The show must go on at Grand Center, where restaurants continue to open, even with the specters of failures past hovering like ghosts of tragic heroes over the city's wanna-be entertainment destination. The newest player strutting across the stage is Kota Wood Fire Grill, which opened in F...

Chiodos circa 2010 is a significantly different beast than it was just one year ago. In 2009 the Michigan-based post-hardcore sextet, then led by the charismatic Craig Owens, was still coasting on goodwill from its sophomore breakthrough, 2007's Bone Palace Ballet. That album h...

Simply put, Hum was one of the most underappreciated bands of the '90s. Sure, the Champaign, Illinois, band's "Stars" video landed on Beavis and Butt-head, and the song itself experienced a resurgence in popularity in 2007 due to its placement in a Cadillac ad. But the space-ro...

For all you band geeks with sour memories of scratchy uniforms, rigid lock-step formations and endless renditions of "Stars & Stripes Forever," Chicago's Mucca Pazza comes to offer redemption. The self-described "circus-punk marching band" recasts high school band class as an exercise in w...

Sunnyvale, California's the Orange Peels starts with the gateway drug of power pop and ends up hooked on psychedelics, yet never quite overdoses on the retro base that makes zombies of many latter-day addicts. Perhaps it's the echoes of a boyish Robin Zander in Allen Clapp's voice, or the ...

In a 2009 interview with the RFT, English Beat lyricist/vocalist Dave Wakeling tried his best to describe the band's kaleidoscopic genre collisions. "Ska was just one in a number of influences," he said. "Primarily we were a punk-reggae party band — that was the idea. Once we ...

Sugarcoated, Martin Sexton's seventh studio album, marks the Boston-based singer's transformation from blue-eyed-soul-searching troubadour to full-blown star of the smooth R&B croon and groove scene. John Mayer says he's a fan; John Mayer also knows a threat to the adult contemporar...

Yes, the Most Serene Republic is a Canadian indie-rock collective. Yes, its albums are dense with trumpets and coed vocals. But unlike the simplistic tunes its peers hussy up in recording studios, the Most Serene Republic's prog-pop opuses weave through varied time and key signat...

First off, forgive us for not having the budget to upgrade this summer movie preview to 3-D. Rest assured, there are plenty of eye-popping (brain-numbing?) epics in the preview list that follows, but to our pleasure and surprise there is a surplus of attention-worthy 2-D flicks too. Happy summer,...

Although Frederick Frankenstein, the brilliant young brain surgeon from New York, arrives in eerie Transylvania with almost no luggage, Young Frankenstein, the brash musical about Frederick and his monstrously creative forebears, arrives at the Fox Theatre laden with considerable ba...

*Editor's Note: James Johnson is a pseudonym.

January was a rough stretch for James Johnson*. In the span of a few cold, miserable weeks, the Sikeston resident turned 26, and lost his $9-an-hour roofing job. To cap it off, he got a new tattoo on his shoulder that he regrette...