Legends of Glue-Huffing
The songs of Townes Van Zandt give the impression that he was a troubled man. Be Here to Love Me, a documentary about the late country singer-songwriter, confirms those suspicions, with testimony from peers and protégés like Steve Earle, who recalls the time Van Zandt put a loaded gun to his own head and pulled…
Bath Time
Charles Fleck’s money-colored eyes dart around the dusty old bus depot, searching for something new to show off. Here’s where he’ll put the Russian sauna. There, a eucalyptus-vapor room. Over there, the 18-man Jacuzzi. Even a room full of heating pumps is worth pointing out. “It’s like something out of Star Wars!” Fleck says, and…
Raul Malo
The Mavericks might be kaput, but the ’90s’ most significant country act lives on with Raul Malo, the crooner who channeled Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, and Hank Williams on such hits as “What a Crying Shame” and “O What a Thrill.” Since the band’s breakup last year, Malo has focused on his solo career by…
Welcome to Hooters
The most important thing to know about the new movie Hoot, adapted from the children’s book by Carl Hiaasen, is that it’s co-produced by Jimmy Buffett, who also appears in a small role and provides new music for the soundtrack. Middle-aged drunks and boat owners might possibly rejoice at the news, but their kids may…
Center Stage
The Cleveland Play House’s FusionFest serves up a performing-arts buffet over the next three weeks. Stocked with opera, dance, and theater, the new festival offers more than a dozen performances. Highlights include Cleveland Opera’s production of The Tyrant, the Cleveland School of the Arts’ New Play Festival, and an appearance by veteran actress Ruby Dee,…
Hoodwinked
In February 2003, Dr. Sandra Caramela-Miller, a counselor for Cuyahoga County, took a big step. The first-time investor plunked $11,500 into a state-sponsored retirement fund. Three months later, when her first statement arrived, she was eager to see how her money had grown. Her excitement turned to disbelief when she saw the bottom line: Her…
OHM
OHM guitarist Chris Poland used to be in Megadeth, back when it was good. His sophisticated solos were the perfect counterpart to Dave Mustaine’s mechanistic thrash riffing on the band’s best album, 1986’s Peace Sells . . . but Who’s Buying? In this trio, he’s trading leads with bassist Robert Pagliardi, whose liquid and fretless…
Charlie & the Shoe Factory
If you’re a regular moviegoer with a gift for remembering unusual names, chances are you’ve started paying attention to Chiwetel Ejiofor, the black English actor with a chameleon’s talent for disappearing into a role. You may not have caught his breakthrough performance in Stephen Frears’ Dirty Pretty Things, but you might have noticed him as…
Dance Us a Song, Piano Man
When Billy Joel wrote “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” he probably wasn’t thinking, What this song really needs is a half-dozen modern dancers interpreting it. But that hasn’t stopped the creators of Movin’ Out from building a Broadway show around 25 Joel songs and setting them to dance moves choreographed by Twyla Tharp. There’s a…
Spider-Mo
If you were wondering why producers of Spider-Man 3 chose to shoot the film in Cleveland, Punch has finally discovered the unsettling truth: They’re trying to make us gay. That’s right. Disturbing footage of Spidey is raging across the internet. It shows the masked avenger dancing more suggestively than Alex Arshinkoff at an all-boys-school prom,…
Eef Barzelay
As frontman and songwriter for the country/folk-inflected Clem Snide, Eef Barzelay has always kept his ironic tendencies poignant enough to avoid smarminess. Whether he’s singing about Enrique Iglesias’ mole, covering Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” or eulogizing horn-dog actor Bob Crane, Barzelay’s focus is on his subjects’ humanity, and their pitfalls and peccadilloes are never far removed…
Being Bettie
If you can tell a society by its smut, America in the 1950s couldn’t have been just a Frigidaire of repressive hysteria. Hidden somewhere in the closets of Pleasantville and Peyton Place, after all, was a stack of fetish mags bearing the face and hourglass figure of Bettie Page, with all the mysteries they contained.…
Icing Johnny
Icing Johnny Figure skater Johnny Weir goes out of his way to piss off critics. So it’s fitting that the 21-year-old Olympian will skate to Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at this afternoon’s Champions on Ice, an exhibition starring Michelle Kwan, Victor Petrenko, Irina Slutskaya, and 11 other skaters. “I have my own opinions about life…
