Just Kidding
Just Kidding A laff riot: Having never read Scene before, I must confess that I found Frank Lewis’s article “Don’t Be a Savya Hata!” [February 25] hysterically funny. Thank you, Mr. Lewis, for your talented article. I look forward to reading more. Angie Caudill Akron It’s all in the mind: The introduction of “intelligent design”…
On View
Aerossault: The Artwork of Grant Smrekar — Grant Smrekar’s work is evidence that there’s more to graffiti than just gang tags and foul language. His often political pop art — full of American flags, helicopters, and what looks like Ché Guevara — poses timeless questions about politics and war; clearly, he wonders whether America’s overseas…
Cypress Hill
Not many hip-hop acts have been in continuous operation since the genre’s early ’90s golden age. Latin rap pioneers Cypress Hill are among the few, and their seventh studio set occasionally reveals the strain. “Til Death Comes” features the couplet “I brought you thug shit/Taught you drug shit . . . Tell me what we…
Sex in the Slam
Last year, guards at the Northeast Pre-Release Center were accused of sexually preying on female inmates (“Authority Problem,” March 12, 2003). Then the guy in charge of investigating abuse was himself accused of sexual harassment (“Fox in the Jailhouse?”, August 6). Not to be outdone, the same conditions were documented at the Reformatory for Women…
No More Wussies
Tom Hanks is who Tom Hanks is today because of something he did about 14 years ago. One afternoon, Hanks walked into his agent’s office and told the man who takes 10 percent, “I don’t want to play pussies anymore.” He had spent the better part of the 1980s being a pussy: the pussy with…
Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force
Yes, okay, fine; there’s a song on this album called “Baroque & Roll.” Now stop laughing, because it’s really good. This whole album is, in fact. For all its fraternal rhetoric, metal’s often as trendy as any genre, and stubborn individualism often inspires an urge to scoff that’s hard to resist. Yngwie Malmsteen’s been a…
Stabbing Eastward
There just aren’t enough gruesome crimes and dead bodies in Cleveland to keep writer John Stark Bellamy II busy. So he’s moving to Vermont later this year, where perhaps he’ll be blessed with a new wellspring of headless torsos and cellar-dwelling killers. “I would have to resort to grease fires and drive-by shootings, if I…
Class Distinctions
For food fans, the celebrity chef is today’s rock star. Just substitute The Food Network for MTV, Gourmet for Spin, and personal appearances for live concerts, and the recipe’s complete. Sure, we collect cookbooks instead of CDs and Cuisinarts instead of Fenders. But just as your 14-year-old nephew secretly wishes he were Justin Hawkins, we…
Various Artists
In the early ’90s, when guitar-wielding northwestern lumberjacks were taking over the alternative landscape with grunge, a quite different scene was brewing in the U.K. Dubbed shoegazers because of their oft-shy stage presence, a new crop of British bands (many on Alan McGee’s Creation Records imprint) took their cue from the melodic, distortion-heavy guitar-pop blueprint…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, March 25 In this age of preening, over-emotive divas, singer-songwriter Josh Ritter is a welcome respite. Decorating his songs with low-key vocals and tastefully spare arrangements, the 26-year-old Idaho native is an old-fashioned storyteller who makes music for deep consideration. This isn’t stuff you put on when you’re getting dressed for work or making…
Texas Talk
Austin, Texas, is not a town for 17-year-olds. The city’s annual South by Southwest Music Conference is pretty much one prolonged beer belch, the Alcohol Olympics. For four nights each spring, downtown streets are blocked off, so that thousands of revelers can stumble about as if the town were poised on a fault line. Tipsy…
Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton and Robert Johnson go back a long way. As a young Turk in the blues world of the ’60s, Clapton covered the Delta master’s “Rambling on My Mind” with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and “From Four Till Late” on Cream’s debut LP. His new tribute to Johnson brings this admiration full circle and confirms…
All Smiley
To Rickey Smiley, comedy today is like strawberry shortcake: The more you eat, the less you want. Take that from the 35-year-old comedian, who credits his first taste of success to an appearance on BET in 1997. Since then, the cable network has increasingly cluttered its airwaves with comedy showcases, which overexpose comedians as well…
Taking Their Shots
