Bossa Nova Baby
John Pizzarelli doesn’t think Rod Stewart is sexy. He doesn’t think Mr. “Maggie May” should be singing American standards either. “He made a rotten record,” the 44-year-old jazz vocalist and guitarist says. “It’s a caricature.” Leave the Great American Songbook to the experts, Pizzarelli says. And while he doesn’t claim to be one of them…
Idol Chatter
In three seasons, American Idol has gone from being just another inane reality-TV show to a ubiquitous pop-culture phenom, the ultimate karaoke contest. Season one was good clean fun, featuring mediocre talent. Season two raised the bar, with better singers and celebrity judges. When 30 million votes were cast in the final showdown between Ruben…
This Moment in Black History
After two years spent staining stages across the States, This Moment in Black History has built quite the rep among the edgy rock illuminati. Their recorded output so far has been but a muddy hint; this au courant crew is slyly stacked with indie-rock war vets, battle-scarred enough to know that now’s the time to…
Remaking and Entering
SUN 5/16 Take the Ohio City Home Tour, and someone’s bound to come up with this gem: Is this place haunted? The neighborhood has its ghostly legends, for sure, but the chances are slim that a haunted house is among the six renovated 19th-century homes and condominiums on Sunday’s tour. The stops include a loft-style…
Less Cock, More Rock
Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx has been rock royalty for more than 20 years. He’s toured the world. He’s headlined stadiums. He’s written anthems. He’s sold millions of albums. He’s shagged everything within reach. He’s died twice. Now he has a new band, the Brides of Destruction, and he’s finally set to achieve one of…
Dead Even
Mushroomhead’s Steve “Skinny” Felton is going to be a big-name metal producer sooner rather than later — but enough about him; he just mastered, mixed, and produced the assault that is Of Constant Rotation. Concentrate instead on the Cleveland quintet Dead Even. Their first official release is relentless, choppy, high-speed chug metal with a few…
Alley Oops
SAT 5/15 Becky Meek can’t help but laugh when she talks about getting on her hands and knees and Bowling for Rhinos. And if you want her to really bust a gut, bring up the “ball-between-your-legs” move. “It’s like you’re in a Laurel and Hardy movie,” she says. “Too funny.” While it’s a zoo-sponsored benefit…
Old Times’ $ake
It was Cyndi Lauper who first sang “Money Changes Everything,” but Rob Halford, Sammy Hagar, and Frank Black will all be joining her on the chorus this summer at an amphitheater near you. This is the year of improbable rock reunions, where bitter ex-bandmates bury their beefs, each of them realizing that 1) it just…
Return of the Kings
5/14-5/29 Jeff Blanchard and Don Mitri want to kick it old-school. The local comedy vets — Blanchard founded Cabaret Dada, Mitri was Tony in the long-running Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding — have teamed up for a two-man improv show, Whose Mess Is This?, that recalls an earlier, simpler time. “We’re song-and-dance men,” Blanchard says. “But…
Tish Hinojosa
Spanish is a loving tongue, as the song says. It certainly is when it comes from the mouth of San Antonio native Tish Hinojosa. All it takes is hearing one border love song — performed in Spanish or English or some of each — in Hinojosa’s honey-drenched voice to know that God was having a…
The Write Stuff
SAT 5/15 The main reason the Poets’ & Writers’ League of Greater Cleveland is gathering Writers & Their Friends at the Cleveland Play House on Saturday is to sell books, admits executive director Darlene Montonaro. But that doesn’t mean you won’t be entertained. Twenty-five area writers — like Terry Pluto, David Hansen, and Gail Ghetia…
Cutting Monkeys
Cleveland’s Dave Thomas, frontman for the legendary pre-punk band Rocket From the Tombs and founder of art-rockers Pere Ubu, has a new album in the can. Slated for October release, 18 Monkeys on a Dead Man’s Chest will feature Thomas cohorts Two Pale Boys (former James trumpet pioneer Andy Diagram and They Came From the…
Pitt and the Pabulum
In the mood to launch a thousand ships? Fine, but it’s gonna cost you. Feel like sacking the Temple of Apollo? Okay, but bring drachmas. Depending on who’s counting, Warner Brothers’ pre-summer blockbuster budgeted out at anywhere between $175 million and $250 million, including the big wooden horse, assorted handmaidens, and spears for everybody. At…
John Prine
“Twenty-four years old and he writes like he’s two hundred and twenty,” wrote Kris Kristofferson for the back cover of John Prine’s eponymous debut more than 30 years ago. The former mail carrier’s ability to turn a phrase, combined with early ’70s timing, made Prine one of the first singer-songwriters forced to don the “next…
