We Were All Witnesses, Until This Morning
Scene Photog Walter Novak snapped this this morning, as workers took down the now-famous “Witness” ad, which will be replaced by a soon-to-be famous “Witness” ad. — Joe P. Tone
Wanna See Saw ? We’ve Got Your Eyes Covered
Saw IV: Exactly like a Tim McGraw song, except in the ways that it’s different, which is more or less every way, more or less. Tomorrow night, movie theaters across the country will show the first three Saw movies, leading up to a midnight screening of the new Saw IV. Like Tim McGraw’s weepy country…
Paul Byrd Discusses God, Drugs, and Porn
“Did I ever tell you guys about how much I love porn?” Who knew Paul Byrd would be at the center of the most interesting story surrounding the Indians after their colossal collapse against the Red Sox? Travis Hafner drinking elk semen? That I would have believed. C.C. buying a Big Mac? I always assumed…
Sour Grapes, Part 1 of 142: Red Sox Fans Suck!
Yeah? Well fuck you too, kid. If you’re still an Indians fan, you’ve probably been getting a lot of grief from Red Sox fans about their recent triumph in the ALCS. They’re from Boston, they’re from the East Coast, they have gaudy accents, they have caaaahs, and sportsbaaahs, and apples, so they must be better.…
All the Best Jihadists Are in Columbus
If you rely on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network for your news, you might have a slightly skewed vision of the world (for example, that Will & Grace was produced by Osama Bin Laden to turn America gay and end the procreation of Western society). Recently, one of Robertson’s crack reporters went out in search…
Coheed Decoded: Coheed and Cambria Frontman Recaps His Sci-Fi Epic
Coheed and Cambria’s new disc, No World for Tomorrow, concludes an epic space opera the prog-emo band has been telling over their previous three albums. With 2005’s Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through the Eyes of Madness, the story expanded into a metafictional tale of a teenager-turned-hero who could destroy…
This Just In: 33 new concerts, live in front of your naked, steaming eyeballs
Have a blue Christmas with the Black Keys. Get ready to rock — and dance — with Electric Six. Soak in the ska with Westbound Train. Groove to the smooth sounds of Rotting Christ. Prepare for some of pop-punk’s finest with the Starting Line & the Almost. And brace yourself for the return of three…
Stephen Colbert Gives Dennis Kucinich One More Reason to Drop Out
Last week, rumors swirled that America’s Most American American, Stephen Colbert, would soon be announce his bid for presidency. Asked by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show whether this was true, Colbert responded that he would address the rumors on a much more “prestigious” program. Mere seconds later, at 11:30 pm, Colbert announced on his…
Local Med Students Donate Bodies to Science — and Hollywood
Last year, we profiled four Case medical students-turned-professional guinea pigs, who, in exchange for meager sums of money, enrolled in various studies and let doctors prode, prod, and even burn them. One even had part of a lung shaved off. (“Guinea Pig Gang,” March 22, 2006). Producers at the Discovery channel read Scene’s story and…
Play Madden for a Chance to Play Madden Against Somebody Who’s in Madden? Genius!
