Music

The Electric Hand.

The Torments.

The Detroit Cobras.

Three die-hard garage rock bands. Three gangs essentially. Their main religious belief: die with your boots on, rocking on 11!

Thus the last Saturday night in February saw a throwback cave stomp the likes of which this two-bit poor man's colon of a town ain't seen in a stegosaurus's age.

Three bands, two killer banzai charges of three-chord brutality and a headliner's display of boozy public breakdown fronting Americana-tinged soul and hoe-down flavored stomperoos. Nothin' but good people, nothing' but real good.

First up: our own Electric Hand.

 T.C.Ottinger, the Hand's frantic front man, may just be Poopville's Number One Rock'n'Roll Personality in terms of live performance. He's utterly confident, completely full of himself and pretty funny. He jumps into songs like a speeding getaway car having just ripped off a Wendy's on Cleveland Avenue. He's a mania.

The Serpent Mound Spring Seed and Water Blessing, Music Peace Summit is a celebration and blessing of ancient seeds from around the world; praying, energizing, and exchanging these seeds. Visitors will experience music, sound healing, water blessings, meditations, presentations, vendors, dancing and sacred ceremonies March 22-24, 2019. The event will also honor the spring equinox by bringing together delegations from the Americas and all around the world to talk and pray about and for international peace. Its message is: “It Takes a Village; All Nations All Races All My Relations”. The event takes place at the Soaring Eagle Retreat, 375 Horner Chappell Rd, Peebles, Ohio. A schedule of events, updates, camping and additional details can be found at www.facebook.com/events/132899697549858 or visit the website at www.alternateuniverserockshop.com/events.

One month ago, I moved from my beloved Arcadia Avenue to the suburban paradise of Upper Arlington. I had my reasons, and I don’t regret the decision. But I do miss the noise and life of the city. There has also been something of a learning curve – dumping metal debris in my front yard for scrappers to pick up is not OK. I also had to buy a snow shovel.

As my consolation for the move, I decided that I was going to take advantage of my nearly doubled square footage and indulge myself with a real music room. A good chance to consolidate the drums, pianos, ten or so guitars, pennywhistles and other miscellany that was formerly stashed in every corner of my old house. And a place to put that duct taped together couch.

I hope so much that I will stay musically active and, unlike a lot of basement bars and man-caves, the room will be more of a functional space than a shrine to a past life. But hanging guitars on the wall got me excited, and the next thing you know I’m installing vintage style sconce lights and buying lava lamps. One thing led to another, culminating in a whiskey fueled online poster shopping spree at 1:00 AM.

The Offense Book of Books Release event at Ace of Cups allowed me to think about music writing within context. The book is a compilation of The Offense post punk zine published from 1980 to 1982 curated by Tim Anseatt.

 I first came across The Offense Zine in 2009. I was impressed by the layout, the writing. I was impressed by the people writing for the zine. The writing was succinct. The Offense writing was funny. If the writing wasn't succinct the text was pre-familiar.

Book of Books is the correct name because the zines were compact and neatly designed. The writers themselves were the list of what defined Columbus, Ohio's national music image within rock music for the past 30 years: Ron House From Great Plains and Mike Repp were the names that kept me turning the pages of the Offense zine because I was listening to their music.

Man of the Year 2018: Joe Peppercorn, purveyor of our annual dozen-hour Beatles Marathon at the Blue Stone, an event of such precise performance by him and his merry band of precision players I could've sworn I was in Liverpool's The Cavern or Hamburg's Star-Club or even Shea Stadium 1966.

Oh, and Abbey Road Studio. Joe, his lads and his lasses, did a technically killer job of recreating the George Martin sounds the Fab Four concocted so brilliantly and so seemingly effortlessly.

But absolutely get one thing straight: Marathon #9 was no cheesy stroll down memory lane, trading hollow nostalgia for an actual feeling. The band's superb, sure, but only a true believer could bring the soul of the Beatles to life.

The inaugural Columbus Covers Columbus (CCC) festival, held in January of 2018, was based on a unique idea. The two-day festival would feature Columbus musicians playing cover sets comprised entirely of the music of other local acts.

The concept was an immediate hit, selling out its first night and packing the Shrunken Head for a weekend of entertainment that included live podcasts and stand up sets from top local comedians. For the event’s organizer, Columbus performer Tony Casa, putting on the whole affair was a step outside his comfort zone.

“I was horrified...once I started, I realized it was a much more intense task than I had previously planned,” Casa remembers of the weekend. “I was pretty damn nervous for the entirety of the event, until we sold out day one.”

When you’ve already made strides in one field, stepping into a new role can be intimidating. As frontman for the popular Columbus band Zoo Trippin’, Casa has achieved heights most local acts can only dream of. For his first foray into event planning, CCC was a learning experience – one that he undertook almost single-handedly. 

Not to imply you were concerned. But I notice if a different gas station clerk is working during my routine. I notice if gas prices decrease. Maybe you noticed I haven't written in the Columbus Free Press a few months. There are myriad of reasons that do tell a story that I needed to wait until the midterms were behind us to comprehend.

If anyone wants to publish a book by me...my 800 words wouldn't suffice.

The short version: I didn't feel comfortable typing pragmatic Democrat writings while someone who works for the paper was running for Governor. I felt like would be undermining someone's hard work. I also knew politics isn't my expertise. I climbed to something that I hadn't intended.

No one from the Columbus Free Press told me what to do. There wasn't a conversation to follow a party line. The Columbus Free Press has worked passionately for social justice since the 70s.

I like rap music and sometimes rock ‘n’ roll. If you feel like you’re the fool. Close your mouth.

How to put it politely? Naughty-naughty-naughty 85-year-old blues bandleader and singer Bobby Rush and his two equally naughty female dancers emphasized nothing but their chakras related to sexual intercourse at his Woodlands Tavern show the last Monday in November.

Call them your crotch chakra and booty chakra, or how to bump-and-grind your spine to better alignment, it was the most entertaining blues show I have ever seen. Eighty-five years young and so old-school I think Moses and he wore short pants together in kindergarten, Rush was the funniest, rockin'est, dirtiest good time I can ever remember having to a quality blues/funk band. And brother, I have seen a lot of them.

With his super-tight five-pieces and two super-funky, super-sexy, super-fly lady dancers, Rush started off with a straight blues ballad and then went off like a X-rated Roman candle into blue-blue-blue-light special land of naughty and super-naughty jokes and lyrics while his rock-hard funk-and-blue grooves flowing like good bourbon.

One of the unrecognized benefits of music is its value as an anthropological tool. Music functions as the soundtrack of a culture, identifying norms and taboos and painting a vivid picture of the lives of its listeners. Music is also invaluable for keeping tabs on the present. For example, according to insideradio.com, there are an estimated 118 million country music fans in the United States. Other than folk legends about a place called “Tennessee” and some unpaid water bills, we know very little about these people.

In the early 70’s, anthropologists Steve Goodman and David Allen Coe performed the first real musical research on the subject, the results of which were eventually published in song format as “You Never Even Called Me by My Name.” According to Goodman and Coe, country music fans in the 70’s were a primitive culture centered around mama, trains, trucks, prison and getting drunk.