Empty Sex
The very best thing about A Dirty Shame, a giddy sex farce from John Waters, is the credits. What’s not to love about a list of characters that includes “Sylvia Stickles,” “Marge the Neuter,” “Fat Fuck Frank,” “Cow Patty,” and “Tire Lick Boy”? The soundtrack, too, bears comic fruit, with songs such as “Tony’s Got…
Gene Ludwig
Gene Ludwig gooses his Hammond B3 organ so effectively, standards are refreshed, and originals hook instantly. In his late 60s, the Pittsburgh-area native hits town this week, reunited with his partners from 40 years ago, guitarist Jerry Byrd and drummer Randy Gillespie. Heavily influenced by Jimmy Smith and Johnny “Hammond” Smith, Ludwig began on piano…
Happy Hours (and Hours)
Here’s John Joseph’s advice to aspiring comedians: Get a day job. But the New York comedian would never deny a young comic a chance to get his name in The Guinness Book of World Records. To mark its second anniversary, Hilarities has recruited Joseph and 40 other comedians from Detroit to Philadelphia (including its own…
Let Him Be
A few years ago, it was hard to explain the distrust people felt for government in the 1960s and ’70s, because if you weren’t there, you just didn’t get it. Well, lots of folks are getting it now — especially the woman who was handcuffed and arrested for wearing an anti-Bush T-shirt at a Republican…
The Gift of Gab
Blackalicious’s Gift of Gab looks pretty plain when the bespectacled MC takes the stage in a hoodie — no bling, no Kangol, no alpha-dog attitude. And he definitely doesn’t look like one of the most nimble men on the planet. But when his mouth starts to move, he spits like few others. Rooted in San…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, September 23 Massillon knows all about high school football. So it’s fitting that the Massillon Museum is hosting Small Town High School Football . . . Featuring Montana and Wyoming Six-Man and Eight-Man Football, a photography exhibit by Morgan Tyree. And despite the clunky title, the 40 pics on display are fluid and often…
The Butler Does It
If hard times and hard laughter go hand in hand, we ought to be giggling ourselves stupid these days. So it’s handy that Beck Center is trotting out By Jeeves, a silly and unsubstantial musical amusement composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and written by Alan Ayckbourn. Based on the P.G. Wodehouse stories of dunderheaded Bertie…
Further Seems Forever
Heart-on-their-sleeves emocore slashers Further Seems Forever cycle through lead singers the way Spinal Tap goes through drummers, albeit not under circumstances involving death by spontaneous self-combustion. The Florida group’s original mouthpiece, Chris Carrabba, departed after 1999’s The Moon Is Down for sensitive-guy campfire angst under the guise of Dashboard Confessional. Its next heartfelt screamer, Jason…
Electoral Collage
9/25-2/27 The hundreds of items that make up the Western Reserve Historical Society’s Every Four Years: Ohio’s Role in the Making of the American President, which opens Saturday, are more than just artifacts of past presidential campaigns, says chief operating officer Kermit Pike; they’re “monumental [pieces of] American history.” Among the memorabilia that will fill…
On Stage
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf — This Karamu production is an absolute must-see for anyone who revels in challenging, involving, and completely entrancing theater. Director Terrence Spivey has assembled a drop-dead gorgeous cast of eight strong, expressive women who take the poems penned by Ntozake Shange and turn them…
Chris Smither
Talk about an endorsement that makes you take notice: Bonnie Raitt called Chris Smither “My Eric Clapton.” Grand praise indeed, and Smither’s six-string finger-picking is certainly worthy of such hyperbole. But the 60-year-old troubadour from New Orleans is a fine artist in his own right, who has been in a groove since the early 1990s,…
Trash Man
It all started on the way to school. Something would catch little Davy Rothbart’s eye as he walked the same path day after day. Before long, a discarded photograph or a crumbled piece of paper would find its way into his pocket, on its way to join a collection of similarly discovered items amassed at…
On View
NEW M3 (M to the Third Power) — Gallery M’s first-birthday show features work by three exceptional fine jewelry artists. Diane Field’s pieces veer more toward being small sculpture rather than functional jewelry. Field adds thin strands of metal netting to minute surgical implements used for cosmetic surgery, creating indeterminate forms. Anya Pinchuk’s intricate and…
Green Day
