Wing and a Preyer
When Jeff Riebe goes on a squirrel hunt, he doesn’t take a gun and he doesn’t expect to bring home any game. Instead, he takes Io, his red-tailed hawk, who does most of the work and reaps most of the rewards. Riebe, who has been practicing “The Art of Falconry” for about six years and…
Micranots
Even though they name-check the Dirty South on the song “Balance,” the Micranots, a hip-hop act from Atlanta, can’t be accused of jumping on the bandwagon that Master P and his army of clones have ridden into the ground. The duo — MC I Self Denhe and DJ Kool Akiem — thankfully privilege abstract beats…
Yours and Mayan
Popular history teaches us that, when the Spanish landed in Mesoamerica, they encountered a highly superstitious culture that thought them gods, allowing the Spanish to smite the natives in the name of civilization. Dr. Anthony Aveni of Colgate University has a slightly different view, which he will present in his lecture “Stairways to the Stars:…
Soundbites
On “Way Back,” a track on his first solo album, 5th Dog Let Loose, Bone Thugs N Harmony rapper Flesh-N-Bone (Stanley Howse) recounts the various tragedies that have befallen rap stars. The song’s a tribute to Notorious Big, Tupac Shakur, and Eazy-E, and in it Howse reminisces about the days when he and Eazy-E, who…
A Snooze Runs Through It
Gopher. Explosives. Gopher . . . explosives. Gopher! Explosives! There. Now you know exactly what was running through this critic’s mind during The Legend of Bagger Vance, the impeccably aimed new tranquilizer dart from Hollywood’s Mr. Honeydrip, Robert Redford. Of course, it’s really not fair to compare this meditative drama to that other profound golf…
Farrah to Poor
The opening credits of Charlie’s Angels hint at a movie that never appears in the film’s expurgated 94 minutes; the tease is too soon rendered a disappointment. A Mission: Impossible-style prelude suggests a live-action cartoon as directed by Robert Altman; a camera stalks the aisles of a jumbo jet, capturing snippets of scenery — from…
The Reluctant Guru
Sarah Scott cut her weight in half. And her secret won’t cost $32.95 for a one-month supply. Instead, the 43-year-old Medina County woman is touting something from which no quack, self-help yogi, or independent distributor can profit: common sense. Because of a simple decision six years ago to eat less and exercise, Scott has found…
Danced to Death
Grown men cried. They looked into the eyes of Artistic Director Dennis Nahat after he uttered “nay” — the only nay, a nay that followed a chorus of “ayes” that killed Cleveland San Jose Ballet. He did not fight for his company. Instead, he sat there, listening, like a mourner watching people pick out a…
Black and Back
In 1969, Ron Reynolds tried to get hired as a Cleveland police officer. The young truck driver arrived for his interview unwisely attired in a black leather suit and sporting a trendy Afro. Later, Reynolds learned his interviewer considered him “subversive.” He didn’t get the job. “All I had going against me,” he maintains, “was…
Edge
A happy place for lawyers: Parma is looking to surpass once-formidable Cleveland as the most litigious city on the North Coast. In recent action, Councilwoman Michelle Stys sued Parma Community General Hospital to get access to the facility’s books. She’s also enlisted a small army of attorneys to fight a proposed senior center at 7300…
What, Them Worry?