Not So Fast
Updating the history lesson: Regarding East Cleveland Mayor Eric Brewer’s letter of April 19: Excuse me, Mr. Mayor: Since you claim to have an interest in African American history, why is it you seem blissfully unaware of recent American history? I’m talking about “Uncle Tom” Blackwell’s energetic efforts to discourage and otherwise void minority votes…
Giant Drag
Singer-guitarist Annie Hardy plays alongside guitarist Micah Calabrese in the Los Angeles indie rock band Giant Drag. The duo crafts a hypnotic blend of angular guitars and fuzzy synthesizers, in a stylish homage to artists such as Mazzy Star, the Pixies, and PJ Harvey. Their 2005 album, Hearts and Unicorns, was reissued this spring with…
Last Caress
Let’s say you’re a teenage boy dying of cancer. A well-known charity dedicated to helping people like you offers to make your fondest wish come true — as long as it’s something realistic, as opposed to, say, finding a cure for cancer. Would you choose a VIP pass to Disneyland . . . or a…
Grandma Comes Home
Legendary Broadway and film actress Ruby Dee returns to her hometown tonight to take part in a staged reading of Saint Lucy’s Eyes, a play written by fellow Clevelander Bridgette Wimberly. Set in segregated Memphis on the night before Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, the drama centers on a 17-year-old girl who pays $50…
Ripper Gets Real
Singing heavy metal for 20 years has made Akron’s Tim “Ripper” Owens a legend. In 1996, he leaped from Akron cover band British Steel to arena headliner Judas Priest, filling-in for metal’s most famous voice and inspiring the Hollywood movie Rock Star. When that long run ended in an unceremonious dismissal, he moved to singing…
Open Turntable Tuesdays with DJ Kaotic
Formerly Club Koozma, Ripple Nightclub is now the city’s newest venue for electronic dance music, specializing in house, breaks, and trance. Sponsors include veteran Cleveland DJ Kaotic, the former Metropolis DJ, whose European-influenced style incorporates the best of progressive trance, house, and drum & bass. Tuesdays, he hosts open turntables, welcoming all styles of EDM…
Technicolor Yuan
Coming closer even than Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers to resembling the Chinese cover art for an Iron Butterfly album, Chen Kaige’s The Promise is extreme psychedelia. Hardly a minute of it passes without a concentrated dose of digital frou-frou and lavish cartoon-poetic imagery: floating ocean goddesses, flying swordsmen, Final Fantasy waterscapes, horse manes…
Dark Side of the Spider
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is Scott Marsh’s all-time-favorite rock movie. He’ll be front-and-center at the Lime Spider tonight for a free screening of the film, which features the band in action at a 1972 concert. “There’s one scene where you’re staring down Roger Waters’ throat, and it’s intercut with shots of volcanoes spurting and…
Indefinable
Most independent record stores work with software called RecordTrak, the most popular inventory and sales program designed specifically for music sales. In use at more than 500 stores, this nearly omnipotent system allows employees to do almost anything with a few keystrokes — check inventory, order new stock, confirm release dates, and account for the…
Karaoke at B-Side Liquor Lounge
A lot of people bring finesse to karaoke night. Some bring years of practice. Here’s what we like about the B-Side Liquor Lounge’s Karaoke Night: What the East Side’s young turks lack in technique, they make up for in panache, dressing to make the scene: Think a tattooed and denim-clad mix of undergrads and recent…
A Dream Worth Sharing
It is said that our dreams are a means of self-exploration, a magic portal of personal insight not available to us in the waking state. We have to assume that this analysis doesn’t refer to those dreams that involve the fruitless search for a sanitary toilet, which can be attributed more to a full bladder…
Sin City
The 1995 movie Seven sparked a sinful renaissance that’s still going strong today. Pride is huge (thanks, Kanye), so is gluttony (hiya, Tony Soprano) — and anger never goes out of style (Russell Crowe, holla!). Convivium33 Gallery pays tribute to sloth, lust, avarice, et al. in The Seven Deadly Sins. Its seven artists contribute paintings,…
Re-Masterful
In 1986, it didn’t matter if you supported the anti-rock mothers of the PMRC, loved pop playboy Robert Palmer, or subsisted on a no-carb diet of hardcore punk; there were two kinds of people: 1) those who bowed down and worshiped Master of Puppets, Metallica’s new thrash-metal masterpiece, and 2) infidel nonbelievers who were not…
