One-Man Swat Team
A good spanking is delivered selectively. Never too hard, and never with the hand, because the hand is an instrument of love. A belt or a wooden spoon is best, but a small hairbrush will do. Pants should be on, because swats leave marks on bare flesh. Words to inflict pain by, from one of…
Burning Airlines
The Washington, D.C. hardcore scene has always been defined by a certain raw intelligence that has been lacking in similar pockets of music around the country. The obvious progenitors, Minor Threat and, eventually, Fugazi, were the first to insist that their listeners really listen — a total reaction to punk’s contention that none of it…
Edge
On Saturday, members of the Black Women’s Political Action Committee kept Cuyahoga County Commissioner Tim McCormack, a participant in its political forum, at the microphone long after his two minutes were up. On the topic of the juvenile detention center, McCormack spoke frankly, calling the current facility a “terrible dungeon.” McCormack said the new center,…
Lynne Arriale
Pianist Lynne Arriale has been steadily building an audience for her trio, which includes bassist Jay Anderson and drummer Steve Davis. Her sixth trio CD, Live at Montreux, closely follows her fifth effort, Melody. Somebody out there must dig what she’s doing. For a jazz musician, Arriale has a rather unusual background. She began as…
Almost Famous
At first, you don’t want to admit it, because it seems somehow wrong–just too easy. After all, the woman on the other end of the phone line is not that woman seen every Sunday night on HBO, lamenting the sad, sorry state of her love affairs. She’s not an actress or a character, but a…
Barenaked Ladies
The Barenaked Ladies are one of those bands you must see live to appreciate. But what initially comes across as an irreverent stage show, complete with improvisational humor and odd cover songs (ranging from Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and Rick Springfield’s “Jesse’s Girl” to the Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony”), quickly becomes formulaic and predictable. Formed…
The Mayoral Ferris Wheel
White Disney World is what we need: The Lakefront Carnival article written by Jacqueline Marino [September 7] was exceptional and straightforward. As a Clevelander, I can only hope to one day see such a development on Cleveland’s shoreline. It seems to me to be a truly visionary plan by the greatest and most noble mayor…
Artificial Reality
Nic Nicosia brings a careening, manic sensibility to his large-scale photographs of American suburbia. Not that there is anything slapdash about his work. His is clearly a vision, not just a case of a little too much caffeine. Nic Nicosia: Real Pictures 1979-1999, the retrospective now on view at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art,…
Stars in Our Crown
For the edification of Northeast Ohioans, three area theaters have imported a sampling of recent off-Broadway hits. But, happily, only the plays themselves are borrowed; the talent is all exquisitely local. Three of our best talents — Scott Plate, Catherine Albers, and David Robeano, at Cleveland Public Theatre, Dobama, and Beck Center, respectively — are…
Winging It at Gateway
Shhh . . . do you hear it? That mellifluous chatter in the downtown air just may be coming from the Thirsty Parrot. As Gateway’s newest restaurant, the Caribbean-themed cantina certainly has its work cut out for it, if it hopes to escape the fate of its predecessors. In an area where restaurants, both good…
Wok This Way
Our own little outpost of Arizona-based P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is scheduled to open this week in Beachwood, near I-271 (26001 Chagrin Boulevard, 216-292-1411). The restaurant, which combines fairly typical Asian fare (think Mu Shu Pork, Kung Pao Chicken, and Beef Chow Mein, for example) with a full bar, a trendy wine list, an assortment…
Gong Goes On
“It’s never stopped,” he says via phone from a tour stop in New York. “I see it as a tradition that isn’t dependent on one particular person. It’s proven that, by surviving no matter what we do. It doesn’t matter how much we reject it, it won’t go away. It’s been there for 32 years…
Oral Fixation
Before Europe evolved into sovereign domains, tribal societies were the norm, and word of mouth transmitted their histories from one generation to another. A peek at the family tree of an Anglo-American might reveal Uncle Moletar getting lit and telling the same old story about the dragon he smote, or perhaps listening, enthralled, to the…
Macedonian Maestro
Like a number of avant-garde musicians these days, vibist/ drummer Matt Moran has a working knowledge of several genres. He’s among the best young jazz vibists and has also concentrated on the music of Charles Ives with his quartet, Sideshow. With his other group, Slavic Soul Party, he plays Balkan music, but he and his…
Holy Superhero!
