Banned from Blockbuster
It’s easy to understand why someone wouldn’t appreciate a picture of four naked, aging punkers. But when Blockbuster yanked the latest issue of Cleveland-based music magazine Alternative Press, it likely wasn’t for aesthetic reasons. AP’s April cover parodies a May 2003 cover of Entertainment Weekly, which depicted the then-embattled Dixie Chicks nude, with words like…
Heart Attack
Over the past year, our local colleges have mounted some fine stage offerings, including the dazzling Crazyface at Tri-C West and A Soldier’s Play at Tri-C Metro. Those performances proved that a college production can blend student actors with experienced area professionals and achieve dynamic results. Then again, there are shows such as Heartbreak House…
Sondre Lerche
Everything about 21-year-old Norwegian wunderkind Sondre Lerche is pinch-his-cheeks cute, from the way his name rolls off the tongue (SON-dreh LAIR-kee) to his baby-faced-gangster CD cover art and website musings about catching a Strokes gig (“How contemporary new wave am I?”). Even the acoustic guitars, strings, synths, and la-la-la’s of Faces Down, his 2002 orchestrapop…
The Enemy Within
The father of former Congressman J.C. Watts once said that a black man voting Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders. The same could be said of gay men. Listen to Republicans these days, and you might as well be at a 1920 Klan rally. They’ve shined up their language and traded in…
The Real Thing
Imagine a world where all travel destinations are delivered via Disney. In this Epcot-gone-wild universe, Mom, Dad, and the kids would be able to visit São Paulo without ever leaving Des Moines, while Uncle Stu and Aunt Florence could see Paris from a theme park in Topeka. Obviously, such a world would be anathema to…
Cee-Lo
Cee-Lo Green’s freakadelic solo debut may have established him as a latter-day George Clinton, but he still has the common sense he was born with. A line from his follow-up summarizes his new philosophy: “You’re most likely to go broke if you can’t bend.” That’s why hitmaking fellow Southerners like Timbaland and Jazze Pha have…
Harp on Tap
It was 5:30 in the morning when Moya Brennan made the 45-minute drive from Dublin to the time-honored tribal grounds at Tara. She looked up from her hilltop perch to see dawn breaking. “It’s very brisk and cold, very clear skies, and this full moon is coming down, and the sun is rising,” she recalls.…
Eating by the Book
You’d think by now that Laura Taxel, that fearless eater, would be tired of thinking about Cleveland’s ethnic eateries. After all, she’s been writing the book — literally — on the region’s ethnic restaurants, bakeries, and markets since 1995; the 2004 edition of Cleveland Ethnic Eats ($13.95 at area bookstores) marks the fourth time she…
Blindside
“I wash my walls with tears of hope,” singer Christian intimates on Blindside’s second album. He really doesn’t cry that much, even if album-opener “Eye of the Storm” does suggest that About a Burning Fire has 12 courses of screamo in store. Like the band’s background — Swedish Christians signed to 3 Points Records, P.O.D.’s…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, March 4 Don’t blame Jackass and Eurotrip for the decline of Western civilization. Fart jokes and bawdy humor were just as prevalent 100 years ago, when Carl Sternheim wrote a play sparked by an accidental glimpse of lingerie. A couple of years ago, funnyman Steve Martin updated the work as The Underpants. “It’s a…
Anyone Got Mc?
