Birds of a Feather
FRI 9/9 Laura Paglin conceived of The Nightowls of Coventry (which opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theatre) in the late ’80s, when its 1973 setting wasn’t so distant. “When I first moved here, I picked an apartment at random in Coventry,” says the director, who’s originally from Portland, Oregon. “I started talking to people…
Talkin’ ‘Bout Their Generation
Tying in with PBS’ My Generation week of rock-and-roll documentaries, Akron’s PBS 45 & 49 commissioned filmmaker Phil Hoffman to assemble a sequel to the well-received It’s Everything and Then It’s Gone, which told the story of Akron’s punk-rock scene from its 1974 inception to its 1979 zenith. Set to air on Wednesday, September 28,…
Quickening
Seven years after Quickening made its debut, it might be Northeast Ohio’s most overlooked band. The Cleveland post-emo alt-rock group averages two shows a month and one release a year. Maybe the fact that the band comes with short discs rubs potential fans and benefactors the wrong way; in the fickle world of rock, more…
Here Come the Hotsteppers
FRI 9/9 Joe Booth and Amy Compton dance till they’re practically black and blue from all the knee-slapping and hand-clapping in Random Acts of Rhythm. The half-hour sidewalk show really turns physical when the two pick up pairs of drum sticks and rat-a-tat each other from head to toe. “Then she’ll jam on whatever she…
The Mass
Experiencing Oakland’s the Mass live is akin to speed-reading a Brothers Karamazov-sized history of metal in 45 minutes: from time-honored badass shredding to involuntary stoner head-bobbing, from epileptic shrieking to Cookie Monster grunting, from unchained melodies to unhinged mayhem. Most of it subscribes to the Hardcore Feng Shui principle, in which every object in the…
The Celebrity Pilots
In the liner notes to their latest, the Celebrity Pilots thank Peter Sellers, Thomas Pynchon, and the Kinks, among others. It’s a telling list, as this is droll, literate pop, as timeless as the heartache that inspires it. For the past year or so, Pilots main man Chris Sheehan has been playing guitar in Doug…
Call the Cops
The Man isn’t so much a movie as a parody of one, the kind of thing people in movies about the movie business pitch as outrageous, inept ideas when a director’s for the cheap and quick giggle. Only in movies like The Player or Bowfinger or Christopher Guest’s The Big Picture would some schmuck float…
The Unseen
The Unseen espouses a peculiar political platform. The group champions the poor, though it prefers that taxpayer-funded social programs ignore destitute drug addicts. (“For over 40 years you broke your back/But they gave your money to some bum on crack.”) Singer Mark Unseen says he’s “pro-violent against the state,” but he favors free health care,…
Go to Hell
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which is based on a true story the same way Harry Potter and Star Wars movies are, is the latest movie of this bloody (awful) year trying to scare the money right out of your wallet. It has but one thing going for it: a cast filled with Oscar nominees,…
Portastatic
It’s been a long time since the marquee college rock bands of the ’90s waved goodbye and rode off into the sunset. Time enough, in fact, that when a band like the Pixies gets back together, pundits consider it a reunion, rather than the end of a very long hiatus. And as the Pixies’ recent…
Grizzly Man
Fans of the last two Miramax films from Swedish director Lasse Hallström — Chocolat and The Shipping News — may be happy to know that he has stuck to the exact same formula for his latest, An Unfinished Life. Like its predecessors, this is the tale of an itinerant single parent with a precocious daughter,…
Heavenly States
The first track on the Heavenly States’ latest, Black Comet, comes off like a cheap ploy. Sure, “Look and Listen” proves that the Oakland band can write a passable punk ditty. But the lackluster string arrangements make it sound as if the group is tricking us into believing that its talents go beyond alternarock. Three…
New releases available this week
The Blues Brothers 25th Anniversary Edition (Universal Studios Home Video) Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman’s modern-day revival of the Blues Brothers is less a stroke of comedy genius than a dose of karaoke night at Hooters. Fight off those thoughts and pop in this 1980 classic. John Belushi and Aykroyd, a couple of white-guy hacks…
Unsound Blunder
Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder” is right up there with Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” for the sheer number of movies that seem to have been inspired by it. Both are receiving ostensibly faithful adaptations on the big screen this year, but why bother? Bierce’s “Surprise! He’s been dead…
Debbie Davies
As ’60s Brits scurried to music shops for their first guitar after getting a taste of Howlin’ Wolf or Freddie King, the best of the bunch would cut sides of their own and, in turn, ignite an emerging pack of stateside brats. One such susceptible Yank youngster was guitar journeywoman par excellence Debbie Davies, whose…
The Scene’s top DVD picks for the week of September 6
Barn of the Naked Dead (Koch Vision Entertainment) The Bela Lugosi Collection (Universal) Bruce Springsteen: VH1 Storytellers (Sony Music) Charmed: The Complete Second Season (Paramount) Crash (Artisan) The Deer Hunter: Special Edition (Universal) Dragnet: Volumes 1-3 (Delta Music) Fat Albert’s Halloween Special (Ventura) Fraggle Rock: Season 1 (Hit Entertainment) Greta Garbo: The Signature Collection (Warner…
Curtains Up
Ask anyone to name the best things about Cleveland, and the performing arts are sure to rank right up there with our pristine views of dead steel mills. That’s not without good reason: From our orchestra to our dance companies to our boundless options for quality theater, our area is blessed with an embarrassment of…
Atmosphere
“Atmosphere finally made a good record . . . yeah, right, that shit almost sounds convincing,” raps Minneapolis-based MC Slug, head of the Rhymesayers collective and label, in “Trying to Find a Balance,” on Atmosphere’s 2003 Seven’s Travels LP. Actually Atmosphere has put out plenty of good records, the most recent being the reissue of…
Why Worry About Kids?
