Arts & Culture

Take Five with Jazzmary Daniels I saw 63 year-old Tommy Smith play at Dick’s Den a couple weeks ago. His drumming matched what he told me on the phone Sunday: “I’m a Bebop drummer. That’s where I come from.”  Tommy Smith comes from the South side of Columbus originally and has been a lot of places. In the 1950’s, he started playing with his grandfather in the Elk’s Lodge Marching Band, and fell in love with jazz after going to shows with an uncle at the Palace Theatre downtown.    During the 60’s, the teen Tommy was living on the West side, attending Central High School and becoming part of small city-wide jazz community.    “In high school, in Columbus, there were a bunch of us,” Smith said. “Not a bunch…I would say we were the young lions. And we were all into Jazz.”    Tommy and his friends would go to Columbus jazz spaces such as The Regal on Long Street, The Copa on Mt. Vernon, The Cadillac Club, the Starline and the 502 on St. Clair.    At the 502 they would watch greats such as Miles Davis and Horace Silver during Sunday matinee shows.    Tommy recalled the dream.    “I walked all the way from the West side.

There is a book in the Grandview Heights Public Library I check out once a year and struggle with. It's about 70 years old. Its cover is unlike any I've seen, except those of some Bibles: very softly worn and gently creased burgundy leather, suggesting age, wisdom, timelessness, strangeness.   It's a collection of poetry and plays by the late great Spaniard, Federico Garcia Lorca, a member of the Genereration of '27, a group of writers between 1923 and 1927 who explored the Spanish avant-garde of letters. I struggle with it because it is entirely in Spanish and is often abstract, as only they can be.   Picasso is easier. But the book is precious.   As I struggled to understand the magnificent mysteries of the Pixies and their main man, Black Francis, Friday night at the LC, I couldn't relate their impenetrable sound to any other way of expression from which they tellingly may have sprang. Looking at his bald-domed inscrutable aura, listening to his utterly weird lyrics, his guitarist's overlay of noisy psychedelia, only one thing made sense of it all: the Spanish key to his mental highway--that beautiful, ancient book.

 Since Winter’s Tale is a romantic fable starring the dreamy Colin Farrell, you might assume it’s the perfect flick to take your date to on Valentine’s Day.   But you’d be wrong. Good Lord, would you be wrong. Judging from the audience at a recent preview screening, this would-be tear-jerker is likely to leave you laughing hysterically. And not in a good way.   Scripted and helmed by first-time director Akiva Goldsman—whose past writing achievements range from A Beautiful Mind to the ludicrous Batman & Robin—this adaptation of Mark Helprin’s acclaimed novel has so many problems that it’s hard to know where to begin.   Farrell plays Peter Lake, a crook in early 20th century New York who’s gotten on the wrong side of the crime lord who raised him, Pearly Soames. Pearly is played by Russell Crowe.   OK, that’s a good place to begin.   Crowe portrays Pearly with a menacing demeanor and a growled Irish brogue, making him such an over-the-top depiction of evil that his Javert from Les Miserables is a work of art by comparison.     But we can’t blame this whole mess on poor Crowe.

Wow, this show sure is dope. If you don’t know any vintage hip-hop slang before seeing How We Got On, don’t worry. You’ll pick some up along the way.    And besides, you don’t have to be in tune with rap culture to understand what’s going on here. You just have to understand human nature.    Set in 1988 in the suburbs of an unnamed Midwestern city, Idris Goodwin’s assured play introduces us to a trio of 15-year-olds who are trying to define themselves through rap.    First up is Hank (David Glover), who boasts, “I got the skills to pay the bills,” but isn’t nearly as self-confident as he likes to pretend. When he learns a freshman at a nearby school is rhyming his way to suburban fame, Hank sets up a rap battle in an attempt to prove his dominance. But he then has doubts about his own battle-worthiness.   And well he might. The macho Julian (Rudy Frias), who bills himself as Vic Vicious, beats Hank so soundly that he’s reduced to slinking away with the crowd’s boos still ringing in his ears.

I first saw the Devil Doves in June of 2013 on the main stage at Comfest. On a stage that could probably fit 20 comfortably, it was just three guys with an acoustic guitar, an electric bass and the box-like latin percussion instrument called a cajon. The sound, though was massive; the audio engineer was on the top of his game that day, and the band took full advantage. All three players were concentrating on giving life to the groove, and letting everything else follow. More than anything else, of all the music I heard that day, they were different.   Recently, I had the opportunity to see the Doves at the 3 Legged Mare in the Arena District. I fought through a mob of Blue Jackets fans (4-2 win over the Capitals!), accidentally purchased a Guinness, and found the band onstage toward the back of the bar. They were doing it up for the hockey folk, tossing out the occasional cover tune, noting the existence of the tip jar and generally enjoying themselves. Again, it struck me that this was something far more interesting than the usual Columbus band Americana.   It’s the group thunk of the beat that does it.