Greg Grene, frontman for the Irish-American rock band the Prodigals, calls the weeks before and after St. Patrick’s Day “Paddy season.” It’s a frantic but lucrative time, as every remotely Irish act and every venue with a liquor license engage in a month-long series of one-night stands. Some of the best of the Celtic rock…
The Elected
This California band is an offshoot of indie semi-stars Rilo Kiley, and it turns that band’s worry rock into bittersweet pop. West Coast popsters always end up in this phase, whether it’s Loggins parting ways with Messina or Steven Malkmus launching a solo career. So you get a lot of pretty music on the Elected’s…
Best Band in Britain
The gurgling guitars and aching melodies that simmer below the surface of British Sea Power’s buzz-heavy debut, The Decline of British Sea Power, are indicative of the band’s game plan. At first glance, they look like a Joy Division-inspired group of highly literate, nautically obsessed schoolboys. But beneath the froth and layers of introspection is…
Hair Spray to Microchips
On the night of our interview, Jeff Samuel was laid off from his job at Microsoft, where he had created sound effects for the company’s Mythica game. Samuel and his sacked co-workers had gone out for drinks after getting pink-slipped, so he was a bit tipsy as we settled into his Seattle apartment for a…
Front Line Assembly
Civilization is classic Front Line Assembly, rebuilt for 2004. Fear Factory producer Rhys Fulber returns to the fold, replacing Chris Peterson on programming duties. The result is a solid effort, which closely follows two of FLA’s antecedents, the electronic bang-and-clatter of 1990’s Caustic Grip and the club-oriented groove of the highly regarded Tactical Neural Implant.…
La Dolce Vita
3/5-4/2 The high school artists featured in Appreciate Life are blowing off all the teen-angst garbage that gave young people a bad name. “It’s just nice to stop and think how good life is, despite all of the bad times,” says Marika Peplowski, co-organizer of the multimedia exhibit opening Friday at Artists Archives of the…
God Forbid
Perhaps that explains why the Christians who release their music through the independent punk label Tooth & Nail Records have been successful. The artists on Tooth & Nail — mostly hardcore bands and some whose melodic hard rock is being called emo nowadays — found their calling through one of the only companies that was…
The Lovekill
When Lovekill frontman Rager announces that “resistance has a subtlety” on the final cut of this electric debut EP, it’s a snarling summation of his band’s modus operandi. The Lovekill alternates finesse with fury; it’s acrobatic post-punk capable of breaking hearts and teeth. The album twists and twirls as if caught in a windstorm. “Perfect…
Cold Balls, Hot Action
3/4-3/7 One really good thing about Cleveland winters: They’re ideal for the National Platform Tennis Championships. And it took a couple of tennis players to find that out, back in 1928. To ease their cold-weather boredom, they knocked around sponge balls with paddles on a raised deck encased in chicken wire. In the bitter chill,…
Start the Bidding
There’s a great scene in Richard Linklater’s Slacker, where an excitable stoner chick tries to sell a Madonna Pap smear to passersby. “It’s a little bit closer to the rock god herself than just a poster” she argues in her sales pitch, to no avail. Well, with the advent of online auctioning, now everybody’s selling…
Team Fright
Team Fright isn’t exactly a collective, but Team Fright: A Primer is a potent introduction to the Lakewood-based crew of overlapping, active and defunct garage-rock projects sharing the common denominator of one Wred Fright. An indie-rock Harvey Pekar in a Mexican wrestler’s mask, Fright writes fiction and comic books when he isn’t playing guitar, bass,…
Star Treatment
SAT 3/6 Did you know that rechargeable batteries are a result of the space program? Ditto for cordless drills and hand vacuums. Learn all about it at Star Station One, happening Saturday at the NASA Glenn Visitors Center, where moon rocks, space suits, and an Apollo command module are among the items on view. It…
Back on the Record
Wilbert’s returned to Cleveland last May after a four-year hiatus. Now the downtown blues club’s eponymous label is back, too. Wilbert’s Records pressed CDs of top local artists from 1993-’99; it returns this spring with an LP from the Cleveland jump-swing combo Blue Lunch. “It’s a calling card for the band, and it became a…
The Future Is Saturday
SAT 3/6 The first time can be intimidating. Carol Gallardo, a tarot reader and psychometric expert, realizes this. “A lot of people would like to get a reading, but they’re kind of scared,” she says. Saturday’s Psychic Fair should ease a little of that apprehension. “[This] is a good way to introduce people to what…
Tom Russell
Tom Russell didn’t invent the musical style we call Americana any more than Al Gore invented the internet. But Russell did have a strong hand in shaping the genre; in fact, the California native and West Texas resident might be the music’s very definition. Even talking about Russell strictly in musical terms doesn’t do him…
Upright Guys
THU 3/4 It starts with three guys with names like Diamond, Apollo, and Ozmosis, who perform a Village People-inspired “fantasy dance.” Those are the words of Gerry Keating, master of ceremonies at the Grid/Orbit’s Dick Daze. “They come out as a policeman or as a baseball player or as a cop or as a fireman…
