A Star Is Yorn
As Pete Yorn explains his migration to California from New Jersey and his subsequent signing to Columbia Records, it’s hard to deny your own urge to pack a bag and give it a shot. But then, Yorn benefited from having mastered the drums, guitar, and bass, and from nurturing a songwriting gift to near-maturity in…
The Funny Business
It took three years for Second City Cleveland to open its doors, which has given its six-member comedy troupe plenty of time to practice being spontaneously funny. “I started training with the first class in June 1999,” Colleen Doyle says. “We’re ready.” With a new home in the theater district, Second City, not so surprisingly,…
Summer Soundtrack
Right up there with suds and sunblock, good music is a must-have for summer. Pick the right tunes, and you’ll be knee-deep in beach bunnies in need of a good oiling. Pick the wrong ones, and even that hairy guy at the pool, the one who looks like Chewbacca in a thong, won’t hang out…
Zoom and Board
Kristian Svitak doesn’t sound like a competitive sportsman. In fact, the 27-year-old skateboard pro’s laid-back attitude doesn’t suggest any sort of athletic instinct whatsoever. “It’s not about winning or the money,” he says. “It’s about hanging out with your buddies, showing off your latest stuff, and having fun.” Svitak and more than 20 of his…
Monster Magnet
Stoner rock has never been a genre associated with artistic ambition. It’s pointedly backwards-looking, mining Sabbath’s sludge to no end, and consequently, it’s become the redheaded stepchild of the heavy music scene, derided by highbrows, sniveled at by populists. But Monster Magnet’s Dave Wyndorf, a reefer-rock forebear, refuses to be dismissed so easily. “Some people…
Nuclear Waste
There has always been something infuriating, if not appalling, about killing thousands of people in the name of blockbuster entertainment. Before September 11, no one thought much about it. Audiences accepted wholesale slaughter on the big screen because they knew there would be some sort of payoff — revenge, redemption, a thousand bodies for a…
One Love Reggae Festival
Everybody digs reggae music. It’s kind of funny, though, that a distinct line somehow seems to separate fans of modern dancehall and the traditionalists of old. In Jamaica, old-time singers have been pelted with bottles from crowds eager to hear the flavor of the month. Outside Jamaica, audiences seem to cross that boundary a bit…
Super Bad
“I ain’t be got no weapon! Why you be gotta pull a knife on me!” So exclaims a desperate black actor in an audition before an indifferent white casting committee in Robert Townsend’s Hollywood Shuffle. In the 15 years since that production, the perfect Hollywood crossover comedy has remained elusive. Fortunately, urban satire is back…
Nappy Roots
Every American knows about the prejudice against white-bread country music — it’s happy-hayseed drivel, devoid of the sly beats and sturdy backbone demanded by modern pop lovers. That prejudice pervades African American country music traditions as well, but it coexists with a contradictory notion that’s all but buried in the white-bread conception. As Nappy Roots…
Oscar Worthy
The plot of The Importance of Being Earnest, for those unfortunates who’ve missed it these past 109 years, goes something like this: A dandified London wastrel by the name of Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff (portrayed in this adaptation by Rupert Everett) welcomes into his chambers his friend and ally, Ernest (Colin Firth). However, Algy quickly learns…
Pink
Pink, the new Madonna? Doesn’t seem possible — certainly didn’t in 2000, when “There U Go” introduced Philadelphia homegirl Alecia Moore as the latest in a long line of bad girls gone badder. Still, there was something “Like a Virgin”-ish to that cover of “Lady Marmalade,” wasn’t there? A certain sass, a willingness to toy…
The Schmuck
Dirty socks. That’s what worries Dave Takach at the moment. Samantha, his eight-year-old daughter, has been playing outside without shoes on, turning her white socks brown. “Where’s your shoes?” he asks. “Ummm,” she says, shrugging as she corkscrews her mouth. “I dunno. Inside.” “Go get your shoes on,” Takach says, gently prodding her toward the…
Boxcar Racer
If Blink-182’s last record, the surprisingly maudlin Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, was like a pinch of novocaine in the Vaseline, the debut from Boxcar Racer (a side-project featuring Blink singer-guitarist Tom Delonge and drummer Travis Barker) is even more numbing. Listening to this disc — with its pair of brooding, quasi-acoustic ballads and…
