Double Fantasy
Human beings and their stories, my, oh my. Somehow, the familiar themes just keep coming around, again and again, ad infinitum. Of course, most of them have already been captured and processed by Shakespeare. From the bitter young man to the crazy old king, from the flirty young thing to the malicious old crone, we’re…
The Furthur Festival
With the emergence of the Other Ones as Furthur Festival headliners in 1998, fans received the closest thing possible to the experience of a Grateful Dead show. Under the guidance of ex-Dead members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh, and part-timer Bruce Hornsby, the Other Ones didn’t just plunder the Dead’s catalog. Rather, they twisted…
Losing Their Cool
If ever there were a competition for our own local Mr. Zeitgeist, Hudson’s Gregory P. Hackett would make a compelling candidate. Over the past few years, after all, Hackett’s professional life has been straight out of the American Boom Times playbook: Start a consulting business, get rich, sell it to some bigger company, get even…
Juke Joint Caravan Tour
The alternative crowd did it. The metalheads did it, too. So did the neo-hippies. Hell, even the female singer-songwriters put their message of peace, harmony, and womanhood into a package tour, aka a bunch of similar-minded artists lumped together and thrown out on the road together for a month or two during summer. And while…
Lakefront Carnival
On a rainy July morning, Mayor Michael White publicly unveiled his plan to claim the downtown lakefront once and for all. Not for business. Nor for the Browns. But for families. White’s plan, rolled out at a press conference in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, evoked visions of countless families enjoying themselves on…
Travis
If you happened to catch the Oasis/Travis concert back in April, you might have witnessed two Britrock heavyweights on radically divergent career paths. These days, Oasis’s Gallagher brothers spend their time cutting each other down in the press and their nights dodging projectiles flung by irate fans. Enjoy yourselves, boys. Scottish upstart Travis has taken…
Scene Should Have Known Better Than to Ask “Where Next?”
From the way Cleveland is planning its downtown shoreline, you’d think museum-going has become the rage of the waterfront, eclipsing as a trend even rollerblading and sunbathing. Under Mayor Michael White’s proposal, the North Coast Harbor, already an emerging museum district, would get the swank aquarium, as well as the Children’s Museum and Crawford Auto-Aviation…
Jad Fair
Jad Fair is one of rock’s true oddballs. Almost childlike in his approach to music (he doesn’t know how to read music and isn’t capable of naming guitar chords), Fair was the leader of the ’80s cult band Half Japanese. With his brother David, Fair created a world of lo-fi indie pop that even had…
School’s Out
A month ago, R.J. Cutler thought he found a home for his child, one that would coddle and nurture his baby until it was ready to stand on its own two legs without wobbling or falling. A month ago, it all seemed so simple to the Oscar-nominated producer-director, who was used to making his films…
Experience the Masculinity
You too can be a New Warrior: Your cover article [“Feel Sorry for Men,” August 17] distracted readers from the legitimacy and honor of men doing men’s work. We do not ask for nor do we need society to “feel sorry for men.” In our judgment, the “men’s movement” is not a reaction to feminism…
Top Quality
Although the Cleveland Museum of Art has been collecting drawings since 1916, the fruits of its efforts in this area have seldom gone on display. It’s not because the works aren’t good enough. Rather, it’s because overexposure to light can discolor the paper and fade the images. Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art…
Opa!
There’s nothing like a good flaming cheese to set the appetite on fire. At least that was the consensus after a recent dinner at the Greek Isles, a friendly, fairly priced Mediterranean restaurant that has become a cornerstone of the bustling downtown Warehouse District over the past seven years. The signature starter, saganaki, proved to…
Where’s Bruce?
It’s one of those archetypal stories we can’t resist: A group of former apprentices, now grown to full manhood, band together to find their erstwhile mentor, thank him for his inspiration, and share their successes. In our own local adaptation, unfolding even as we speak, the former-students-on-a-quest include Steve Parris (Fulton Bar & Grill, 1835…
Weaving the Way
When drummer Michael Dahlquist first met the members of Silkworm — singer-bassist Tim Midgett, singer-guitarist Andy Cohen, and singer-guitarist Joel Phelps — more than 10 years ago, the Missoula, Montana outfit was touring with a drum machine called Lurch that it used in place of original drummer Ben Koostra, who had recently left the group.…
The Screaming Siren
Rosie Flores received some sobering news from fans recently, after playing the renowned Gil Fest in Milwaukee along with rockabilly institution Sonny Burgess and his Combo. “A couple of people said to us, ‘Wow, the two of you are legends,'” says Flores via phone from her Nashville home. “Oh God, am I getting so old…
Soundbites
You don’t have to work at a record label, own a club, or play in a band to know that the music business is filled with assholes. Stories of payola and extortion reach back to the days of Alan Freed, and the gossip and innuendo that extend from Eminem to Christina Aguilera, Fred Durst, and…
Geeez ‘N’ Gosh
Since moving to Santiago, Chile, three years ago, the German experimental composer Atom Heart (Uwe Schmidt) has developed a sense of humor that nicely complements his fluttering electronic compositions, which bleep and burp with erratic charm. Last year’s Pop Artificielle featured covers of Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” and David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes,” and Heart continues…
An Akronism
It’s 1920, and you’re a guest at Franklin and Gertrude Seiberling’s gracious estate in Akron, also known as Stan Hywet Hall. You leave your calling card with the butler, who informs you that you are one of several guests who will be dining there this evening. His reference to dinner is the first of many…
Underworld
A live disc by electronic artists renowned for their tremendous visual stage show and continuous, frantic mixes may seem futile on the surface. And in a way, Underworld’s Everything, Everything is. No matter how pumped up the music is, without the benefits that only a set of booming speakers in your face can deliver, there’s…
Sappily Ever After
A night at the theater doesn’t often involve a champagne toast, a fully catered Italian dinner, and dancing to live music. Of course, theatergoers don’t usually find their seats located in the middle of an Italian American Catholic wedding. But Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding, which runs through the year at the Hanna Theatre, doesn’t have…
The Twilight Singers
As the frontman of the Cincinnati-based Afghan Whigs, Greg Dulli has spent the last decade looking for sexual healing with his unique brand of R&B-influenced alternative rock. After years of fleeting success, Dulli has taken his feelings of insecurity into his side project called the Twilight Singers, a group that includes Howlin’ Maggie multi-instrumentalist Harold…
The Bagmen Cometh
This is the beginning of The Way of the Gun you will not see, because it was written but never filmed: Two men, Parker and Longbaugh, urinate in an open grave in front of mourners, beat up a priest, steal organs meant for transplant, and shoot a dog. The introduction, 10 script pages long, was…
The Assmen
Formed in Erie, Pennsylvania, three years ago, the Assmen are a scruffy punk trio who don’t play their instruments particularly well, but know how to be offensive. Not including this album, the Assmen have released one full-length (1998’s Enema Nation) and several 7-inches (including 1998’s “Burgerbreath”). They have a fan club called the Ass Army,…
