Golden Girl
Sixteen-year-old gymnast Carly Patterson didn’t have time to shake off the jet lag before she found herself onstage next to pop star JoJo at MTV’s Video Music Awards in late August. As the two teens were about to present the Viewer’s Choice Award to Linkin Park, Patterson had a flashback to a year ago, when…
Dead Can Danse
When the Omaha synthheads in the Faint moved out of singer-keyboardist Todd Baechle’s basement to create their latest album, Wet From Birth, they didn’t opt for any pimped-out rehearsal space. Like every good indie-rock lifer, the quintet kept its digs simple. “We rented a space over a convenience store that sells expired food,” Baechle says.…
Solo Flight
WED 10/13 Erstwhile Black Crowes guitarist Rich Robinson is aware of all the rumors: “I’ve heard that Kate [Hudson, wife of brother and ex-Crowes singer Chris Robinson] reunited the band. I’ve heard that Kate is writing songs for the band. And I’ve heard that we’re touring in March. None of it’s true, as far as…
Some Kind of Monster
“Nothing we do is meant to be a parody or campy joke.” So says Cramps frontmanimal Lux Interior in the liner notes of their latest rarities CD, How to Make a Monster. This may be something of a revelation, since the Cramps have become icons of kitsch kookiness. Their ability to write tunes called “It…
No Girly Men Allowed
SUN 10/10 Frank King growls at weightlifters on steroids. That’s why he and his brother, Ed, have run the Ohio Powerlifting and Bench Press Championships since 1990: to promote drug-free weightlifting. “There are some extraordinary lifters out there that can lift a lot for their body weight,” says King, who owns Kings Gym in Bedford…
Party’s Over
The Party was about to end, and the stage was as dark as the dispositions of the several hundred who had come to bid adieu to one of Kent’s finest bands. “We’re the Party of Helicopters. This is our last show in Ohio,” singer Joe Dennis announced from the Beachland Ballroom stage on a recent…
Six-String Sojourn
FRI 10/8 Lino spent his first six months in L.A. sleeping on friends’ garage floors. In the early ’90s, the part-time guitarist scrapped ambitions of becoming a doctor and decided he wanted to be a rock-and-roll guitarist. “Sometimes it’s worth it, and sometimes you’re wondering what you’re doing,” says Lino, who did time in the…
Jammin’ Again
The Cleveland jam band Oroboros, which earned national acclaim over an 18-year career, will reunite for an October 16 show at the Grog Shop (2785 Euclid Heights Boulevard, Cleveland Heights). “When we started, we were modeled on the Grateful Dead, like a family,” says Jim Miller, who now fronts the jammin’ blues outfit the JiMiller…
Austen Power
10/8-10/31 Jane Austen fans are notoriously prickly when it comes to sundry theater folk messin’ with their gal. The latest production of Pride and Prejudice, opening Friday at Lakeland Theatre, apparently earned their hard-won approval. “I had to get this adaptation vetted from the Jane Austen Society,” says director Martin Friedman. “They wanted to make…
Ian Hunter and the Rant Band
Fans of Ian Hunter have but one mental picture of him: the mound of corkscrew blond hair, the oversized dark glasses so permanently attached to his face that you’d think he was born with them on, and the clenched mouth with no trace of a smile. How many other rock stars on the scene for…
Hell of a Catch
There are at least three movies contained within the covers of H.G. Bissinger’s best-selling 1990 nonfiction book Friday Night Lights. One is concerned with the socioeconomic life of a small West Texas town built on the wobbly foundations of oil and racism, and the out-of-whack worship of a high school football team. Another would deal…
Richard Buckner
With its insistently driving acoustic guitar and opening preoccupation with “brakelights showing,” the obliquely dark lead track from singer-songwriter Richard Buckner’s upcoming Dents and Shells could easily serve as a musical extension of Crash, J.G. Ballard’s nefarious novel of automobile-impact obsession. But “A Chance Counsel” was actually inspired by a late-night Arizona encounter. “That night,…
The Importance of Being Ernesto
Revolutionary idolatry is an odd business. Just ask unruly pop singer Stew, of the unruly pop group the Negro Problem. On his Naked Dutch Painter album, the melodic rebel dares to challenge a very sacred image. “Don’t you wish there was, like, another picture of Che Guevara?” he inquires. “Like, one of him, like, at…
