Cannibal Corpse
Cannibal Corpse began as the musical equivalent of chair-throwing on The Morton Downey Jr. Show. Putting sensationalism and violence above content, the band compensated for a clear lack of ability at the early ’90s onset of its career with pointedly scandalous cuts such as “Entrails Ripped From a Virgin’s Cunt,” “Addicted to Vaginal Skin,” and…
Grandma Gets the Bad Guys
Del Bitner doesn’t go looking for trouble; she just refuses to ignore its existence. “People say, ‘You’re so nosy, Ms. Bitner. When are you going to mind your own business?'” says the 85-year-old granny with marshmallow-fluff hair. “It gives me a bad reputation, and I love that reputation.” Just last week, during her morning constitutional…
Antibalas
Phil Ballman, who mans the drum kit for the raucous Afrobeat orchestra Antibalas (“bulletproof” in Spanish), is an expert on the difference between the rhythms of African American funk and Nigerian-bred Afrobeat. “In a lot of traditional funk drumming, there’s an emphasis on the back beat, the two and the four. One big difference with…
Ruth Burnside’s Cleveland
A gift for speech aided White’s legacy: I had to pick up my jaw from the table after reading Scott Dotson’s letter [in response to “Why Mike White Shouldn’t Be Forgiven,” January 10]. Dotson is obviously ignorant about the bullshit that actual Cleveland residents had to live with: all the crap that White turned a…
Hoobastank
Dumbest band name in 20 years. Period. Having lost that mythical big poker hand to the God of Common Sense, these four foxy California kids are stuck with the moniker Hoobastank — a name better befitting a befouled, shoeless jam band than a buncha pretty boys plying aggro-rock for chicks (and the dudes who desperately…
Islamic Splendor
When the Taj Mahal was built in the 17th century as a mausoleum for Muslim ruler Shah Jahan’s favorite wife, the tribute, at the time, was without precedent in Islam. Now, at the Cleveland Museum of Art, one can see what master goldsmiths and jewelers were making around the time the grand Indian monument was…
Down
Down’s sophomore effort is a lot like its marijuana muse: smelly, carcinogenic, and addictive. High as a mountain and just as dense, II is a less accessible, more varied affair than the self-titled 1995 debut from this Cajun metal supergroup, which features members of Pantera, C.O.C., Crowbar, and Eyehategod. Murky Delta jams and instrumental reveries…
The Pitch
Before he died of congestive heart failure in March 1992, Richard Brooks, director of The Blackboard Jungle and In Cold Blood, used to tell this story. It takes place sometime in the late 1940s, when Brooks was ascending royalty in Hollywood; after all, he’d written John Huston’s Key Largo, starring Bogie and Bacall, and for…
Custom
When all is said and done, there is nothing new under the sun, and what sells in rock and roll is the same old threesome: sex, swearing, and shock value. Custom uses a liberal dose of all three S-words on his debut, which may be why the first single is doing so damn well. “Hey…
Grecian Yearn
I wish Niko’s were in my neighborhood, so I could devote happy hours to grazing my way through the restaurant’s menu of Greek and Mediterranean home cooking. There would be moussaka on Monday . . . tzatziki on Tuesday. Another day, I’d turn my attention to the gyros, those breathtakingly savory sandwiches of seasoned ground…
Playgroup
Sound producer/graphic designer Trevor “Underdog” Jackson spent a good deal of the ’90s purposefully stumbling around the fringes of the U.K. music business, drawing inspiration from the shadows where hip-hop got dirtied by atmospheric electronics and running an adventurous label (Output) that embraced beat experimentalism. His tastemaker cred secure, Jackson has now gone behind the…
Chriszt Has Risen Again
It only takes a moment to realize that the pint-sized Marigold Café (2800 Euclid Avenue, in the Interbelt Building) isn’t your usual dreary downtown coffee shop. The fragrance of freshly baked scones, simmering soups, and specials like Salisbury steak quickly signal that, simple though it may be, this food is prepared by people who care.…
Eels
Mark Everett is on pace with David Bowie when it comes to creative reinvention, having successfully meshed his roles as obscure baroque pop crackpot (as A Man Called E) and critically/commercially acclaimed alternapop whiz kid (as the main man in Eels). Within his body of work, Everett has donned many creative hats — multi-instrumentalist, producer,…
The Doctors Are In