For the last month, hip-hop radio station WENZ 107.9 has been holding weekly tournaments of football video game Madden 2008 at Upscale Bar and Lounge in Garfield Heights (10600 Broadway). For the un-initiated, competitive Madden doesn’t always attract the Dungeons and Dragons-style nerd culture you may be imagining. At Upscale, dudes gather around a flat-screen…
Mike Dolan, Mike White, and the Terminator, Together in Cyberspace
Someone out there must really hate Mike Dolan, the former Cleveland City Councilman and current executive director of the Ohio Lottery Commission. A new video making the rounds on the web shows talking heads Dolan and former Mayor Mike White having a heated discussion. Their lips are moving, but it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger’s voice that comes…
Food and Wine Eats Up Cleveland
The November issue of Food & Wine magazine offers its take on Cleveland, as part of its series on Food & Wine Across America. Among the spots getting some national lovin’ are Momocho (“terrific modern Mexican food”); Light Bistro (“fantastic lemongrass-chile pickled shrimp); Michael Symon’s Lola and Lolita; and in Tremont, Lucky’s Café. Editor and…
Bill Waterson Returns to Newspaper
Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Waterson — the recluse who’s Northeast Ohio’s greatest comic-art creator since Superman’s Jerry Siegel — returned to newsprint this week. He didn’t have new cartoons, but he did weigh in some classics, writing a long review of Schultz and Peanuts: A Biography, a new biography of Charlie Brown creator Charles…
Table 45 Picked as One of the Nation’s Top 20 New Restaurants
Table 45, chef Zachary Bruell’s sexpot of a salon at the InterContinental Hotel, has been chosen by Esquire magazine as one of the nation’s top 20 new restaurants. Food and Travel editor John Mariani selected his picks from hundreds of entries nationwide. The mag’s November issue — the 23rd Best New Restaurants edition – is…
Michael Symon Passes Another Round on the Next Iron Chef
Tribe fans may be crying in their Buds, but at least Cleveland foodies still have reason to cheer as the national spotlight continues to shine on some of our dining scene’s top toques. Chef Michael Symon rocks on toward the title of Next Iron Chef after last night’s victory in the Resourcefulness portion of the…
Hope for Bald Guys: Someday, You Can Inherit a Dead Guy’s Hair
The Cleveland Clinic’s become world-renowned for making all kinds of medical advances, not the least of which is milking huge donations from rich, dead guys like Al Lerner. Now it looks as though they might have a use for dead guys with shallow pockets too – as long as they had rich head covering while…
Stripper Bill: Angry Jesus Will Not Be Gloating Today
Supporters of the repeal of Ohio’s new Stripper Bill had until October 5 to gather 126,000 signatures to make the issue count at the ballot box. Though they reached that number, many were declared unverifiable — including thousands of signatures reading “Seymour Butts.” The strippers, however, aren’t going down without a fight, and are now…
Kucinich in his Natural Role: As a Punchline on the Colbert Report
What’s Congressman Dennis Kucinich carrying around in his pockets? The little guy’s been known to lug around an AFL-CIO membership card, a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution, a prayer from St. Francis, a ‘60s Topp’s card of Indian’s slugger Rocky Colavito, and his unlimited American Express Card, courtesy of the Federal Election Commission. Comedy…
Prog Rock & Punk: Mikey G’s Entertainment Picks of the Week
This week’s top music picks around town, from the guy who’s paid to listen: Monday: Modern prog-rockers Porcupine Tree have had a busy year. Their latest album, Fear of a Blank Planet, was released in April. A new EP, Nil Recurring, came out last month. Like all prog, we have no idea what leader Steven…
Money Where Your Mouth Is: All Smiles
The Scene Music Department stayed up late to watch the game, and now they’re out of the office, burning copies of The Departed. Instead of raving up All Smiles — the mellow indie-rock solo project from ex-Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild — they’ll just the singer do it. But you should know that he deserves better.…
“I’m hot ‘cuz I’m fly;” MIMS Show Canceled
The MIMS show scheduled for Tuesday, October 23 has been cancelled. The NYC rapper sings “This Is Why I’m Hot,” which somehow makes a convincing case with lyrics like, “I’m hot ‘cuz I’m fly / You ain’t ‘cuz you’ not / This is why I’m hot.” Seriously. Click the pic above for a link to…
You too can set up random visits from Mormon missionaries online!
