Music

One of the best feelings in the world is seeing a hot band in a cozy club playing a show so unforgettably on that you're sure – absolutely sure-fire sure – the best rock'n'roll anywhere on the planet that night is being performed right in front of you raw and in the flesh.

Seeing how the Stones had the night off...

... it's a no-brainer: NRBQ at Rumba Cafe was the greatest rock'n'roll anywhere on our funky blue spinning ball the last Saturday in June. Stupendous they were, 120% stupendous.

My clogged chakras got an energizing purge so bold-as-love they're still a-tinglin'! Like musical super concentrated high-voltage Liquid Plumr – the Q straightened my spine and blew my mind, left all my troubles behind. I can't booze it up and dance to just any old band. They got to know how to play and to slay and brother, when it comes to the Q, well, that's my church of the holy soul jelly roll. They stoned me. They owned me. I'm going to leave them everything I got in my will.

My first response from reading JAre (J Rawls + John Robinson’s) Youth Culture Power book was: There Are Social Skills Even For People Who Don’t Teach. The book is written to give educators methods to build rapport + create environments that are conducive to the exchange of information utilizing Hip Hop.

Youth Culture Poweris a Hip Hop record as well as book. YCP’s album brings the human side for the teachers as music should.

I want to recommend Youth Culture Power’s music to people who participated with Hip Hop in high school + college while choosing to work as a teacher following the ideals that made them Hip Hop.

The YCP album starts with John Robinson stating that Youth Culture is Power in some median point articulation between KRS One + Q-Tip.

UK folk-pop singer Lucy Spraggan will be playing a headlining show at Rumba Cafe on June 23rd.

She just released her fifth (!!!) studio album Today Was A Good Day on May 3rd via Cooking Vinyl. The four-time UK Top 40 artist's signature folk-pop style (Think a mix of Courtney Barnett, KT Tunstall, and Ed Sheeran) has captured hearts in her home country, allowing her to forge her own path across Europe and the UK. She has also received hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube (With some of her videos reaching millions of views!!).  

My earliest memory of Comfest was probably the Summer of 2000. I was in the process of wrapping up a degree at Ohio State and living at a place on Tompkins Street. I was sort of dragooned into going by the guys who lived next door, who were more in tune with things. At that point I was unaware that Comfest – or Goodale Park for that matter – even existed.

I remember that we parked illegally in the Big Bear parking lot on Neil Avenue, which made me nervous. I think that it was either dark or getting dark when we arrived, and that I was pretty disoriented. The food stalls on Goodale Street seemed to come out of nowhere. I was fairly quickly pulled over to the main stage to see a band called the Jive Turkeys who were closing out the festival. Despite my bewildered state, the band blew me away. They were truly incredible, ending their set with Sly Stone’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime.”

Foghat released its self-titled British boogie debut; T. Rex, its third album, The Slider; and Chicago's V was America's number one thanks to its feelgood hit, Saturday In The Park.

It was also Chicago's last album without a Peter Cetera-written song.

We didn't know it, but our culture was seeing the true end of the visionary '60s and tiny little signs of Seventies Cheese would later be recognized. Cetera was soon going to slime us with his musical mayonnaise like we were French fries at the fair.

Elvis was switching performance residencies in Vegas from the Hilton to the MGM's Grand Hotel (his pay jumping to $200,000 per week from $125K) and prerecorded tape was challenging the primacy of the LP.

And Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come was number two in Bangkok.

What magazine would've featured all that jazz on its cover (except for the Bangkok tidbit, which was inside)?

Billboard, from Oct. 7, 1972 – my senior year in high school – and the music industry's main weekly publication. And unintended culture chronicle.

Jay-Z and Cam'Ron publicly squashed their beef last month during Jay-Z’ s BSIDES + Album Cuts show by performing “Welcome To New York City” at Webster Hall.  Makes listening to music less complicated for this Columbus rap critic.

Jay-Z’s rap impact seems almost absurd. Dipset making Columbus their second home during the Roc-a-Fella era was something this rap fan personally cherishes.

Jay-Z owned Roc-A-Fella with Cam’ron’s BFF Dame Dash.