Race Debating
That blacks make up only 33 percent of Cuyahoga County’s population — but 74 percent of the kids in correctional facilities — would seem a compelling argument that judges treat them more harshly than they do whites. Among liberals, it’s long been an article of faith. Then Case Western Reserve professor William Sabol released a…
Nina Nastasia
Oh, what haunted places some songwriters wander. Smog, Cat Power, Sparklehorse — these artists’ songs sound as though they were carried over by a skip on the river Styx. You can add Nina Nastasia to that list. The Blackened Air is a frightening and gorgeous piece of work, notes from a shadow world. Take “Oh…
Low and Inside
He didn’t want to sell. The Monreal Funeral Home had been at Vine Street and Route 91 for 27 years, and Bill Monreal had built a clientele. Plus, the City of Eastlake was offering only $700,000 — not the $4 million Monreal thought would be necessary to buy land, construct a new home, and move…
El-P
If you don’t believe that underground hip-hop is enjoying a serious renaissance, just listen to El-P’s brilliant solo debut. Maybe “enjoying” is the wrong word: The oh-so-appropriately-titled album doesn’t make it sound as though it’s enjoying much of anything, save for the ruin of listener-friendly mainstream rap. In the midst of Fantastic Damage’s sludgy production…
Attack of the Puritans
Frank Maenza is talking about how, despite alcohol, strobe lights, throbbing dance beats, and topless women, this fantastical paradise known as the Diamond Men’s Club is all about order. His walkie-talkie interrupts him with a crackle. A voice on the other end reports that a dancer wants a glass of wine. It wouldn’t be worth…
Múm
Boards of Canada’s 1998 ambient-pop masterpiece Music Has the Right to Children redefined stylistic parameters for a cadre of music listeners with dogmatic tastes. Released in the U.S. on a famously grumpy indie-rock label (Matador) and featuring a melodic, drifting, not particular dancey take on techno, Music brokered a common ground both for rock kids…
Counting the Lies
The real Jim Capwill was in church: Concerning your article “Rogue Businessman?” [May 2]: You obviously did not answer your own question. Then again, maybe this type of smut is something Tom Francis is used to writing. I’ve known Jim Capwill for four years. While this man cares about his appearance, he has never worn…
Cyde
As the slouching verse on “Paranoid,” the opening track on Cyde’s latest album, kicks into the soaring chorus, it sounds as though the band has finally arrived. At that moment, the foursome achieves a marriage of the oppressive trudge-and-thud of nü-style pain merchants and the anthemic yearn-and-yowl of old-school cock rockers. The loose, funky “Fix”…
Pulse of the City
Landscape photography doesn’t have to concern itself with people. Cityscapes, on the other hand, can’t avoid them. Even when there’s not a single person in sight, the human element is never completely absent from an urban scene. This is certainly true in the Cleveland Artists Foundation’s revealing exhibit The Contemporary City: Northeast Ohio Photographers View…
Dr. Strange
When this column debuted at the beginning of 2000, readers and editors scoffed at its occasional subject matter, the comic book. Kids’ stuff, they growled, junk food for adults who still live in their parents’ basements. And maybe they were right back then. The industry was dying; the art form was moribund. Sales were dwindling…
Country Comfort
Lingering in a wicker rocking chair on the broad porch of the Welshfield Inn, a person can easily imagine the days when travelers came up the curved driveway in coach and buggy, seeking respite from the dusty road. There’s a softness to the air out here and a brightness to the stars, reminiscent of another…
Golden Buns
Treeka Wong has some of the best buns in town: big, pillowy dim-sum-style buns, that is, stuffed with everything from pineapple custard and chestnut puree to barbecued pork, curried beef, and even hot dogs. Along with partner and baker Peter Liu, the entrepreneur operates Golden Bakery (3030 Superior Avenue, 216-241-4418), the newest addition to Chinatown’s…
Astro Creep
Let’s say you’re a music-biz Dr. Frankenstein. You want to build the perfect beast for the MTV era, an artist equally adept at visual and musical communication, someone for whom a video and song are all part of an inextricable package. Rob Zombie just might be that beast. Sure, it’s conventional wisdom to say that…
