Sex and the Single Vampire
He’s written music about penises and fairy tales. Now avant-garde classical composer David Del Tredici has moved on to bloodsucking freaks with the release of Dracula, a tale of seduction and sensuality with a dark side. “It’s all about me,” Del Tredici, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and self-proclaimed sex addict, says of the work, which…
He’s the Chef
Though he wasn’t present in the birthing room, his grandfatherly smile triggers the earliest of blurry postnatal memories: a twinkle in the eye, a full belly. Rolling meatballs, and plateaus of face-smearing red sauce. He’s the face on the tin can: former Clevelander Hector Boiardi, known to three prepackaged generations as Chef Boyardee. But millions…
Life’s Still Beautiful
The joke that opens Jakob the Liar, the new Holocaust comedy (talk about an oxymoron) starring Robin Williams, captures the bittersweet quality — the grim reality mixed with laughter — that the rest of the movie tries and fails to embody. The story takes place in an unidentified Jewish ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland during the…
Mr. America
Have you heard? The only tools a nice fellow needs to repair the damaged psyches of an entire town are a guilty conscience and a dash of insight. That, at least, is the premise of Lawrence Kasdan’s silly new social parable, Mumford, in which the eponymous hero poses as a psychologist and, despite being unlettered…
Lies of the Beholder
Grown-ups, take heart. Even if you misspent your summer at the movies pigging out on reheated space adventure, slob humor, and stubborn old ballplayers who won’t hang up their spikes, all is not lost. A powerful and intelligent film called American Beauty has volumes to say about the way people live, their secret disturbances, and…
Veteran Losers
During the mad rush to sign anything remotely alternative a few years ago, the troublemaking, noise-fucking, and hell-raising duo Royal Trux somehow got itself a major-label record deal. Virgin Records released two albums by the band (which consists of mainstays Jennifer Herrema and Neil Hagerty, plus occasional friends and hangers-on lending a hand here and…
Hungry and Heavy
L7 singer-guitarist Donita Sparks is pleasant enough, joking about “stress neck” from talking on the phone too much and needing a “hooker and cocaine diversion” to help calm her nerves, which have been frazzled ever since L7 started its own record label earlier this year. Sparks is cordial as long as you don’t mention that…
Playback
Dixie Chicks Fly (Monument) “Let’s go out to the lake, Earl/We’ll pack a lunch/And stuff you in the trunk/. . . Earl had to die.” “Where’s mama?/She’s taking a little nap in the trunk/. . . Mama said she wants to show how far she can float/And don’t worry about that little boo-boo on her…
Soundbites
Send local music info and stupid band names to jniesel@clevescene. com.