Lazy Like a Foxx
If even one of the major networks had a successful sitcom in the vein of Friends but with an all-black cast, movies like Breakin’ All the Rules would have no reason for existence. Part of an ever-expanding subgenre that includes The Brothers, Two Can Play That Game, and Deliver Us From Eva, Breakin’ All the…
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band
The Dirty Dozen Brass Band formed in New Orleans in 1977, when interest in traditional brass-band music had hit an all-time low. The genre was widely viewed as dated music played by stodgy, tuxedoed senior citizens. Think “When the Saints Go Marching In.” The Dozen retained the instrumentation of a brass band — drums, tuba,…
Family Ties
In Israeli writer-director Nir Bergman’s Broken Wings, we never see an automatic weapon, a military roadblock, or a horrific explosion on a city street. Rather than dealing with the volatile politics of the Middle East, this quiet, soul-wrenching film examines the unresolved traumas of one middle-class family trying to cope with the death of a…
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers
Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers’ newest disc, True Companion, winds down with a feel-good cover of the Standells’ barroom classic “Dirty Water.” Grushecky himself has been kicking around the area long enough to remember when the Cuyahoga was so dirty, it was flammable. Granted, he’s talking about the Three Rivers of his hometown — with…
Sour Town
If only Dogville were at least involving enough to be perplexing. Sigh. In simplest terms — which it definitely deserves — Lars von Trier’s latest thingamabob is a large, pretentious blob of coulda-been. As in it coulda been deep and insightful. It coulda been sociologically challenging. It coulda been formalistically thrilling. But it isn’t. Sigh…
El Guapo
Art-damaged dance-punk bands are more ubiquitous these days than Ryan Seacrest’s smiling mug, though not as likely to induce dry heaves. More closely attuned to the no-wave movement when they emerged in 1996, El Guapo’s early recordings were expansive, boundless excursions with a free-jazz sense of adventure and early punk’s ambivalence toward melody. Keying the…
The Monopolist’s Lament
SBC Ohio, formerly Ameritech, doesn’t engender much trust. Three years ago, it was bitch-slapped in an independent audit for repeatedly lying. Among other sins, the company tried to blame its service problems on earthquakes and blizzards in the summer. The audit was ordered by the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, which had received so many…
Funny, Period
Everybody enjoys musicals dealing with energetic young people who, fresh off the puberty production line, are on the brink of conquering the world. Those lean, sleek, starry-eyed idealists make shows such as Hair, 42nd Street, and Fame a pleasure to behold. But what about the people in the audience: the nearsighted, overweight, and wrinkled denizens…
Thrice
A heartening consequence of the infiltration of the mainstream by punk and emo bands is the abundance of groups who use their non-underground status to raise social consciousness, instead of just reveling in babes and booze. Heading up this gang of do-gooders are the screamocore wizards in Thrice, who have been at the charitable forefront…
Place Your Bets
“You only need to go to East 30th Street and Payne Avenue,” says Councilman Joe Cimperman. It’s where you’ll find the best argument for a Cleveland casino. In the morning, people gather to wait for the bus. It’s a scene repeated every day from Lakewood to Euclid, where casino buses from Windsor, Niagara Falls, and…
Candide Hams
There’s a theater in town that exudes such an atmosphere of inclusion, vitality, and good cheer that it’s contagious, even on the first visit. (And, not incidentally, they put on a whale of a show.) The Near West Theatre has been in operation for 27 years, bringing talented professionals together with neighborhood folks, kids from…
Orgy
Orgy’s combination of new-wave shimmer, Jay Gordon’s dour vocals, and heaviness that didn’t pander caught the ears of nü-metal dudes comfortable with their masculinity and girls fashioning themselves after Death from Vertigo’s Sandman comic books. Thanks to Orgy’s blistering cover of “Blue Monday,” a generation of gloomy kids raised on a diet of Hot Topic…
A Man Apart
To make a penis from scratch, a surgeon needs the right raw material. It might seem logical to harvest from a place that has skin and fat to spare, like the belly, but better results are achieved from the forearm. Its soft inner flesh is quite similar to penile tissue in terms of vascular and…
On Stage