Project/Object
Project/Object is a good name for a Frank Zappa tribute band — apparently, Zappa’s estate does indeed object to two of Zappa’s vocalists roaming the land, playing a representative cross section of his uniquely diverse output. The group takes its mandate from a reported deathbed request from Frank that anybody and everybody play his music.…
Vote No
Silver City is being marketed as a biting, bitter sendup of George W. Bush. Hence the abundant use of trailer footage in which Chris Cooper, as Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dickie Pilager, stumbles over simple sentences, dodges reporters’ questions with mindless macho explications (“My message to the criminals is this: You straighten up or get out”),…
The Black Keys
Rubber Factory, the Black Keys’ third full-length release, gets more than just its name from Akron’s industrial decay. The CD, recorded in a former General Tire R&D lab, includes liner notes that look like an old “Operations Manual,” with song lyrics scribbled out on “Shift Notes.” Dan Auerbach’s soulful groans and lonely serenades echo the…
Voice Lessened
Tweener fave Hilary Duff effortlessly maintains her wholesome image in Raise Your Voice, a coming-of-age drama (what else would you expect when the star is all of 16?) that is being marketed as a kind of updated Fame. Whereas director Alan Parker’s popular 1980 musical was set at Manhattan’s prestigious High School of Performing Arts…
DJ Krush
Jaku, the latest offering from Japanese hip-hop export DJ Krush, seems to lose something in translation. Maybe it’s the way Shuuzan Morita’s otherworldly shakuhachi flute contributions make Krush’s beats sound lifeless and flat — a problem Krush never had when he paired with the smoky trumpeting of Toshinoro Kondo on their 1999 duet, Ki-Oku. Or…
Collapse of Eastern Civilization
Eastlake Interim Mayor George Spinner is ready to haul ass. He’s been cursed with the job since April, when Mayor Dan DiLiberto retired for health reasons — the kind that arise when you drive your city to ruin, the state declares a fiscal emergency, and the FBI comes a-calling. What amazes Spinner is that six…
Enter Laughing
One of the ways we define ourselves in the world is how we relate to authority figures. From the least among us to Donald Trump, we all have people of one sort or another who wield influence over our lives, and the way we respond to that authority goes a long way in determining who…
The Zombies
Los Angeles’s Love and the U.K.’s Zombies are two of the most influential, wrongly ignored groups of all time, so it’s quite fitting that they’re touring together after all these years. Both acts had similar careers, starting off quickly with insanely catchy hit singles in the mid-’60s — the Zombies reached No. 2 with the…
Ban? Bam!
Unloaded, Jim Titlow’s Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle feels hollow but heavy, like a wink on its way to becoming a glare. It is made of steel and black plastic, weighs 7.3 pounds, and fires 30 rounds a minute. In steady hands, it can put a bullet through a Pepsi can from three football fields away.…
Lady Killer
Ever wonder why psychopaths are omnipresent in the news and entertainment media? It’s because we’re endlessly fascinated by people who behave without moral guidelines or conscience (Ted Bundy was one; Scott Peterson may be another). Even more frightening is the idea that such loose cannons could rise to heights of great power, using superficial charm…
Boxcar Satan
To put it mildly, critics have a hard time pithily describing San Antonio’s underground-rock legends Boxcar Satan. In fact, they wind up sounding a lot less like Lester Bangs than they do Jonathan Edwards, Cotton Mather, or even Jimmy Swaggart. “The next rung down that lake of fire Leadbelly warned us about,” runs one such…
Gray Area
Nate Gray gets around. Secret recordings captured the businessman describing former East Cleveland Mayor Emmanuel Onunwor as “my mayor.” He was videotaped giving Onunwor envelopes stuffed with cash, apparently to further the interests of CH2M Hill, the company running the city’s water department. It ultimately led to Onunwor’s conviction for bribery, racketeering, and tax fraud…
On Stage
By Jeeves — Set in 1920s England and based on the P.G. Wodehouse stories of dunderheaded Bertie Wooster and his condescendingly superior butler, Jeeves, this show generates a fair number of chuckles, thanks to a mildly wry script and some well-calibrated comic performances. The thin premise is that Bertie, an affable but none-too-bright upper-crust Brit,…
