Run, Eric, Run!
Eric Fingerhut does not like to interrupt. He does not enter a crowded room and pull people to him like planets to the sun. He does not brag about himself or gossip about others. He doesn’t wink. Fingerhut, therefore, is a rare politician. The cool morning sun rises slowly on the last morning of September,…
Rebel, Rebel
It’s the 10th anniversary of John Duigan’s smart, sensual, and superb movie Sirens, and I’m reflecting on the comment made by a female friend when I asked her how she liked it. At the time, in American pop culture, we were experiencing the last original gasps of the riot-grrrl movement, and she replied with disdain,…
Angie Stone/Anthony Hamilton
Both halves of this R&B twin bill have more in common than just their prominent positions in urban music. Neosoul diva Stone, a South Carolina native, traces her roots all the way back to Sugar Hill Records, where she was part of the rap trio Sequence in the early ’80s. In fact, she nearly reunited…
Westerly Winds
They just kept coming. Two, three, even four times a week. Faxes from an unknown businessman who knew “a bit” about Kenneth Schalmo’s company and “a bit” about his industry, yet claimed to know exactly what was best for the Canal Fulton contractor: namely, to sell. “Kenneth: I have been writing you and writing you…
The Passion of the Goy
Part soap-opera, part history lesson, part vital, and a little tedious, Rosenstrasse, from veteran director Margarethe Von Trotta, illustrates an important standoff in WWII Berlin framed by — and sometimes diluted by — an unwieldy present-day scenario. It’s relevant material, very much worth considering, and it may serve as a balm for many, yet as…
Attack of the Boy Scouts
Put that in your pipe and smoke it: As a 5th-year holder of the Pipestone, I want to let you know that I cannot believe you actually published this article [“A Brave Never Tells,” October 6]. You gave a completely biased view of the program. You also failed to mention that the program is completely…
Blessed Are the Cheesemakers
In 2004 A.D., as the five remaining members of the legendary Monty Python comedy troupe lie in coffins in a Vanity Fair spread to jeer at their own deaths, it’s really nice to have them back together commanding the big screen. Behold anew their wonderfully wiggy Monty Python’s Life of Brian as it makes its…
Little Big Man
Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose megalomaniacal presidential campaign made him a national punch line, is on intimate terms with the concept of shamelessness. So it comes as no surprise that he refused a City Club invitation to debate Republican opponent Ed Herman. Spokesman Doug Gordon says Kucinich is not a wuss; the Elfin One simply doesn’t…
Politically Correct
Anyone who compares President Bush to Adolf Hitler is being non-observant in the extreme. The President has no mustache, for starters, and Hitler never cleared brush at his redoubt in the Bavarian mountains. Of course, those who draw these parallels are usually dismissed as paranoid leftists who hate their country — the same kinds of…
Second String
They turned on and tuned in for the kids at Woodstock. Then the Incredible String Band dropped out. Thirty-five years ago, the Scottish folk-rock trio was at its peak: There were sold-out shows in the U.K., a rabid following that devoured every note it played, and respect from peers like Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and…
No Mercy
It’s bad enough that the tragedy of 9-11 has been flogged by politicians to justify damn near anything they want to do, but when a playwright employs that humongous emotional sledgehammer to crack a minuscule walnut — using the attack on the World Trade Center as a setup for a thin and rather repulsive relationship…
Social Distortion
Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness is a true survivor. In 26 years with his band, he’s done plenty that would make a parent cringe — gone to jail, struggled with addiction, been on both the winning and losing end of beatings, and branded himself with precedent-setting tattoo density — but he’s never embarrassed himself by…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, October 21 Ordinarily, 7 Floors of Hell would be something we’d stay very, very far away from (attics and basements are enough to give us the willies). But Halloween’s coming up, and haunted houses are as much a part of the season ritual as dressing up as a giant testicle and begging for candy…
On Stage
Crowns — In the African American community, churchgoing women still bedeck their heads in feathery and sequined flights of fancy, and that tradition is given a loving and rousing tribute in this show. Playwright Regina Taylor has adapted this work from the book Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats, mixing stories, mini-profiles, and…
. . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead
In concert, . . . And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead smothers its songs with dissonance before cremating the compositions in an instrument-annihilating ritual. Lost in those cresting-and-crashing waves of velocity and volume is the fact that this guitar-smashing group writes better hooks than just about anyone in its genre. Under…
