Twist of Fate
“A film starring Bob Dylan” — five more frightening words you’d be hard-pressed to put into the same sentence, even among those who forgave the man for his grotesquely indulgent 1970 album Self-Portrait or sat though his disjointed home movie Renaldo and Clara in ’78. The apologists, of course, will excuse Masked and Anonymous its…
Iggy Pop
Skull Ring is Iggy Pop’s best record in a while, which is kind of like saying the McDonald’s drive-through went a little quicker today. It’s generally assumed that Iggy’s solo records bear two or three good tunes and that his main contribution is proof that Dionysian figures exist. It’s pointless to suggest that Iggy need…
Can’t You Smell That Smell?
On a balmy, sun-kissed fall afternoon, Cuyahoga Valley National Park seems the loveliest place on Earth. Butterflies flutter and grasshoppers buzz as a pair of hawks circle high in the crystal-blue sky. The murmuring Cuyahoga River carries orange and gold leaves shed by the trees along its banks. The whole scene feels very Thoreau. Until…
Worth the Wait!
The bios of famous people often include the phrase “who grew up in a small town,” as if that’s some badge of achievement. Guess what — we’re all from a small town, the borders of which are the bony left and right walls of the cranial cavity. It matters little whether the body happens to…
Black Box Recorder
The title of Black Box Recorder’s 1998 debut was England Made Me, and perhaps never before or since has an album title served so utterly and functionally to describe a band’s obsessions. And on Passionoia, Black Box Recorder continues to work a vein of extreme, almost provincial Britishism. So unless you’ve got a raging case…
The Quiet Man
Ralph Watts — bail bondsman and bounty hunter — looks at his list of skips. Only two today. Both young black men, 20ish, out on bail from felony drug cases. It’s his job to bring them in. Looking at the men’s jackets, Watts shakes his head and makes a long face as he heads out…
Almost Grand
Pianos are the crack cocaine of all musical instruments, addictive because they seem so easy to play: There is virtually no other serious instrument on which a rank beginner can create single sounds as well as an expert. For example, we all can play a C-major seventh chord (if someone tells us which keys to…
Ezra Weiss
Ezra Weiss, a 24-year-old pianist from Phoenix who graduated from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, has released a solid, swinging debut any seasoned jazz artist would be proud of. The memorable tunes span the harmonically inventive, propulsive “Symmetrics”; the goofy, Kurt Weill-influenced “The Clown Feature”; and the elegiac ballad “I Regret.” Weiss is adept on…
Big Game Hunters
It started with Rick’s dad, who was never a big presence in his life. His mother raised him; his dad, Rick says dismissively, was your typical West Side drunk. But he could talk. And he liked to talk about “sweat-hogging.” A college friend, a good-looking guy, had been into it. “Let’s go out and pick…
A Work in Progress
Imagine an airy, contemporary dining room with a complex, seductive-sounding menu — an upscale sort of spot, where a well-dressed couple’s tab can easily soar above the $100 mark. Now take that dining room and plunk it down in a sea of asphalt in the middle of a suburban industrial park, leave its menu execution…
Various Artists
Very rarely does a rock band release a “remix album,” and that’s fine by us. In most cases, producers just strip the most identifiable vocals from a song and plop them down over cookie-cutter club beats. So why bother? It makes more sense in the case of the Dismemberment Plan, a group that has always…
Playing Chicken
In April, jail guard Hector Delgado was indicted after being accused of deleting 3,000 temporary protection orders from the police computer system. A municipal court clerk discovered the missing records, and the purge was traced back to Delgado’s log-on. Prosecutors think he was attempting to delete an order involving himself, his baby’s mother, and her…
Great Scots
Set during the 1973 Glasgow garbage strike, Lynne Ramsay’s film Ratcatcher depicts an urban wasteland as grim as any you’re likely to see. A drab, overcrowded housing estate rises from a sea of trash, through which rats burrow, kingly and plump; the canal is brown and stinking with the residue of Glasgow’s industrial past. And…
Various Artists
On Foundation 2, the SynthCleveland collective offers an engaging cross section of the area’s electronic scene. The disc reaches from IDM to industrial rock: Notech’s ear-cleaning “Now Anna Won” is a brusque, brutal opener, while Scinema’s “After Subtraction” and Near the Parenthesis’s “Fraun” ought to catch the ears of Warp label aficionados. It ventures into…
Letters to the Editor
Got Grit Best break on the lake: In reference to “Strange Love,” September 17: Great work. And right on target. I am a native New Yorker (Long Island). My wife is a native Baltimoran. I joke with her that Cleveland is the Baltimore of the Great Lakes, which is kinda true — I imagine John…
A Joyful Noise
The distasteful connotation that accompanies the term “Christian rock” can clear the room quicker than a Limp Bizkit concert at a nursing home. Musically, however, there are few differences between the Jesus-leaning charge of Creed, P.O.D., and MxPx, and their secular brethren. For starters, it’s almost impossible to discern a band’s Sunday-morning habits (who talks…
French Connection
Michael Kostroff, who stars in the touring production of Les Misérables coming to Playhouse Square this week, knows that the musical (based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel about a fugitive evading a determined detective over three decades) has a rep. He knows it’s come through town a few times before. But he insists, even after…
Refried South
Perhaps it started with Kid Rock using a mock-James Gang riff to anchor “Cowboy” in the late ’90s. Or maybe it had something to do with Goin’ South, that tongue-in-cheek, two-CD, made-for-TV compilation that hit a couple of years later. Whatever it is, a new generation of musicians, music lovers, and eager-to-please hipsters has caught…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, October 2 The Wonderful World of Ohio Mart, happening this weekend at Stan Hywet, is sorta like a Renaissance festival without all the medieval freaks. Yes, many of the 100-plus vendors sport ages-old apparel, but the 37-year-old fest’s emphasis is on arts and crafts (as opposed to people knocking each other senseless with archaic…
