The Battle of 93rd & Quincy
Cuyahoga County had the best of intentions. It was looking for a new juvenile detention center site. Fallow sat 16 acres of brownfields at East 93rd and Quincy. If it built there, it could not only cleanse the land, but save $25 million on the cost of the center. The site wasn’t exactly primed for…
Rilo Kiley
Close your eyes, and it’s 1994 again. Maybe it’s Jenny Lewis’s sugary crooning, her sweetly suffering lyricism, those seductive hooks, or the buoyant melodies. Whatever the case, Take Offs and Landings is classic indie pop for the new class. The reason for that? Well, it stays true to the old one. It’s difficult to harness…
Achy Breaky DJ Story
Country music is all about broken promises and thwarted dreams. So is a career in commercial radio. No one knows this better than Cleveland DJ “Dancin'” Danny Wright. Just like the truck drivers and jilted prom queens of the songs he’s spun, he’s been jacked around and kicked to the curb with rhythmic regularity. Three…
Bob Gatewood
Bob Gatewood’s second solo CD starts with some mean and bluesy acoustic guitar riffs and a touch of conga drumming reminiscent of “Sympathy for the Devil.” This, on a song called “The One That Got Away,” goes on for a minute and a half, until Gatewood stops the music and announces that “it ain’t gonna…
God Had a Busy Day
The Big Guy did big things on September 11: I found Derf’s comic [“The City,” October 18] interesting in a couple of ways. For one, I agree that the steel-girder cross was a bit hyped by the media, but I am sure some found it comforting. Derf’s main question is: Where was God on September…
Second Helpings
Theater, as opposed to film, is about the pleasure of memory; it’s a sand castle, created inevitably to be washed out with the tide. Yet two rare second chances are provided in The Gin Game and Eating Raoul, reruns of productions that respectively galvanized and decadently tickled local theater connoisseurs in their previous incarnations. On…
War on War Books
Only a couple of months ago, it looked as though Donald Miller had a publishing home run on his hands–a thoughtful, exhilarating, inclusive book about World War II scheduled to hit stores just as Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks’ Band of Brothers was finishing its critically lauded run on HBO. His work was–no, it is–nothing…
Fashion Plate
Stepping off the bleak sidewalk into downtown Akron’s Piatto is like discovering a diamond in the bottom of a cornflakes box. Reshaped and redesigned, the former bank building near the intersection of Main and Exchange has been given new life as one of the most elegantly understated dining rooms in the region — a place…
More Than Maki
If there is one thing Mike Ina wants Clevelanders to know, it’s this: Sushi on the Square (13120 Shaker Square, 216-921-7744) serves more than just sushi. “We must get 20 calls a day from people wondering if we have anything else,” says the restaurant’s bemused manager. “And the answer is Yes, we do!” While the…
Heavenly Metal
Wedding the music of the devil to the season of Jesus is no small undertaking. And indeed, there’s nothing small about the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, an orchestral rock troupe with 60-plus members whose aim is to intermingle the holidays with headbanging, Beethoven with Budweiser. Imagine what Dokken might have done with “O Come All Ye Faithful.”…
Dead and Alive
In mid-’70s Cleveland, there was no future, there was no past — there was just a graveyard, and it was coming fast. “The Flats had no bars; it was all steel mills. Cleveland was a very desolate place. The population was decreasing 5 percent a year, there was nothing there,” says Cheetah Chrome, guitarist for…
High on History
Potheads may chuckle at the sound of it, but the Western Reserve Historical Society’s Altered States: The History of Alcohol and Other Drugs in America is no joke. Placed within a sobering setting, it keeps the quirks to a minimum, taking a defiantly academic position. Yet Altered States transcends its conservative presentation by piling on…
Stars and Tripe Forever
“This song should be playing on every radio station and television show in the country right now,” Hal “The Songwriting Attorney” Pollock says as he cues up “Our Flag Still Flies” on a CD player in his crowded Terminal Tower office. He’s an excitable, fiftyish fellow, as eager to show off his work as a…