May the Force Be Hip Too
Eric Dietrich felt the buzz at a basketball game last year. He cased the arena and watched how the crowd got caught up in a good game of hoops. If the excitement could escalate in a sold-out basketball arena, he thought, it could certainly get crazy at an indoor soccer game. The vice president and…
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…
Mest
Unless you still hope that the cashier at the liquor store doesn’t confiscate your fake ID as you stock up on cheap booze for the weekend, you probably have no idea who Mest is. In fact, since Simple Plan and New Found Glory hog the whine-punk quota on TRL and radio, the Chicago quartet has…
Crazy, for You
10/22-10/31 It takes more than eating cat food or farting in an elevator to earn a person the nickname “Crazy.” That moniker requires some totally stupid shit — like performing somersaults atop something called the Pendulum of Pandemonium or attempting motorcycle tricks in a 16-foot steel sphere while your wife fearfully cowers at the bottom…
Nature Calls
Eat your hearts out, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. You lucked out on the geysers, mule trips, and miles of spectacular vistas. But Northeast Ohio is hot on your trail: Not only do we have an honest-to-federal-tax-dollars national park, now we have the laid-out lodge to go with it. Admittedly, the Blue Canyon Kitchen * Tavern…
Switchfoot
Jon Foreman has heard enough about his band’s faith and Christian-rock underpinnings. The Switchfoot front man says that to really understand him as a musician, critics and fans should know that he’s a devoted follower of J.C. We’re not talking Mel Gibson’s Hollywood savior here. It’s that other troublesome demagogue: Johnny Cash. “In an interview…
President Bash
SUN 10/24 If elected President, Tailgating Party candidate Joe Cahn of New Orleans would settle congressional disputes with sudden-death overtimes. Cahn and his three-year-old running mate, Sophie the cat, are traveling to every NFL city this season in RV One to tailgate with football fans. Cahn’s supporters include the Campbell Soup Company, which is donating…
No Remorse
Blag Dahlia wants to have his cake and eat you too. The pop records that the slim, shady Dwarves frontman (who compares himself to both Jesus Christ and Jack the Ripper) makes with pop producers often sound sweet — until you pay attention to the words. With spit-polished sing-alongs about statutory rape, Satan, and doing…
Mos Def
Five years ago, on the most audacious move of a brilliant debut, Mos Def declared “The Rolling Stones could never, ever rock like Nina Simone” and reclaimed rock and roll for the ghetto. On The New Danger, he puts his music where his mouth was. Bristling with guitars and filled with raw, murky sounds alien…
The Other Schubert Falls
SAT 10/23 Even though he’s credited with writing nearly 1,000 musical compositions by the time he died at age 31, Austrian composer Franz Schubert remains an enigma to Jonathan Sheffer. So, in Franz Schubert: Unfinished/Refinished, the conductor and artistic director of Red {an orchestra} gives Schubert’s two-movement Unfinished Symphony a 21st-century overhaul. “I’ve always been…
Vanessa Carlton Comes Clean
Before Vanessa Carlton became a familiar face in Teen People and on MTV, the brunette was just another accomplished pianist-dancer deglamorizing the starving-artist cliché. The 18-year-old — raised in small-town Pennsylvania but newly graduated from N.Y.C.’s prestigious School of American Ballet — lived in Hell’s Kitchen and was gigging around the city, doing what she…
Jimmy Eat World
Futures often conjures the hookfests of the Goo Goo Dolls. This is hardly a pejorative comparison, emo elitists: Before vocalist Johnny Rzeznik morphed into a doppelgänger of Jon Bon Jovi, Goo had the heart of a brash bar band. Futures practically booms with such blackened sugar. Somersaulting riffs, mind-expanding choruses, and dreamy, Anglophile-pleasing textures –…
Songs for Pirouetting Lovers
10/21-10/24 For its Cleveland debut, the Miami City Ballet is offering a mixed program featuring Nine Sinatra Songs, Ballo della Regina (based on a Verdi composition), and Stravinsky Violin Concerto. “It shows three different manners and approaches, in terms of style and periods,” explains artistic director Edward Villella. “It’s fun, but there are dimensions and…
Voice Deactivated
In 1994, a rock-and-roll god with a beer gut was born when the tiny Scat label released a disc now considered by many to be the Sgt. Pepper’s of indie rock. The album was recorded under less-than-ideal conditions in various midwestern basements by an almost unknown band loosely formed around a middle-aged fourth-grade teacher from…
Converge
Converge is one of the most brutal and single-minded noisecore outfits around, mixing the complex riffage of Botch with the hellish screeching of Unsane. It’s a thoroughly unpalatable mix, unless you’re really looking to have a record pummel you about the face and head for half an hour or so. The band’s 2001 album, Jane…