On September 10 of last year, the four members of U.K. indie sensation Clinic were on top of the pop world, with every right to be. They had just arrived in New York on a wave of glowing press for their full-length debut, Internal Wranglers. They’d been hailed by four out of five Radiohead members…
Ghetto Mind State
Dogs From Tha Land is the musical equivalent of a Stallone movie: jam-packed with so much sex, violence, and liquor that you’d be ashamed to admit that you like it. But you will. New subject matter? Nope. Positive messages? Nada. Radio friendly? Yeah, right. Dogs is the CD that little suburban girls hide in the…
Cartoon Networking
The most telling thing about Animania 2002! is the ancestral line that can be traced from its earliest feature (1926’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed) to its latest (last year’s Waking Life). Both films take a near-minimalist approach to animation (cut-out silhouettes make up the former, dreamlike sketches the latter), and both have story lines…
Intro to Fetishism
“Everyone thinks ‘fetish’ is something dirty,” says Dave Vidra, the creative director of the fetish-heavy Organ Grinder’s Ball VII, which comes to Metropolis this weekend. “It isn’t. Just because someone is into a fetish doesn’t mean he or she is a pervert.” Maybe. It’s Vidra’s job to separate the genre’s “hobbyists” from the merely perverted.…
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
It’s readily apparent that Danny DeVito’s Death to Smoochy deals with a thoroughly debauched children’s television host (Robin Williams) who plots, amid much dark zaniness, to destroy his squeaky-clean successor (Edward Norton). It’s also quite easy to proclaim it the greatest movie ever made . . . about a singing vegan in a fuchsia rhino…
Durham Bull
The eternal beauty and constant surprise of baseball are always getting sabotaged by Hollywood’s urge to reduce the grand old game to a set of clichés as tedious as spring training drills. The ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson elevated Field of Dreams, the Wild Thing’s errant fastball gave momentary charm to Major League, and no…
Slight Club
With Panic Room, about the night Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her teenage daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart) are home-invaded by a trio of burglars seeking hidden treasure, dyspeptic director David Fincher reveals himself as little more than a derivative visionary. For some, this will be enough: As mainstream, studio-financed movies grow smaller and less significant,…
Positive Ink
It was a weird mix of aesthetics when the Cleveland Rocks Tattoo Convention invaded the downtown Sheraton last weekend. For four days, tattoo conventioneers mingled in posh conference rooms amid candelabra-laden chandeliers, polished wooden dance floors, and dark, plush carpeting. “It’s like a heavy-metal wedding reception,” one woman was heard to say. Thus, the stage…
The Big Wall of Stink
It hit her like a wall of stink, the instant Cheryl Ickes stepped from her Elyria home into the night. “You felt it on your skin, in your throat.” Something thick and sulfuric was in the air August 14, searing her lungs and leaving her struggling for breath. Ickes called the fire department, which reported…
Slave 4 Britney
A few weeks ago, Total Request Live (MTV’s neo-American Bandstand) broadcast the “Top Ten Britney Spears Videos of All Time.” Viewers were treated to an hour-long smattering of The Many Faces of Britney, from her humble pigtailed beginnings to the sweaty, balls-out humpfest “I’m a Slave 4 U.” There were bare-midriff tops, a dance troupe…
Giving Them the Business
Give the media credit. When they make a mistake, they don’t just make any half-assed flub. When they get it wrong, they get it wrong. Take the coverage of a certain Houston-based business. Fortune magazine said it was one of the country’s most admired companies. The New York Times called it “a model for the…
Hank Williams III
Hank Williams III has taken up his grandfather and father’s family business with a twanging, hard-rocking vengeance and thrown in more than a couple of contemporary twists of his own. On his sophomore album, Lovesick, Broke & Driftin’, Hank III continues to explore the edges of honky-tonk Americana with no regard for its acceptance by…
Open Letter to Maxim
Maxim magazine New York, NY Dear Editor: It has come to my attention that your esteemed periodical recently announced its Greatest City on Earth. This is indeed a lofty honor, given Maxim’s profound sociological import as the nation’s foremost chronicle of “sex, sports, beer, gadgets, clothes, and fitness.” I have long been a fan of…