Mobb Deep
It’s only May, but Mobb Deep is already looking tough to top in the race for Most Quotable Hip-Hop Line of 2006. Over the heavenly choirs of “Pearly Gates,” Prodigy dismisses “religious bullshit” and threatens to beat “that nigga Jesus . . . for leavin’ us in poverty and not watchin’ over me.” But the…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets — It’s exhilarating to find a short show that’s entirely diverting and worthwhile — not to mention free. The title of this George Bernard Shaw piece refers to the 24 sonnets by William Shakespeare purportedly addressed to a “dark lady,” who served as the bard’s muse for a spell.…
Modern Classics
Osvaldo Golijov has composed and conducted everything from klezmer music to modern-day folk pieces. At 45, he’s part of a new wave of classical musicians who are equally skilled at writing operas, symphonic works, and music that echoes the traditions of his Jewish forefathers. At tonight’s Musical Alchemy performance, the Argentina-born conductor leads the St.…
Build Your Own Band
What’s in a lead singer? Audioslave and Velvet Revolver have gotten along quite nicely without their prima donna leaders. In honor of original Rock Star Tim “Ripper” Owens (featured in this week’s music section) and new INXS singer J.D. Fortune (the man who lifted the tattered hopes of Elvis impersonators everywhere), we offer our thoughts…
DragonForce
This is one shredtastic power-metal album. Like a rocket launched straight from the heart of ’80s Land (or Europe), DragonForce has stuffed every nook and cranny of this CD with guitar and keyboard solos, barely leaving room for high-pitched vocals declaiming about glory, struggle, “the flame of youth,” and broken hearts. There’s a token ballad…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Other People’s Art — Newlywed Cleveland poets/artists/art collectors Steven B. and Kathy Ireland Smith are moving to Spain, and everything artistic must go. There are finds aplenty in their stash of local and family-made work, although you’ll have to do a little sorting. Among the standouts is a gruesome but compelling untitled painting by…
Ink It Over
Whether you’re in the market for a new tat of your own, or you just want to gawk at the snakes, skulls, and Chinese symbols of others, today’s Miami Ink Tattoo Show has you covered. In addition to the new designs on display, Chris Garver and Kat Von D from Miami Ink — the Learning…
Sound Advice
Mike Farley used to lead his own group. Now he’s CEO of Michael J. Media publicity firm, helping local bands go national. When do local bands need a publicist? When they are too busy making music and touring to be able to do PR themselves. Most of the artists on our roster are on labels…
The Dresden Dolls
Their debut was captivating, revitalizing, and manic, seamlessly melding cabaret, torch, and rock styles with macabre confessional lyrics. Yes, Virginia is the follow-up from what once seemed an unpredictable band; sadly, everything on it is predictable. The song structures are standard fare. The band’s all-around sound, once so full and dynamic, is so pared down,…
Embarrassment of Riches
Tennessee Williams Film Collection (Warner Bros.) All that’s missing from this boxed set — six movies, one doc, eight discs — is a jar of sweat; even Williams is here, in a 1973 documentary. Then there’s Brando, Beatty, Newman, Taylor, Burton, Gardner, Leigh, Malden, Huston, Kazan — the last of the red hots, when they…
No Room for Popcorn
Meal & a Movie — the new daily program that pairs dining at Boulevard Blue with movies at a pair of East Side theaters — does the heavy lifting for you. The menu, including a salad and entrée, is already set; all that’s left is deciding which movie to see at Shaker Square Cinemas (13116…
He’ll Be (Singing That Song Till He Dies)
Edwin McCain will be forever known as the guy who wrote that song that 14,000 American Idol hopefuls sing every season. “I’ll Be” has become a modern standard, a ballad that works equally well at wedding receptions and talent-show stages. With its sweeping declarations (“I’ll be the greatest fan of your life”) and even more…
Money Where Your Mouth Is
Band: Patrick Sweany (solo) (www.patricksweany.com; www.myspace.com/patricksweany) Hometown: Massillon Sounds like: “Lightnin’ Hopkins mixed with Solomon Burke, with Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys thrown in.'” Fun fact: “I am a natural-born-lover’s man. I’m a rollin’ stone. I’m a man.” Playing: Monday nights at the Lime Spider, Akron Why you should see him: “I am going…