C-Notes made a potentially groundbreaking discovery today: At Mormon.com, a new feature allows you to enter your address, phone number, and e-mail address, and missionaries will drop in at your home at random times and bombard you with calls and e-mails persuading you to believe that God lives on a star near planet Kolob, which…
Reader Reads Our Cover Story, Discovers Sarcasm
Bill from Canton called to weigh in on this week’s feature, “The New McCarthyism.” Here’s what he had to say about foreign scholars being barred, because of visa troubles, from entering the U.S. “First of all, very scary headline there. Ooh, New McCarthyism, be very afraid. But the truth is, you have no evidence to…
Breaking News: losing $38 million not a good sign
The Plain Dealer reports today that the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation former chief investment officer “knew he was looking at trouble when a monthly financial report showed that one of the (BWC’s) investment managers had lost $38 million — more than a third of the money it was given to invest.” The statement by BWC…
Is This Heaven? Nope. It’s Hell on Newsprint
If you picked today in the “Which Day Will Regina Brett Relate the Indians’ Playoff Run to God and Religion” pool, it looks like you’re the big winner. The Plain Dealer religion — er, metro columnist chimes in today with all the ways baseball is just like religion, and somehow manages to sneak in a…
Justice After All? Gang-banger won’t snitch, and feels judge’s wrath
An ounce or two of justice may be on the way in the disturbing case of Akron’s V-not street gang. This gang of wannabe bad-asses is known for intimidating witnesses who agree to testify against its members A bit of background: In January, 18-year-old Shawrica Lester was heading to her car from Cage, a teen…
Tribal Solidarity: Jewish federation taps Mark Shapiro
The Jewish Federation tapped Tribe GM Mark Shapiro to speak to its tribe. Wedgie? Call back when you get mitzvahed, buddy. The Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland has found a way to take advantage of Indians’ playoff fever. Next month, the organization’s Young Leadership Division is hosting an event appropriately entitled “From One Tribe to…
Live from New York: More whining
Let it go, New York. We beat your pretty asses fair and square. In today’s New York Times, columnist Teddy Kider blames the Yankees’ loss to the Tribe on midges, squirrels – pretty much everything but mediocre ball-playing by the team. — Michael Gallucci
Breaking News: Getting Ripped Off Can Be Expensive!
“Study: Payday loans costly” That’s the headline from yesterday’s lead story in The Plain Dealer. It turns out that all those payday loan shops around Cleveland aren’t just there to occupy space in floundering strip centers, as previously thought. According to reporter Michael Sangiacomo, people actually use them. And because they can legally charge interest…
Un Video Para Tu
Local comic Mike Polk, of Last Call Cleveland fame — OK, fame’s a stretch, but you get the drift — has captured the hearts of YouTube viewers with his “One Semester of Spanish Spanish Love Song,” which you can view above. It’s been viewed one million-plus times. People apparently think it’s muy bueno. It’s sort…
No Blaze of Glory: For Asa Coon, This is How it Ended
Asa Coon may have thought he was going out in a blaze of glory when he shot up SuccessTech last week, but a 14-year-old’s revenge fantasy rarely ends romantically. This is how it is: a photo making the rounds – purportedly shot by a student – moments after his rampage.
ALCS Game 4: Japanese Hordes, Kenny Lofton’s Mom, and, Yes, More on LeBron’s Headgear
Curt Schilling tries to include Daisuke in the fun. Damn, the Indians are good at scoring seven runs in an inning, aren’t they? Having recruited Terry Pluto to smuggle me into Jacobs Field last night in his rolling knaps ack, I was able to make the above observation about baseball, and the following observations about…
Second Cop in Castlebar Race Rumble Cleared (But Still Can’t Fight for Shit).
Last year, Scene brought you the story of Aric Jackson and his girlfriend, Jamie Cuxton, who in August 2005 ventured into the Castlebar on Lorain Avenue, not knowing their mere presence would stir two off-duty Cleveland cops into action. The crime? Being a bi-racial couple under the same roof where one of the cops, William…
The Mayor’s Bro Heads School Security. There Was Just a School Shooting. We’re Just Saying …
Just because Mayor Frank Jackson’s brother Nick is incompetent, arrogant, and widely despised in his plum patronage job with the city school district doesn’t mean he’s responsible for every catastrophe there. Many city leaders failed to fix our broken schools long before he arrived. Still, it’s hard not to notice Nick’s fingerprints on last week’s…
Beantown Boys Make Good
