Will and Grace
THU 10/14 There’s a lot of water imagery in Anthony Doerr’s first novel, About Grace. A lot of water imagery. Snowflakes fall. The sometimes-clairvoyant protagonist moves from snowy Anchorage to lakeside Cleveland. And in his dreams, his daughter drowns when their house sinks during a deluge. “I wanted to be a marine biologist when I…
The Black Heart Procession
With its sun-drenched beaches and temperate climate, San Diego isn’t exactly the place one would associate with a band like Black Heart Procession. Yet the trio managed to dodge tanned muscleheads after forming in 1997, mainly by crafting music suited to pasty-faced melancholics and readers of Dostoyevsky novels. Their first three albums — sequentially numbered…
U.S.A-holes
A parody of Gerry Anderson marionette shows (like Thunderbirds and Joe 90), Jerry Bruckheimer action movies, and the ’80s cartoon/toy line M.A.S.K., Team America: World Police boils all those ingredients down to their essences, starting with the theme song “Americaaa . . . Fuck yeah!” (imagine it scored like Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” and sung…
Bernie Leadon
When Bernie Leadon looked in his mirror in 2002, he saw a guy who had spent a quarter of a century helping other people make records. He decided it was time to see his name on the front of an album and not on the back (or stuck on the last page of a CD…
Soft-Shoe Soft Sell
It would be so easy to titter and scoff at Shall We Dance?, a Miramaxed-out version of the 1996 Japanese film of the same name, which told of a bored businessman who is reinvigorated by dance lessons. This version, with its cast of glow-in-the-dark movie stars and shimmering soundtrack of post-war pop standards, looks as…
Har Mar Superstar
Har Mar Superstar is a paunchy, balding indie rocker from Minnesota who creates bawdy R&B and hip-hop that critiques the stereotypes of those genres by — oh God, never mind. We’re bored just saying it. The point is, one can only see hairy, white, fishnet-encased love handles shaking to a straight-faced, Usher-by-way-of-the-Jackson-5-by-way-of-SWV groove so many…
Hats Incredible
If you’ve ever wondered why we all know who the leader of the Catholic Church is but would be hard-pressed to identify the top dog of any other religious group, the answer is obvious: It’s the hat. One look at the towering miter the Pope props on his dome, like a bejeweled rocket ship about…
Akercocke
Numerous long shadows fall across Akercocke’s latest album, Choronzon, including Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Opeth’s Blackwater Park, and the Current 93 school of drawing-room satanism. This could bode well — or poorly. It all depends on who’s working with the source material. Akercocke, four Anglo-Saxon agents of Satan who have the good sense to wear…
That Darned Ghost
Do you know the identity of that mysterious man who hit town last week? The one with the immovable face, who lives in an undisclosed location where he plots and schemes? No, not Dick Cheney. That other antisocial paranoid who’s visiting again, the main man of The Phantom of the Opera. While it’s tempting to…
Duran Duran
In the 1980s, the members of Duran Duran possessed everything pop stars could want. Perfectly feathered hair! Pouty visages! Swooning devotees! Drug habits! But the group’s true talent was creating pop tunes about nothing — girls named Rio dancing on the sand or “The Reflex,” anyone? — that sounded as if they meant absolutely everything…
Badge of Dishonor
If Jeffrey Moore’s marriage wasn’t as exciting as it once was, it was at least stable. At 41, he was a bit of a dreamer, a passionate man with salt-and-pepper hair and bluish-green eyes, whose nightly job as a bartender left him free to pursue golf during the day. His wife, Marilyn, was a lithe,…
On View
Daring Decade: Women in the 1920s — After WWI, American girls wanted to be more independent, and simply constructed, loose-fitting, low-waisted evening dresses made it easy to fox-trot late into the night. One of several examples of the genre is a Lanvin purple chiffon dress, circa 1929; the blouson shape of the top and the…
Talib Kweli
