Behind the Front
Contrary to Eminem’s dipshit misogyny/homophobia and the bling bling-obsessed, crass commercialism that continually pushes rap storytelling from gritty urban realism to big-money surrealism, the heart of hip-hop doesn’t pump champagne and violently spilled blood alone. Throughout the genre’s tumultuous, troubled history, iconoclastic crews have risen above the muck — A Tribe Called Quest, with its…
Conducting History
With major media around the world raving about the Cleveland Orchestra — to the point that even the critics seem to be doing PR — the last place you might expect to find a balanced perspective on the ensemble’s history is in its hometown. Yet Cleveland music critic Donald Rosenberg serves up both wine and…
Soulfly
On Soulfly’s 1997 self-titled debut disc, singer-guitarist Max Cavalera did little to hide the bitterness that stemmed from his acrimonious split with Sepultura, the influential Brazilian hard-core group he used to front. On “Eye for an Eye,” the disc’s first track, he declared, “I am what I create/ Believing in my fate/Integrity is my name/…
Georgia on His Mind
Of the thousands of lynchings that took place in the South after the Civil War, one case still haunts Confederate sensibilities. It doesn’t stand out because the victim was white or because he was hanged on a sheriff’s property. The thing about the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank — retold in the musical Parade, which…
Great Plains
Coming from the early ’80s generation that saw the American Dream take its place at the end of the unemployment line, Great Plains was one of many indie rock bands that sprouted up from the demon seeds of late ’70s punk. With purposeful guitar strums, whirring carnival keyboards, and beguiling but intelligent lyrics (captured on…
The Dr. Is In, Out, In, Out …
Richard Gere, as Dallas gynecologist Sullivan Travis, has never been more likable onscreen, perhaps because he’s never been more human, more vulnerable, more there. After so many years of so many duds, after so many years of playing ladies’ man to little girls (and the recent Autumn in New York would fall into both categories),…
Ahmad Jamal
Among the major jazz pianists to emerge in the ’50s, Ahmad Jamal has influenced numerous musicians, including Miles Davis and Davis’s pianist, Red Garland. Like one of his own major influences, Erroll Garner, Jamal was born in Pittsburgh, although he came to the fore in Chicago. Jamal picked up Garner’s method of spread chord voicing…
The Offender
There’s no getting around it: The Contender is the most offensive movie of the year. It pretends to be high-minded even while it slings mud and semen at the audience in its attempt to make its bludgeoning point, which is: If a woman wants to ascend to one of the highest offices in the land,…
Pere Ubu
It’s a harrowing testament to the music Pere Ubu made that now, 25 years later, the sonic doom of a song such as “Final Solution” still resonates so clearly. In the midst of a blindly contented era, its lyrics “don’t need a drug/need a final solution” still scream out a punctual message for the dot-com…
Crossing the Line
Standing on the porch of her family’s Cleveland home, Deborah Damanti smiles slyly. She’s telling the story of how she spent a weekend in jail for sneaking one of her three sons into a Euclid school. “I did try cheating the system,” she says. “I got away with it, too.” For a while, anyway. Damanti…
Orgy
On its second album, the L.A.-based neo-goth act Orgy cops that creepy feeling used by Marilyn Manson and other metal maniacs who bitch about the state of the world while doing very little to make it any better. The band also offers up a whole lotta mumbo jumbo about creating a new religion and so…
Those Wicked Lawyers
Q: What do lawyers and sperm have in common?A: One in three million has a chance of becoming a human being. Pardon Ohio Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse for not laughing at that joke. The group doesn’t find abuses of the legal system so funny. OCALA is airing radio ads (heard locally on WTAM-AM/1100) that depict…
The Wallflowers
Chief Wallflower Jakob Dylan rarely discusses his legendary father, Bob, in interviews. One can’t blame his desire to separate his career from Dad’s, but it’s hard to ignore a familial trait when it comes to the type of music that both create. Both share a fondness for well-crafted songs that have an organic feel to…
Edge
The Cleveland Play House’s Eliot Ness in Cleveland torso murder display includes this tantalizing tidbit: Ness had a “number one suspect” who sent him postcards from at least two mental institutions. But the signature of this alleged villain — a medical doctor with a prominent last name — was blocked out by the curator. Out…
Robert Lee Castleman
The first time you hear this exceptional CD, the talons of Castleman’s songs will gain quick, whispery purchase on your emotional skin, and over time, the lyrics will sink in as deeply as Castleman’s singularly warm and supple baritone. His voice is haunting, his narratives open-ended, and his quest purposeful. Although he’s the restless kind…
South Side Stories
Maybe movies used to cost a nickel because they had to compete with free entertainment. Activities like street fights, stickball played with balls made from crumpled-up newspaper, or practicing the harmonica for the neighborhood variety show. For writer Raymond DeCapite, raised on Cleveland’s immigrant South Side during the Depression, the front stoop was the best…
Cold Hand of Christ
Formed three years ago, Cold Hand of Christ has gone through numerous lineup changes since releasing a three-song demo in 1998. And, just so we know who is in the band these days and what their personalities are like, the group sent us biographical information on each one. We learn that vocalist Reverend Jim W.…
“Look! I Made This!”
A cold breeze blows through an open window, and a football game silently unfolds on the television screen. The old man sitting on the couch regards the game with mild interest, though not long ago, football was his passion, a way of pocketing a little scratch during those long stretches when Hollywood lost his number.…
Soundbites
Is it possible to judge a presidential candidate by the musicians who support him? With old-and-out-of-touch artists such as Pat Boone, Larry Gatlin, and Loretta Lynn contributing to his campaign, George W. Bush is clearly not down with the kids. But there’s a finer line between Al Gore and Ralph Nader. Gore has an array…
Hulett Unloading
An ardent preservationist lays waste to nostalgic thinking: In your Monster City issue [September 28], I took great exception to the comments made in the Best Park category. Listing the Ohio and Erie Canal Reservation as the best the Metroparks have to offer was a bit of a stretch, but your selection was somewhat plausible.…
Princely Prints
It’s a good idea for a museum to show the public how it’s been spending its money and its time. That’s precisely what the Cleveland Museum of Art is doing with its new exhibit, From Rembrandt to Rauschenberg: Recently Acquired Prints, which features prints that have been added to the permanent collection since 1994. It…
Partly Cloudy
Posterity is a wacky, unpredictable dame that you can never count on to behave. Plays expected to live into the next century, such as Maxwell Anderson’s indestructible edifice Elizabeth the Queen, and Jean Kerr’s wildly successful laugh-lulu Mary, Mary, are now as extinct as the proverbial dodo. Yet, The Rainmaker, a play deemed, in its…
Touch and Go at Touch
Opening a new restaurant can be a long, hard row to hoe. If you need proof, just ask Doug Berg. Berg (known to many from his role as mastermind of the popular former West Side dance club, Brillo Pad), along with partner and DJ Mazi Jahi, decided last year to expand their offerings by adding…
This Gin Is In
We have long loved icy Tanqueray-and-tonics on hot summer evenings and spicy Bombay Sapphire martinis on cold winter nights. And now, with the introduction to the Cleveland cocktail scene of another new super-premium gin, we have ever so much more to adore. Tanqueray No. 10, a long elegant pour of aromatic botanicals — grapefruit, lime,…
BellRays Blast Off
When the BellRays’ Let It Blast blares over the speakers, the eyes of bored hipsters suddenly come aglow. The music is unnerving, unreal after years of digitally enhanced sounds — a time warp from a free-format ’60s AM station. It’s wildly unpredictable and original, a fusion of punk and soul exploding with raw, visceral passion.…