Let’s get this out of the way right now, because so many of you will find this hard to believe: Yes, Mad magazine still exists. It is still being published 48 years after it was created by Harvey Kurtzman and William Gaines, neither of whom lived long enough to see their child reach its 400th…
Johnny Frigo
Still one of today’s better jazz violinists, Johnny Frigo hasn’t received much attention for his efforts, simply because he has spent so much time over the years working in Chicago as a studio bassist. Born in Chicago in 1916, Frigo began playing violin at age seven, but then switched to tuba and, in high school,…
The War Against Fighting
Save the fisticuffs for the XFL: Kudos to Pete Kotz for a compelling story on new Lumberjacks enforcer Garrett Burnett [“Tough Guy,” October 19]. Kotz did a fine job of describing not only Burnett himself, but also the history and culture of hockey fighters in general. That said, it is an absolute shame that someone…
Dennis DeYoung
A founding member of Styx, Dennis DeYoung pretty much invented the art form we have come to know as the power ballad: huge, bloated tunes filled with ridiculously dramatic and sweeping arrangements that kicked subtlety in the ass and always went a bit too far. DeYoung penned songs such as “Babe,” “Lady,” and “Come Sail…
Tales From the City
Trail of Narratives, the new show at downtown’s Here Here Gallery, is a thought-provoking sampler of local art. Out of the 139 works on display, not everything is compelling, but the best of them deal with topics like AIDS-related illness, the media coverage of this year’s presidential race, and the connection between ’50s pinup icon…
Mike Lee
The story is a familiar one — local kid takes up the tenor saxophone, moves to New York, and toughens his chops with a big band. He eventually moves on to a bigger orchestra, takes sideman gigs with players deep inside the mainstream and others living on the fringe, and finally records as a leader.…
Awake and Stinging
Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing is surely one of the most influential of American plays. It is the spiritual godfather to such works as Death of a Salesman and The Little Foxes, plays that chronicle the deadening effects of money-grubbing on idealism. It is also Odets’s most finished piece, an honest and heartfelt look at…
U2
It’s inevitable that, after a decade of experimenting, U2 would return to its rock and roll roots on its 10th album, All That You Can’t Leave Behind. The teen pop and disposable hip-hop marketplace all but renders such artistic flights of fancy as commercially unviable acts of self-indulgence (not that U2 has ever been guided…
The Garden of Eatin’
Let’s call her “Nan,” my adventurous dining companion with a yen for the unusual. She and I are sitting in a big red-upholstered booth in Arirang Garden, Yong Nypaver’s pretty Korean restaurant in Lyndhurst, sipping pungent roasted corn tea, contemplating the sinus-clearing virtues of kimchee (that fermented cabbage condiment peculiar to the Korean pantry), and…
Johnny Cash; Various artists
The cumulative effect of Johnny Cash’s biography gives his third effort with producer Rick Rubin a resonance, even though his voice is starting to deteriorate due to age and illness. Suffused with the sorrow, resignation, and endurance that characterize his emblematic outlaw legacy, Cash’s first recording in nearly three years lacks the uniformity of its…
Beau Peeps
Summit County foodies are still getting over the shock of learning that Grappa’s, Scot Jones’s upscale Italian restaurant in Fairlawn, is out of business. When it opened nearly two years ago, Grappa’s was a dream come true for Jones, an Akron chef who had spent nearly a decade planning for it during his daily commute…
R.L. Burnside
R.L. Burnside’s latest album, Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down, is a big improvement over his previous album, 1998’s Come On In, an exercise in blues-fusion that was too much of the latter and precious little of the former. When a critic cites one or two songs that “are likely to please purists,” you…
Crimson Pride
King Crimson fans have always looked for deep meaning from the monster prog-rock band. From 1969’s In the Court of the Crimson King to this year’s The ConstruKction of Light, Crimson albums are steeped in a grandiose art/rock/epic mystique. Layers of technocratic proficiency and ambition encase the work, inviting devout listeners to peel them away…
MOKO BOVO and CMC
An ambitious project that attempts to augment the poetry of Raymond Carver with music, Lament for Raymond Carver, a collaboration between the local groups MOKO BOVO and CMC (Contemporary Music Collective), has been several years in the making. Pairing Carver’s words with music, it features performances by spoken-word veteran Dan Bode (who provides the narration),…
The Brats Beat On
Everything about the rise and fall and return of Bratmobile, from its unlikely beginning to its triumphant reformation and the release of its new album, Ladies, Women and Girls, smacks of the kind of drama that would insinuate itself into the narrative of an overwrought but edgy youth-on-fire film. Singer Alison Wolfe and drummer Molly…