American Idiot — widely described as a “punk-rock opera” — comes full circle, back to Green Day’s 1994 mainstream breakthrough, Dookie. That album detailed the raging, Generation X boredom of teen punks; Idiot is ostensibly a chronicle of one of those burnouts 10 years later — still frustrated and angry, but this time having a…
Hole Shebang
9/23-12/24 Even with 30 years of Saturday mornings on the golf links behind him, Mark McNulty has never aced a hole. “There’s gotta be a first time,” says McNulty, as he practices his shot at the Hole in One Challenge. Since late July, every golfer who pays a greens fee at the Cleveland Metroparks’ Manakiki…
From Russia, With Love
The last time I can recall getting into a fight over food, I was five, and the neighborhood bully was threatening to run off with my sour-apple DumDum. So imagine my surprise when, during a recent visit to Akron’s Globe Café, a companion and I nearly came to blows over the last forkful of fried…
Shadows Fall
Metal is a formalist, modernist genre. It’s not nearly as important to be innovative as it is to make the strongest record possible. This is why classic, and classicist, acts like Judas Priest, Slayer, Lamb of God, and Atreyu were the most impressive performers on 2004’s Ozzfest. Shadows Fall understands this mind-set. Its last album,…
Almost Grown
THU 9/23 Like Michael Moore, author Christopher Paul Curtis’s work is informed by his hometown of Flint, Michigan. “It’s an American city that’s emblematic of a lot of cities that are in similar situations,” explains the Newbery Medal winner (for the 2000 coming-of-age tale Bud, Not Buddy). “Flint was a boomtown for many years. When…
Mojo’s Workin’
We were sorry to see Executive Chef Morgen Jacobson leave Lockkeepers (8001 Rockside Road, Valley View, 216-524-9404) last month. But now that Clevelander Michael “Mojo” Herschman (Cena Copa, Mojo) has taken over the kitchen, we’re feeling much better, thanks. What sets Herschman apart from many of his peers is his ability to playfully push the…
Interpol
The curse of the sophomore record is legendary. Yet for most bands, the second long-player is richer than the first — the raw energy of the debut ripened, deepened, expanded into a mature voice. Think Radiohead and The Bends. The danger of that second record, consequently, is that a band’s idiom can’t sustain much expansion;…
Buffoons With Tunes
9/24-9/25 If Tom Phillips hadn’t tripped over singer Chris Donley at an Ashland University jam night, the Sindust silliness never would have taken off. Three CDs of melodic hard rock later, the quartet has graduated from impromptu sessions on campus to big-city gigs at the Odeon and Peabody’s. “In years past, there was no voice…
Beats and Pieces
“When you’re sampling stuff like James Brown, Roy Ayers, or the Meters, it’s pretty hard to fuck up,” admits hip-hop producer RJD2. “Almost everything they did was good in the first place, so you kind of have to be an idiot to sample the stuff and make a bad record.” It seems like a nonissue,…
Joss Stone
The voice and vintage-R&B vibe of Joss Stone’s 2003 debut The Soul Sessions were so at odds with reality — how could the second coming of Aretha be a lily-white British teen? — that it’s still hard to believe. But not only does Mind, Body & Soul repeat the trick, it betters it: Substituting Stone’s…
Already Forgotten
In this year of political movies, in which agendas serve as plots, comes the unlikeliest candidate of them all, The Forgotten, in which the climactic moment hinges upon the belief that a child’s life begins at conception and not in the delivery room. To explain any further would reveal too many plot points. It’s already…
Favorite Haunts
Colin Meloy was not a normal boy. He loved books more than just about anything — Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Piers Anthony — and had a rather unsettling fascination with ax murderers. At the age of 7, he wrote, directed, and starred in his own play, The Bloody Knight, which he describes as “basically a…
Chevelle
The one thing harder than writing a No. 1 hit is following it up, and trying to craft a sequel to 2002’s “Send the Pain Below” weighed heavily on Chicago modern-rock phenoms Chevelle. Crumpling under the pressure, the band pulled a desperate move on its third LP: It’s gone from being merely influenced by Tool…
Rent-a-Renoir
Philip Alejo kneels on the floor of the Allen Art Museum, his dark brown hair flopping into his eyes as he peruses rows of works by Picasso and Chagall and Warhol. With a soft-tipped pencil, the Oberlin College senior carefully maps out the names and locations of the pieces he likes best. Tomorrow morning, he…
Terrible 10
David Byrne has done it right. Destined to live high on the hog — thanks to Talking Heads royalties — until the day he dies, the adventurous quirkmeister has been nothing but ballsy since his seminal new-wave outfit parted ways. You may not like everything he’s tried since he reached the apex of his career,…