Kanye West’s The College Dropout might have been the best thing to hit hip-hop this year, but you can argue that it was the worst thing for Talib Kweli. After spending years cultivating a reputation as the rhymer most likely to unite hip-hop’s mainstream and underground, Kweli saw West come out of nowhere to span…
Nader’s Traitors
The Naderites are supposed to lay siege to evil corporations — but let’s face it, mucking up national elections is Priority One. That explains why Peter Camejo, the lower half of Ralph Nader’s quixotic ticket, ditched a commitment to attend an untelevised, third-party debate at Baldwin-Wallace College in favor of sounding off to ABC News…
On Stage
Lobby Hero — In this thoroughly engrossing Beck Center show, playwright Kenneth Lonergan (he wrote the screenplay for You Can Count on Me) introduces us to Jeff, a young slacker with zero leverage over his life, who possesses a goofy reliance on the ultimate power of truth. He recently got tossed from the Navy for…
Isis/Pig Destroyer
Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto uses a huge camera and hours-long exposures to take photographs of the ocean at night. The wall-filling images he produces look entirely black at first, but gradually, the eye finds the subtle shades of darkness that divide sky from water. Isis’s Panopticon, as heavy as it is melancholy, is a perfect aural…
Magic Bus
It’s Sunday, 11 a.m., and Scott Nunnari wears a serene smile stuffed with a stogie as he presides over his kingdom, otherwise known as the Muni Lot off East 9th Street. He’s been up since dawn, cooking steak and shrimp, tapping the keg, and stealing the virginity of an immense bottle of Jack Daniel’s, which…
Rookie of the Year
Businessman Tony Cioletti liked his favorite Italian restaurant so much, he bought it. Now Cioletti, himself a descendant of chefs and caterers, gets to immerse himself nightly in a world of white linens, fine wines, and savory dishes at Strongsville’s Portofino. The Oracle software exec added “restaurateur” to his résumé in March, when he purchased…
The Foreign Exchange
It’s a shame that A Tribe Called Quest wasted an epic title like The Love Movement on 1998’s clunker reunion album. It would have been so much more appropriate for this debut from Foreign Exchange. Sure, Dutch producer Nicolay and North Carolinean head MC-vocal ringmaster Phonte are “connected” by their partnership in the Exchange, but…
Bushwhacked
Bushwhacked So that’s what you call them: “The toughest fight of his life probably came in the third grade, when a tall girl kicked his ass . . .” I guess you want people to take this nonsense seriously, huh, Pete [Kotz: “Country Club Swagger,” September 22]? You attack the first president with any balls…
Booze You Can Use
“There’s three cities in America that have not put their boob in my drink,” Bob Log III declares. “Fargo, North Dakota; Boston, Massachusetts; and Colorado Springs, Colorado. But that’s out of a hundred and thirty.” Of course, the baked bluesman has never had such troubles here. “I’m not worried about Cleveland at all,” he says…
Houseguest
Houseguest plays light, jangly indiepop that wouldn’t leave an imprint in wet cement — which is fine; it’s not that kind of disc. Considering the company the band keeps, Talking Time is surprisingly buoyant; Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney recorded the Akron quartet’s sophomore release, crafting a disc for the ears — the crisp mix…
The Rich Girl’s Guide to Congress
It’s nearing 6 p.m., and Capri Cafaro doesn’t have a thing to wear. Actually, the 26-year-old millionaire has a lot to wear — form-fitting skirts, cigarette pants, Zeppelin T-shirts. Unfortunately, this arsenal remains at home, and Cafaro’s outfit of the moment — a pinstriped suit and low-heeled pumps — isn’t going to cut it at…
Holly’s Hobby
“I might have to go all of a sudden,” Holly Golightly says by way of introduction. “I’ve got food in the oven.” Golightly has cooked from a musical perspective since at least 1991, when she made her first impact on the global garage-rock scene. Still, it’s difficult to reconcile the black-clad-boho look she affects on…
The Potato Bugs
The debut from pop punks the Potato Bugs is as repetitious as beer-drinking and lovemaking. But since nearly every track of this nine-song, 18-minute disc revolves around getting drunk, getting high, or getting some, the redundancy is apt. Besides, by titling the disc It’s All the Same, it’s not as if this trio is putting…
