In Search of Swing
The tune is “Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise,” a theme recognizable in the first two intervals–one that recalls Milt Jackson’s resonant vibes or John Coltrane’s probing sax. A drum roll opens this particular rendition, a bass pattern repeats between the first and second beats of the measure, and the pianist joins. The rhythm section…
Starry Bike Night
Trees overhead filter out the moon, letting dim light fall through like shards of glass or silver scraps of fabric. Tires on crushed pea gravel whisper a quiet grind as a few dozen people roll along at a relaxed fourteen miles per hour. They’ve all come for different pieces of the same thrill: motion through…
Long Journey Home
Lucinda Williams does not simply answer questions. She responds in monologue, rambling on minute after minute until the query almost seems like an afterthought. Perhaps this is because at this moment, she is rushing to get out the door and to the airport, where she will catch a plane to London for a week’s worth…
Night & Day
Thursday May 13 The bands in the Manual Independent Music Festival aren’t known for their hummable tunes–unless it’s the hum of a pile driver on a bed of clay. Organizer Brian Ulrich of Cleveland band Hilo brings together sixteen of his favorite soundbenders for the three-day event, meant to be a blueprint for young upstarts…
Playback
Old 97s Fight Songs (Elektra) The Americana highway is littered with good intentions and broken hearts. In the old days, no one really noticed it much. Bands and singer/songwriters came and went; no one really paid attention to their stylistic mode or the then-unknown fact that they were spreading out a pavement of star-spangled glory…
Strikes, Spares, and Sausages
Most bowling alley food tastes like it’s sailed down the lane a couple of times or marinated overnight in the fumes from stale cigarettes and sweaty rental shoes. Greece is a country, not a condiment, okay? And even in summer, frozen french fries taste better when they’re cooked all the way through. But as luck…
Regional Playback
The lack of a centralized music scene in Northeast Ohio can make local players feel as lonesome as the Unabomber and as powerless as a homeowner who can’t get city hall to put a stoplight on her block. It does, however, make for a diversified crop of talent. Songwriters and musicians know they have to…
A Royal Flush
The Castle is a modest little comedy from Australia that falls into the subgenre of Capraesque idealism, in the little-guy-triumphs-over-evil-powers-that-be division. The story revolves around the unpretentious Kerrigan clan. Darryl (Michael Caton), the father, has his own little towing business. Sal (Anne Tenney), the mother, is the family cook and a not-very-inspired one–a fact that…
Soundbites
He should have known better than to try to slip an unauthorized song past one of the Cleveland Indians’ most knowledgeable music fans. From his cramped perch in the scoreboard room of Jacobs Field, Darrell Scott Wright plays the music that follows the introduction of each Indians hitter. One game Wright played War’s “Low Rider”…
Sunny, and Cher
Even English actresses of a certain age have a difficult time finding good roles, so it’s understandable that Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Joan Plowright might jump at the chance to star in Tea With Mussolini, Franco Zeffirelli’s new film about a group of English expatriates living in Florence during the 1930s, who willfully ignore…
A Dream Both Gauzy and Gutsy
A Midsummer Night’s Dream came early in Shakespeare’s career. He had written it by at least 1598, in roughly the same period as another lyric-romantic masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet. Despite Samuel Pepys’s famous dismissal of Dream as “the most insipid ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life,” it has always been among the…
Needle Junky
Eight floors up, in a renovated apartment building in Cleveland’s fashionable Warehouse District, the sun streams through a living room window and Lake Erie glimmers in the distance. In the kitchen, a longtime AIDS activist grinds fresh coffee beans. Ken Vail, founder of Xchange Point, the ballsiest needle-exchange program in the city, wears his calling…
The Edge
Tribe Fan Throws Owner a Curve Hottest item on the sports memorabilia circuit these days: A revealing photograph of Chief Wahoo, caught in a cheeky display of fan devotion. The serendipitous snap was reportedly taken several weeks ago at Johnny’s, the downtown watering hole of Tribe owner Richard Jacobs. Two young lovelies were at the…
Paper Pusher
Long before Plain Dealer Editor David Hall announced his resignation in March, reporters at Ohio’s largest daily were preparing his obit and taking bets on who would be named his successor. Potential candidates included Editorial Director Brent Larkin, Detroit Free Press Editor Bob McGruder, and top editors from New Orleans and Portland, Oregon. It wasn’t…
Letters
The Truth Sets Pagans Free You can’t imagine how happy I was to read Mark Naymik’s article “Out of the Broom Closet” [Scene, May 6]. It was written in such an unbiased way, which does not usually happen with this topic. The fact that this article went so far as to explain that, not only…
The Devil in the Details
In his famous poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats mused about the man on the ancient vase eternally chasing a maiden. Since both were frozen in time by the urn artist, the guy trying to catch up with the girl of his dreams would be thwarted forever. In Martin Boyle’s paintings of fanciful Greek…
Moliere Sans Air
The production of Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid at the Cleveland Play House suffers from a major handicap right off the bat–the curtain goes up. Kent Dorsey’s setting is impressive enough–with its crystal chandelier, lush carpet, hardwood floor, and oversized statues in neoclassical niches. And Lindsay W. Davis’s baroque purple-and-red velvet contraptions under the name of…
The Grapes of Mirth
Elizabethans had their golden age–after an unpleasant plague–and a resplendent queen let culture thrive. The halcyon days of our comic theater commenced with the birth of talkies. To ward off Depression blues, Hollywood and Broadway started cross-pollinating each other with larger-than-life screwball comedies replete with wisecracking idiots, featherbrained flibbertigibbets, glorious eccentrics, crackpot egomaniacs, and vivacious…
Right on the Mark
It was a picture-perfect spring evening in the Flats, with an immaculate blue sky bending down over the much abused, but ever-resilient, Cuyahoga River. Our destination on this Saturday night was the Watermark, an upscale East Bank establishment, where proprietor Hap Gray and Executive Chef Michelle Gaw have been entertaining guests since 1985. While it…
Livewire
Esthero Pure Plex Grog Shop May 6 The press likes to point out the odd in their couple. Her: the singer, Esthero, with the self-effacing, emotionless name–a squirmy nineteen-year-old redhead from Canada who cites Bjsrk and Prince as listening favorites. Him: Doc, a.k.a. Martin McKinney; American at the turntables, guitar, and programming–likes KRS-One and Bad…
