Khan
It’s romantic to love the perennial rogue, and for that reason, Khan’s (Can Oral) compendium Passport may tickle many an electronic music neophyte. Having spent the last decade or so releasing timely if not temporal dance music on labels all across the globe and under a flock of guises, Khan has issued the best of…
The Tony Lang Band
Singer-guitarist Tony Lang, formerly of the Simpletons, recorded his first solo album in multiple locations — tracks were not only laid down in Redondo Beach, California, but also locally in Lakewood, Strongsville, and Cleveland. It was mixed at Chicago Recording Company and in Cleveland at Closer Look Studios and GTR Media. For the eponymous album,…
Erik Friedlander/Topaz
Cellist Erik Friedlander has been a prominent figure in New York’s avant-garde “downtown scene” for many years, working with John Zorn, Mark Dresser, and Dave Douglas. He made significant contributions to a number of outstanding “new music” albums, many of which, however, went over the heads of not only the mass audience, but many jazz…
Gerald Levert
R&B singer Gerald Levert was born and raised in Cleveland, and despite achieving superstar status, he has no plans to ever leave. Levert, who now lives in Newbury, celebrated the release of his new album, G, which came out on March 7, by making several local appearances (he recently signed copies of the album at…
Rodeo Drive
A quick glance at the occupation on the business card of Gizmo McCracken — “Professional Comedy Entertainer” — brings to mind countless wisecracks by half-buzzed barflies trying to pick up chicks on a Friday night, but not so much the fact that McCracken is a rodeo clown and barrelman, currently touring with the World’s Toughest…
Letters to the Editor
Where Jumpsuits Go to DieWhile I enjoyed Harvey Pekar’s take on the Rock Hall [Music, March 2], I disagree on one small point. I travel fairly often, and the Rock Hall actually has helped give Cleveland a new national identity. Take that for what it’s worth, but at least it beats the burning-river image. Regarding…
Primordial Booze
When Andrew Craze was a teenager, he used to stay up late watching firebreathing Godzilla and his archnemesis Ghidrah battle it out on the tube. Apparently, those late-night marathons of “B” monster flicks were life-defining moments for the Stanford graduate and brewmaster of the Western Reserve Brewery: He and fellow Western Reserve founder Gavin Smith…
Art for Politics’ Sake
If Dr. Frankenstein had been an artist, he would have been a minimalist. Like the good doctor, minimalist artists try to infuse life into featureless raw material. Since the ’60s, these artists have also attempted to infuse their work with political content. This endeavor is at the core of Minimal Politics, the new show at…
Mission Implausible
Mission to Mars.
Directed by Brian De Palma. Starring Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, and Connie Nielsen.
Southern Gothic
With that lumbering mastodon in Madame Butterfly drag, Miss Saigon, decomposing in front of anesthetized audiences at the Allen, we begin to fear that live theater is terminally ill, heading the endangered species list. Then we find a restorative in Dobama Theatre, which last Saturday offered a series of life-enriching revelries. In the morning was…
The Devil May Care
Directed by Roman Polanski. Starring Johnny Depp, Emmanuelle Seigner, and Frank Langella.
Side Dish
Hunan Resources Attorney and restaurateur David Cameron knows a hungry diner when he sees one, and the thousands of white-collar types who flock to Solon’s bustling businesses each day represent a lot of potential empty tummies. So when space in the heart of the city’s industrial area became available last year, Cameron and partner Kwan…
Reappraising Rear
Peeping Jim: Stewart, keeping tabs on the neighborhood.
Change for the Better
The warning conveyed by the little black letters was succinct: “This parking meter is enforced twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. NO EXCEPTIONS!” Welcome to Lee Road, where winter restaurant dining can mean endless circling through half-plowed municipal parking lots, skating across slippery sidewalks, and interrupting a meal hourly in order to feed…
Underground Ugly
The pipe died violently at the age of 110. Without warning, it split in two, opening a wound seven feet long. Water surged out onto East Ninth Street, creating Cleveland’s Great Flood of 2000. Across the city, taps ran dry or dribbled out only a trickle of water. Downtown traffic snarled, schools closed, and panicked…
The Americana Way
Al’s Fast Freight, a Cleveland band that regularly gets nominated in local music polls as one of the best country bands in the area, doesn’t play at country bars and doesn’t even have much of a country audience. The one time the band did play to a strictly country audience, it didn’t even get to…
Holy Split
Everybody knows the devil is in the details. But sometimes emissaries of the Almighty, even rebellious ones, have to toil there, too. So Mary Ann Carlson knows that it takes exactly 548 people, hand-in-hand, to surround the Convention Center in downtown Cleveland. It’s a crucial bit of information — and there will be plenty more…
Pretty Hardcore
Few underground music scenes cast a longer (and more menacing) shadow than New York City hardcore. The subgenre breeds its own surface stereotypes — a vegan/straight-edge lifestyle, lightning-fast punk dynamics, violent mosh pits, and bluntly political, screamed lyrics. But often, these preconceptions don’t hold up under the microscope. H2O, a N.Y.C. quintet embracing the hardcore…
Mr. Fixit
As far as mind-numbing tasks go, sorting through 20 tons of broken pottery is way up there. Art conservator Larry Sisson found that out when he was on pottery shard duty at Mount Pistachio, an ancient Roman trash heap where philosophers and plebeians tossed their broken crockery. After about five tons, the relics of a…
Medical Attention
America: Some people can’t get enough of the place. After visiting the U.S. for a two-week holiday at Disney World in February, singer-guitarist Davy Carton of the Irish rock band the Saw Doctors went back to County Galway for just one day, before crossing the ocean again for an abbreviated (14 dates, 13 cities) American…
Edge
Party’s over! Even the signs are gone at Club Aqua, per an agreement struck by county prosecutors with owner Gary Bauer, who shut down the after-hours dance club rather than face charges of “operating a nuisance.” While Bauer’s lawyer claims he was unaware of drug trafficking in the club, undercover vice cops had no problems…
Ian Anderson
Midway through the conversation portion of Ian Anderson’s appearance at the Rock Hall, Anderson was asked how difficult it was for him to quit smoking. The question might seem banal, but what else do you ask the leader of Jethro Tull — a guy who used to wear Victorian waistcoats and tights, and dance like…
Those Bastard Souls and The Lonesome Organist
There’s something almost magical about seeing indie rock being played in a dingy, smoke-filled room with a mediocre-sized crowd on a forgettable night. In perfect script, Those Bastard Souls, and specifically singer-guitarist David Shouse, played a heartfelt, melodic set. Mellow in nature with ephemeral glimpses of intensity, the music played by this Memphis band was…
The Jungle Brothers
Underground hip-hop is so much more interesting than its mainstream counterpart. While the DMX and Master P crews churn out the same repetitive beats and rhymes month after month (and line their pockets with gold excavated from crass exploitation of the streets), an entire movement of dedicated rappers thrives somewhere below the Top 10 (or…
