Sure Beats Alimony
10/14-10/16 Ex-spouses set aside their disputes this weekend by bending fenders at the Divorcée Demolition Derby at Lorain Speedway’s Hawaiian Cavalcade Nationals. The Sunday-night race pits divorced couples against each other in cars painted black (for the guys) and pink (for the gals). “Across their front hoods are going to be their former married names,”…
Sound Advice
Rambler 454 is a trio of honky-tonk hellraisers who can definitely drink you under the table. Drummer Jesse McCoy shares his thoughts on some albums you need to own. I kinda feel like we’re in some kind of musical lull right now. There isn’t much new music that really grabs me. However, there are a…
Danger Doom
Since 2003, the year hasn’t been complete without a much-hyped underground hip-hop collaboration. The first was a disappointing duet between superproducers Jay Dee and Madlib, neither of whom brought his “A” game to the inappropriately named Champion Sound. But last year’s Madvillian team-up between ‘Lib and metal-masked MC Doom picked up the check for both…
Heads Held High
Building Up to the Breakdown is the promising debut from Cleveland punk quintet Heads Held High. Apparently, the group spent its money on great cover art and skimped on production. Tracked at Lakewood’s Strangelove Studios, the EP sounds like it was recorded in a cardboard box lined with aluminum foil. But sometimes you have to…
Ski School
10/13-10/16 When she was a national skiing champ in 1964, Jeannie Thoren grew frustrated with the tools of her trade. Made to fit men’s feet, her skis were too long to swoosh down the slope in record time. “Women are not small men,” says Thoren. “Our weight is in our rear ends. We can’t flex…
Money Where Your Mouth Is
Band: Facemaker (www.facemaker.org) Hometown: Akron Sounds Like: “Teetering the fine line between rock and metal, while balancing grunge in one hand and heavy riffs in the other — all while smoking a cigarette.” Fun Fact: “Our name is derived from a lewd sexual act, but don’t tell our grandmas.” Playing: Saturday, October 15, at Club…
Earth
The reigning kings of ambient heavy metal and doomy dirgecore have returned from the abyss on their new album, Hex. Earth’s first studio disc since 1996’s Pentastar: In the Style of Demons may shock the Seattle group’s hardcore fan base. Rather than the downtuned, fuzzed-out congestion and angst-ridden riffing of old, Dylan Carlson and company…
Up Ensemble
Saxophonist Chris Burge creates most of the songs on this trio’s third release. He’s got chops and creativity, and he’s in good company with drummer Beau Lisy and bassist Matthew Charbonneau. Sparked by the languid calypso of “Darkness,” the shifty tempo of “Jungle Boogie,” and the nocturnal electronica of “Kamasutra,” this album is more complex…
Miller Time
FRI 10/14 Dennis Miller makes no apologies for switching political sides. The quick-witted Miller once pledged allegiance to most things left, “until [al-Qaeda] blew up the World Trade Center,” he says. “Listen, I’m a pragmatist. I’m for gay marriage, but I think we should kill the guys overseas who want to blow up gay marriage…
Final Word
“We’ve all seen Revenge of the Nerds, right? Remember how they all played in the band — with the keyboards and shit? I saw Interpol this past Monday (9/26), and they rocked, but Boom Bip sucked. I wanted to storm the stage and unplug their ‘equipment’ — and sadly, they thought they rocked.” — Melody…
Bettye Lavette
At 59, Bettye Lavette has gone under the radar for too long. She’s recorded for Atco, Epic, Motown, and a host of smaller labels. She’s flirted with the charts. She’s always been soulful. And she’s just released one of the best albums of the year. Crafted by the team responsible for Don’t Give Up on…
Why We Need DVDs
Arrested Development: Season Two (Fox Home Entertainment) The best show on TV — which you’d know, if you actually watched the thing — also serves as one of the best reasons for the existence of DVD: No show has ever rewarded multiple viewings the way Arrested Development does. The second season, about the dysfunctional Bluth…
A comprehensive listing of Halloween events, happenings, and activities.
