Tracing the Trailblazers
Think rock and roll began with the arrival of Elvis Presley? Well, think again. As Nick Tosches reveals in this reissue of Unsung Heroes of Rock ‘n’ Roll (complete with a new preface), Presley simply popularized a musical form that was in existence as early as 1942. In the years since its original publication in…
Night & Day
Thursday May 27 It’s Rib Cook-Off time again, a chance for swingin’ scenesters to break out of the meatloaf mold and hear hot new acts like Rick Springfield (today) and K.C. and the Sunshine Band (Saturday). Friday night’s bill actually has a pulse, with the Goo Goo Dolls and Fastball taking the stage. For a…
Soundbites
Last Thursday, the opening night of the eleventh Undercurrents band showcase and seminar, fewer than fifty people milled about the two stages at Peabody’s DownUnder. Even though the cover charge was knocked down to five bucks (from ten), the crowd was made up largely of bands, their entourages, and bartenders. Tumbleweed practically blew across the…
Castalia Sings the Blues
From the Grand Canyon to the Grand Coulee Dam, the earth’s great pores and puddles have always owned a special place in mankind’s heart. It’s no wonder, then, that a “bottomless” pool of stagnant water drew lines of enamored onlookers (and more than a few divers, who failed to hit ground) for decades. Such was…
Livewire
Hole Imperial Teen Nautica Stage May 21 Courtney Love tried hard to make people like her. She said “thank you” after almost every song, she told a number of guys in the audience that they were cute, and she even rewarded the thirty or so crowd surfers who made it to the stage by letting…
High Holy Groove
The airbrushed mural behind the stage of Club Paraiso paints icons of Latin bandsmen and dancers against a Cleveland skyline in shades of fire and black. On a Saturday night, Sammy de Leon y Su Orquestra pump out macho merengue and salsa fortified with horns and three essential percussion instruments. It’s not the Sistine Chapel,…
Virtual Reality Bites
Deja vu is usually a sign of love at first sight. Says who? Says the heroine of The Thirteenth Floor to the hero that she’s on the verge of kissing. Though they’ve just met a scene or two earlier, they both feel they’ve seen each other before. That maxim about deja vu was a new…
Nothing Hill
Maybe it’s the damned blinking thing, because it’s not simply the foppish hair and boyish face–or, for that matter, even the vaguely befuddled reticence and wry, self-abasing demeanor we Americans prefer to see in our Brits. It’s got to be the blinking. That’s what he does, almost all he does, and it must be some…
The Burden of Being Serbia
The atmosphere is electric at St. Sava Church in Broadview Heights, where, on a recent Tuesday night, nearly two hundred members of Cleveland’s Serbian Orthodox community have flooded a small reception hall. Large families, single young adults, and church elders fill the seats, forcing latecomers to stand along the back wall. Some are wearing buttons…
Big Bucks in Berea
Dave McCamey fixes a French horn in his cramped store underneath an old photo of himself with burly Marvin Aday, better known to most people as schlock-and-roll star Meatloaf. McCamey has spent more than half his life around music, either selling and fixing instruments, as he does now as owner of Berea Music, or by…
The Edge
Policy Rides to Hounds Nice digs! Browns President and GM Carmen Policy scored a honey of a house in Hunting Valley, on five-plus secluded acres off Fairmount Boulevard. The two-story Colonial, built in 1996, sports four bedrooms, four full baths, a finished basement, seven fireplaces, and a five-car garage. Price tag: a flat $3 million,…
Letters
Jimmy the Pizza Lover? I found your piece on Jimmy Dimora [“Boss From the ‘Burbs,” May 20] to be informative, seemingly objective, and well-written, for the most part. However, having an Italian heritage myself, I have to object to your use of the term “godfather”–a term that almost always is used to describe only Italian…
On the Down Side
The new exhibit at SPACES, Floored, is so designated because each of its six local and national artists create work for and about the gallery floor. All righty, then. There’s nothing implicitly wrong with finding a new use for gallery floors, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with working within a minimalist aesthetic, as do all…
Two Men and a Divorce
The good folks who keep cranking out plays at Beck Center should be commended for one of the year’s most delightful concepts. Currently on the boards is Neil Simon’s 1965 smash The Odd Couple, undoubtedly Broadway’s most well-crafted comedy since the pre-war heydays of Kaufman and Hart. Like George Orwell’s indestructible houseplant, the aspidistra, it…
Theater in Slow Motion
Anyone who studies scenic design should hop over to Karamu House for a gander at Richard H. Morris Jr.’s stunning 1920 Harlem boarding-house set. With its rich burgundies and beiges, furniture that could have come out of a 1920s Sears-Roebuck catalog, and infinite attraction to period detail (even down to an authentic door transom, bohemian…
Mondo Makeover
Like the shy girl with the golden smile, Piccolo Mondo–Carl Quagliata’s restaurant in downtown’s trendy Warehouse District–has always been likable enough, though not exactly dazzling. But now, with a new man in her life, little Piccolo Mondo has trimmed down, lightened up, and looks poised to give her neighboring fine-dining establishments some heavy-duty competition. The…
Playback
Ani DiFranco & Utah Phillips Fellow Workers (Righteous Babe) By calling their new album Fellow Workers, Ani DiFranco and Utah Phillips pay homage to this country’s long-faded socialist movement (whose members always began their speeches with a hearty “Fellow workers!”). By dipping into a song bag that’s partially made up of Depression-era folk tunes, the…
The Variations of Tom Waits
Everything you are about to read is a lie. Well, perhaps that is an exaggeration, much like most of what comes out of Tom Waits’s mouth. It’s not as though he doesn’t know the truth, it’s just less fun to tell it. Every interview–and he has handed out only a handful in conjunction with the…
