Noir Gang
The American film-noir flicks of the 1940s and 1950s don’t make a grand entrance. They come up the back staircase, with a cigarette in hand and a no-good dame on the brain. “That’s what America does best–this unpretentious stuff, stuff that’s done quickly, with real wit and real professional craftsmanship,” says John Ewing, director of…
Suds and City
Brothers and GLB co-owners Pat and Dan Conway are ardent promoters of the city of Cleveland, preserving its heritage in their historic microbrewery as well as supporting its modern attractions. One of their most charming contributions to city life is the free shuttle van that takes customers from the brewpub to the tourist destination of…
The People Principle
Every day thousands of commuters speed past the Cleveland State University Art Gallery on Chester Avenue, a modest brick fixture of the gritty urban landscape. Lost in their rush-hour reveries, few notice the building, let alone recall that not long ago, this was the site of a small but significant battle over the First Amendment.…
Night &Day
Thursday November 5 Apollo’s Fire, a.k.a. the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, kicks some sackbut this week, opening its fall season with Monteverdi’s Vespers of the Blessed Virgin. The venerable sackbut–a period British instrument from the trombone family–will be joined by lutes, strings, cornetti, and vocalists when the orchestra performs the seventeenth-century sacred work. At a time…
Reeling in the Years
As a requiem for the Sixties, The Big Chill didn’t quite hit the mark the first time around, in 1983 (the film is scheduled for recycling November 6). Its greatest-hits soundtrack was soul-stirring, for sure; it’s hard to top the Stones, Marvin Gaye, or Aretha Franklin in any decade. But the shameless way in which…
Poetry in Locomotion
The first time we see Ray Joshua, the young black hero of director Marc Levin’s impressive feature debut Slam, we get a vivid taste of the conflicting forces that rule him. His olive-drab pants, so hip-hop baggy that you could fit two rail-thin Rays inside, are stuffed with bags of weed, which he deftly dispenses…
Fun House
Fifteen minutes into Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes’s love letter to England’s glam-rock scene of the late Sixties/early Seventies, the film has already promised to be many things: a missing-person mystery, a meticulous period piece, an essay on sexually liberated dandyism, a quasi-musical, a portrait of the Machiavellian as an aspiring pop star, an attempt…
Final Jeopardy
Fascism is in the air . . . well, at least it’s on movie screens. In a two-week stretch we’ve seen old Nazis (Life Is Beautiful), neo-Nazis (American History X), old Nazis training neo-Nazis (Apt Pupil), book burning (Pleasantville), and now, with The Siege, a story of full-blown military rule on American soil. Still in…
Trash Compactors
In times of desperation, people always look for a savior. That tends to explain the music press’s recent compulsion to ordain so-called electronica the next big thing. Techno and its variants have given few commercial indications that they’re equipped to permanently steer the masses away from melody and harmony, but their prospects seem positively robust…
Letters
Thundering at the Buzzard I hate WMMS, and it’s a relationship of animosity that I have been an unwilling partner in for more than ten years. In around the early ’80s, while in my teens, the really cool station to listen to in Cleveland was M105, which has since become a brothel of bad taste…
Zero Tolerance
Zero Parade main singer and songwriter Bobby Quick sounds emphatic when he talks about his band’s future. Still, you get the sense he’s just as uncertain as the next guy. “We’ve paid our dues,” says Quick. “We’ve put in the time. Now we want to put it in a position where it’s up to the…
Space Spin-off
All right! Senator John Glenn has made a successful return to outer space. When can we send the rest of Congress up into orbit? Hopefully, that new space lab that’s on the drawing board will have 535 seats. If ya wanna talk about the space program’s spin-off benefits, just imagine the money we’d save from…
Irish Zing
“To Win Just Once,” a rousing sports fan’s anthem from the Saw Doctors’ 1996 album Same Oul’ Town, took on a whole new significance for the band last month. “I was born in 1964,” says guitarist Leo Moran, sounding for all the world like a long-suffering Indians fan. “I’ve waited a lifetime for this.” Moran…
This Time, It’s Personal
Five years ago last month, I wrote about the “handshake of hope” (as the media was then characterizing it) that had taken place several weeks earlier between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. This momentous event, brought about by a Bill Clinton more preoccupied with peace than with getting a piece,…
Makin’ the Scene
To answer those citing band tension for Josh Stone’s recent solo break from the Fifth Wheel, it appears health concerns are more at the root of the matter. The Fifth Wheel, largely inactive over the past few months, has been idle because of the hand injury incurred by bassist Tom Weyand. A broken bone has…
The Straight Dope
Why aren’t seat belts mandatory in all school buses? –Kesti16, via AOL When I first considered this question, the words “natural selection” bobbed inexplicably to mind. On examination, however, the main factors are safety and expense. Which one was more important to the people in charge I leave for you to decide. Their ungainly appearance…
Livewire
Lyle Lovett Lakewood Civic Auditorium November 1 Lyle Lovett doesn’t play by the rules. As a follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1996 release The Road to Ensenada, Lovett has put out a double album of songs by his favorite Texas-based writers over the years. It’s a risky venture that only a star of his caliber…
Funny It’s Not!
Intermission at Jewish Community Center’s Broadway Bound (through November 21). You can hear the disgruntled rumble of varicose-veined grannies as they ask their hairy-eared husbands, “Is this supposed to be funny?” They can’t understand why the comic genius who wrote The Odd Couple and The Sunshine Boys, the two most laugh-ridden comedies since Moe came…
Fastball Down the Middle
Doing phone interviews from the road has to be one of the worst things about being a touring musician. If Fastball guitarist/vocalist Miles Zuniga agrees, he’s not letting on as he begins the interview with the words to “Helen Wheels,” Paul McCartney & Wings’ 1974 hit single. He’s calling from Birmingham, Alabama, and he says,…
Twelve Olde War Horses
The decade that brought us Brylcreem and Alfred E. Neuman is ever at our side. At your neighborhood movie theater Pleasantville is eulogizing the ’50s as though it existed only through our television screens. In the flesh, the principals of Reginald Rose’s Twelve Angry Men at the Cleveland Play House (through December 6) are still…
Playback
Beck Mutations (DGC/Bong Load) Somewhere between his indie sound and Geffen sound, Beck has created an album worthy of carrying both his Bong Load and DGC insignias. Mutations is a stripped-back collection of bittersweet ballads that brings his poetic ruminations to the forefront. Lyrically, the subject matter may not be so far removed from his…
Encore
Four Queens–No Trump. For those who crave their theater foul-mouthed, simple-minded, and a couple of evolutionary notches below Fox-TV, Karamu Center for the Performing Arts is, for some reason, offering Four Queens–No Trump. Writer/director Ted Lange’s sickening surfeit of pussy and dick jokes and constant hot-mama-in-heat jive all give smut a bad name. Take someone…
Dizzying Up the Charts
“I’m sitting here staring at a Rammstein billboard on Sunset Boulevard,” says Goo Goo Dolls bassist Robby Takac by phone from Hollywood. “[Their music] does what it needs to do: shock and intrigue–and burn.” Takac’s description of Rammstein, the new storm troopers of aggro-rock, would fit his own band just as well. Without the use…
Pouring Its Heart Out
Sometimes the search for good pub food seems as futile as Don Quixote’s quest for the lovely Dulcinea. In many cities, the sad truth is that good suds often means food duds. Of course, I held out hope that Cleveland might be different. After all, in the Great Lakes Brewing Co. we have one of…
