Music
Weird, the stuff you find cleaning out your beloved record store of 27 years, preparing it for the Campus Partners/OSU wrecking ball:
--Several still-sealed vinyl copies of the '80s Columbus Police Department unofficial band, Hot Pursuit. The album? Communicate, recorded at Musicol Studios. Engineers: John Hetrick (not me, not my pseudonym), Doug Edwards, Lisa Dale and John Hull. Five of the band's six members were or maybe still are full-fledged members in good standing, I assume, and have never arrested me to the best of my knowledge.
Ecstasy--pure human ecstasy, not the cheap drug--is a beautiful, necessary thing. Living the modern life of civilized apes, we sometimes either impoverish ourselves of the ecstasy of life or outright outlaw it. Not good; not right. Seeing visions was essential to a great many of America's original people. How they got 'em seems natural enough--fasting, dancing, natural stimulants, worship of nature, etc...
To which I say: Beatles = liberation.
Thus it was at the sixth annual 'Beatles-a-thon', 12 hours of live Beatles music provided by Joe and Matt Peppercorn and their band of highly proficient deep believers in the Beatles canon. I was ecstatic simply waiting in line half-an-hour before it began at the Blue Stone at 12:30 p.m. December 26. Liverpool and nirvana, here we come!
I predict the New Year will probably include a presidential election.
Sorry, that was a joke.
You want to hear about music?
Deerhunter performed at the Skully’s Music Diner December 17th. This show was about a year after singer and multi-instrumentalist Bradford Cox was involved in a car accident that hospitalized him and resulted in him taking stock of his life.
Deer Hunter’s latest release, “Fading Frontier” is a reflection of this.
Well, it’s weird because if you look at the photos of Cox in the hospital and compare it to the amount of sounds and movement on stage one would one remark that he recovered from depression induced from immobilization quite well.
Musically the Atlanta group operated poppy hooks, on occasion upbeat, at intervals melancholy, but eventually optimistic with layered tales of bored inertia turned motivation. Deer Hunter is aurally some place in between indie-rock, jam-band land and Neu!
So as it turns out, we never made it to Frenchman Street.
Every year, a few friends and I engage in a weekend of musical tourism, taking trips to cities which claim a vibrant live music scene and/or some historical interest. Past trips have included Memphis (Beale Street, Sun Records, Graceland) and Nashville (Downtown, Grand Ole Opry), among others. You know, famous places.
This year, we decided to make our pilgrimage to New Orleans to get hammered and listen to jazz. From the moment we got into the cab at the airport, locals directed us to Frenchman street. According to pretty much everybody, this was the place to see jazz. The party was great, the music was fantastic, and you didn’t have to worry about the filth and violence of Bourbon Street. So sayeth the cabbie, the hotel concierge and the guy working at CVS.
But the problem was that our hotel was right in the middle of the French Quarter. Everything was a just a short walk away, from bars to museums to famous cemeteries – everything, that is, except for Frenchman Street. At over three miles away, it was unquestionably a cab ride proposition if we intended to drink seriously.
In 1960, two Ohio State students would hang out on folk night at Larry’s Bar, just south of the corner of Woodruff and North High. The two formed the folk duo The Sundowners, and almost certainly played their first show either at Larry’s or down the street at the Sacred Mushroom, across from the student union. The first was named Jim Glover, who subsequently moved to Greenwich Village and had moderate success as part of the duo Jim and Jean. The other was Phil Ochs.
Ochs, who had lived intermittently in Columbus even before he attended OSU, would eventually follow Glover to New York in 1962 and began playing Village coffee shops and folk clubs. In early 1964, he released his first album for Elektra records, “All the News That’s Fit to Sing.” He became friends of a sort with Bob Dylan, who the following year went electric at the Newport Folk Festival and transcended into pop stardom with the release of “Like A Rolling Stone.”
We’ve seen so much horrendous death recently; the annual year-end listings seem insignificant. My favorite thing about the year was watching the human spirit have superior attributes over negative entities.
After watching the Black Lives matter movement, the pro-choice rallies, legalization of gay marriage, socialized health-care and other displays of enlightenment, I thought there was a sure sign of a majority social enlightenment backed by expansive resilience in the face of adversity.
Power to the People.
But now people are getting shot at protests and pretty much everywhere. It’s weird watching people actually try to induce the apocalypse.
I would like to explain to ISIS, distraught white men and murderous police that killing random people will not cause Armageddon.
It will kill innocent people, while the powers that be will leverage this for profit, or limitation of our rights.
You aren’t even going to war profiteer. The guy selling you weapons will.
Well, nihilist, idealism and/or absurdism shall come hither.
Would it be presumptuous to compare the Black Keys guitarist Dan Auerbach's stunningly textured musical pallet to Michelangelo's abilities to lay on his back and paint heaven on a basilica?
A little hoity-toity, maybe?
A bit much perhaps?
Well, how 'bout comparing Auerbach to another great Italian, soundtrack supremo Ennio Morricone? He was the man who put the sonic spaghetti in the westerns genre (Good, Bad, the Ugly) and 600 other sundry films.
Because, frankly, my darling, what I heard at the LC Pavilion Dec. 3 from his new band The Arcs put me in a zone of stupefied analytical wonder. This guy is amazing. Give him a handful of minutes, a crazily rocket-shaped guitar and a band wired to his brain, this guy's songs will take you places you've never been.
It’s been a while since I was a groupie of any band. I am too old for concert going and fan obsession...or so I thought. I have found my new calling. I have been revived. Last night I attended the concert of Young Rising Sons, a soulful soul-filled band from Red Bank, NJ.
The show started with The Mosers, their music is upbeat, fun and loud and their personalities shown through in their new sound. Their energy was a great way to start the show.
Following this uplifting act came Night Riots. Lead singer Travis Hawley’s voice was hauntingly eerie and it was fitting we were in Brooklyn, as they were as hipster (in a good way) as they come. At one point Travis stood on the drums. Yes, on the Drums – don’t ask me how. Their music left you entranced and ready, and talent was tangible.
It’s been a while since I was a groupie of any band. I am too old for concert going and fan obsession...or so I thought. I have found my new calling. I have been revived. Last night I attended the concert of Young Rising Sons, a soulful soul-filled band from Red Bank, NJ.
The show started with The Mosers, their music is upbeat, fun and loud and their personalities shown through in their new sound. Their energy was a great way to start the show.
Following this uplifting act came Night Riots. Lead singer Travis Hawley’s voice was hauntingly eerie and it was fitting we were in Brooklyn, as they were as hipster (in a good way) as they come. At one point Travis stood on the drums. Yes, on the Drums – don’t ask me how. Their music left you entranced and ready, and talent was tangible.
People say to me, write some damn previews. Spread the word. These are music events that Columbus will be hosting in the next month.
The Game
Xclusive Elite
October 31st
$30-50
The Game just dropped the Documentary 2 and The Documentary 2.5 for the 10 Year history of his classic album the documentary. The Game is known to be hyper-referential in his lyrics.
Well,the Documentary 2 both shows that 1) Game has personal history that can be -self-referenced and 2) also takes routes into 91-96 East Coast Hip Hop in addition to Game’s usual Dr. Dre’s cultural impact in the flesh existence.
“The Documentary 2” allows a slew of guests like Diddy, Kanye, Will-Iam, Dre, Kendrick Lamar and others to present a history of “Hip Hop” through a Compton lens, then and now.