Tin Pan Allies
It’s tricky business, throwing real-life people into fictional, what-if situations. Think of Time After Time, in which H.G. Wells hopped into a time machine to pursue Jack the Ripper, or Picasso at the Lapin Agile’s imaginary meeting between the painter and Albert Einstein, or any number of reimagined history lessons brought to life by a…
Paul Oakenfold
It’s hard to know what to believe about British DJ Paul Oakenfold. Thousands of glowstick-sporting club kids and ravers around the world adore him, which explains why his latest mix-CD release, the double-disc opus Perfecto Presents Another World, debuted at No. 114 on the Billboard 200 — the highest-ever debut for a mix CD. But…
Later, My Love
Filmmakers don’t get any more sensitive than Paul Cox. When it comes to jerking a tear or tugging a heartstring, this Dutch-born, Australian-raised veteran is a master. Just ask anyone who saw My First Wife (1984), in which a workaholic disc jockey falls to pieces when his neglected wife has an affair, or Cactus (1986),…
Echo & the Bunnymen/Psychedelic Furs
Some things never change. But then, sometimes they do — especially for musician types. Namely, they get older. Stop drinking. Find God. Procure a pet. Whatever. But if they’re lucky, the sentiment never falters, meaning the music never stops. So it is for ’80s goth-pop pioneers Echo & the Bunnymen. Save that little respite back…
Knight Falls
The new Martin Lawrence comedy, Black Knight, is yet another twist, albeit an uncredited one, on Mark Twain’s protean A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, one of the original fish-out-of-water comedy-fantasies. Was there an outcry for yet another redo? After all, Twain’s 1889 novel, about a New England mechanic who wakes up in Olde…
Angie Stone
“It’s that time of the month/Don’t even mess with me,” brays Angie Stone as her second CD, Mahogany Stone, barrels to a close. She’s talkin’ about bills, people. Smoothed-out neo-soul is the way to pay those bills these days, and Stone leaps Afro-first into the boxing ring with the Sades and Jill Scotts and India.Aries…
Is It Safe?
A worker in the Allied Carpet Inc. warehouse grabs his right elbow in mock pain. “Ohh,” he moans. “Mustard gas.” Company President Mike Suppo pushes him away with a smile and says, “Get outta here.” But once the employee walks out of earshot, Suppo turns serious. Not long ago, officials with the U.S. Army Corps…
Suzanne Vega
Suzanne Vega has evolved from wistful contemporary folksinger into fringe-folk experimentalist over the course of her nearly 20-year career. The melancholy melodiousness and lyrical magnitude of her eponymous debut in 1985 was followed by more of the same on Solitude Standing in 1987. The big difference, on the latter, was the presence of the enormously…
Too Hip for Thee
Doug Rutti owned a heath-food store for 16 years. Now he’s driving a limo. For 28 years, Sylvia DeFranco owned a beauty salon. Now she’s not doing much of anything. Rutti and DeFranco were left behind by Shaker Square’s $24 million renovation. Their stores, Feel-Rite Health Foods and Helen Milner Hairdresser & Boutique, didn’t figure…
The Reindeer Section
Because the Reindeer Section is a veritable Scottish supergroup — its members hail from some of Glasgow’s finest, including Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Arab Strap, etc. — one would expect its sound to closely resemble the ornate musical constructions of those bands and others of their ilk. Surprisingly, though, Y’all Get Scared Now Y’hear sounds…
Unluckiest Man on Death Row
Joe D’Ambrosio’s father believed in the virtue of work. For decades, he punched the clock at General Electric, installing liners in train engines. He taught his only son that a job provides two rewards: a paycheck and self-respect. Dad always told me, You work. I don’t care if it’s flipping burgers, you work,’ D’Ambrosio recalls.…
Nathaniel Merriweather Presents . . .
Each of Dan the Automator’s high-profile concept albums has been a palimpsest, a new work with remnants of his earlier records shining through. Even a cursory listen to Dan’s get-together with Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and Kid Koala in Deltron 3030 reveals concepts from his Kool Keith-abetted Dr. Octagon project. His Gorillaz disc often overlaps…
