Music
Never been prouder of Columbus thanks to a spontaneous moment of dance at Bruce Nutt's Crazy Mama's 40th Anniversary shindig starring the indefatigable Fleshtones at Skully's, Friday, October 4.
Deep in their super-rock garage soul show, lead singer Peter Zaremba, guitarist Keith Streng and bassist Ken Fox began doing a 'boogaloo' line dance onstage to the catchiest stripper/tiki/funk beat I've ever heard compliments of drummer Bill Milhizer.
The lanky Zaremba and his fellow super-rock skinnies urged the audience to join them and 'boogaloo down High Street/c'mawn, c'mawn.'
With no further prompting almost the entire dance floor crowd did exactly that. Eight lines or so, each roughly a dozen people, instantly and joyfully in sync with the band began marching back and forth, like the best New Orleans' New Year's party you've never been to.
An already-hot Fleshtones show/special anniversary show kicked into ultra-high gear, spirits levitating, middle-aging bodies gyrating, the night now a happening and not just a remembrance of youth crazily spent.
I don’t smoke weed, instead I watch internet programming about marijuana. You know those Yule log videos? It’s kinda like the moment where the non-homeless learned their thermostats then watched TVs with fireplace images. While I would like to believe that this is funny…
Weed internet is flouring because medical marijuana opened the door for weed investors who can overpower previous monopolies.
I read High Times’ website because you're either gonna learn about the changing weed laws or read well-written news stories that are often funny because weed is the subject. I don’t smoke weed. I’m trying to figure out how to ride this economic wave. I never sold weed because I didn’t want to open my home to potheads.
Most weed dealers work 120-hour work weeks at commission rates from their living spaces. Allowing complete strangers who just want drugs into my home doesn’t appeal to me.
I’ve decided to write articles about social weed culture from the vantage of someone who doesn’t smoke, but understands music writers exist in the new legal weed economy.
An historic Friday the 13th yellow harvest moon shining a light on an outdoor Jack White show, his Raconteurs going off like Roman candles for the better part of two hours – could there be any summer's night of musical intensity more spectacularly supernatural?
Maybe a Def Leppard/Whitesnake/Blackstone Cherry return-of-the-wish-they-were-still-dead tour, for sure. Or maybe not.
Just kidding, kids. Thus it was at a heavily attended PromoWest amphitheater one warm and humid evening last month, the moon at its advertised farthest-away apogee in a dozen years (a minimoon they call it as opposed to a supermoon which is closest).
Nothing mini about the music that night, strictly super. But I think the infamous numeral of bad luck; the rare cosmic distance between earth and luna; and Jack White's personal nuclear energy made the night one very special bunch of loose ends coming together and sparking maniacally like the devil's lightning.
Exciting as hell!
Columbus Women's Chorus, the only feminist chorus in central Ohio, is open to new members on September 16, 23, and 30, 2019.
All women, and those who identify as women, who can sing alto or soprano and are 16 years old or older, are welcome to our non-audition chorus.
Rehearsals are Mondays from 7-9pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 West Weisheimer Road, Columbus 43214. Please arrive at your first rehearsal by 6:45.
Our next concert will be Sunday, November 17, 2019, at the Unitarian Church.
For more info, please see our website
Two titans of rock face off these days with recent albums: Akron, Ohio's Black Keys and Detroit's Jack White and his mostly Cincinnati-based Raconteurs.
Gotta love that Ohio connection. Not only did Ohio generals win the Civil War, but most of the farm-boy regiments Sherman used to make Georgia howl were from Ohio (and Indiana).
We're as tough as turkey buzzards.
(By the way, I saw one strutting down West 1st Avenue in Grandview the other day, having pecked at some grisly pile of fur and guts in the road. Thing really did look like a big fat turkey. Its wingspread was enormous, taking off like a B-52.)
The two unequally fine albums make for a helluva death match. Let's get after it.
Their rock this time out is '70s heavy both in energy as well as nuanced period-piece production. Want a little AC/DC, Queen, ELO and even Stealers Wheel with your modern rock? Jack and Dan reach deep into their magic trick bags and the mix of styles are dang good for the most part and at times even colossal.
