Color His World
5/29 – 6/14 Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hits bookstores at midnight on June 21, but kids can get caught up in the Harry hype early with the Harry Potter Children’s Art Contest, taking place at Borders stores throughout the area. “We want them to draw their favorite scenes from past Harry…
Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter
The title track of Jesse Sykes & the Sweet Hereafter’s debut CD is about falling in love. We know, because Sykes said so in an interview. We never would have guessed it otherwise. “Reckless Burning,” like almost all the other songs on the album of the same name, is earthy and lugubrious, with languid guitar-playing…
Stand-Up Guy
FRI 5/30 You can see Seinfeld, the show, anytime you want. Seeing Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian, is a little more difficult. His stand-up performance at the Akron Civic Theatre Friday is a must-see. Expect plenty of observational humor, which has gained new facets since he became a husband and father a few years ago. In…
Poison
There comes a time in a woman’s life when you look back and think, Hey! Why didn’t I ever let a rock-and-roll bad boy lead me onto his tour bus, so he could slurp Jack Daniel’s from my navel? Former groupies are older now, more mature — and still so interested in “Nothing but a…
Safe, Cracked
Another week, another remake — summer is upon us. But unlike The In-Laws, which creaked into theaters last week, this latest update of a decades-old action comedy has two things going for it: Its forebear is a veddy British caper film little seen in the United States, which means it’s unburdened by expectation, and this…
John Hammond
For anyone who’s ever doubted that blues can cross the color line, John Hammond is the ideal myth-buster. Once a young buck heralding the ’60s folk and blues revival, alongside the likes of urban stylists Paul Butterfield and Mike Bloomfield, Hammond developed into a bona fide master of country blues. Now, he’s perhaps the genre’s…
Right on Track
The French government should officially proclaim actor Jean Rochefort a national treasure. A fixture of Gallic cinema for five decades, he is best known to American audiences for his comedic turns in such sex farces as Pardon Mon Affaire and The Closet, and of course his near-miss as Don Quixote, as chronicled in Lost in…
John Howard
It’s funny the way San Francisco’s house scene has risen to prominence under the guidance of a host of Chicago-born DJs and producers. Funnier still that John Howard, one of the higher-profile DJs in the Windy City, is actually from San Francisco. And yet Howard doesn’t dish out much of the patchouli-scented, dub-influenced “San Francisco…
Undersea No Evil
If grownups were meant to watch Walt Disney cartoons, God would have kept us all in the third grade for two or three decades. Still, somebody has to drive the SUV every time the Disney folk decide to lure the little ones down to the multiplex, and as long as the actual movie experience is…
Grave
Forget ABBA, and forget all the garage bands; Sweden’s greatest contribution to music remains the early ’90s death-metal sound, exemplified by Entombed, Unleashed, and Grave. Back From the Grave, the band’s first disc in six years, displays an impressive understanding that when you’ve got a good thing, you don’t mess with it. It’s one of…
Fleeing Cleveland
Add Athersys to the list of high-profile companies leaving Cleveland. It’s not yet official, but reliable sources — i.e., guys who know, but don’t want their names printed — confirm that the biopharm glamour boys are bolting for Durham, North Carolina. President and CEO Gil Van Bokkelen made it clear a few months ago that…
Touch of the Poet
The budding teenage poet in Karen Moncrieff’s Blue Car writes melancholy verse about autumn leaves falling off trees and fathers abandoning their daughters. Predictably, the girl’s floundering mother is too harried and too strapped for cash to pay much attention to her, and her troubled little sister is endlessly needy. In other words, we’ve seen…
Verbena
The curse of Nirvana doesn’t just plague Messrs. Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic — just ask the Birmingham-based trio Verbena, which was saddled with comparisons to the grungetastic trio after its major-label debut, 1999’s Into the Pink. Not only did Grohl produce Pink, but its heavy chords and vocalist Scott Bondy’s strained yowls bore an…
The Producer
