Parting Shots
SAT 5/10 Jerry Springer stopped in after a campus lecture. Congressman Tim Ryan made a campaign stop there. And Playboy named it College Bar of the Month shortly after its 2001 opening. But Glory Days in Kent is shuttering its doors on North Water Street this weekend and heading into a two-story building on South…
The Blowtops
Bubbling up four years ago from some cauldron of stolen six-packs, B-movie horror flicks, and eyes of newts, Buffalo’s Blowtops have since released two CDs, a 10-inch EP, and a few singles, to middling acclaim. Attribute that to their soiled-’60s, four-chord crunch. Even for fans of the furthest fringes of garage rock, the Blowtops can…
Crime Drama
5/9 — 5/31 Bad Epitaph Theater Company’s first production in two years almost didn’t happen. Less than a month before the opening of Albert Camus’s State of Siege, director Thomas Cullinan’s car was broken into, and numerous items — including more than two dozen handmade masks — needed for the play were stolen. “I was…
Fleetwood Mac
When British blues guitarist Peter Green left John Mayall in 1967 to form his own band, he reputedly named the group after his drummer (Mick Fleetwood) and bass player (John McVie) as a joke. But no one was laughing three years later, when Green’s deteriorating mental condition led him away from Fleetwood Mac, touching off…
Mr. Mom
Long ago, Eddie Murphy grew tired of Eddie Murphy parts: the fast-talking high-jiver, the preening put-on. Even before he began parodying himself in Bowfinger and Showtime and I Spy (in the case of the latter two, perhaps accidentally), he accepted high-paying roles in low-rent movies that neutered and humiliated the character he had sharpened to…
Give Up the Ghost/The Hope Conspiracy
Give up the Ghost and the Hope Conspiracy are part of a crop of hardcore bands bringing a traditional sound back to the underground. The two young Boston-based groups brush aside the bloated metal riffs and maniacal math-rock time signatures that have been popular for the past few years, concentrating instead on cheater beats, speed-demon…
Winter of Our Discontent
What more can go wrong in suburbia? Director Rose Troche (Go Fish) wants us to know, and to that end she has recruited another army of wounded parents, troubled children, and broken dreamers, then marched them all into a whirlpool of dysfunction on quiet, tree-lined streets just minutes from the shopping mall. This is, of…
Chuck Prophet
“Americana” is to musical classification what “miscellaneous” is to office filing systems. Don’t know what to call an eclectic artist? Put him/her in with the Americana stuff. Which is where Chuck Prophet is often lumped. True enough, the man is certainly eclectic. His heroes and influences are many and varied. His first band, the ’80s…
Mighty Mediocre
Just to admit this up front, my ideal concept of musical comedy involves Bryan Adams and Dave Matthews garroting each other onstage with their own damnable guitar strings. Nonetheless, even viewers with a more centrist appreciation of the genre may feel disappointed by this friendly new folk-music curiosity titled A Mighty Wind. God love Christopher…
Macy Gray
If Macy Gray seems at times to be from another planet, that’s because she probably thinks she is. With her squeaky rasp and spaced-out arrangements, Gray wears her superfreakiness like a crown. No matter that her last album, 2001’s The Id, met with mainstream indifference; on The Trouble With Being Myself, she struts and natters…
Yankee Rubes
Thomas Moyer has lobbied in vain for Ohio to appoint judges, rather than have them sully their robes and reputations on the campaign trail. Now the state’s chief justice has finally found an audience that agrees with him — in Buenos Aires. Moyer paid a five-day visit to Argentina’s capital last month to lecture on…
Sketchy, at Best
If you’re going on vacation this summer, don’t forget to stop by the Sketch Comedy Hall of Fame located in — oh, wait, there is no such place. And it’s a damn shame. The fact is, nightclub sketch comedy isn’t a respected art form; it’s just a training ground for comic actors, until they get…
The New Pornographers
Every once in a while, you encounter an album you just don’t want to think too much about. Listen to, yes; think about, no — out of blind fear that the intellect will puncture the blissful contact high you get from the music. The New Pornographers’ Electric Version is one of those records: a beach…