Cookin’ at the Cookery: The Music and Times of Alberta Hunter — At 82, blues legend Alberta Hunter mounted a remarkable career comeback, performing at the Greenwich Village nightspot the Cookery for seven years. That alone would justify a musical tribute, which is now on the boards at the Play House. The two women who…
Sloan
Bands that last more than a decade together are running on one of two kinds of fuel. Rare is the nuclear burn of creative energy — a nagging sense that there’s terrain yet to be mapped in a sonic sensibility established long ago. More typical is the band that rolls on thanks to inertia, kicking…
Blessed Are the Billboards
Blessed Are the Billboards Holy See, holy do: In response to “Selling Jesus,” April 7: God bless the parish of St. Stephen’s! It is so refreshing to know that there are more true Catholics faithful to the Holy See! Our parishes have been failing due to facts that were more comfortably hidden. We must begin…
On View
Aging in America, The Years Ahead — Being old doesn’t necessarily mean living on the fringes of society, as this multimedia show proves. Ed Kashi’s black-and-white photographs demonstrate, for example, that the Marlboro Man has nothing on the 75-year-old cowboys competing at the National Senior Pro Rodeo. A leather-jacketed senior biker chick gives meaning to…
Auf Der Maur
One of the cheekier female-empowerment badges around reads “Of course I don’t look busy . . . I did it right the first time.” The same thought comes to mind as you listen to the ridiculously good solo debut from ex-Hole bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur. A rocking affair that runs circles around the assembly-line…
5 on Your Hide!
Sweeps month is a rotten time to be mayor. In February, Jane Campbell and her kids were targets in a ferocious Channel 19 series on police overtime. This month, it’s Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic’s turn, with Channel 5 behind the camera. WEWS has taken up the cause of Christopher Shawn Wright, an Akron man who…
Grecian Yearn
Avid home entertainer and party guy Dimitris Ragousis started his catering career pretty much on a whim. “I agreed to throw a 50th-birthday party for a dear friend of mine,” the chef recalls, “and it was a huge success.” By the end of the evening, everyone was asking the Birthday Boy for his caterer’s business…
The Streets
Historically, English crossovers shelter the nuances we Yankees find so easy to mock. Indeed, the best-loved expats (Wham!, for example) conquered xenophobia by sounding like us in song and avoiding references too British. That changed in the late ’90s, when drum & bass, jungle, and Brit-hop became the vogue. Brixton, “wanker,” angst for the queen…
Pucked Up
Long after the ice has melted, Chris Sprague still talks hockey. He’s the man behind the Columbus Blue Jackets Breakaway Tour, a “hockey carnival” of inflatable goal posts and makeshift rinks that hits the road between April and September to let fans know that, yes, the NHL’s youngest team is alive and well and playing…
Shore Bet
Server Georges D’Arras swoops down upon the high-chair-bound toddler like a peregrine falcon nailing a fine, fat pigeon, snatching up the soaring candleholder at almost the exact moment the kid lets it fly. It’s a testament to D’Arras’s innate diplomacy that little Bubba’s mommy greets the server’s intervention with an apologetic smile, while the long-suffering…
Athlete
We used to be a British colony. We threw ’em out, they got over it, and more than two centuries later, Tony Blair stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Dubya, bragging about the two countries’ “special relationship.” The U.S. and the U.K. have had a long and productive cultural conversation. Nowhere is this better exemplified than with music:…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, May 13 When we last heard from Carmella DeCesare, the Avon Lake native was a local title-firm employee with a mere Playmate of the Month title under her garter. Sound the trumpets and grease the poles! DeCesare has been crowned Playboy’s 2004 Playmate of the Year! In addition to a pictorial in the June…
Twisted Mister
A dozen years after entering the Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest rapper around, Twista has achieved a feat almost as rare. In a genre notorious for its short memory, a veteran MC who’s been absent from the charts for years is almost guaranteed to stay kicked to the curb. The idea that…
Judas Priest
Judas Priest is as important as Black Sabbath or Metallica. The band has always combined fist-pumping choruses with high-tech metal, impeccably played and polished to a gleaming sheen. The result is a catalog that’s larger than life, best heard in arenas packed with screaming, crazed fans. At its early ’80s peak, it showed how heavy…