“I’m a conservative guy,” Ben Schigel announces as he polishes off a Bud Light tall boy and lights up a bowl. It’s 3:30 on a bright Monday afternoon. Out of bed for about an hour, Schigel is sitting outside Spyder Studios, the comfy home-recording facility nestled in his parents’ Strongsville garage, where black-light Iron Maiden…
Urban Bright
Christian Osterland’s fifth-grade art class parades across Denison Avenue and into Art House. Once inside, the Denison Elementary students plop down at big work tables. The noise crescendos. “Eyesssup heeere pleeease,” Osterland gently admonishes. With dark blond hair and black-rimmed glasses, he’s the kind of teacher everybody loves: laid back and cool. He’s ready to…
X Fest
Aside from screamo bottom-feeders the Used and the “secular P.O.D.,” (hed)pe, X Festivities are heavy on white, schlumpy, bummer rockers cut from Scott Stapp’s messianic Play-Doh mold. Each act has a cute baritone anthem that makes it, uh, “unique”: Nü hedonists Smile Empty Soul “do it for the druuuuuuuhhhhgs”; tough guys Trapt warn, “Back off,…
Off the Hook
Michael Vietti believed he’d been fleeced. He claimed that an asphalt recycling company in Cleveland owed him $90,000 in sales commissions, but it refused to pay up. On a friend’s advice, he hired lawyer Harvey Morrison to file suit. That was in June 1999. Over the next year, public records suggest, Morrison appeared to forget…
Tasty Morsels
It’s kind of a shame, but the world just ain’t safe for drifters anymore. These days, if a scruffy young man knocked on most front doors, looking for work in exchange for food, he’d soon be spread-eagled on the sidewalk by a SWAT team, dragged off in shackles, and held incommunicado. Back in the 1950s,…
Duran Duran
Remember Haircut 100, a Flock of Seagulls, ABC? Didn’t think so. But nobody forgets Duran Duran. In the early ’80s, the sensual new romantic fivesome ruled the airwaves with such confections as “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “Rio,” “Is There Something I Should Know?” and the indelible “Girls on Film.” The link between Bowie and INXS,…
Letters to the Editor
Club owners should pay the piper: Having been a bar owner and manager, I understand wanting to fill your club with people [First Punch, April 16]. However, when you book a band (or any service) for a set amount of money, it is customary to pay for the work. If a night isn’t turning out…
Drink Special
Rural routes 3 and 303 intersect in a sleepy little corner of Medina County. Blink once, and you’re likely to miss it. So be warned: If you’re looking for Fosters Tavern of Hinckley, you’d better stay sharp. The crossroads watering hole is the kind of place you can pass by a dozen times without noticing.…
Deftones / Staind
The Deftones’ Chino Moreno and Staind’s Aaron Lewis are two of metal’s most emotive frontmen. Unlike most headbangers, they trade in tears as much as testosterone, though the two take different routes to your heart. The more subtle of the two lyrically, Moreno conveys emotion through his voice more than his words, which are becoming…
Must-See Theater
Mike Polensek isn’t one to keep his pistols holstered. Nor does the bold and bellicose Collinwood councilman preserve his ammo when someone needs lighting up. “I’m gonna say what I have to say, because I’ve pulled enough arrows out of my ass where it doesn’t bother me,” he says. So you’d expect him to land…
Dem Blues
You’ve been warned: This is a column about politics wherein a popular-culture critic (dunno what that is either, but says so on my tax returns) interviews a former rock journalist-turned-publicist-turned-band-manager-turned-record-label-executive about how the Democratic Party alienated everyone under the age of death. You may take this with a grain of salt; you may take it…
The Thorns
The Thorns are three earnest guitar-pop balladeers — Matthew Sweet, Pete Droge, and Shawn Mullins — who’ve traded the total creative autonomy and mild commercial fruits of their respective solo careers for a concentrated market incursion and the chance to sing in dazzling three-part harmony. It’s tough to say whether the market will sing back.…
On With Their Heads
Reuben and Dorothy Silver jet off to London every year, spending two weeks in a rented flat and taking in some theatuh. Last year, they saw Maggie Smith perform a monologue from Talking Heads, based on a popular BBC program. Reuben knew he had to bring the stage version to Cleveland, and he did: The…
Blue Clues
Strolling down Larchmere Boulevard, with its antique shops, gift boutiques, and neighborly eateries, is already one of our favorite ways to score a dose of East Side hipitude. Now the scene promises to get even hotter, with the late-summer arrival of Boulevard Blue (12718 Larchmere), a contemporary American restaurant with a glass-enclosed garden room, live…