Absolute Cintron
The list of guests invited to the Hispanic Roundtable’s Leadership Breakfast is stacked with heavy hitters. There’s a judge. County officials. Lawyers and bankers. Businessmen. But not Cleveland’s lone Hispanic councilman. It’s not that Nelson Cintron doesn’t want to go. He does, badly. Cintron’s lawyer even wrote the breakfast’s speaker, Greater Cleveland Growth Association chief…
Blew It
Quick, somebody send the cops to the Cleveland Play House. There’s a multiple murder in progress, and it has to be stopped. The victims are David Hare’s defenseless script, The Blue Room, along with virtually all aspects of competent acting and directing. It is sad that, on the heels of its rousing Dirty Blonde production,…
The Gossip
The Gossip’s bassless counterparts, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the White Stripes, favor gritty blues flavored by their urban digs. But this Arkansas-via-Olympia, Washington trio testifies as if it were at a garage-rock gospel revival fueled by Southern soul. Movement, their second effort, shakes mightily with swampy rumblings from guitarist Brace Paine, whose riffs belch…
Unavenged Angel
Virginia Kohler and Aileen Osborne arrived at the party shortly before 8 p.m. to watch the sun sink behind the horizon. Fifty people had gathered at a private Euclid beach, most lounging about a pavilion nestled on a cliff above Lake Erie. After greeting a few pals, Osborne walked down to the shore with her…
When He Was Cruel
Two women, dressed in standard waitstaff uniforms, emerge from the bar and into the well-appointed lobby of the hotel built 90 years ago by beer magnate Adolphus Busch, who tried to bring the Jazz Age to what would become a Muzak town. About 50 feet away, an interviewer and his subject–a large man with a…
NOFX
Not since the Beastie Boys swapped Budweiser for Buddhism have party animals so suddenly embraced social awareness like NOFX, a band whose only previous foray into activism involved telling off feminists who denounced its sexist lyrics. Now, frontman Fat Mike has discovered his inner Noam Chomsky: “I never looked around/Never second-guessed/Then I read some Howard…
Big Game on Campus
Friday afternoon at the Kent State recreation center is a symphony of squeaks and grunts: the sounds of pickup basketball and volleyball practice, the whirring of fitness equipment harmonizing with the piped-in soundtrack of the Doors and Stones. But as the clock strikes 4, a different brand of athlete shuffles in, and a different sound…
Fussy Logic
There are chefs for whom simplicity is the highest calling, whose gift is the ability to serve a perfect hard-boiled egg with a pinch of sel de mer and make it seem like a rustic feast. On the other hand, there are chefs for whom too much is never enough, who pile on the high-test…
Various Artists
There are more reasons to listen to Flying Funk than the two tracks by the late, great Nina Simone. But her contributions are a good place to start. She kicks off the compilation with a cover of Aretha Franklin’s “Save Me,” delivering a vocal performance that sends shivers up the spine. Her “Funkier Than a…
Letters to the Editor
When you’re Right, you’re right: Pete Kotz’s column [“That Dog Don’t Hunt,” April 9] reminded me of a scene on The Simpsons where the consummately square Principal Skinner is searching the town for a truant Bart Simpson. He reasons he will find him at the Museum of Natural History because, if he were a kid…
Ticket to Tuscany
Cleveland’s jet-setters aren’t flying so high these days, what with SARS, war, and the weak economy. But look on the bright side, grounded ones: A ticket-free gustatory tour of Tuscany awaits you at downtown’s Sans Souci (24 Public Square in the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel). In addition to his usual menu of Mediterranean fare, chef du…
Chimaira
On Chimaira’s sophomore turn for Roadrunner, the band’s songwriting chops have grown — right along with their hair. Gone are the crew cuts, overplaying, and rigid feel that characterized 2001’s Pass Out of Existence. In their place are long, scruffy locks, more discernible, immediate tunes, and an old-school metal aesthetic. The biggest improvement comes in…