The Six Parts Seven
Everyone loves a kick in the ass: the thrill of slashed guitars, the exhilaration of a fat bass beat. But the guys in the Six Parts Seven wouldn’t know a visceral rush if it came up and disemboweled them. Since 1995, this instrumental septet has peddled a brand of melodic, free-floating post-rock that has outlived…
The Wreck of the Oglebay Norton
In nearly a century and a half in Great Lakes shipping and mining, Oglebay Norton Co. never had a CEO quite like John Lauer. When the former B.F. Goodrich leader joined Oglebay in late 1997, he refused to accept a salary. At the time, Lauer was a doctoral candidate at Case Western Reserve University, and…
Stolen Summer
Summer is normally the highlight of the concert season, with top-drawing acts and package tours making the rounds to support big new releases. But this summer was a bust, right up there with Catwoman and the Indians’ bullpen. Maybe the worst one ever. Read on, as we recount the ways these past few months have…
Saul Glennon
Songwriter and guitarist Jack Rugan’s first record was the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer” single. The other members of Saul Glennon hail from the end of Generation X, which embraced Britpop anew in the 1990s. The band’s been making music together since Oasis hit big, and its last release was called British Garage Invasion. If you haven’t…
Wolves in Samaritan’s Clothing
If you see your doctor sporting a button that reads, “Ask me how you can save medicine,” you may be putting your health in the hands of Mephistopheles. The button is part of $1.5 million campaign by the Ohio State Medical Association and Ohio Hospital Association to make sure the state Supreme Court remains stacked…
Shawn of the Dead Band
After six years and some frustratingly close brushes with the big time, Akron modern rockers Cyde have called it quits. “I decided to put that horse down,” says frontman-guitarist Shawn Hackel. “She was breathin’ from the nose. That’s it.” The band formed in 1998 when Hackel, then guitarist of the regional funk-rock band Java Bean,…
Whither the Y?
Whither the Y? A downtown perspective: In response to Chris Maag’s YMCA article [“Tough Sell,” September 15], I am writing to challenge two conclusions. Maag wrote: “For the Y to grow, first it must shrink. The only long-term source of new money is to build branches in the suburbs.” We can all agree that the…
Robert Randolph & the Family Band
We’re not ones to bow our heads at the altars of false guitar gods. But Robert Randolph, a pedal-steel virtuoso based in New Jersey, is — according to many people who’d know better than we would — a true guitar god, a title he shows off robustly on Unclassified, the major-label studio debut of Randolph…
Country Club Swagger
The man on TV swaggers like he’s undefeated in 57 Collinwood bar fights. He threatens, he talks big, he’s fearless. His are the pronouncements of a badass. Meet George Bush, consummate man. It’s a noble thing he seeks. While the Manly Man has fallen from fashion, replaced by The Sensitive Guy who can cook a…
Dead Moon
Dead Moon main man Fred Cole doesn’t go for also-ran bitch rants. Musicians who whine about how the industry screwed them should remember that they offered up their ass in the first place and would probably do it again. Cole learned his lesson early, turned around, and never looked back. His first two bands –…
The Company Line
Near the beginning of The Corporation, the narrator posits the documentary’s thesis: “We present the corporation as a paradox,” she says, “an institution that creates great wealth, but causes enormous and often hidden harm.” In fact, this formulation is not a paradox: Creating wealth is not the opposite of causing harm. Furthermore, though The Corporation…
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo is the sound of slightly nerdy brainiacs rifling through the racks of the hippest record store in town. You know the type — obsessive fans who always have the first line on what’s new and cool and often obscure, people who can also find the buried treasures on albums you thought were…
Dead Good
“Ash is feeling a little bit under the weather, so I’ll be taking charge.” So says Shaun (Simon Pegg) to his valiant crew of appliance salespeople, but if you don’t get the real meaning, you’re probably not part of the target audience for Shaun of the Dead. Ash, for the benefit of readers who are…
Alter Bridge
Why is former Creed guitarist Mark Tremonti even bothering with local media? His former band sold more than 30 million records, and One Day Remains, the first album by his new band Alter Bridge, debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard album chart without the group playing so much as a single live show. “I…