South by Southwest is really only about one thing: overindulgence — in bands and booze. We partook of so much of the latter that we had to stow our liver in the overhead compartment on the flight home. It’s a good thing we were taking notes. Leading the handful of local artists at SXSW were…
The Fierce Invalids
The Fierce Invalids’ Impure Thoughts is the kind of rock that keeps Cleveland on the map. When done well, slick songs like these wind up on the radio and stay there for 30 years. And the Invalids already qualify as classic rockers: The rhythm section of bassist-writer Gerard Dominick and drummer Tony Rockich has been…
The 10 Spot
SUN 3/28 Slim Pickns rattles the walls with his “funky-chunky” tech house. Drum & bass impresario Oni1 introduces his latest deep-house tracks. And Semaj offers a mix of gospel, tribal, and “booty for the soul.” They are three of the turntablists featured at this weekend’s 10 Hours, 10 DJs at Twist. “We aren’t going for…
Let There Be Darkness
It’s so easy to laugh at metalheads, because it’s so hard for us metalheads to laugh at ourselves. You’d think a genre that came of age in a codpiece, that once rocked bangs high enough to imperil aircraft, would inherently have a well-developed sense of humor. But alas, headbangers are a terminally overserious bunch these…
The New Lou Reeds
The serrated Ritalin blues of Cleveland’s New Lou Reeds is a product of short attention spans and shorter tempers. This trio’s convulsive whiskey rock is fidgety as a kid in church. Last we heard from Stephe DK, he was manning the drum kit for local garage rockers Coffinberry. He’s the frontman here, with a sardonic…
Canoe Believe It
SUN 3/28 Hank Annable of Oberlin has been paddling the Vermilion River since he was a Boy Scout in 1942. So take it from him that the river’s twists and turns make the 36th annual Vermilion River Race one of the most challenging area competitions for amateur canoers and kayakers alike. It’s an eight-mile contest…
Dawn of the Dweebs
When it comes to the rock-radio airwaves, forget well-coifed hipsters or impeccably attired starlets. These days, the geeks have inherited the earth. The popular, chewy, pastoral pop nugget “So Says I” comes from the Shins, four average Joes who look more like avid bowlers than talented musicians, while emo upstarts Yellowcard prominently feature a frantic…
Ride That Ass
3/25-3/28 Tommy Davidson wants to make your life a little more complete. “My [act] has the racial insight that one would need to feel humanly whole again,” the comedian offers. “I pretty much break down all the barriers of what we think about each other and lay it on the table for everyone. I’m a…
‘Money’ Problems
Thousands of Cleveland classic-rock fans are voicing their disapproval over pending legislation that has prompted WNCX to stop playing the music of Pink Floyd. The outcry began shortly after the band’s Dark Side of the Moon was named the all-time best rock album by NCX listeners. The station planned to air the album in its…
The War at Home
FRI 3/26 Children of War isn’t easy to watch. That’s the point, says creator Ping Chong. “You can’t tell the stories of children who went through war without expressing the consequences of war on ordinary people,” he says of the production, which is part of his acclaimed decade-long Undesirable Elements series. Children gathers kids from…
Every Time I Die
Nearly a year after the Summer of Screamo, there still isn’t a good term for bands like Every Time I Die — “post-hardcore” and “melodic hardcore” don’t say enough, and most of them are about half metal. “Ferretcore” might be good; the group’s Jersey-based label, Ferret Music, has plenty of the better acts, including Every…
Suth’n Comfort
The Ladykillers is the second film that Joel and Ethan Coen have made in as many years to fill space between pet projects that seem to run off-leash; it’s their time-killer, if you will. But even their recent paychecks reflect the brothers’ restlessness: Their movies have grown more manic and scattered, more fun than they…
The Delgados
A choir of angelic voices followed by violently lovely orchestral bombast precedes “The Light Before We Land,” the opening track on the Delgados’ fourth album, Hate. It’s a rather incongruous beginning to an album born of personal tragedy and deep, black sadness, but it works. And how. Formerly reliant upon the songwriting and lyricism of…
Papa Tried
Jersey Girl, the sixth film by writer-director Kevin Smith, is the least Kevin Smith-y film he’s ever made, which will be welcome news to those exhausted by Smith’s everlasting obsession with his dick, fart jokes, and comic books, and bad news to those enamored of same. For the first time in Smith’s decade-long career, Jay…
Khanate
There’s doom metal — the slack, bluesy subgenre that revels in Black Sabbath’s shadow — and then there’s fucking Khanate. While technically a doom band — they’re on the L.A.-based doom label Southern Lord, they tour with flagrant Sabbath-worshipers, and they call their own music “infernal black doom” — this N.Y.C. quartet is millennia removed…
