides the open holes over the water, which the workers must negotiate like cats — a life preserver hangs tied to the railing, just in case…
Sumack
Sumack Now Hear This (V2) Sumack may call the music it makes “junkrock,” but it sells itself short. A cross between Soul Coughing and Timbuk 3, this Los Angeles band serves up a well-tailored smorgasbord of groove, complete with social and psychological insight and topical commentary. And even when it misses the mark (despite its…