The only difference between the Willie Aames life story and an E! True Hollywood Story is that Aames is still alive and has retained some semblance of an acting career. He was the requisite child actor (Eight Is Enough) who went on to ingest a laundry list of drugs (“It was the ’70s — we…
Soundbites
Plenty has changed since the days of electric Kool-Aid acid tests, bell bottoms, and long hair, but Damnation of Adam Blessing guitarist Jim Quinn’s recollection of the past isn’t as fuzzy as you might imagine, given the amount of drugs he’s consumed in the name of creative pursuits. “I remember playing an SDS [Students for…
Listen to the Movie
“This song explains why I’m leaving home and becoming a stewardess,” says Anita Miller (Zooey Deschanel) to her well-meaning, overbearing mother, as the soundtrack begins to swell with the low hums of Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Just a few seconds earlier, Elaine Miller (Frances McDormand) had insisted she wouldn’t allow such filth in her…
Bjork
We’ve been told that Bjork’s Selmasongs makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, the movie to which it’s a soundtrack. Doesn’t matter. The seven songs that make up this brief but rich 32-minute EP are packed with the electronic adventures and melodic juxtapositions that made the Icelandic…
The Devil to Pay
In the 1998 documentary The Fear of God: The Making of The Exorcist, made for the BBC and available on The Exorcist 25th-anniversary DVD, director William Friedkin spends a great deal of time explaining why he excised certain scenes from his film, scenes author and screenwriter William Peter Blatty had begged him to keep in…
Los Amigos Invisibles
Arch and funny, Los Amigos Invisibles’s Arepa 3000 vamps on disco, funk, and hard rock. Although it’s largely based on the discredited disco form, Arepa 3000 is livelier and more original than the group’s previous album, 1998’s The New Sound of the Venezuelan Gozadera, which was more allied to lounge and orthodox rock and roll.…
A Touch of Cute
ome may find reason to embrace the romantic comedy Woman on Top as the nonsensical but sweet-tempered fantasy of two South American filmmakers who don’t understand life in this country very well, but grasp all the magical powers of Brazil. After all, Brazil ranks second only to fashionable Tibet on every armchair-traveling American’s list of…
elliott
The most remarkable thing about elliott’s 1998 debut, U.S. Songs, was its packaging. The disc came enclosed in a grayish silver slipcase that folded open to reveal two pristine booklets with liner notes and beautiful photographs. It almost didn’t matter that the loud guitars and whiny vocals weren’t as evocative as the packaging — U.S.…
Battle of the Bones
In the Hall of Man at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History stands a little lady who once smacked a young science upside the head. Internationally, she’s known as Lucy, but her most ardent admirers know her as AL-288-1. Lucy is a 3.2-million-year-old fossil. Her three-and-a-half-foot-tall partial skeleton has been reconstructed to capture her in…
Biaxadent
Biaxadent has gone through so many line-up changes since releasing its debut CD, The Dawn of Eternal Nights, three years ago, that the only original member left is singer-guitarist Dion DeSantis. An opinionated, fang-wearing frontman who hasn’t been afraid to take on local promoters, DeSantis has continued to feud with Spotlight Entertainment and its pay-per-publication…
Worst Aid
On the night of September 13, just before tuxedo-clad cellist Yo-Yo Ma stepped on the Severance Hall stage to give a benefit concert for the AIDS Housing Council, Ameritech Ohio President Jacqueline F. Woods reminded the capacity crowd about the importance of the housing council’s work. It wasn’t exactly a tough sell. Each member of…
Muddy Waters Tribute
It’s about time that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum got around to paying tribute to McKinley Morganfield (Muddy Waters) by featuring him in the American Music Masters series entitled Got My Mojo Workin’: Muddy Waters and Modern Blues. The blues master guided the barebones acoustic sounds of his Mississippi Delta home…