Trench Chef
Chef-cum-author Anthony Bourdain doesn’t quite bristle when he’s called the “bad boy of the kitchen.” Still, “I’m not really a working chef, I’m not that bad, and I certainly ain’t no boy,” says the 48-year-old writer of 2000’s best-selling Kitchen Confidential, a gut-busting and gut-churning tale of what really goes on behind those swinging doors.…
American Idolatry
It’s no wonder that tribute bands are king of our nightclub landscape: We live in an age where Wonder Bread-wholesome American Idol contestants rule the TV ratings and pop charts with their overblown cover schmaltz. Take the success of Providence, Rhode Island’s Badfish, who are widely viewed as the world’s best imitators of Sublime and…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, October 14 We have only a vague notion of what nanobiotechnology is — something involving tiny robots and bodies. We think. HealthSpace Cleveland’s new exhibition, It’s a Nano World (opening today) hopefully will fill us in with all of its hands-on activities, displays, and presentations. Fun exhibits like a Magnification Station (loaded with amplification…
Misfit Night
Amanda Howland’s voice is so soft, it sounds as if it were spun from cotton. When she speaks, she barely registers on a tape recorder. She seems an unlikely candidate to front a noise duo that sounds like tires squealing on wet asphalt. Then again, the cordial gal with the economy-sized laugh seated next to…
Show Girls
Don’t bug Brad Fogarty at a Cleveland Cavaliers game — especially when they’re losing. The hometown fan claims he can cast voodoo curses on opponents by rubbing the LeBron James trading card he keeps in his coat pocket for good luck. But he needs complete concentration. “I say this little spell, and it seems to…
Dreadful News
Cleveland slowcore hopefuls the Dreadful Yawns have signed to Bomp Records, the long-running indie label that’s issued releases from Iggy and the Stooges, the Dead Boys, Devo, and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. “I like the Yawns because what they do is hard to define,” says Bomp owner Greg Shaw, who launched Who Put the Bomp…
Kind of a Drag
10/15-10/28 Almira Gulch was last seen pedaling her bike down a dusty trail, with Dorothy’s lovable pooch, Toto, trapped inside a basket. When Miss Gulch Returns!, she’s a boozy cabaret singer with a repertoire of sassy songs and an attitude to match. Written more than 20 years ago, the one-man musical is playwright Fred Barton’s…
Metal Movement Tour
Tours characterized by bands of a single sex are nothing new. For recent examples, see the all-male suckfest Family Values or the geriatric stool sample known as the Kiss-Aerosmith tour. These events seldom use gender-specific terms, such as Boys Gone Wild or Sleazy Slimy Grandpas. But when several female-fronted metal groups decide to pool their…
Get Pucked
SAT 10/16 With a padlock on the NHL, puck junkies can at least take comfort in knowing that the AHL is still alive and skating (with several major players making their way to the minors, to boot). The Barons, coming off last year’s playoff-spiked season, return to the ice Saturday. Offense defined the team last…
Barry Manilow
You know it’s true. You love Barry. We love Barry. Everybody loves Barry. Sure, hipsters roll their eyes at the dramatics of “I Made It Through the Rain,” the bouncy bop of “Daybreak,” and that tragic Brazilian love triangle of Lola, Rico, and Tony in “Copacabana.” But legions will be throatily singing along to his…
Lite Christmas
SAT 10/16 Ready for Christmas? The contemporary jazz quartet Yellowjackets apparently is. Its new CD, Peace Round, is a collection of traditional holiday songs (like “Little Drummer Boy,” “Silent Night,” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”) smoothed out and jazzed up for the season. It might not prepare you for the snowy months ahead, but…
Li’l Ed and the Blues Imperials
For those who think of blues as a mostly “down” affair, there’s a fivesome from Chicago that’d be only too happy to change your mind. A set or two from slide guitarist Li’l Ed Williams and his boys should provide enough jumpin’, rockin’, and ravin’ to place the blues in a much more festive light.…
