Top Guns
TV — Bullets Over Hollywood: This documentary (airing at 8 p.m. Friday on Encore) chronicles the history of gangster flicks — from the original 1932 Scarface to Quentin Tarantino’s modern-day blood-soaked opuses. There are looks at real-life old-school g’s — like Al Capone and John Dillinger — whose careers in crime inspired biopics, but the…
Getting the Adult. Act
In conversation, Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller of the electro-rock trio Adult. come across as a modular unit, the modern equivalent of the “American Gothic” cliché of catatonic midwestern types. They break away from the daily routine of running their record label, Ersatz Audio, to answer questions succinctly and sparingly. They fulfill their duty.…
Bonfire
For those about to rock: Don’t let the name throw you — AC/DC tribute band Bonfire plays material from both singers, and frontman Scott handles the snarl and the sneer with equal grace (or lack thereof). Strapped with a Gibson, guitarist Jeff has been in the long-running band’s key position for only a year, but…
She Bops
Cyndi Lauper just wants to have fun. More than 20 years after her signature song, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the singer still knows how to shake it up. Which explains the giddiness captured on her new CD, The Body Acoustic, a collection of Lauper’s past hits — stripped-down, rearranged, and loaded with guests.…
Slanted and Enchanted
Ali Jackson, big-shot jazz drummer extraordinaire, won’t claim encyclopedic knowledge of indie rock, but like all sensible Americans, he enjoys Pavement a lot. “I like that hit that they had on MTV, that ‘Cut Your Hair,'” he says. “It’s real catchy and real earthy, just playin’ around, like you play around, like kids play around.…
Snap Back Sundays at Twist
Every Sunday, Cleveland’s Doug Burkhart spins house at Twist, dishing out a broad selection from the genre — but all his choice cuts have one thing in common: they’re funky. “I play a little bit of everything,” says Burkhart. “From laid-back San Francisco to more soulful and vocal East Coast. It’s all groovin’. It’s all…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, December 1 Nothing says “Happy Holidays” like Nashville musicians wearing Mexican wrestling masks and playing surf-rock instrumentals. Los Straitjackets return to the Beachland Ballroom tonight for their annual holiday show, in which traditional favorites — like “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” and “The Christmas Song” — are injected with that twangy…
Takin’ Out the Trash
The Cars are back, though this promises to be one Yugo of a reunion. With the new-wave revival in full swing and groups like Franz Ferdinand becoming as unavoidable as death and Bono, it was only a matter of time before the Cars got their motor runnin’ again. And rightfully so. Of all the new-wavers,…
Richie Hawtin
As the reigning king of minimal techno, Richie Hawtin has employed a steadily evolving arsenal of technology with his DE9 series in order to redefine the act of DJing. On Transitions, Hawtin uses the Ableton Live Software to strip hundreds of loops out of the records he’s been playing and trigger as many as six…
Getting Past Mimi
Kathy Kinney wants to dispel the oft-repeated myth once and for all: She’s nothing like the big-mouthed, back-talking Mimi Bobeck she portrayed for nine years on The Drew Carey Show. And co-star Carey is the same ol’ Cleveland boy, she says — still dining on a menu of dirty jokes and beer. “He’s such a…
Money Where Your Mouth Is
Band: Arms for Venus (http://www.myspace.com/armsforvenus) Hometown: Cleveland Sounds like: “Powerful, hardcore-inspired indie rock led by the second coming of Etta James.” Fun fact: “A few years ago, our bass player’s band had to follow Henry Rollins at CBGB’s. At roughly the same time, our singer was hit on by a much-older Captain Sensible of the…
Los Straitjackets
There are a number of long-in-the-tooth retro rockers releasing Christmas CDs this season (Brian Setzer, Reverend Horton Heat). And this wacky band of surf rockers sporting Mexican wrestling masks wasn’t going to sit there and watch the others sled by. Like Setzer and the Rev, Los Straitjackets’ shtick is pretty much played out, but it’s…