Hunting for Hipsters
Much like sobriety and exercise, rock concerts routinely fail to live up to the hype. For every Jesus Lizard or AC/DC, there are two dozen bands that are about as exciting as watching hair grow. Because of this, it’s often necessary to come up with ways to entertain yourself at rock shows, other than the…
Take Fifty
Time is on Dave Brubeck’s side. The 82-year-old jazz pianist and composer has plenty of it to reflect on — the awards, the classic recordings, the National Medal of the Arts President Clinton gave him. He’s been making records since 1948, two years after he was discharged from the Army (he served under General Patton).…
Rock Rivalry
The verbal sparring between Montreal metallers Slaves on Dope and local favorites Mushroomhead continues. “It seems that Slaves On Dope are worthy enough to get a mention from the all-mighty Mushroomhead, a band who chooses to hide behind masks and makeup,” SOD bassist Frank Salvaggio said in an e-mail to Scene that was also posted…
Independent’s Day
THU 10/2 Larry Meistrich had a very selfish reason for starting Film Movement, which distributes first-run movies to DVD (via subscription) and art houses simultaneously. “I don’t live in Manhattan anymore,” he says. “I live in the suburbs, and I have three kids. I have to go significantly out of my way to see films…
The Dresden Dolls
They invade eardrums with bombastic piano and polyrhythmic drumming, surrounded by full-blown orchestration. White-faced and red-handed, the Dresden Dolls are caught in a web of Weimar-style cabaret and Pink Dots punk rock. The band’s frenzied rock cuts a wide swath of emotions, each of them part of a perfectly directed tragicomedy. Pianist-singer Amanda Palmer wants…
Here’s Your Nine Iron
SAT 10/4 Caddies are out, hotties are in at the HornDog State University Four-Man Golf Scramble. The hotties are the “school’s” team of busty women who, in their short shorts and tight T-shirts, serve beer and cheer on the golfers. “None of them are strippers, though,” says organizer Russ Crowder. “They’re, like, schoolteachers and stuff…
John Scofield
John Scofield looks a little like Nicol Williamson’s Merlin in the film Excalibur, which might be an apt comparison for a man known as a guitar wizard. Merlin could see into the future, yet it was his fate to revisit the past. And so it is with Scofield, who gazed deeply into the jazz-fusion crystal…
Go Worm
SUN 10/5 Dick Goddard doesn’t understand what the big deal is over a chubby worm. Whatever it is, it’s enough to propel the 31st annual Woollybear Festival on Sunday. The legend behind the black-and-orange caterpillar is based on an old farmer’s tale: If the critter puts on a few extra ounces in the fall, it’s…
The Fever
The brattiest band out of New York’s new-wave punk pack, the Fever definitely puts on a show. What kind of show? Well, that depends. Sometimes, the band’s live rendition of the Gun Club-goes-pop material on its debut EP, “Pink on Pink,” is so messy and frankly godawful, it makes you want to take mop-haired frontman…
Stand-Up Guy
SUN 10/5 After 17 years of doing stand-up, comedian Dave Attell hit the big time by falling down. Often. And on TV. Drunk. His Comedy Central bar-hopping program, Insomniac With Dave Attell, is a cult hit. He hits a city at dusk, visits its bars, and then finds things to do at 4 a.m. “There…
Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express
You’d never guess that Brian Auger’s been at it for close to forever from Voices of Other Times, a strong 2000 release by his Oblivion Express. The man is a master of the Hammond B-3 organ, up there with Johnny “Hammond” Smith and Brother Jack McDuff. Light of touch, lightning-fast, and feverishly improvisatory, Auger has…
Cowgirl Gets the Blues
FRI 10/3 Allison Moorer doesn’t let it get her down. Even though the alt-country singer has been shuffled among four different record companies over the past five years. Even though her latest album, the live Show, was abandoned by her last label before it was even released. “The major-label system is about what the promotion…
Cordero
Cordero is the type of idiosyncratic act that would have found better welcome in the eclectic ’80s underground than in today’s glut of musical bilingualism. Indeed, not only does this Latin-flavored indie band sing in two languages; it partakes of several influences that reflect singer-guitarist Ani Cordero’s varied background. Cordero, who’s shared the stage with…
It’s a Black Thing
Director Richard Linklater’s School of Rock imagines, sort of, what might have become of Barry, the voluble rock snob, the morning after his grand finale in Stephen Frears’s adaptation of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity — after his Marvin Gaye impersonation had faded and been forgotten in the daylight hours, after he quit his gig at…
Limp Bizkit
Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst still has a day job. Tattoos and ball caps notwithstanding, the Interscope vice president is a lot like many other wildly successful corporate executives: Driven by resentment, he still vividly remembers every slight dealt to him in high school, and he tells embellished stories of his distant youth as if…
Time and Again
Out of Time — in which we’re to believe 48-year-old Denzel Washington and 32-year-old Sanaa Lathan were high school sweethearts — demands that its audience ignore all manner of implausibilities. Chief among them is the behavior of Washington’s Matt Whitlock, chief of police in a tiny coastal town just outside of Miami, who behaves less…
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan’s 1965 masterpiece has been parsed for decades, and there’s no doubt that it’s one of the key recordings in rock. All one need say about Bringing is that it represents the apotheosis of Dylan’s wordplay, political savvy, and rock-and-roll authority. What’s notable about this release is its marketing and timing. It’s one of…
