The Shootings
It was all over, as far as he was concerned. The vandalism, the cops, the burning building — the biggest damned weekend of the year, and he had missed it. Instead of being in the middle of student unrest and civil strife, he was off frolicking in the Pennsylvania wilderness, taking pictures of teaberry and…
Soundbites
In a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, Come to Where I’m From, the new album by Akron-raised singer-songwriter Joseph Arthur, is reviewed in conjunction with Elliott Smith’s latest effort. The end result: The relatively unknown Arthur gets an A-minus and Academy Award nominee Smith receives a B-minus. It’s praise that Arthur, whose gentle, folk-based music…
Aftermath
He presided over the trials of murderers, mobsters, and porn kings. But one of the hardest things William Thomas ever had to do during his 32-year career as a federal judge was make an apology. It was December 1978. The nine students wounded at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, along with the families…
Regional Beat
Spaceflakes Plenty of groups are mixing electronic beats and world music these days. The members of Kent’s Dot Morton take this a step further: They actually play some of the worldly instruments that appear on their debut. In recent performances, the group, which includes T.J. Hudock on samples and synthesizers; Jason Mowry on percussion programming,…
Honor Bound
In 1996, Bob Camburn was visiting a traveling version of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at Cleveland’s Lake View Cemetery when he noticed a fellow visitor scanning the names. The man was obviously frustrated, so Camburn asked who he was looking for. “Sekne,” the man answered, explaining he couldn’t remember how to spell his late friend’s…
Edge
Blame game! Everybody was at fault in the Sheppard trial except losing lawyer Terry Gilbert, according to the appeal he filed Monday. Gilbert is asking Judge Ronald Suster to overturn the verdict mainly, he argues, because the jury didn’t deliberate long enough. In private conversations since the trial, two jurors haveconfided that they not only…
The final cut
Peter Becker is the most important man in the movie business, even though you have no idea who he is. Becker himself would not cop to such a description; he, like few else in the business called show, does not put himself before the work. To describe what he does for a living would be…
Letters to the Editor
Fine Whines It is time for Terry Gilbert to go take a time out. That is what any of my children would do for whining as badly as he is doing in his letter [“Another Disappointed Customer,” April 27]. I realize that this was a very personal thing for him, and I have great empathy…
“Girl” on Film
To gossip columnists in the late ’20s, she was “the girl photographer.” But early in her career, Margaret Bourke-White was also being hailed as “the daredevil of Cleveland’s steel mills” — a risk-taker who sought and found beauty in the city’s smokestacks, drawbridges, and battered boats. A thought-provoking new exhibit at the College of Wooster…
Greene Light
For value-conscious theatergoers, the Great Lakes Theater Festival ends its 38th season with a bargain extravaganza. It combines the best aspects of literature, reader’s theater, and good farce. Best of all, it’s one of the rare adaptations of Graham Greene that’s true to its source in plot and philosophy. On a sky-blue stage, among Magritte-style…
A Point Well Taken
Clevelanders are blessed as never before, with not one but two burgeoning enclaves of fine dining: trendy Tremont and the urbane Warehouse District. Tremont is hip, no doubt about it. But as a child of the rolling Cuyahoga Valley, whose comfort depends on the opportunity to snuggle my back up against a grassy hill or…
War Names
The first memento at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was reportedly a Purple Heart placed in the concrete as the wall was going up. From then on, the steady stream of items has included everything from letters and photos to stuffed animals, dog tags, and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. “It’s really become a post office open 24…
Sidedish
Look for Blake’s Grill, a new Chagrin Falls restaurant with a focus on seafood, to open by July, in space that used to house Leonetti’s. The totally redecorated, bilevel restaurant will have a stunning view of the falls and is the latest project for Joe Saccone and Rick Hauck, founders of the Hyde Park Restaurant…
Comet Tale
If astronomer Alan Hale had a nickel for every time his name has been mentioned since co-discovering comet Hale-Bopp five years ago, he wouldn’t need grants to continue his studies. Hale, along with unwitting accomplice Thomas Bopp, turned his telescope to Sagittarius in late July of 1995 and saw “something fuzzy” where something fuzzy shouldn’t…
Beaching the Beatles
As the songs on the Apples in Stereo’s new album, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone, show, Robert Schneider may have a love for classic pop melodies, but it’s rivaled — if not surpassed — by his passion for rock and roll. You can hear it on the disc’s opening track, the energetic…
Dark Journey
Poor Kim Basinger! In her first role since bagging the 1998 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (for L.A. Confidential, the film that should have won Best Picture and Best Director as well), the actress positively trembles with what seems to be fear. Notoriously insecure about appearing on camera, Basinger looks intimidated to the point…
Hard Luck and Longevity
Walk into a record store — one of those franchised, mall-based mega shops — ask 25 customers if they’ve ever heard of NRBQ, and chances are you won’t find three who have. Still, the group continually gets tagged as “one of the world’s greatest bands,” a description that has followed it for over 30 years.…
Chicken Caesar
There is a killing late in Gladiator, Ridley Scott’s new heroic epic, and it is one of those wonderfully cathartic extinguishings that make a wide-eyed audience rise and cheer. After several brutal battles, after much bloodshed, after considerable suffering both needless and entertaining, a blade finds its mark, and a mortal conflict finds its resolution.…
The Demonic Duo
When Ween embarked on its first tour nearly a decade ago, it was a little-known duo from New Hope, Pennsylvania, that was on such a low budget, it had put all the drum and bass parts of its songs on a cassette tape to which it played along. Despite having shared bills with Fugazi and…
The Goddaughters
Everybody’s a princess at one point or another. Rich girls work it from birth to final crack-up. Bourgeois girls play the precious ‘n’ misunderstood game through adolescence, shifting it into ruthless ambition shortly thereafter. Poor girls can blow an entire lifetime just screwing up their hair and pretending they’re Galadriel. As for boys, the princess…
Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos
Call downtown New York guitarist Marc Ribot’s second Postizos CD the Manhattan Vista Social Club. It’s a blend of ? & the Mysterians, Tito Puente, and the Sir Douglas Quintet, meshing garage rock, salsa, and a hint of Tex-Mex in 10 tracks. Launched with the sweetly urgent “Dame un Cachito Pa’huele,” by Cuban inspiration Arsenio…
Sick at Heart
The War Zone opens with a black screen and the sound of waves gently crashing against the shore. The methodical ebb and flow of the water produces a soothing rhythm and a sense of tranquility. The film’s first visual image is equally evocative — a beautiful section of seashore, buttressed by windswept cliffs. Only slowly…
The Jayhawks
When Jayhawks co-founder/singer-songwriter Mark Olson packed his bags a few years ago, no one really expected Gary Louris, his writing partner and the co-anchor of the group, to make much of the leftover pieces. Yet, Sound of Lies, the Jayhawks’ 1997 album, the first one without Olson, sounded almost like . . . the Jayhawks…
Bloody Monday
It began as the sweetest of days. The sky was blue, almost cloudless as I remember, the temperature in the high 60s, calibrated for joy. It was a Monday with promise, a day of expectation — especially if you were a student on a campus in a climate where winter rubbed the spirit raw. Spring…
Various Artists
The type of no-holds-barred free improvisation in jazz that emerged in the ’60s eventually hit a wall, and there wasn’t any point in trying to play higher or faster than Albert Ayler or use more multiphonics than Pharoah Sanders. As a result, there was a need to create new structures rather than return to old…