Golda Digger
12/7-12/11 Two days after the national tour of Golda’s Balcony opened in Fort Lauderdale a couple of months ago, Valerie Harper raced to Miami to escape Hurricane Wilma. Still, she couldn’t find electricity, food, or fresh water. “At our hotel, we scooped water from the swimming pool to flush the toilet,” says Harper, who stars…
Sound Advice
Cleveland’s Drastic is one of the city’s nastiest MCs, best known for his ferocious battle rhymes. He shares with us some favorite ill tunes. What have you been listening to lately? I’ve been listening to my new CD, called They Should’ve Known Better. I’ve also been pumping a local artist named Twizted Mind. He dropped…
Fort Minor
Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda clearly loves hip-hop. His group’s use of underground MCs instead of stars on its Reanimation remix project proved that it was more interested in genuinely integrating genres than in the potential for commercial crossover. But acute appreciation of a form makes one an aesthete, not an artist. Shinoda’s Linkin Park work…
You’ve Been Served
THU 12/1 Reigning Wimbledon champ Venus Williams views the Williams Sisters Tour as more of a tune-up for the Australian Open in January than a grudge match against her equally successful sister, Serena. And she admits to needing the practice, since she dropped out of a tournament in Switzerland earlier this year because of leg…
Last Word
“The Slack-Jawed Yokels’ ’05 demo. Just think how much heat it’d be generating if they had been able to gig before November!” — Phillie N., Cleveland “Ventana’s demo. It’s amazing. No topping this new industrial band.” — Matt X., Mentor “Filament 38’s Unstable!” — Tür M., Cleveland “Midnight’s Complete and Total F@#cking Midnight is as…
Lady Sovereign
Like Iggy Pop, Lady Sovereign’s five foot one, and she’s almost as cocky. She may be the lone white chick in the black-male-dominated U.K. grime scene, but there’s nothing token about Sov’s status among the nascent genre’s elite; the girl’s got mic skills that’ll tie your cochlea in even tighter coils. A blogosphere phenomenon, Sov…
Good Fella
12/1-12/3 Rick Porrello’s ancestors prepared him for a life in crime. In 1932, his mob-connected grandfather and great-uncle were gunned down in a hit. More than 50 years later, Rick became a police officer. A decade or so after that, he started writing true-crime books. Just published, his third, Superthief: A Master Burglar, the Mafia,…
Forgive Me, Fiona
Dear Ms. Apple, Okay, so I’m not real good at apologies. I get a lot of things wrong — you should see my haircut — and I’m afraid that I haven’t been entirely fair to you over the years. And by “fair,” I mean refraining from calling you a pretentious brat whose navel is deeper…
Dolly Trauma
Akron quartet Dolly Trauma emotes like a teen caught up in a first crush. “I’ll never surrender my heart,” singer Josh Coon promises on the opening cut of the band’s latest EP, an album full of melodrama and inscrutable song titles (“Iowaiga,” “Ampleaxu Tenebat”). Think Sunny Day Real Estate taking a dip in Dawson’s Creek.…
Holiday Bombast
12/2-12/3 We’d say that Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s prog-rock-inspired holiday sound isn’t your mother’s Christmas music . . . if Mom didn’t like TSO so much. The N.Y.C. group — a revolving ensemble of players anchored by producer Paul O’Neill — takes traditional Christmas songs, spices them up with some bitchin’ guitar solos (most of the founding…
Early Man
How did this band wind up on Matador Records? Perhaps the label heads thought Early Man’s thundering drums and screaming guitar riffs were an ironic joke. Lucky for metalheads, they were dead wrong. The band’s full-length debut, Closing In, is a 42-minute blast of primitive thrash that’s metal to the marrow and utterly devoid of…
Dropgun
Dropgun is the kind of band that hard-drinking legions form an army around. “We’re gonna show you how to rock,” promises singer Bill E. Rotic, sneering like a British gob-hawker on “Get It,” one of 10 equally rockin’ songs from the Akron punkers’ long-time-coming sophomore album. A brazen affair, Devil Music is a hybrid of…
Snow Bored