Haley Bonar
Haley Bonar’s whiskey-flask folk is all about big dreams and bigger skies. The 20-year-old South Dakota native’s pastoral musings are rural and restless. “I can’t settle down for shit,” she testifies on . . . The Size of Planets, her debut — a dusky drinking album that’ll make you weak in the knees and the…
Hutch Ado About Nothing
Maybe the most amazing thing about the big-screen version of Starsky & Hutch is how much smaller it feels than its predecessor, the William Blinn-created, Aaron Spelling-produced cop series that ran on ABC from 1975 to ’79. Everything about this cineplex variation feels rinky-dink, like some extended variety-show skit that became a network pilot that…
Galactic
“If you’re a musician, you ain’t shit if you ain’t workin’,” Galactic singer Theryl “Houseman” de Clouet states matter-of-factly in his soulful Southern drawl. Performing an average of 250 club dates a year, the horn-fueled, rhythm-driven New Orleans funktet has been everywhere from friendless no-name bar gigs to multi-night sellouts in prestigious rooms like San…
Bush Comes to Shove
At first glance, Hidalgo seems to be nothing more than an old-fashioned, flat-footed adventure epic, plunked down on a vast stretch of desert and amply furnished with the usual Hollywood conventions — a strong, silent cowboy on horseback, a couple of villains with nasty black mustaches, a killer sandstorm, and a cloud of locusts straight…
GoGoGo Airheart
Despite their gangly name, which sounds like something a quarterback calls on third and 12, there is little else jockish about this California combo. Their self-titled 1997 debut (recently reissued on CD) fumbled with an experimental, synth-soaked, dub-ambient thing — along the lines of early ’80s originators like Liquid Liquid and other acts more influential…
Great Heights
Some acts of courage command everyone’s respect — the firefighter’s return to a burning house to rescue a child, the infantryman’s sacrifice of self for a wounded comrade, the weary black woman’s refusal to yield her seat on a segregated bus. Sometimes, though, courage can feel clouded — especially when it’s a response to voluntary…
The Walkmen
Are the Walkmen the best band in the universe? If they aren’t yet, there’s reason to think that one day soon, they will be. The band that formed from the ashes of Jonathan Fire*Eater and the Recoys was already earning comparisons to a young U2 after the release of its debut album, Everyone Who Pretended…
Blue Mob
My 22 is right here and also my pit bull that bits first and asks questions later. Anyway between the two I feel pretty safe Warren cops don’t need to respond to my home they never came before so I got my own protection. First it was a 22, now it’s a 22 and a…
Dead Horse’s Last Ride
Sex, ashes, and a mysterious blood clot all converge in the final show at Dead Horse Gallery. It’s a suitably eclectic parting shot from the Lakewood space, which, since its opening in 2000, has consistently showcased intriguing works by artists ranging from avant-garde musicians to middle-school students. The show, simply named after the titles of…
God Forbid
It’s hard to imagine even the most skeptical metal fans fixating on God Forbid’s demographics as much as the band itself does. The predominantly black modern thrashers — granted, there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day — play a mix of old-school shred and nü-school chug like they have something to prove. Their latest,…
Poker Face
The chips are flying at a Las Vegas Night fund-raiser on this Saturday night. Most of the crowd of about 150 are seated at the 14 poker and blackjack tables that fill the Lithuanian Hall on East 185th Street. What the gamblers lose goes to a charity — in this case the East Shore Unitarian…
Dicking Around
For a show that flaunts the punchy title I Heart Dick, the latest exhibition at 1300 Gallery is closer to Jane Meets Dick. Touted by curator Victoria Semarjan as a celebration of the “power of the pussy” by “women who love men,” the show consists mainly of suggestive words and double entendres set amid playful,…
The Von Bondies
For many, their first glimpse of head Von Bondie Jason Stollsteimer was a December 2003 photo in which he looked like the bloodied and bruised victim of several wicked Mike Tyson uppercuts. The perpetrator? Fellow Motor City garage-rock-kitty Jumpin’ Jack White, the White Stripes singer and (apparently) amateur boxer who had a bone to pick…
A Safer Bet
A Safer Bet To wipe out crooks, just legalize poker: “The House Folds,” by Thomas Francis, regarding crooked Las Vegas Night operators, is misleading [February 11]. If Ohio legalized poker, these operators would all be out of business within a week. I’m not talking about allowing full-fledged casinos — I just mean legalizing poker, as…
Hare’s Breadth
“Love conquers all.” According to countless pop lyricists, TV-series scriptwriters, and preteen girls who dot their i’s with little hearts, love makes the world go ’round — and deep, unconditional love can transform the universe. But eventually the music stops, the series is dropped, and the sparkly ballpoint runs out of hot pink ink. And…
Dickey Betts
While both of the original Allman Brothers Band guitarists were gifted enough to shape the group’s sound, it was Dickey Betts who was left to take the task on after Allman’s death in 1971. With the bluesier half of one of rock’s most distinctive tandems gone, Betts’s country-grounded style filled the void on the band’s…