With so many discount Florida vacations and free rounds of golf to sponge, state leaders can’t be expected to concern themselves with kids. That’s why the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled the state’s school-funding system unconstitutional on four separate occasions. Yet the legislature has continued to blow it off. Either that, or the court’s ruling…
On Stage
Dark Room — The conventional image we have of playwrights and poets is of lonely souls slaving away in a poorly lit basement. Well, you’ve got the location and the illumination right, but everything else about the Dark Room project is much cheerier. Sponsored by the Cleveland Theater Collective, it’s a once-a-month workshop/cabaret for writers…
MDC
Cribbing from a press kit is a half-assed way to write about a band, but this press release is from 1982, so please pardon: “MDC is a hardcore political humanist band from San Francisco. Formerly the Stains” — “Stains” with a big anarchy logo — “from Austin, Texas, the group changed its name and address…
Mushroom Cloud
The video begins with a still shot of a sidewalk, taken from the dashboard camera of a police cruiser. In eerie silence, the car shifts into drive, plunging into the lamplit street. When the audio cuts in, the radio is playing “Karma Chameleon.” . . . Every day is like survival . . . “Which…
On View
NEW CIA Faculty Show — Far-out both conceptually and technically, the first exhibit of the academic year at CIA is as confusing as it is impressive. Each piece occupies its own aesthetic world, and the effect is akin to dozens of voices speaking at once. Some make absolutely no sense: Kevin Kautenberger’s “Field Screen” is…
The White Stripes
Meg: “Your voice sounds really high on this record, like the old days.” Jack: “I noticed that too.” So goes part of the Detroit duo’s conversation in the little bio that accompanies the press mailing of Get Behind Me Satan, easily the White Stripes’ most modest album since the aforementioned old days, yet also the…
That’s One for Brown
That’s One for Brown Wrong so much, he’s back around to right: I have a confession to make. I read Roger Brown’s columns in The PD, certainly not in the hope that I’ll learn anything [“The Sniper,” August 24]. I do, however, enjoy the real-estate transactions, the scoops from nonexistent insiders, and the last-known whereabouts…
Amazing Grace
Never doubt the power of gracious service to hone the ragged edges of an evening at the table. Consider a few recent reconnaissance trips to Aura Global Cuisine, Jihad Hachicho’s new dining room in Broadview Heights. The food ranged from marvy to mundane, and the pacing was positively dreadful. But thanks to a corps of…
Madball
Madball is old-school, but it also represents the new face of New York hardcore. The veteran band’s debut for Ferret Music, Legacy, takes the post-Hatebreed crunch-riff formula and applies it to vintage NYHC’s favorite theme: Even when you don’t have much, you have principles.