It begins with a very literal cliffhanger. Five snowboarders — the best in their field, we’re told — are dropped off via helicopter atop an Alaskan mountain called 7601, imaginatively named for its height above sea level. Swooping aerial shots around the peak convince us that it’s steep, high, and dangerous. All they have are…
Feelin’ the Love
Cleveland indie/post-hardcore band the Lovekill has signed a three-record deal with Astro Magnetics, a New Jersey label run by the principals from Eyeball Records, which issued the first albums by emo/rock sensations Thursday and My Chemical Romance. Astro Magnetics is part of Universal Records’ Fontana distribution network. “There’s something incredibly honest about the Lovekill,” says…
Bonnie Prince Billy
Alt-country’s answer to Frank Abagnale, Will Oldham has recorded under such pseudonyms as Palace Brothers, Pushkin, and Superwolf. Although his work under these names has gravitated toward 11th-hour Dust Bowl despair and acoustic minimalism, Oldham has spent much of the 21st century loitering as the warbling country-gent Bonnie “Prince” Billy. The changeling Prince is as…
Homewreckers on DVD
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Fox) The pairing of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, both in real life and on celluloid, is so obvious as to be almost cartoonish. So even though both are better actors than they need to be, they perfectly belong in this goofy, explosiony world. Married assassins, trading bullets and smoldering looks…
Simply Galling
Deception, betrayal, and revenge. In his film directorial debut, acclaimed playwright/ screenwriter/theater director Craig Lucas is done in by his own script, which becomes so excessively icy and cruel that it breaks, rather than solidifies, any bond it could hope to establish with its audience. A modern-day Greek tragedy — complete with an unwitting Medea…
Sinéad O’Connor
Keeping up with Sinéad O’Connor’s existential contortions is a bit like chasing dandelion fuzz in a hurricane. Her latest album, the covers collection Throw Down Your Arms, is a proclamation of Rastafarianism that at least does her a good musical turn. With everyone from Willie Nelson to My Morning Jacket pillaging reggae for creative inspiration,…
Supersize Me
If Hollywood wants to learn from the videogame industry — which outgrossed the box office last year — it should pay careful attention to Shadow of the Colossus, a game with the epic scale of a summer blockbuster but the emotional heart of an indie flick. Shadow is brought to you by the same creative…
Senior Moment
If The Memory of a Killer were not mostly in Flemish, it would be easy to mistake for a Hollywood movie. The story of a hit man with a conscience and the cop who’s always a step or two behind him as they pursue the same villains, it’s full of familiar reference points, including the…
Tarantula AD
N.Y.C. trio Tarantula AD wanders a distant wilderness like a band of mystic Israelites. The hyphen-inclined might call Book of Sand, the band’s second full-length, “world-folk-chamber-metal.” Not us, though. We’d prefer to describe it as The Ten Commandments soundtrack, played by some brainy dudes with a flair for tasteful heshing. Arena-slaying electric guitars and drums…
Our top DVD picks for the week of November 29, 2005
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Empire) Caterina in the Big City (Empire) CSI: Five-Season Pack (Paramount) Death to the Supermodels (Columbia/Tristar) Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (Columbia/Tristar) Empire (Buena Vista) Family Guy: Volume 3 (Fox) Formula 17 (Strand) The Frighteners: Director’s Cut (Universal) The Hives: Tussles in Brussels (Universal Music) Hollywood and Vine (Gotham) Jurassic…
Stocking Full of Cratchit
A large sampling of today’s right-wing nutjobs are of the opinion that subversive retailers are trying to steal Christmas by saying “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” to their shoppers. This Yuletide Gestapo even wants you to boycott stores that don’t intone the correct seasonal salutation, and to hell with how those of a religious…
Brad Paisley
It doesn’t happen often on Time Well Wasted, but on “Alcohol,” the two Brad Paisleys — the amazing post-James Burton guitarist and the conventional country singer — finally get together and make one of the year’s best singles. Rendered in funky triple time, it’s narrated by booze itself: “Since the day I left Milwaukee, Lynchburg,…