In 1950’s The Simple Art of Murder, Raymond Chandler describes the hard-boiled detective as “a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it.” He may as well have been summoning Patrick Kenzie, the dark-city crusader of Ben Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone. From the moment Kenzie, played by…
Genuine Fake Robots
Transformers (DreamWorks) No doubt, Michael Bay’s slam-bang action-figure commercial doesn’t play nearly as well on TV, no matter how high or high-def your screen; this demands to be seen on a screen the size of a skyscraper and heard on speakers as large as jet engines. So the first half-hour plays flat, and the last…
Betty
1:30 a.m.: The bartender cuts you off. Stumbling out of the john waving your wand all over the place, demanding another shot of tequila or else, was the last straw. But you couldn’t help yourself. Playing “Roadhouse Blues” on the jukebox 23 times in a row makes a man feel invincible and free. On a…
Fantasy Island
At his concert in Valley City tonight, Wayne Faust will sing a bunch of songs he wrote about party-central Put-in-Bay. The Colorado-based troubadour was a summertime staple at the island’s Beer Barrel Saloon in the ’90s. His repertoire consists mostly of satirical songs about the local “Disneyland for drunks” — including the crowd favorite “Save…
Ordinary Rendition
Late in Rendition, a tense Washington exchange takes place about the legitimacy of sending dark-skinned Americans to secret prisons abroad. On one side is a young senatorial aide (Peter Sarsgaard), on the other the CIA suit in charge of foreign operations (Meryl Streep). He throws the Constitution at her; she invokes 9/11. There’s a genuinely…
Playing Dumb
Love him or despise him, head Jackass Johnny Knoxville has made millions from getting kicked in the yambag. Had YouTube arrived before Jackass, Knoxville, Steve-O, and the show’s other gutterpunk masochists might still be slinging French fries, getting burned by hot grease in a strictly nonrecreational way. But with a brand-new video game release and…
Kenny Smith
Cincinnati’s Shake It Records has been documenting the Ohio Valley’s vibrant music scene since its milestone first release, a long-overdue anthology of Midwest punk legends the Customs. The imprint’s Cincinnati Soul Spectrum Series aims to archive far more than just vintage soul music, but it’s fitting that One More Day kicks things off, unveiling the…
Stellar Solo Gig!
On his third solo album, Hey, You, Push Stars frontman Chris Trapper plays meaty, chewy power pop — the kind his day band has mostly skirted over the past decade. The Boston native also offers plenty of hooky jingle-jangle, introspective singer-songwriter musings, and Celtic-spiced alt-rock. Trapper recently landed a major score: His song “This Time”…
Shifting Gears
It’s been an eventful year for the Drive-By Truckers, one that signals a new chapter in their story. Six years ago they released their magnum opus, underwent a vital lineup change, and saw their fortunes shift dramatically. Now there’s reason to believe history is repeating itself. In 2001 the quintet self-released its fourth album, the…
We’re Jammin’!
TOP PICK — Bob Marley & the Wailers: Exodus (Island) The reggae icon’s best album marks its 30th anniversary with a CD reissue that tags on a live DVD of a 1977 concert. Exodus — part political manifesto, part loverman come-on — features some of Marley’s most enduring songs, including “Jamming,” “Waiting in Vain,” and…
K.C.
If the Akron hip-hop scene was St. Vincent-St. Mary high school, then Team Tuck’s Xtro would be LeBron James, a ready-to-go phenom who could be in the finals three years from now. The game jumps up three levels when he spits big-league rhymes in a deep voice, with crisp delivery that’s too good for the…
Ladies Man
John Joseph, one-half of the John Joseph & Johnny B comedy duo, has been getting in touch with his feminine side recently. He advises all guys to visit a gynecologist just once — just to see what a woman goes through: “She walks into a cold, stark room lit like the sun, wearing a robe…
Don’t Waste Teardrops
“The Killing Fields,” September 12 DON’T WASTE TEARDROPS If your relative’s a monster, are monsters relative? I just read Paul Bounds’ letter [September 26] in regard to “The Killing Fields” and must admit I felt relieved that I’m not the only one who saw one of these “innocents” for the monster he was. I’m referring…
Our top DVD picks scheduled for release this week:
AC/DC: Plug Me In (Sony) Bob the Builder: Ultimate Adventure Collection (Hit Entertainment) Bully 911: Stop Being a Victim (Bayview) Believers (Warner Bros.) Best Picture Collection (MGM)The Hoax (Miramax) Hollow Man: Director’s Cut (Sony) The Invisible (Disney) Ironside: Season 2 (Shout) The Jazz Singer: Three-Disc Deluxe Edition (Warner Bros.) The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Live at…
