California Schemin’
If it hadn’t been for the bleak, colorless skies, freezing rain, and plummeting temperatures, the California dreamin’ would have come a little easier during a recent stopover at Willoughby’s San Francisco Oven (34601 Ridge Road, 440-860-0130), a year-old “quick-casual” eatery that celebrates the gustatory prowess of that city by the bay. Still, there’s nothing like…
Boards of Canada
Twoism is the debut from Scottish recluses Marcus Eoin and Mike Sandison, also known as Boards of Canada. In 1995, 100 vinyl copies surfaced on the duo’s Music70 imprint. The nine-track mini-album accrued legendary status, due to its scarcity and BOC’s subsequent cult popularity after it released the seminal Music Has the Right to the…
Speedball
To hear this clean-cut, seemingly earnest ex-major leaguer tell it, it doesn’t get much better than a meth high. “I ain’t gonna bullshit you, man, it’s an awesome drug,” says former Indians pitcher Kevin Wickander, who threw on and off in the big leagues from 1989 to 1996. “Meth is perfect for me all the…
Seeing Red
“This is not a supergroup,” Curt Kirkwood insists. He’s talking about Eyes Adrift, a new rock-based trio featuring himself, Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic, and Sublime’s Bud Gaugh. “This is not any of your American fuckin’ hogwash. This is real. We want to have a good go of our lives, because the past is dead, you know?…
Full Wave Rectifier
Most groups that adopt the better attributes of other bands find their own material perpetually overshadowed. This isn’t the case with Full Wave Rectifier. Granted, the Kent band’s latest EP recalls the Jesus and Mary Chain’s stoned grandeur (“Metal Shell”), the Pixies’ slippery surf guitar and ominous chord progressions (“Stop Signs & Purple Flowers”), and…
The Cult on Coventry
It’s Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, and several dozen people have gathered in a snug room to celebrate the beginning of a daylong fast. They will collectively confess their sins and ask forgiveness. They wear nothing but white to symbolize purity. But these Jews are unlike any in Cleveland. With a few white-faced…
The Doom Generation
Just like Samson, Peaches gets power from her hair; it’s just that hers are shorter and curlier. Witness her self-directed video for “Set It Off,” which opens with the rapper (a ringer for Carla from Cheers) perched on a urinal in pink undies and cheapo aviator sunglasses. She chants the song from the confines of…
Algorhythm
The amount of cutting-edge electronic music coming out of Cleveland is at an all-time high, so it’s no surprise that young producers like Algorhythm are sprouting up. But “The Contingency EP,” the Akron native’s debut release, owes a lot more to experimental electronica’s innovators than it does to the rest of the heads around town.…
The Grappler
Women often study sambo as a defense against muggers and rapists. Developed by Russian soldiers in the early 1900s, it’s a martial arts form best described as a combination of judo and wrestling. “We learn a lot of tactics from the ground. If somebody attacks you, you don’t have to be very strong,” says Gokor…
Dolemite Makes Right
In “Dolemite,” the raunchy routine that helped define his career, profanity-spewing comedian turned ass-kicking, ass-baring cult-film favorite Rudy Ray Moore describes a character who takes no shit from anyone — even his own father. “Why, the day he was dropped from his mommy’s ass,” Moore brashly announces in his trademark song, “he slapped his pappy’s…
Eastern Enlightenment
The races must coexist — but not mix: I’m a Russian emigrant, living in U.S.A. for 10 years. I have to say that I support Cuyahoga Falls residents [“Unpleasant Meadows,” October 30]. They have right to decide what kind of people they are going to live with. I would never imagine to live in mostly…
Turkey Shoot
The holiday season is upon us again, and we all know what that means: giving to those less fortunate, celebrating family and friends, eating your body weight in peanut brittle, and making an ass of yourself at the office party. To prepare for all the goodwill, we’re gettin’ the negativity out of our system in…
Move Over, Macy’s
Before Eric Sandstrom enjoys turkey and stuffing, he’ll be out on a racecourse, huffing and puffing. “Competition takes a backseat to enjoying the morning,” says Sandstrom, an avid runner who will join his sister, nephew, and a flock of others at the Cleveland Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. The annual five-mile race begins at Burke…
Half Hour of Power
“How many people are from the ghetto?” Jay-Z asked a packed Peabody’s last Wednesday. “The real ghetto, not the rap ghetto,” he then clarified, and more than half the crowd thrust their fists into the air. Seemingly, it was for these diehards that this show was intended. A surprise gig put on by WENZ-FM 107.9…
A Little Dickens
Mark Dawidziak sympathizes with us. The local writer and actor’s initial reaction to his wife’s desire to stage A Christmas Carol was the same as ours: “I rolled my eyes,” he says. “I was stunned. There are Christmas Carols coming out of the trees every year.” But he hit upon an idea to freshen the…
John Tejada
It’s not often that we find dance music dons who produce tunes as well as they DJ (and vice versa), but L.A.’s John Tejada is the complete package. His style on the decks is fast and loose, which allows him to move from track to track in the time it takes most jocks to score…
Ahoy, Oh Boy
It’s doubtful Robert Louis Stevenson imagined his Treasure Planet populated by cyborgs and scored to Goo Goo Dolls outtakes; and one has to wonder what the author would have made of his characters being turned into talking and walking dogs and cats who, gulp, copulate and reproduce mangy hybrids. Far as I recall, there were…
The Cynics