  Milestone 229 has definitely stolen the lead on the best hummus in town (if you love lemon as much as I do). It isn’t called “Really Good Hummus” for nothing and it isn’t just the fresh ground lemon rind; it is the fresh-out-of-the-oven house pita bread, and all the premium marinated artichoke hearts, oven-dried tomatoes and Kalamata olives they dress it with. They will even prepare a special fruit dessert for you if you tell them you are vegan (or eat a plant-based diet for health reasons). Great service, great atmosphere, great view, great food, they don’t use Styrofoam containers, they source many of their ingredients with local farmers for the finest and freshest (which means nutritionally dense) produce and herbs and with the intent on supporting the community. There is a reason you never hear me talk about the “humanely farmed,” “free- range,” and “locally produced livestock,” but I’m going to start today.

February is a time for snow, romance, and casting news for the next year’s crop of big-budget aspiring blockbuster movies. With the success of superhero movies over the last few years, a lot of what’s being planned for 2015 is going to feature familiar characters played by familiar – but not always likely – faces. These days the most controversial movie news always seems to come from DC Comics. With the major success of their recent Batman movies and the middling success of their second recent attempt to bring Superman to the big screen in all the glory of his 70s/80s Christopher Reeves incarnation, the next big project they’ve announced is going to bring the two characters together. Though the movie is technically being considered Man of Steel 2, it might more fairly be called Superman/Batman. But there’s a problem there: Christian Bale, who played the titular character in the recent Batman movies, is done with the black-masked, growly-voiced thing. For that matter, at the end of the last one the character retired.

I get the feeling I’m not the target audience for The Lego Movie. Not only am I not a kid who plays with Legos, but I’m not an adult who used to play with Legos. While others may see the flick as an extension of their playtime hours or a nostalgic reminder of their youth, I see it as one long product placement with really primitive-looking 3-D animation. Directed and co-written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs), The Lego Movie is designed to appear as if it’s made with Lego toys. When the heroes end up in the ocean, even the water is constructed out of Lego bricks. At times, the plot developments likewise seem to have been dreamed up by a young Lego enthusiast, as when superheroes such as Batman, Superman and Wonder Women join forces with real-life figures like Shakespeare and Shaquille O’Neal. It’s the kind of conglomeration only someone with access to a variety of Lego sets could have imagined. Other times, the plot follows a well-worn path that seems numbingly derivative. At its center is Emmet (Parks and Recreation’s Chris Pratt), a construction worker who prides himself on being faultlessly normal.

We already know what you’re going to say. Valentine’s Day is a billion-dollar ruse, the brainchild of greedy card and chocolate companies who care nothing for love and want only to take your hard-earned cash. First of all, why are you so cynical? Stop that. Second of all, how about you take advantage of the opportunity that’s been presented to you. Okay? Okay. Now that you’re no longer behaving like you’re dead inside, it’s worth exploring your options for the holiday, should you decide to think above and behind cliché. A quick glance around the area shows there are some good options for couples interested in more than just dinner and Redbox. The Ohio Theatre will host one of the area’s more traditional pieces of Valentine’s entertainment. On Friday Feb. 13 and Saturday Feb. 14 the Columbus Symphony will perform a program entitled “Masterworks: Romeo & Juliet.” ($25-$68, Friday/Saturday) Kansas City Symphony’s Michael Stern will conduct selections from Berlioz, Bernstein and Prokofiev. Stern returns to Columbus after an almost ten year hiatus.

In the summer of 2010 Wes Crow and Brandon Pettiford were members of different musical acts competing against one another at the Rising Star Talent Show in Gahanna. Neither of the teens won that day, but the event proved to be the genesis for one of the area’s most noteworthy emerging bands. One year later, Crow and Pettiford teamed up with Wes’ younger sister Julia to form Pett Crow, returned to the Rising Star and came away with top honors. The jazz scene in central Ohio may never be the same. It is rare these days to hear teenagers rattle off a list of musical influences that includes The Doors, The Who, Kiss, Motley Crue, Rush and The Allman Brothers Band. But such is Pett Crow, a trio featuring a pair of Olentangy High School students and an eighth grader at Gahanna’s Middle School East. “We’re a blues rock band,” said Wes, 16. “But we play old blues, modern rock and anything in between.” Pett Crow will be headlining a diverse lineup at this year’s Instaband Battle of the Bands semifinals, a 20-group competition taking place Friday Feb. 7 at GROOVE U’s campus in Columbus.