Wages of Sin
DMX fans expecting the next installment of Exit Wounds or Cradle 2 the Grave may be in for a shock when they sit down to watch his latest cinematic outing, Never Die Alone. For one thing, the movie opens with their hero lying dead in a coffin, and it’s no cheap fake-out. For another, the…
Sonny Landreth
Sonny Landreth is the second-most famous slide-guitar player born in Canton, Mississippi, after the legendary Elmore James. He’s also the second-most well-known resident of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, behind Carolina Panthers quarterback Jake Delhomme. As for firsts in his life, the 52-year-old became the first Caucasian to join zydeco superstar Clifton Chenier’s Red Hot Louisiana Band…
Moe the Merrier
In the annals of lyric writing, there is perhaps no single line that more completely expresses the essence of a lover’s frustration than the plaintive and fabulously ungrammatical wail “Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?” In those few words, hot composer and saxophonist Louis Jordan captured the angst of love along with…
Burnt by the Sun
Yes, the greatest drummer in heavy music is named Dave. But it’s not the one you’re thinking of. Dave Witte is the go-to guy, right now, for all things percussively assaultive. He first emerged, bashing away, in New Jersey abstract-grind gutter-dwellers Human Remains, then joined the even more abstract grindcore-masters Discordance Axis. (Their entire discography…
Hail to the Thief
I was with friends at a nightclub on a recent Friday night when — for reasons that have nothing to do with alcohol consumption — I left my car parked overnight on the 1300 block of Prospect Avenue. When I returned the next morning, I discovered the window broken. Gone were my most precious musical…
Songs Sung True
Some people despise musicals because they can’t understand why, in the midst of conversation, otherwise normal folks would suddenly erupt into song. “That never happens in real life,” they say. “Tough titty,” respond others, who adore these melodic asides that focus on exquisite moments — passion, regret, love’s delirium — that deepen and enrich our…
The Panthers
Screw MPAA warnings: What CDs and other soon-to-be obsolete means of audio media should come stickered with is a pretension rating. It could be color-coded, like the Terror Alert System — green for albums with all the intellectual appeal of a Junior Mint; red for Einsturzende Neubaten. People generally know how much pretense they like…
The Underwear Underground
It’s 11 p.m. on a Friday night, and The Pirate’s Cove seems like any other dive in Cleveland. Guns n’ Roses blares from the speakers. Punk-rock boys in their 20s swill Miller Lite, throw back Kamikazes, and blow cigarette smoke. But there’s something more potent in the air — the unmistakable crackle of sexual anticipation.…
On Stage
Bee-Luther-Hatchee –In a world where reality-show contestants are rewarded for sabotaging their peers, the idea of discussing intellectual honesty may seem quaintly passé. But playwright Thomas Gibbons wrestles with a number of heavyweight issues, including intellectual-property rights, ownership of cultural identity, and a passel of racial conundrums. The ethical storms kick up when a heralded…
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While conventional wisdom says you can’t judge a book by its cover, the same adage doesn’t usually hold true for band names. You can probably assume that Cradle of Filth and Napalm Death are no more emo bands than the Starting Line or Brand New are death-metal shit-stirrers. Nevertheless, take an outfit with an enigmatically…
Revenge of the Nuts
The Constitution Party wants to abolish welfare and immigration, kick the U.N. out of America, and ban the federal government from meddling in education. Its presumptive presidential candidate, Michael Peroutka, refers to gays as “sodomites.” Its official platform reads as if it were written in 1830. None of this has stopped liberals from gleefully cheering…
Playing the Ponies
The battle for Middle Earth was waged with tens of thousands of mounted ebony horses furiously charging over the Pelennor Fields to capture the White City of Minas Tirith. Countless steeds were taken out by enemy weaponry or toppled by inadvertent contact, rendered into heaps of mangled muscle on the battlefield. Of course, the monumental…
Lou Reed
After almost 40 years, Lou Reed still can’t decide whether he wants to be a rock star or an art star. His music has always relied on his status as an “artist,” and his art leans heavily on his cred as a musician. The downside of this conflict is well documented in this two-hour live…