Bloodview Haunted House, 1010 Towpath Rd., Broadview Heights, 440-526-9148, www.bloodview.com The Broadview Heights Lions Club and the Legion of Terror are celebrating the 25th anniversary of Bloodview Haunted House, which scares you for a good cause. Bloodview is open September 23-24, September 30-October 1, October 7-9, October 13-16, October 20-23, and October 26-31. Hours are…
Mr. Self Destruct Blows Up
It was about 10 minutes into Nine Inch Nails’ set when Trent Reznor asked God to apologize for His shortcomings. Even heavenly beings are fatally flawed in NIN’s grim canon, as evidenced by songs like the faith-shaking “Terrible Lie.” The rest of us hardly stand a chance. So it was fitting that dark, foreboding storm…
Prophecy Not Fulfilled
Waking from a trance, you find yourself in the restroom of a diner. You just stabbed a complete stranger to death as he urinated. Blood is on everything — including you. And to make matters worse, a police officer is sitting outside, drinking coffee. Should you take the time to carefully hide the body and…
Crowe Flies Home
It happened almost with the first step off the airplane at the Toronto airport last month. Someone, a friend or merely a concerned stranger, would stop to warn you of impending peril. They would plead with you to avoid the danger ahead in Elizabethtown, the Cameron Crowe film that screened early in the Toronto International…
Social Distortion
Social Distortion and the Rolling Stones had every reason to pack it in years ago: The Stones are wealthy beyond belief, and Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness is the band’s last original member. Both have seen better days, but each can still put together a good album, even if neither offers much to the new…
Scene‘s top DVD picks for the week of October 11.
Alicia Keys: Unplugged (J) Audioslave: Live in Cuba (Sony Music) The Best of the Chris Rock Show: Volumes 1 and 2 (Warner Bros.) Bomb the System (UMVD) The Bridge of San Luis Rey (Warner Bros.) The Dresden Dolls: Paradise (Fontana) 11:14 (Warner Bros.) The Ellen DeGeneres Collection: The Beginning/Here & Now (Warner Bros.) Fat Albert’s…
Con Sequences
As Johnny Cash and Jerry Seinfeld have illustrated, your name can be an enormous influence on how you live your life. In “A Boy Named Sue,” Cash had a hit with Shel Silverstein’s lyrics about a boy whose father named him Sue to toughen up the kid in Dad’s absence. And as Seinfeld has observed…
Enter Ultralord
Rising from the ashes of the recently defunct Fistula, Akron sludge quartet Ultralord has inked a deal with California label This Dark Reign, which could last up to three albums. The band is just one of drummer Corey Bing’s projects to receive wide release in hot-tipped underground circles next year. “It think it all just…
Platinum Tony
At 29, Anthony Hodel was makin’ cream: the sprawling $775,000 home in Brecksville, a pen of exotic cars, à la Cribs, and a beautiful wife and daughter. The former car salesman was sitting atop the throne of one of Cleveland’s fastest-growing companies, Platinum Warranty Corporation, which sold car warranties that kick in after the factory…
Poor Dad
The protagonist of Lodge Kerrigan’s deeply moving, uncomfortably intimate Keane is the kind of pariah most urban dwellers will do anything to avoid. Rocking from foot to foot, the poor man mutters angrily to himself or shouts at the air, a captive of demons only he can hear. Eyes bloodshot, knuckles scraped raw, he’s clearly…
Nada Surf
Nada Surf On 2002’s Let Go, Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws wanted “to know what it’s like on the inside of love.” The band’s latest disc, The Weight Is a Gift, hints that Caws spent much of the last three years there — and it hasn’t been all sunshine and flowers. From firing the lead actress…
Home and Away
A Bears defensive back has just intercepted a Trent Dilfer pass. As he dashes through an obstacle course of Browns tacklers, the patrons of the Field House pub in Chicago go quiet and glower at the plasma screen. “Get him!” barks one drinker. “Kill him!” says another. A guy on a barstool chuckles and says…
Keira Get Your Gun
Her name is Domino Harvey, and she is a bounty hunter. If you’ve seen even one TV spot or theatrical trailer for Domino, you’ve heard that message ground into your brain like an annoying jingle. What you may not know is that Domino Harvey was a real person, daughter of actor Laurence Harvey (of Manchurian…
Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
This quintet of avant-garde art-rockers comes with sinister industrial noise, death rock, and portentous lyrics while clad in the hottest of Victorian unmentionables. It’s theater of the absurd straight out of the sanatorium, inspired (in part) by the eccentric writings of one John Kane, a turn-of-the-20th-century futurist and mathematician. Folks, if your ears are ailing…
System Failure
It was just another day at The International Preparatory School, another day when nothing went right. School administrators were late, as usual. Since they were the only ones with keys to the building, teachers stood outside the locked doors and stamped their feet in the cold. The school had failed to pay the snow-removal company…
Women in Chains
It is interesting and noble to want to produce theater by and about women, as the mission statement of Red Hen Productions promises. But it would be wise to add the codicil that these theatrical productions must also be well written and competently directed. In a region filled with accomplished women of theater — including…
Thee Shams
This Cincinnati band is firmly in gripe mode. The title and many of the lyrics on its latest, Sign the Line (Shake It), are bitchy references to the faded garage-rock trend. These guys were in the thick of the post-Strokes feeding frenzy of 2002-’03. The band played a groggy version of early ’70s blues stomp,…
Attack on Angel
Get those lap dances in fast, boys. Angel and Celeste are about out of a job. As part of their continuing plan to kill every last business in the state, Ohio lawmakers are creeping dangerously close to passing a bill that would outlaw lap dances, ban all contact between dancers and customers, and force strip…
Capsule reviews of current area theater presentations.
Amadeus — If your mortal enemy were in the same profession as you, chances are you’d wish him every failure possible, so that you could wallow in all the attendant misery. But Amadeus author Peter Shaffer might advise that you be careful what you wish for. Indeed, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a giant thorn in…
The King of France
It’s a real dilemma. Your inner-hipster doesn’t want to admit liking this pop music. But when you listen to the off-kilter, intelligent melodies of the King of France, you gotta ‘fess up to digging this bunch. The band’s blend of vaudevillian vocal styling, impeccably augmented rhythms, and controlled chaos grabs you by the ear like…
Holy Special Editions!
DVD — Batman Begins/Batman: The Motion Picture Anthology: The Caped Crusader’s return to Dark Knight territory in this year’s Batman Begins incorporates all the psychological (and physical) anguish that the last Batman movies somehow fumbled away. All five two-disc sets come loaded with making-of docs, commentaries, and insight from directors Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins), Tim…
Capsule reviews of current area art exhibitions.
NEW Drunken Bottles, Franken Hearts, and Other Friends — As a Halloween show designed to amuse, this lighthearted exhibit of small sculptures by Ross Kennedy more than suffices. Kennedy, a Kent State grad now living in Oakland, California, has made playful, quasi-grotesque figurines out of terra-cotta and paint. They exude a dark, odd humor that…
Suicide Girls
“A lot of people come to our shows, and they have no idea what the fuck they’re coming to watch,” says Stormy, one of the suicidegirls.com models who opens the modeling website’s debut DVD, Suicide Girls: The First Tour. “But I think they come away satisfied.” Twenty seconds later, footage of this very tour plays:…
The Big Picture
The Big Picture Credit where credit is due: Letters like Mike McCormick’s [Letters, September 21], alleging that Scene, of all publications, is racist toward blacks by calling Kenneth Blackwell an “Uncle Tom” and “former black man,” are ludicrous. McCormick does his own letter a hypocritical disservice by stereotyping Democrats as “whiny liberal Democrats,” when not…
Scratching a Niche
Too few residents, not enough traffic, scarcity of cheap parking . . . downtown can be hell for full-service restaurants. That’s why smart operators know going in that they need to find a hook — something interesting and sexy to pull in patrons who would otherwise stay in the suburbs. That can be just about…
Blues Traveler