Dada’s Gala
Being the city’s oldest, most reliable improv troupe is busy work for Cabaret Dada. It’s employed more than 50 actors and comedians since its 1995 debut. It opened the innovative Cleveland Black Box Theater. And it still packs in audiences at its West Sixth Street home. Expect the same this weekend when the troupe throws…
Return of the Roar
Jason Newsted’s story unspools like Rock Star in reverse. He was plucked from cult thrashers Flotsam and Jetsam in 1986 to play bass for Metallica, metal’s biggest band; then he gave it all up to return to the underground a decade and a half later. He joined Voivod, the seminal Canadian prog-metal band whose entire…
The Perfect Guy
Few five-song albums manage to be epic, and fewer still boast protest songs as invigorating as they are idealistic. The Perfect Guy’s debut succeeds on both counts. Fo$$il Fuel Folk Hymnal is both acerbic and absorbing, driven by the breathy, snotty snarl of frontman Dave Petrovich. His biting lyrics, skewering corporate hegemony and blind consumerism,…
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, May 8 Jeff Black is one of the best American singer-songwriters you’ve never heard. His songs have been covered by Waylon Jennings and Blackhawk (who took his “That’s Just About Right” to the top of the country charts), among others. His latest album, B Sides and Confessions, is totally acoustic — perfect for getting…
Locked and Loaded
Gomez is one of those bands that, like a cat being forced into a pet carrier, struggles against being placed in any one category. Is Gomez a blues act? Space rock? Prog rock? Latin-tinged alt-country? Somehow, the answer to all of the above is yes. Yet despite this crazy-quilt approach to making music, the British…
Mom’s the Word
She gave birth to you. She diapered you. She made you think a spoonful of strained peas was a twin-engine Cessna flying past your pursed lips. After all Mom’s done, how are you going to return the favor on Mother’s Day? Following are a few alternatives to the ol’ flowers and candy . . .…
Mixed Up
There are a few tempting, all-but-mandatory questions for the Faint that you are really much better off not asking. No one warns you about this in advance — there’s no PR heavy standing by with a contract stipulating topics that are verboten, when you talk with the Nebraska new-wave revivalists, or forcing potential interviewers to…
Good Golly, It’s Lolly
THU 5/8 – WED 10/15 Lolly the Trolley’s summer tours — which start in the Flats and take riders downtown, to the East Side, and back — pay visits to Cleveland’s storied landmarks: the Rock Hall, West Side Market, and Playhouse Square. They run daily. Tickets are $10 and $15; call 216-771-4484. — Cris Glaser…
Criminally Lame
Suing Creed because they suck is kind of like suing a landfill for the stink. Nevertheless, four fans who attended a December gig by Creed in Chicago have filed suit against the band for what they claim was an unforgivably sloppy performance. In particular, frontman Scott Stapp appeared to be so “distressed” (read: drunk) that…
Cave Men
THUR 5/8 After a long day at work, John Prisel gets away from it all by crawling into big holes in the ground. “You can go in a cave and just sit, turn off your light, and rest your head on the dirt or mud,” says Prisel, a member of the Cleveland Grotto, a local…
Smack Down
It was a sight for sore necks: the return of MTV’s Headbangers Ball with a special free show at the Agora, featuring old-school favorites Anthrax and platinum-selling nü jacks Godsmack. Nestled in the balconies were a pair of projection screens, showing Ball-worthy videos from Dio to Killswitch Engage; in the lobby, giddy Godsmack fans sipped…
Dog’s Day
5/14 — 5/18 Personally, we’re a Steve guy. The erstwhile host of the Nick Jr. show Blue’s Clues quit his kiddie gig about a year ago to pursue adult endeavors (among them, and we kid you not: making music with the Flaming Lips). His replacement, Joe, is a hit with the young ones. Joe makes…
The Dirty Filthy Punkfest
Though they’re separated by only some 40 miles, the Cleveland and Akron punk scenes tend to keep their distance from one another, like Rick Santorum and fans of the Pet Shop Boys. But what better way to unite the two than with the Dirty Filthy Punkfest, a weekend of rough ‘n’ randy rock and roll…