To Live Is To Die
With members ranging in age from 15 to 19, To Live Is to Die displays both its youth and potential on its sophomore effort, Delaying the Inevitable. The opener, “Love in Vein,” starts off well enough: An ethereal keyboard intro gives way to the band’s thrashy metalcore. That dynamic, however, is just a tease, and…
Out of This World
Singer-songwriter Nicole Atkins’ debut CD, Neptune City, pays nostalgic tribute to her New Jersey home. But the album’s 10 songs sound like they were ushered in not only from another era, but an entirely different solar system. “It’s a picture of my personality,” she says. “I’m really into David Lynch’s [soundtracks] and ’60s garage rock…
Tubbs-O-Lard
CBS News had a lot to choose from when it launched an investigation of congressional earmarks. It’s a practice whereby members of Congress slip millions of dollars of worthless stuff into budget bills, without debate or oversight, charging the final tab to you, dear reader. Yet CBS producers ultimately fell back on the safe play:…
On Stage
Forbidden Broadway: Special Victims Unit — As musical-revue franchises go, they don’t come much healthier than Forbidden Broadway, which has enjoyed several iterations over the past 25 years. Featuring comedy knockoffs of popular musicals, this most recent version is a mix of old material (Les Miz lampoons) and newer stuff, like spoofs poking The Lion…
A Touch of Glass
A lot has happened to syndicated public-radio host Ira Glass since the last time he performed at Playhouse Square two years ago. First, he relocated his longtime show, This American Life, from Chicago to New York; then in March, Showtime unveiled a TV version of the popular radio program. “The move was entirely about the…
Dance Party
While librarians shush bookworms downstairs, Jaime Declet will get feet moving in an upstairs area of the Lorain Public Library at today’s StepMania Video Dancing Game Party. “Not being a gamer myself, I had never heard of it until we started playing last winter,” says Declet, a librarian in the children’s department. “But the kids…
Told You So
“Oh, if we could just turn back the clock a few hundred years, put Larry Dolan in stocks on Public Square, and let the citizenry pelt the Indians’ owner with overripe eggs.” That was Plain Dealer columnist Bill Livingston’s lament last year. Dolan could have expected as much. It had been this way since the…
On View
NEW Erik Neff — Neff, a local painter and draftsman, was recently included in a major museum exhibition in Cleveland. That made sense: It was a group show, and Neff’s loosely geometrical abstractions, thickly painted on small canvases, fit into and benefited from the larger theme. But Neff alone is much harder to take. Here,…
There’s No Place Like Home
A century’s worth of masterpieces make their homecoming in Impressionist and Modern Masters From the Cleveland Museum of Art, now on view at the venue. The traveling showcase — which has been on the road for the past 17 months, during the museum’s renovation — features 144 works from the CMA’s collection of 19th- and…
Alt-Weeklies Provide Web Links to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Home Address
Member papers of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN) this week are providing links on their websites that direct their readers to the many places on the Internet where the home address of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is listed. AAN papers are doing so to show solidarity with the Phoenix New Times, which was…
A Losing Gamble
The casino in Streetsboro isn’t decorated in flashing lights or fountains and brass. There’s but a small neon sign that reads “Open,” and it’s quite necessary. Otherwise you might mistake the storefront in this decrepit strip mall as just another business that packed up and left. In fact, Wild Cherry Gaming is the one place…
Eight Quickies
The difference between a full-length play and a sketch is roughly comparable to that between having sex and masturbating. Each can be satisfying in its own way, but real plays and shared sex have much deeper resonances, last longer (with any luck), and don’t contribute to carpal tunnel syndrome. So when the Cleveland Public Theatre…
Family Affair
Georgia is often referred to as the California of the former Soviet Union. Like its U.S. counterpart, the region is known for its valley girls, wineries, and showbiz dynasties like the Sukhishvilis, who founded the Georgian State Dance Company 70 years ago. The celebrated troupe — which still includes a few original members working behind…
Swerve Into the Future
Adam Franklin spent most of the ’90s fronting the seminal Brit-rock act Swervedriver. Over the last several years, however, he has steered clear of the shoegazing subgenre that his band helped create. Instead, Franklin has explored jangle pop, droning psychedelia, and alt-country with his group Toshack Highway, and now solo with his 2007 debut, Bolts…