Timo Maas
If you’re skeptical about whether a superstar DJ such as Hanover, Germany’s Timo Maas can produce solid dance music on his own, you may well be right — “Timo Maas” is actually more of a brand name than the true work of an individual. His main studio partner, Martin Buttrich, brings essential technical life to…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, May 29 Bob Hope turns 100 today. In honor of the Cleveland-raised comedian’s birthday, the Cinematheque has lined up a weekend series of the funnyman’s finest films. It kicks off tonight with screenings of The Big Broadcast of 1938 (in which he debuted “Thanks for the Memory,” which became his theme song) and the…
Grumpy Old Men
Metallica needs an image overhaul the way frontman James Hetfield needed to dry out. It’s been almost six years since the band bestowed an album of original studio material upon the world, and in the interim, Metallica has dropped dud after dud. Since 1997’s lukewarm Reload, there’s been a lame, Moody Blues-esque symphonic live album;…
Fistula
Medina’s Fistula plays soot-black stoner metal so pained that it belongs in an ER. This is pointedly coarse masochism, equal parts doom, grind, and bleeding vocal cords. Singer-guitarist Aaron’s glass-gargling shrieks will test the mettle of even the most hardened headbanger, and his guitar playing is equally barbarous: massive, sun-obscuring riffs add impressive girth to…
Baby Talk
Jeff Danis is a hotshot Hollywood agent who has represented such movie stars as Jeff Goldblum, Paul Newman, and Sigourney Weaver. When he decided he wanted to adopt a Vietnamese child, it was natural that he’d hire a film crew to document it. “This began as a little home movie,” he says. “But one thing…
Banana Flambé
Tokyo’s Melt-Banana — two guys and two girls in their late 20s — defies traditional definitions of speedcore, avant-metal terror, or even Japanoise. Naturally, that hasn’t stopped niche-makers from branding the band with all those labels over the course of its 10-year life. Though Melt-Banana has achieved much recognition for furious shows that typically become…
The Alligators
The satanic surf rock of the Alligators brings to mind a defrocked Reverend Horton Heat: With requisite reverb, rubbery bass, and B-movie lyrics, the band embraces the conventions of pyschobilly, but in particularly gruff fashion. “We fuck and we fight/We drink and we smoke/And they say we’re the type you shouldn’t provoke,” frontman Turd McGurk…
Peace Soup
SAT 5/31 Eleven years ago, Donald Foose was a Spudmonster looking for the meaning of life. He found enlightenment when his Cleveland hardcore band toured with the New York-based Cro-Mags, whose members were Hare Krishnas. “I had all kinds of questions, and they all seemed happy in life,” he says. Now Foose himself is a…
Ground Control to Spider One
In August 2001, Powerman 5000 founder Spider One realized that the new record his fast-rising group had just finished sounded a lot like its last one, 1999’s Tonight the Stars Revolt! But rather than release an album that would please the label suits, guarantee those coveted MTV guest spots, and help secure blanket radio coverage,…
Columbus Calling
5/30 – 6/4 The Columbus Clippers’ Cooper Stadium is a clean but undistinguished 1970s-era ballpark. It has dark green stadium seats with cup holders, backed by a walkway and a second seating tier of aluminum bleachers. Arm yourself with these fun facts before visiting the Yankees’ AAA affiliate: Beer: Bud or Bud Lite. Our father-in-law’s…
Rock Hall Rescue
Like many of the musicians it honors, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame appears to be careening toward an early death. In the past year, the hall has cut close to two dozen jobs and slashed millions from its budget. Attendance dipped to 575,000 in 2002, after a high of 875,000 in ’96. Important…
Colin’s Clean
SAT 5/31 Colin Dussault put away the booze for good a couple of years ago — a good move for a guy who could polish off a bottle of Rumplemintz or Jaegermeister in one sitting. “I’d wonder why I was always sick, why my voice was gone, and why I couldn’t sing,” the 34-year-old bluesman…
Thar She Blows Again
The Pirates Cove, a seminal local rock club in the late ’70s and early ’80s, is back, offering a new downtown harbor for underground sounds. After a two-decade hiatus, the new Cove sits between Peabody’s and the Rascal House on East 21st Street, near the Cleveland State campus. The original Cove, located in the Flats…