You can hear Hov’s concert via Tidal.com. We were excited and played a snippet via Bboys Steal Attention. This new radio show plays via WCRSFM.org in Columbus. Ohio 92.7 and 98.3 @ 7pm Thursdays.

Both shows appeared online in April. I didn’t know Jay-Z was planning this.

While it’s possible Hov was surfing the web and found my show.

Let’s be more practical: Jay-Z and myself both liking rap music isn’t surprising at all.

I would like to congratulate Columbus’ the Fallen regarding their new release, “Stick Yo Self” EP with French based Decision Making Theory Records/Knotweed Records in March.

Weddings, over the years, have been something of a pain in the ass. From time to time I’ve done everything from a Catholic Church to a cornfield, and it’s all sort of a frontal assault on those of us who suffer from ADD. While my Keynesian philosophy appreciates weddings as an important economic driver, my inner tightwad estimates the expense of and shivers at the sight of a horse drawn carriage.

I can’t even deal with the invitations -- being commanded by people I barely know to “save the date” feels like being ordered around by a cop, which is my least favorite kind of being ordered around. Although I don’t know if I’ll even be alive in July of 2020, I now know for damned certain I’ll be spending at least one day that month eating rubber chicken with people named Todd and Andy.

But this time was different. When I walked into my office on one fine Monday in early April, I spied an envelope with “Ed” written on it carefully placed on my keyboard. Opening it, I found an invitation to the Smith-Jones Wedding, to take place on 4/20/19 at precisely 4:20 PM. There was no address, just some vague directions to a road near Legend Valley and a dubious promise of signs.

No names will be mentioned, nor place of performance. No band name, no bar name, no set list. This...group...is real. It exists. It must never see this review.

Because I don't want to hurt their feelings. Nor do I want to die. One of 'em looked like Charles Manson.

Anonymous they must remain. Or I am a dead man.

It isn't just a bad review. It's a sad review. Old goat classic rock zombies--Facebook is loaded with them--and not very good, it's doubtful these guys could ever play. And at this late stage of the game nor ever will they.

But playing bad isn't the greatest sin in the world, no sir. Playing bad and thinking you're playing good isn't the greatest sin either.

No. The worst sin in the world is playing really bad, thinking you're really good--and also thinking you are really, really bad-ass while playing like crap thinking you're great. At a really old age.

I guess what am trying to say is you may as well pose like you have a ravenous armadillo in your pants 'cuz you suck so badly anyway.

Everyone who read the adventures of Peter Pan knows the directions to Neverland – first star on the left and straight on ‘til morning. But after a heavy night of bourbon swilling directions can get a little muddled up, especially when your truck starts making that weird whining noise as you’re pushing it off your neighbor’s lawn. All the stars start running into each other, and the next thing you know you’ve cruised right past Neverland and arrived in a strange region where the towns have names like Abilene and Dogpiss.

This is ‘Murica, a place where heavily armed work comp fraudsters order 50 Big Macs while seated on a Wal-Mart scooter parked in the back of their cousin’s girlfriend’s truck while flags cover the sky and Lee Greenwood rolls around naked in the street screeching for beer money. A bacon-soaked world where there are always plenty of bottle rockets at the trailer park, and where misguided promiscuity is never hindered by literacy.

Sam Craighead’s newest release “Self-Portrait w/Fries” made me question: what do I think of comedy music?

I like Sam Craighead’s catalog.

His skillset fits a Henry Nilson-meets David-Berman vibe, clueing you in why people have Kris Kristofferson and Michael McDonald records at their house. Ballads your parents could have conceived you with. He wears sweaters and glasses. He looks like someone who would write songs that people who like Band of Horses would like.

I liked his band Heavy Mole ten years ago. I thought his newest band, Feature Films, delivered one of the most beautiful Columbus records during the past five years.

In fact, I was thinking: I would probably consider myself a Sam Craighead fan.

I went to the Rock Potluck at Ace of Cups specifically because Sam and Winston Hightower were in a band.

Winston didn’t play. He was working at Ace. The band was both funny and musically competent.