Overkill
Overkill won’t make the metal hall of fame on the first ballot, but it is one of the most enduring thrash bands and certainly the most productive. The Jersey group has been around longer and released more records than any of the “big four” — Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer. In the late ’70s, Overkill…
Need for Speed
Race enthusiasts have their eyes on the prize at the first-ever Hot Rod Cup Challenge, which runs for the next three months at Beachwood Place’s American Hot Rod Racer. After contestants build their very own remote-controlled model cars, they’re awarded licenses to compete in three-lap races. The faster the RC, the more points kids rack…
The Iceman Cometh
Val Kilmer has been a lot of things: Batman, Iceman, bloated. But he remains a Renaissance man. The classically trained actor has done David Mamet and Shakespeare, has played a doped-up, fat version of himself on Entourage, and has even released a book of poetry, My Edens After Burns — used copies of which go…
The Roches
“People either love their swooping three-part harmonies and folksy-neurotic humor, or they want to flee to another time zone,” wrote Salon critic Dwight Garner, looking back on 1975’s Seductive Reasoning, an early album by the Roches, veteran folk rockers from New York. Indeed, the quirky manner in which the Roches — sisters Maggie, Terre, and…
Masters of Disaster
Alabama rockers Maylene & the Sons of Disaster come off like the kid that Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd conceived one wild drunken night together back in the ’70s, but refuse to talk about now. On its second album, II, the band loads up on Southern boogie riffs, hardcore vocal shreds, and Prohibition-era mythmaking. Led…
The New McCarthyism
Marixa Lasso and Jim Raden took their wedding vows in March, beneath the arched ceilings and candlelit chandeliers of the Rockefeller building in Cleveland Heights. A fire crackled in the hearth, warming the beige shawl that hugged Lasso’s bare shoulders. Her dark hair shimmered under a wreath of white roses. The family Lasso had adopted…
Insane Clown Posse
Confessions of an ex-juggalo: My friend Chad introduced me to the ICP while we cruised suburban Detroit’s Gratiot Avenue in the summer of ’94. It’s important to understand the urban-obsessed world of lower-middle-class kids, who all reacted the way I did to the shimmering blue cassette that Chad slipped into his car’s tape player. ICP’s…
The Heaton’s On
The Plain Dealer’s “Minister of Culture” Michael Heaton has written thousands of human-interest articles over the past 25 years. Yet he claims it didn’t take much time to handpick the three dozen pieces that make up his new book, Truth and Justice for Fun and Profit: Collected Reporting. “I was looking for stories that had…
Lost Jazz
Burn Baby Burn is one of those mysterious LPs shrouded in rumor and legend, with a muddled backstory that’s been handed down for four decades: In November of 1968, two Cleveland musicians — trumpeter Norman Howard and searing saxophonist Joe Phillips — recorded the disc for ESP-DISK’, an iconoclastic free jazz and experimental rock label.…
The Avengers
The original Avengers only released a few singles in the band’s lifetime (1977-’79). What’s more, the group’s first posthumous collection, 1983’s Avengers, quickly went out of print. Nevertheless, the San Francisco band has influenced scores of West Coast punks. (The 1999 compilation Died for Your Sins serves as the perfect primer.) Led by the fierce…
Porrait in Terror
In Osama the Hero, opening this weekend at Cleveland Public Theatre, a small factory town has had enough of the violence that’s plagued the neighborhood lately. So a local vigilante group pins the terrorist acts (which consist mostly of exploding garages) on a teenage boy who championed Osama bin Laden at his high school. British…
International Legacy
The Eternal Legacy track “Metal Anvil” will be featured on Metal Crusade, a compilation assembled by German magazine Heavy. The CD will be included with the December/January issue. Eternal Legacy represented Cleveland’s Auburn Records at Germany’s Headbanger’s Open Air festival in July. After impressive showings at the festival and a club show, the band was…
Porcupine Tree
Falling somewhere between Coldplay-like swoon rock and the Alan Parsons Project (with a dash of Muse-style prog-metal for good measure) is Fear of a Blank Planet, the latest album from Britain’s Porcupine Tree. Of course, PT has been around a lot longer than both Coldplay and Muse. Concocting a fake history and discography, mainman Steven…
Silent Treatment
Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail is one of the director’s most intriguing early works. Shot in 1929 in his native England, the film tells the story of a woman who murders a guy who tries to rape her after she goes to his apartment. She covers the crime, but her boyfriend cop — assigned to the case,…
Good Ol’ Grill
Like typewriters and telephone booths, the small-town diner now exists mostly in memory as the spot where retired geezers gathered to discuss crop reports, and moms in housedresses sneaked in for iced teas before the wee ones came home from school. These days, of course, the “geezers” are still running the rat race, and jeans-clad…
Erin McKeown
It’s hard to pigeonhole Erin McKeown. Far from your typical coffeehouse singer-songwriter, McKeown is both a literate pop folkie and an American songbookie. On the Bostonian’s latest studio effort, this year’s Sing You Sinners, McKeown takes an entertaining trip down Tin Pan Alley, paying respect (not stodgy reverence) to such standards as “Get Happy” and…
Extreme Makeover: Big-Top Edition
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is looking an awful lot like the AST Dew Tour these days. Motorcyclists rev up inside a giant sphere, BMXers wow crowds with gravity-defying stunts, and a clown with Vanilla Ice’s old haircut jumps rope on top of the Wheel of Steel. “The show got a face-lift,”…
Market Prize
Hard to spot but worth looking for, Medina’s new gourmet food-and-wine shop, Good Taste, marks its grand opening Sunday, October 21, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with samples, cooking-school sign-ups, and an opportunity to check out the retail goodies. At 8,000 square feet, the new market is a beauty, channeling a wine-country vibe through…
Neil Young
Neil likens Chrome Dreams II, with its mix of Crazy Horse-style guitar thunder and mellow country rock, to After the Gold Rush. In other words, it’s the kind of album Young could make in his sleep by now. Recorded with pedal steel/dobro player Ben Keith, bassist Rick Rosas, and drummer Ralph Molina, Chrome Dreams II…
Runaway Train
On his debut solo album, Last of Seven, Train’s Pat Monahan sticks to the placid mom-rock that’s made his band a hit with the picking-up-the-kids-after-soccer-practice set. Producer Patrick Leonard (who’s applied tons of studio gloss to chart-topping records by Elton John and Madonna) polishes Last Seven to a radio-ready glow; guests Brandi Carlile, Graham Nash,…
Every Time I Die
Ignore rumors that Every Time I Die is a hardcore, fashioncore, metalcore, or anything-core band. True, they came out of the Buffalo punk scene. And yes, guitarist Andy Williams has Black Flag bars tattooed on the back of his neck, and his life took a turn for the better when a friend gave him a…
Down
As far as supergroups go, the Louisiana quintet Down is that rare case of the whole exceeding the sum of its parts. Boasting members of southern-metal dirtballs Corrosion of Conformity, Crowbar, and Eyehategod, the band retains a wealth of experience in the art of Sabbath-inspired blues rock. One could be forgiven for thinking that genre…
Goal Wine
“Football” and “party” usually mean Velveeta-smothered nachos and bottles of Bud Light. But at tonight’s Grapes of the Gridiron bash at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, revelers will eat and sip something a little more refined — all in the presence of pigskin greats. “It definitely introduces different groups of people to each other,”…
Touch of Evil
Puccini’s Tosca closes Opera Cleveland’s debut season with a potent mix of drama and tragedy. The old-school classic tells the story of a pair of fateful lovers and the badass villain who wants the title character all to himself. “When you’re playing a quintessentially evil, scary, dark character, you must leave enough space for the…
Girl in a Coma
There are three types of people in this world: People who think Smiths references are a good thing, people who think Smiths references are a bad thing, and people who think Smiths references are such a good thing that they just can’t help but use them as a name for their band. Texas indie rockers…
Akron/Family
Akron/Family calls Brooklyn home, but that means nothing to the geography of its sound. Love Is Simple, the quartet’s fourth disc since 2005, is a very secluded and ceremonial mountain-valley experience. At first Love Is Simple feels like just another pretty sing-along indie rock album. Then a belligerent surge of vocal gymnastics and thumping drums…
Sleepless in Cleveland
Sleep deprivation fueled Victoria Anders’ new metallic photography exhibit, which opens today at the Tower Press Building’s Wooltex Gallery. “I was jolted from sleep with this idea of visualizing Cleveland’s cityscapes through simple lines of composition that show off the industrial strength of our city,” she says. The late-night muse also inspired her to process…