Fox in the Henhouse
When you’re living on Social Security and retirement benefits, you tend to keep a close watch on your bank account. So when Dottie Zampino noticed an extra $199.95 charge on her account in October, she was suspicious. She called the bank and discovered the bill was for something called 24Protect Plus. The Northfield Center woman…
Washed Up
It is sad but inevitable that bad plays will happen to good theater companies. In their search for new and stimulating works, virtually every group of performers takes a chance on a pile of words, whether set to music or not, that even talent and glowing intentions cannot overcome. So it is with Opal, now…
Living Colour
Living Colour’s 1988 debut, Vivid, is precisely the sort of release music writers hail in retrospect as seminal. The cross-breeding of rock, funk, and hip-hop so common nowadays can find a key piece of its beginnings in the path cut by four black New York City rockers, whose balls-out sound, built around the wails of…
Freedom Reigns
When Summit County passed its smoking ban on November 20, health-conscious Akronites celebrated in vain. No one bothered to inform them that the ban had as many teeth as an 87-year-old bar hag from Arkansas. Two weeks before it even passed, Akron Law Director Max Rothal told Scene that the county ordinance would not affect…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
Bravo, Caruso! — In the galaxy of larger-than-life performers, opera icon Enrico Caruso was a blazing star. He was the man who brought macho chops to the previously effete position of the tenor and paved the way for Luciano, Placido, et al. This slight play by William Luce, now in performance at Ensemble Theatre, captures…
Javon Jackson’s All-Star Quartet
In the 1990s, there was a phenomenon in American jazz that saxophonist Steve Lacy dubbed the “Reboppers,” referring to those nattily dressed musicians in their 20s and 30s who possessed a noticeably retrograde approach. The Reboppers personified mainstream bebop from the early ’50s to the mid-’60s — excluding of course the “free” and soul-jazz movements…
Payday Hunting
The hollow murmur of a half-empty arena. A sleepy crowd wishing for something to stir it alive. So far, this warm September night has been full of unknown fighters in unmoving fights. For the smattering of ticket holders, buyer’s remorse is about to set in. Then, with no warning, the arena spins into a spectacle,…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Flowers for Disappearing — “Half-Thought, With Reverb” is what Bedford artist Mark Keffer titles each of his seven paintings here. But don’t take that to mean they’re incomplete. Each represents a whole and robust visual system in perfect balance with itself, similar to a well-conceived landscape but far removed from anything realistic. What’s more,…
Aerosmith
Atom and his Package documented the downward spiral of a once-great rock figure with “Sting Can’t Possibly Be the Same Guy Who Was in the Police.” Aerosmith’s fall from grace deserves a sequel, something like “How Do Those MTV Geezers Rock So Hard on My Dad’s Old Records?” Before its decline, Aerosmith specialized in raucous…
Tales of Voter Suppression
The challenger nets a Muslim: In response to Lou Bartulovic’s letter [November 9] asking Scene to provide a list of suppressed voters, I can contribute at least one name: Antesar. I’m not sure if this is the correct spelling, or if it is a first or last name; all I know is that this is…
No Noodling
Chefs who inject a bit of whimsy or reasonably calculated experimentation into their menus aren’t necessarily on the wrong track. Dining out should be fun, after all. On the other hand, The People’s Law of Dining demands that, above all else, the food’s gotta taste good. So to the extent that those chefs decide that…
As I Lay Dying
In the course of their day, the members of San Diego metal quintet As I Lay Dying are just as likely to ask, “What would Jesus do?” as “What would Slayer do?” The latter scenario may present itself during songs like “The Truth of My Perception,” in which the band cribs breakdowns from the unholy…