People in Planes
Riding high on buzz generated by its performance at South by Southwest this year, the Welsh quintet People in Planes sparked a rather heated “alchemy or artifice” rock debate recently. The charge? That the group’s seemingly jazzy take on post-Radiohead “rawk” is clutching at the coattails of Muse and Snow Patrol. To be fair, someone…
Hero With a Thousand Faces
The biggest innovation videogaming saw in the past decade or so was the invention of the “sandbox”: Programmers create settings and consequences, but give you, the user, free license to do with them what you want. Grand Theft Auto is certainly the best-known of these games. The carjackings, the hookers, the running-over of pedestrians –…
Hell and a Handbag
From lust to gluttony, drag queen Varla Jean Merman walks audiences through the seven deadly sins in the musical revue I’m Not Paying for This! “She wants to see how many sins she can get away with before she goes to hell,” says Jeffery Roberson, Merman’s alter ego. The New Orleanean’s crowded résumé includes recent…
Thrash and Burn
One glance at the cover of Exodus’ new album, Shovel Headed Kill Machine, tells you these guys aren’t playing Wayne Newton covers. Yep, Exodus deals in thrash — and pretty well, at that. The Bay Area quintet formed 25 years ago (future Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett was an original member), and they still rock harder…
Last Word
Last Word
Loose Fur
Born Again in the USA, the second album from the Loose Fur collaboration of Jim O’Rourke and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy and Glenn Kotche, clocks in at 38 minutes, with 10 tracks barreling straight through hooks on the bellies of sharp-clawed riffs, the tenacious guitar tones of Phish’s “Billy Breathes” snagging the complex melodic maneuvers of…
Our top DVD picks for the week of May 2.
BTK Killer (Lions Gate) Chubby Hubby Workout (On Air Video) Dinosaurs: The Complete First and Second Seasons (Disney) The Family Stone (Fox) Flight 93: The Movie (UAV) Jargo (Picture This!) King of Thieves (Picture This!) Last Holiday (Paramount) Lie With Me (Lance) Life in the Undergrowth (BBC) Misaki Chronicles: Volume 3 (ADV) Modern Romance (Sony)…
Appetite for Destruction
Indianapolis rock band Demiricous formed on Halloween Night in 2001, which sounds about right: The quartet’s new album, One, is rife with ghoulish howls, haunting growls, and a general sense of mayhem. Like many Midwest metal bands, Demiricous makes a point of blasting eardrums, but it also injects songs with blue-collar workmanship: One features lots…
Turbulence Ahead
Next time you catch a Continental Express flight out of Hopkins Airport, the man at the controls could be DJ Jason Damman. But when the veteran airman isn’t flying a 50-seat plane, he’s turntabling at the weekly Cool House Collective, which debuts dirty-progressive house music tonight at Metropolis. “The sound is kinda crunchy,” says Damman,…
Sticker Situation
Akron-based Fractured Transmitter Records was forced to delay its first high-profile release of 2006 when its label’s corporate parent, WEA (the music conglomerate comprising Warner Bros., Elektra, and Atlantic labels), objected to its title. Former Carcass frontman Jeff Walker had christened his all-star collection of metal-tinged covers of country classics Welcome to Carcass Cuntry. “There’s…
The Black Keys
To hear Black Keys frontman-guitarist Dan Auerbach tell it, the acclaimed Akron blues-rock duo might not existbut for Junior Kimbrough. The Mississippi Delta bluesman played in relative obscurity before finding cult fame late in life, ending his days with dirty-blues label Fat Possum, now also home to the Keys. The new Chulahoma is a reverent…
The week’s best releases from the pop-culture universe:
CD — Journey Into Paradise . . . The Larry Levan Story: Levan, an old-school DJ, defined the dance subgenre of garage back in the early ’80s. This two-disc set features 22 songs Levan produced, remixed, or spun in his hugely influential sets at the Paradise Garage in N.Y.C. Best are Yaz’s “Situation” and Taana…
Moping for Dollars
Emo doesn’t get more emotional than it does in the hands of Hawthorne Heights. The Dayton quintet can’t catch a break on its new album, If Only You Were Lonely: Boy and girl split up, boy and girl try to reconcile, boy and girl end up sleeping in separate beds. “Seeing you cry makes me…
Style Wars