Founded in Pittsburgh in 1984 by Get Hip label boss Gregg Kostelich and singer Michael Kastelic, the Cynics specialize in Nuggets/Pebbles-type garage rock — proto-punk guitar stompers, folky tunes cut with psychedelic overtones, and most stops in between. Despite having played together for nearly two decades (albeit with a constantly revolving rhythm section), the Cynics…
Menorah-ty Report
After garnering a bushel of positive critical notices less than two months ago for his work in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love, Adam Sandler now squanders his new-found respectability with another one of his cookie-cutter “lovable loser” vehicles, Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nights. Only two elements set this apart from Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, and…
Josh Wink
Back in 1995, before trance became synonymous with saccharine, mega-club bombast, Philadelphia’s Josh Wink reigned supreme (at least in Europe and Great Britain) with smash hits like “Don’t Laugh,” “Liquid Summer,” and “Higher State of Consciousness.” Wink’s acidic floor-fillers were as freaky as the chaotic tangle of blond dreadlocks he sported in those days. Since…
Ocean’s Ill Heaven
The smart sci-fi fan knows that, technically speaking, Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris is not a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film at all, but rather a newly filmed interpretation of a Polish novel penned by Stanislaw Lem. Nonetheless, the new film stands in a mighty big shadow. If someone attempted to make a new Wizard of Oz,…
The Epoxies
The Epoxies’ name is no misnomer. Just like glue, the Portland band’s new-wave-meets-punk tunes get stuck in one’s head. With shredding guitars, bopping keyboards, and the voice of female leader Roxy Epoxy, which shifts from an Exene Cervenka growl to straightforward Missing Persons-style singing, the Epoxies are nothing if not memorable. And they aren’t just…
What Was Going On
The tragedy is that even those who should have known better didn’t know at all; how could they? The names they sought weren’t listed, their contributions weren’t cited, their influences weren’t credited, so even those who spent hours and days and forevers wearing out the grooves in search of holy-mother-of-God grails had no idea who…
Kool Keith
When critically lauded MC Kool Keith says he should be in the rap hall of fame between Run-DMC and Public Enemy, plenty would agree. So why can’t you name three songs by him? Probably because you might get your mouth washed out with soap if you did. More graphically sexual than the most reviled hip-hoppers,…
Dark Chocolat
For more than 40 years, French New Wave figure Claude Chabrol — who first achieved renown in the U.S. for his fourth film, Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) — has been making thrillers of moral ambiguity. If his style is more austere and less immediately “entertainment”-oriented than his idol, Hitchcock, his thematic concerns are no less…
Nerf Herder
After nearly 10 years, Santa Barbara, California geek-rock quartet Nerf Herder has managed to escape the fate of like-minded novelty bands. On its latest, the thumping American Cheese, the group has transcended its trivia-rich name (it’s an insult in a fight between Princess Leia and Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back), potential one-hit-wonder status…
Eye of the Beholder
Tori Amos is jolie-laide. The French oxymoron, which translates as “pretty-ugly,” describes women who aren’t supermodel-gorgeous, but have a verve and charm that makes them alluring. Cleveland is jolie-laide, too. She’s a city pockmarked by poverty and a polluted river, but graced with world-famous arts institutions and resilient residents. Twelve of America’s most accomplished photographers…
System of a Down
After a dozen-plus demos from its Toxicity recording sessions made it onto the Internet, the innovative thrash band System of a Down polished up a few of those unfinished tracks, along with some other previously unheard material, and sent it out into the world. Unfortunately, this record is for diehards only, a fact that becomes…
Cash Poor
How the hell did we wake up and find ourselves stuck in the viscous tendrils of Dick Armey’s wet dream? For years, the GOP congressional leader and most other Republicans have fought tirelessly for the rights of giant corporations and Americans in the top 1 percent income bracket. And now, presto, it’s all come true!…
Shania Twain
After ascending from their adopted city of Nashville on the wings of 1997’s Come On Over, which sold 37 million copies worldwide, Shania Twain and husband-producer-co-writer Jeff “Mutt” Lange rise higher into the global pop stratosphere on the brazenly titled Up! To reassure old fans, the duo offers comfy continuity, too, with 19 songs as…
Richter’s Scale
Andy Richter, the man who for seven years proved himself the rare late-night television sidekick worthy of being labeled equal partner, is not given to saying nasty things about people who sign his paychecks, a rarity in a business where people are more than happy to bite, then bite off, the hand that feeds them.…
Mudvayne
For Mudvayne to boast that it invented the term “math metal,” as the band does in the press notes to its new disc, is almost as laughable as P. Diddy declaring that he’s the father of the remix. Sorry, dudes, but both the designation and the scene existed years before you did — although coming…
Back in the Hi Life
It’s the economy. It’s the influx of new restaurants. It’s the phases of the moon. Who knows why business has been off at Tremont’s venerable Hi & Dry In? But this much we do know: When we last visited the tavern in the fall of 2000, the funky neighborhood hangout was jumping. A wacky and…
TLC
TLC could’ve made a real downer of an album. No one would have faulted Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins and Chilli, the group’s remaining members, for creating a somber and reflective tribute to their fallen comrade, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, who died in a car accident last year. But instead, TLC celebrates life in the wake of…