Little Brown Man
He wears the requisite navy blue suit, American flag lapel pin, and businessman hair with the first intrusions of gray. Yet there is something odd about this man. His tongue wields the King’s English with precision. His hands fold primly. Yet he plots to slay the thieves in Columbus. He offers to lead the revolt…
Square Dance
The “Opening This Spring!” banners had been gathering dust in the windows for months. It was cause for wondering whether Chef Sergio Abramof was having second thoughts about his proposed restaurant at Shaker Square. But no. “The delay was purely because I was — how shall I put this? — very thorough in putting together…
Municipal Waste
Until now, every band claiming to be a throwback to the golden age of the ’80s metal-hardcore crossover was either lying or thinking wishfully. A retro-thrash masterpiece, Municipal Waste’s Hazardous Mutation is the best Dirty Rotten Imbeciles record since 1985’s Dealing With It. At 15 songs and 27 minutes, the disc sounds like a hybrid…
The Sounds of Music
Monet Madrid Madagascar means no disrespect by not padding its itinerary with as many hometown gigs as its fans would like. But when the sextet formed in the spring of 2003, it came to a conclusion: It would rather zigzag the country with its impressionist mix of rock, jazz, and electronica than become too content…
National Anthems
We want Sufjan Stevens to heal our fractured nation. And when his latest record, Illinois, starts up, we’re convinced he can do it. His ensemble parades like a marching band, walloping the drums with gusto, while the brass and woodwinds cry as if we’re about to win a war (or start one) and the choir…
Browns vs. Bengals
Legendary coach Paul Brown started with the Massillon Tigers, moved on to Ohio State, established the Cleveland Browns as a dominant force in professional football, was ingloriously dismissed by Art Modell, and closed his career in Cincinnati, where he founded the Bengals. Now Brown’s latter-day team will face the Browns in their home opener. Don’t…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, September 8 As summer winds down, we’re gonna look back at the Movies Under the Stars series as a highlight of 2005. Tonight’s free outdoor showing of Finding Neverland caps the season on a thoughtful and poignant note. Last year’s tearjerker about playwright J.M. Barrie’s efforts to launch his masterpiece, Peter Pan, and the…
A Lesson In Violence
Frank Watkins knows there are plenty of reasons to hate death metal. So as the Obituary bassist attempts to explain the appeal of a genre that his band helped popularize, he speaks with the calm, patient air of a kindergarten teacher, the kind with tattoos and a penchant for dropping f-bombs. “I kind of look…
Ill Nino
Ill Nino distinguishes itself from the nü-metal masses with subtle salsa rhythms, thunderous tribal percussion, and breezy tropical jazz guitar. But the sextet mostly confines its compelling cross-cultural experimentation to introductions and interludes, leaving plenty of room for standard stutter-riffs and chiseled breakdowns. Like old-school Latin rapper Mellow Man Ace, frontman Cristian Machado obsesses about…
Whack Job
Ever wonder what words like “Dork Turnspit” and “Hydroids Souvlaki” have in common? Dave Gorman did. The British comedian trekked around the world in search of those and other Googlewhacks — two totally disparate words that, when plugged into Google, return one lone website with a match. Gorman spent two months in 2002 traveling more…
Girls On Film
Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to appear in music videos. Yes, sometimes they do get to act, but more often women are little more than silicone-stuffed blowjob machines. It’s especially true in rap, where women-as-pleasure-objects remains the dominant visual paradigm. Many call them video ho’s, but we’ll be nicer and adopt the term…
Echo and the Bunnymen
It’s been a brilliant year for the rejuvenation of British post-punk icons. First, New Order resurfaced with the surprisingly vital Waiting for the Sirens’ Call, and now Echo and the Bunnymen are back with Siberia, a rousing return that finds co-founders Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant channeling their trademark angst into lush anthems like “Stormy…
Posh Party
SAT 9/10 Back from rubbing elbows with the beautiful people in Florida’s swanky South Beach, Marcus Sims is confident he can show Cleveland how to party with class at Jet . . . Set . . . Go! Says Sims, who organized Saturday night’s soiree: “Our parties don’t have to be beer and a DJ…
Incredible Video Vixen Moments in MTV History
Duran Duran, “Girls on Film” (1981) The Brits introduced the original scandalous video chicks. Even the estrogen-filled WWF offshoot, GLOW (Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling), took notes on this rowdy, R-rated smackdown. Robert Palmer, “Addicted to Love” (1985) Palmer must regularly turn over in his grave, knowing that his video of mindlessly identical, guitar-wielding lady druids…
Black Dice
All-out noise projects, like Merzbow, seem designed to send listeners screaming from the room. Dance music, on the other hand, is all about pleasing crowds and getting the party started. But on its latest disc, Black Dice attempt to combine noisiness with rhythm, failing on both counts. Black Dice’s noise isn’t noisy enough — it’s…
Wreckin’ Crew
SAT 9/10 Greg Prunty would give anything to get rid of the 1,300 abandoned cars behind his Uniontown towing company. So every September, he donates 20 of them to the Police and Fire Demolition Derby. “It’s not unusual for someone not to come back and get their car,” he says. “I just want these junkers…
Guzzlin’ the Haterade
As if Wham! and Madonna’s new accent weren’t reasons enough to hate the British, the Crazy Frog seals the deal. By now, you’ve heard “Axel F,” the über-annoying techno casualty produced by dance duo Bass Bumpers and Jamster — and if you haven’t, does that rock you’re hiding under have room for one more? The…
The Warlocks
After years of piling druggy, blues-fuzz riffs atop an updated model of the Jesus & Mary Motorcycle Club, the Warlocks have finally gotten down to business on Surgery and made the album they’ve always been capable of. On “It’s Just Like Surgery,” Bobby Hecksher’s voice creaks with passion as he belts out a classic love…