The rivalry between Kent State and the University of Akron will be rekindled tonight — this time on the catwalk. Inspiration, a fashion show featuring nearly 100 designs created by 14 Akron students, is a sort of coming-out party for the school’s emerging fashion-merchandising program, which operates in the shadow of Kent’s prestigious design school…
The Receiving End of Sirens
This Boston area quintet was one of the side-stage buzz acts many of the other bands on Warped Tour were talking about last year. Combining the churning tension/ release of emocore with the elegant intricacy of prog metal, TREOS’s debut, Between the Heart & the Synapse, sounds like an odd cross between Thrice, Coheed &…
Brandtson
With each album, Brandtson refines its pop-infused indie-rock sound. In Hello Control, the Cleveland quartet reflects influences like the Violent Femmes and Depeche Mode — and ex-Furnace St. mastermind Adam Boose, who took the reins after bassist John Sayre departed. “A Thousand Years” opens the disc with a lush synth backdrop and drummer Jared Jolley’s…
Life After Hell
Through sculpture, film, and sound, Pam Heller crafts a haunting multimedia portrait of the Jewish immigrant experience in Eye Contact: Century to Century, which opens today at Cleveland State’s Gallery C. “It began from the stories my grandmother told me,” says Heller, a video artist and sculptor. “The imagery is still so vivid.” After four…
Tea Time
Union Station’s Long Island Night is quite a deal . . . if you don’t mind the entire wall of big-screen TVs tuned to Will & Grace. Every Thursday, the gay-friendly club peddles Long Islands for three bucks — and with gifted bartender Bobby Stolicny mixing nine of them simultaneously, you may be hammered before…
Kathy Valentine & the Impossible
It’s not easy being a Go-Go — bassist Kathy Valentine can attest to this — what with the touring, the fans, the money. Okay, so maybe it’s nice to be a pop star, but success isn’t everything. “It’s a part of my life, but not the main part,” Valentine says. “I have plenty of time…
Hot in the City
We’ve come a long way since the days when “neighborhood restaurant” meant a deli, diner, or Denny’s. Today’s options include everything from that Puerto Rican place to the Greek joint down the street. And now, to the list of comfy, casual neighborhood spots we can add the new Phnom Penh, settled along a short stretch…
Mystery Solved
Les Roberts says it was love at first sight. When the Chicago native moved from Hollywood (where he produced Hollywood Squares and wrote for The Andy Griffith Show, among other gigs) to Cleveland nearly 20 years ago, he was smitten. He came here to oversee the startup of an Ohio Lottery TV show, but soon…
Nighthawks
Believe it or leave it, there were parallels between punk rock and the “blue-wave” bands — a critical sobriquet laid on nonconformists in the new generation of blues bands such as the Fabulous Thunderbirds, the Kinsey Report, and Robert Cray. Like their oddly dressed illegitimate brethren, these upstarts stripped blues down to its essentials and…
Tasty Tour
One part Food Network and one part HGTV, the 13th annual Evening in Ohio City returns Saturday, May 20. The progressive food-and-wine affair combines great eats from some of Ohio City’s top restaurants with an opportunity to savor a peek at six unique homes — including a ninth-floor Stonebridge condo, with spectacular views of the…
Folkswagon
When the Today show’s Mike Leonard loaded up an RV for a cross-country trip with his parents a couple years ago, he really hadn’t considered what he was in store for. “They’re not somebody you want to be contained with for a month,” he laughs. The 30-day journey is detailed in The Ride of Our…
The Pest
It’s Christmas in February at Else Baumgartner’s house. A strand of multicolored lights droops like a downed power line across the walkway to her front door. Webs of gnats cocoon the doorbell. A towering woman in bare feet swings open the door. Her whole body comes to shake hands, bobbed blond hair framing her square…
A-Trak
He hasn’t even turned 25, but Alain Macklovitch — aka A-Trak — has already enjoyed a decade-long career, with more highlights than there’s room to list. And the Montreal native is only getting started. He’s best known at the moment as Kanye West’s DJ; the hard-to-impress Kanye was so taken with the routine A-Trak performed…
Only in America
In 1817, a Tennessee landowner named John Bell was startled by a bizarre creature, described as a dog with a rabbit’s head, which materialized in a cornfield and vanished when fired upon. That night, an unexplained pounding shook the walls of the Bell home. Over the next four years, these oddities escalated into terrors, from…