Fifteen years ago, the flashy harmonica and sly vocal delivery of John Popper helped cement a new subset of pop music. Picking up where the Grateful Dead left off, Blues Traveler — along with the formative H.O.R.D.E. tours the group organized and headlined — popularized dozens of bands like Phish, the String Cheese Incident, and…
Class Clown
To North Olmsted High School’s class of ’88, here’s a heads-up: Comedian Mike Melville still holds a grudge. And twice a month at No Excuses, he takes out his frustrations by slinging one-liners at the stuck-up kids “who wouldn’t give me the time of day back then,” he says. “And I’ll admit it’s partially out…
Luscious & Local
If you’re eating strawberries in January or tomatoes in May, chances are your food is better-traveled than you are. And while you’re obviously not the only one who craves ‘nanas on her Coco-Puffs each morning, there’s a downside to buying food from halfway around the world. What our food gains in geographical sophistication, it loses…
The English Beat
If you didn’t catch the English Beat’s set when it opened for Devo this summer, you may recall the ’80s new-wave sensation for its hits “Mirror in the Bathroom” (as heard in Grosse Pointe Blank, one of the great love letters to the new-wave decade) and “I Confess.” For this show, the band is not…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, October 13 In NASCAR: The IMAX Experience, the only thing more white-knuckling than race cars speeding by at 200 miles per hour is Kiefer Sutherland’s mumbling, dragging narration. The real action revs up once NASCAR faves Dale Earnhardt Jr., Jeff Gordon, and Jimmie Johnson climb into their rides and burn rubber. The ultra-huge screen,…
Firing Away
His name is Waylon Albright Jennings, almost like his father’s — Waylon Arnold Jennings. Just don’t expect him to answer to it. “I’ve always been Shooter, from the day I was born,” Jennings says. “I peed on the nurse the first day in the hospital. That’s how I got the name.” With his long dark…
Can’t Stop the Beat, featuring Andy Rourke
Smiths bassist Andy Rourke has turned into a club-hopping DJ. The Mancunian maestro will visit the B-Side Liquor Lounge this weekend, where he’ll spin a set of ’80s tunes, punk, and indie rock. Yes, it’s a Sunday, so if you still need a reason to show up, here’s two: 1) He’s not Boy George, and…
The Doll’s House
Charles Band knows all about touring and groupies. Not that the veteran horror filmmaker behind the Puppet Master series has experienced any of this firsthand. But his son Alex leads the Calling, a pop group that had a pretty big hit a few years ago with “Wherever You Will Go.” “His fans are all hot…
The Greatest Gigs
Slipknot might be the only modern band that regularly draws to its shows spectators who are ambivalent about its music: Its fright masks and chaotic choreography lure spectacle-curious rubberneckers, who observe from the fringes. Slipknot’s upcoming two-disc concert set, 9.0 Live, might not hold the same appeal for outsiders, but it figures to be a…
Gang of Four
“Repackage sex/Keep your interest,” chanted vocalist Jon King and guitarist Andy Gill on the Gang of Four’s slashing 1979 debut, Entertainment! A quarter-century later, the middle-aged pair chant it again on this set of re-recorded classics, all performed without a hint of irony. In England, where the proletariat is more mindful of history and politics,…
Ladies’ Night
10/14-11/6 Twenty years ago, Neil Simon revamped his 1965 stage classic The Odd Couple so that women could take the roles of Oscar and Felix. When Karamu opens The Odd Couple (Female Version) on Friday, it’s adding even more diversity. “I wanted a multiracial cast,” says director Jean Hawkins. “We have three white women, three…
Critical Fatwa
All hail X, the band that has somehow remained unembarrassing as it ages — a most difficult task for punk rockers. Just look at the Germs, its contemporaries, to witness how sad punk rock has become. Despite the 1980 death of singer Darby Crash, the remaining members of the band want their glory back and…
Gris Gris
With iPods, endless websites touted as “the next Pitchfork,” and every other form of music dissemination, it’s clear there’s no specific compass to guide rock trends anymore. Ideas are sprouted, hyped into trends, and then dismissed every five minutes. In a world of such swirling, fleeting bearings, it follows that the amorphous tomfoolery of Gris…