Nineteen years ago, I graduated from the Ohio State University. As a somewhat lackluster student, I wasn’t able to pull things together to graduate on time and missed the big ceremony that used to be held on the Oval. Instead I was stuck with the rather grim winter quarter graduation at St. John Arena. Winter quarter graduation speakers were selected by the faculty, who unsurprisingly picked one of themselves.*
The speaker, whose name I unfortunately can’t remember, was a voice professor from the music school. His speech was a combination of talking, poetry and singing, with a soaring list of musical comparisons to an unstated something (i.e. calling down the defiant beauty of contralto Marian Anderson’s 1939 rendition of “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” at the Lincoln Memorial). He didn’t bother to tie any of it into the idea of graduation, it just sort of rolled.
But one thing he said sort of stuck with me. He mentioned the power of Big Mama Thornton’s “Hound Dog” before Elvis Presley “stole her song.” My first exposure to the concept of cultural appropriation.
This is where I would normally write some sort of introduction to college students that hopefully makes them want to learn about the city they live in.
Used Kids, and Embassy Skateboards to the north. Yao’s Chinese Bistro and Magnolia to the south.
Ok now we’ve said that. Kafe Kerouac, Cazuella’s, Dirty Dungarees. Ace of Cups closer north. The Westside and Eastside probably have places you can have fun and meet people who went to the Columbus College of Art and Design (CCAD).
Call me a small town nitwit, but I found myself walking to White Castle and Starbucks at Lane and High. I can remember when that area didn’t look like an area in New York that you might stop at while headed somewhere.
While making this walk, I noticed families moving their kids into campus living. I walked to Panda Express and saw people playing beer pong in the nearby houses.
The contrast between young humans and their families and slightly older young college students drinking made me think about the fact these college freshmen are nervous, excited and in the least moving into a new life.
Because I write a music column, people get the idea I am paying attention to modern music. I periodically get asked what new bands I’m listening to, and I always feel guilty when I have to tell them that I’m not really listening to any new bands. To be honest, if I’m listening to current music these days it’s pretty much pop with a little bit of dance. I’m sort of done with the Pearl Jam imitators on 99.7 The Blitz and the “indie” rock infesting the internet. The Pearl Jam stuff is self-explanatory, but people always seem disappointed that I can’t point them to an up and coming indie band.
Which is sort of bullshit. Why should I have to listen to indie rock? Why should I sift through the detritus of a genre that hasn’t had an original idea in 20 years just to see if somebody got confused and accidentally made a good record? The people over at Pitchfork get paid to do that, not me. Even then, how those people summon up the motivation to write breathless reviews of these lame bands day in and day out is beyond my comprehension.
I am deviating from my decision to not write about politics for about 136 words – with the understanding that Democrats and Republicans know that impeachment might not ruin the President’s reelection campaign.
The Democratic-controlled House should impeach. I assume The Republican-controlled Senate would not repeat their Nixon decision that demanded the President resign or make the decision to convict the President in the Senate.
My presumed outcome from the impeachment of the President is Democrats avoiding advertisements that say: ‘Democrats didn’t even believe their own Russian hoax.’ The President would tweet about the Senate not convicting him instead. There was nothing disrespectful to Republicans or praising of Democrats in these statements.
This doesn’t say the President will be reelected or not be reelected.
The only real message is regarding commercials you’ll watch while watching football vs. if you want to look at The President’s twitter.
Music Reviews:
Against my better judgment, in a couple of weeks I’ll be taking a trip up to Put-In-Bay with the family of one of my daughter’s friends. I say better judgment, because the last time I went there I ended up spending nine boring hours with some guy named Mitch, who owes me money. Ah yes, island culture. Boating culture. Buffet Culture.
When I was 18 I had a job bussing tables at a place up at Crosswoods called Cantina del Rio. On Fridays and Saturdays they would have live acoustic music at the bar. The acts differed, but it was always more or less the same set. The only real question was whether they would open or close with Margaritaville.
In college one of my friends got free tickets to see some guy named Pat Dailey play at Promo West and I got dragged along. We knew nothing about the guy. This local college rock band opened up and played a song about being too stupid to effectively communicate in a relationship, or something equally insubstantial.* They had like nine guitar players, and there was this weird scene where this gigundus band tore down and was replaced by just one guy with an acoustic guitar.