Attack of the Clones
The Grudge bears the approval of Sam Raimi, but not his smarts or sense of fun. The wunderkind director behind the Spider-Man and Evil Dead franchises has followed in the path of Robert Zemeckis and Joel Silver with their Dark Castle releases, launching his own lucrative spook factory, Ghost House. However, serving as co-executive producer,…
A Humble Rumble
“You can boo if you want,” Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter announces as the lights go down in the VIP room of the Odeon, his features illuminated only by the glow of blue lava lamps behind the bar. It’s a fittingly self-deprecating introduction to the premiere of his band’s first DVD, The Dehumanizing Process, which is…
Elliott Smith/Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen has a voice capable of pulling the shades on the brightest of days. He sounds the way a bad hangover feels. His deep, weary baritone makes every song seem like a eulogy, even when he’s singing about getting laid — which is often. The same could be said of Elliott Smith, whose frail…
Killing You Slowly
The punk-hipster appeal of filmmaker Jim Van Bebber is based on half a dozen lurid, no-budget gorefests like My Sweet Satan, in which a suicidal teenager gets strung out on dope and starts worshiping the devil, and Roadkill: The Last Days of John Martin, whose maniacal protagonist insists on scraping his dinner off the local…
Replacement Rocker
Around 300 fans turned out at Peabody’s two Mondays ago to see Mushroomhead play its first show with singer Waylon, the band’s newly recruited replacement for departed frontman J. Mann. The band’s first non-Clevelander, Waylon previously sang with North Carolina’s 3 Quarters Dead, an alt-metal group that toured with Mushroomhead. The band took the stage…
Doug Gillard
Pink Frost is a brand new imprint co-run by Jack Rabid, publisher and editor of America’s finest alternative music magazine, The Big Takeover. As Rabid has probably been Guided by Voices’ biggest fan in the national media over the past decade, it’s no surprise that he’s behind GBV guitarist Doug Gillard’s solo debut. If there…
Mind Games
Before he made Primer for some $7,000, Dallas software-engineer-turned-writer-director-actor-editor Shane Carruth had no idea how to make a movie. Some who see his creation will argue that he still doesn’t, while others will lavish upon it the hearty praise reserved for visionaries who leap from the shadows to the spotlight without any warning. Such has…
The Blood Brothers
Yes, Blood Brothers singers Jordan Blilie and Johnny Whitney are capable of screams and screeches more grating than Godzilla’s nails on a giant chalkboard, but it would be wrong to dismiss the group as a run-of-the-mill screamo or punk band. The Brothers cleverly appropriate various rock styles that aren’t usually considered common in the hardcore…
David Thomas and Two Pale Boys
Maybe all that rocking out with the reformed Rocket From the Tombs last year reanimated the sequestered punk in David Thomas, as this release finds him toying with the riffs and revved beats of rock he long ago dismissed. Well, not “beats,” exactly. Thomas and the Boys traverse their ink-black byways via such agit-instrumentation as…
Say Wha? Say Why?
Maybe it’s the mark of a great film that it can affect an audience member even when he sleeps through the entire thing. Such was the case with my father at a recent preview of David O. Russell’s I Heart Huckabees, a philosophy lecture masquerading as a comedy in which shrill Lily Tomlin and mop-topped…
Steve Earle & the Dukes
Steve Earle can write a political song that actually does more than just preach and irritate. Maybe it’s the storytelling that bolsters his consideration of what soldiers endure on his latest, The Revolution Starts . . . Now. In “Rich Man’s War,” three blue-collar workers answer a call from their country. “Home to Houston” tells…
Home Sweet Homo
Joel Brown fantasizes about an Eden inhabited exclusively by elderly gay men. At 60, with a balding head and a starched, monogrammed shirt, Brown looks almost grandfatherly. Since 1988, he’s operated the Parkside Male Residential Hotel, a refuge for men who have nowhere else to go. He’s harbored sex offenders, convicts, and recovering drug addicts.…
Beating the Bush
Hijacking Catastrophe, a documentary about the co-opting of 9/11 by the Bush administration, begins with a chilling quotation. “The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders,” the screen reads. “That is easy . . . All you have to do is tell them that they are being attacked . . .…
My Chemical Romance
As a movement, emo is notably easy to ridicule. After all, its practitioners tend to be self-conscious, self-pitying, self-loathing, and self-obsessed — a collection of traits even Narcissus would have a tough time topping. Fortunately, My Chemical Romance’s major-label bow, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, avoids emo’s worst pitfalls (most of the time, anyhow) and…