Tom Waits
Real Gone, Tom Waits’s first record since the double whammy of Alice and Blood Money reaffirmed his artful side in 2002, clanks and wheezes and wails and pontificates, alternating cacophonous, uptempo tunes with dirges, theatrical narratives, and Quaalude reggae. It’s a great Tom Waits record, populated, as always, with the loners, losers, and outsiders Waits…
A Brave Never Tells
I learned about masturbation from an old man in a loincloth when I was 16. He wore a black wig, and every inch of his body was painted red. He was trying hard to imitate an American Indian, but to me, he looked more like an accountant with a bad sunburn. Beyond the trees that…
On View
NEW Needful Things: Recent Multiples — Walking into gallery 244 at the Cleveland Museum of Art is like walking into one mighty hip rummage sale. From a snow globe with John Ashcroft’s head in it to mummified Barbies, a salt-and-pepper-shaker set labeled “heroin” and “cocaine,” and a massive gold chain sporting a CNN pendant made…
De La Soul
If LL Cool J’s most recent album seemed to prove that hip-hop wouldn’t allow its veteran stars to age gracefully, this is the rebuttal. Largely MIA since 2001, De La Soul has still seen growth to its reputation as patron saint of the burgeoning hip-hop underground. So get past the first couple of tracks on…
Winners Take All
Winners Take All Coroner rules with a whim of iron: I want to congratulate you on a fine work of journalism with your astonishing and moving article, “Dead Wrong” [September 15]. Ever since I read it, I have been feeling rather vulnerable. I would like to put my faith in the criminal justice system, but…
The Sauce Is Boss
Give any fool a spatula and a meat thermometer, and he can probably grill you a decent steak. Direct said fool to a pot of boiling water and a timer, and most likely he can produce a satisfactory plate of pasta. But hand a fool a saucier and a whisk, and ask him to whip…
The Clash
Disc one: London Calling, the original, remastered and all that. Brilliant, beautiful, nostalgic, powerful, and perfect. Disc two: The Vanilla Tapes, lost and found rehearsal and demo tracks. A sketchbook jam-pad pile of tasty odds and ends. A Clash fan’s dream. Disc three: a DVD containing a 45-minute documentary of the band members’ London Calling…
Fire Down Below
Four years ago, Mike Watt was all set to record an album about his cat, a longtime pal that accompanied the 46-year-old bass player on tours with the Minutemen, Firehose, and assorted friends (like Eddie Vedder and Dave Grohl). Then a long-undetected internal abscess in Watt’s perineum (it’s, um, the space between the anus and…
Bigger Is Better
Cleveland entrepreneurs John Hotz and Mike Genco — the real-life big guys behind Big Guys Pizza (2539 W. 10th Street) — have taken the next step toward world domination by opening a second carryout pizza shop in Brecksville, at 7032 Mill Road. Just like the original Big Guys in Tremont, the new spot serves oversized,…
Various Artists
Lester Koenig probably would’ve worked his way up in the movie business if he hadn’t been blacklisted for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early ’50s. Instead, he started Contemporary Records and became an industry model. Koenig was honest, generous, supportive, and even altruistic, as his willingness to record iconoclasts…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, October 7 Sculptor Kia Neill says her work “is based in the transformation of identity as it morphs into the domesticated social ideal.” Whatever. The pieces that make up her latest exhibition, In-Home Mutations, combine toys and household items to offer a light, amusing, and fun take on retro-kitsch design. Whether slapping a cowboy…
Reason to Smile
Brian Wilson’s story is one of creativity and commerce, about trying to make the most innovative, divine music in the world. It’s also about a dysfunctional family, about a tyrannical father who allegedly beat him so hard he went deaf in one ear, about brothers who lent him the voices he heard in his head…
The Mice
For all 726 Mice fans out there, this CD was supposed to be a Holy Grail reissue to match Brian Wilson’s Smile. The Mice brought pure pop heart to a mid-’80s Cleveland underground scene that often got caught up in insular ironic ha-has. Though drunk and jokey in their own way, the Mice always seemed…
