Music
A friend of mine invited me down to see the Bummer’s vinyl release at Strongwater Food and Spirits on March 6th. I was unfamiliar with both the Bummers and the other bands on the bill, and had also never seen Strongwater function as a live music space. At least things promised to be educational; I bundled up on what turned out to be the last cold night of the year.
The cool kids release vinyl these days folks. CD’s are yesterday's beer coasters, relegated to traditional Celtic Music and Chad Mitchell Trio compilations. I think the vinyl thing is a little precious, a triumph of hipster revisionism, but that’s probably sour grapes -- the needle on my record player is broken.
The Columbus electronic community is hurting right now. Connor Compassi died unexpectedly. Connor promoted, deejayed and just in general helped make things happen.
Worst importantly: Connor was beloved and a good friend to everyone he interacted with.
This is an informal writing.
A bulk of his friends went to Mississippi for Connor’s funeral so there will probably be something more written down the road.
However, I can say that Connor played a special role in our city.
Connor was amongst the Nightmode Squad.
He deejayed at bars, helping with equipment, and also being a trusted glue.
Connor promoted many events in DIY settings like garages, loft apartments and other non-bar spaces through his party Signal.
He clearly wasn’t in it for the money. The labor of love he put into things is the extra mile that invokes punk ethos of the past with an upper-echelon respect for the better electronic music of the next.
The Charity Crowe Birthday Show at the Double Happiness club in the Brewery District turned out to be one awfully sweet way of kicking winter in the shins on its way out. Mammy, wotta night!
A rainy-ass Friday night it was, the thirteenth as it were, and unlucky it wasn't. Well, maybe for the two lone singer/songwriters opening.
Not sure of their names but I don't mind protecting the guilty. A twenty-something lad in jeans, jean jacket and hat strongly strumming a well-tuned guitar was the first of the night. He seemed to be on a futile quest his entire set to find the right key for his voice. Dylan based a career on this. So he went, singing and searching, ultimately crafting his own 'key of me,' the verses were OK but the choruses proved a vocal bridge too far. Not a song didn't he go off the rails when it came to the money lines. Ah, well. Dylan's done alright. I can't stand him sometimes but I love him.
It’s now been a little more than a year since I came on as a music writer for the Freep, and on a rather rare basis, I get asked how I managed to pick this gig up. Obviously, it wasn’t any sort of merit-based thing, as my previous writing experience consisted of Sixth Circuit Briefs, diatribes ripped off from Hunter S. Thompson, and a penchant for hate mail (although not hate e-mail -- I like the idea of people at the Dispatch or Fox News actually having to open up an envelope to read the opening salutation “Dear Fuck-face...”).
Kevin Failure does much for Columbus Punk and DIY. He fronts Pink Reason and also has a new band called Brass Orchids. Kevin runs a label called Savage Quality which has released albums by American Jobs, Teenage Anal Terrorist and more.
He books shows at Bourbon Street/Summit. Kevin has played a huge role in developing our cities’ current underground electronic subculture with his Future Maudit event.
Kevin is now faced with helping his father David De Broux through chemo.
Kevin described the trip to the hospital where the cancer was discovered.
“A few months ago he had a fall. He suspected he had broken ribs because he was having trouble breathing.”
A couple of the benefits will be held in Wisconsin where his father lives and there is one here.
The Columbus benefit is Thursday, March 5th at Cafe Bourbon Street/The Summit. Pink Reason, Mosses, and Ipps are performing.
Kevin’s dad is a veteran who was stationed in Germany during the 70’s.
I think George Clinton ought to be called in to do a P-Funk concept album of how Campus Partners and Ohio State want to de-funkify High Street.
Remember the good old days when South Campus was one huge block of rough'n'tumble bars, carry-outs and hip clothing stores? A virtual Wild West red light district practically, so popular Thursday through Saturday nights cops had to put up the super-strength industrial wire stretching from phone pole to phone pole, keeping the drunk kids from falling into High Street there were that many thousands of revelers. Papa Joe's alone pumped a Niagara Falls of beer every night while every drinking establishment hosted a squad of football players getting in extra-curricular blocking and tackling practice as bouncers and doormen.
Ah, the hourly debauchery. The teenage drinking age. The good times and the bruises to show for 'em. How are kids gonna learn if they aren't allowed to get hurt once in awhile? Long live the plastic scaldings from the old toy Vacuu-Form.
I linked up with DJ Musa and DJ Hamadi aka DJ Empty Nest to discuss the philosophy, culture and music direction of their Blvck Ice dance party which took place on Friday, Febuary 13 at Ace of Cups.
The origin of my intrigue stemmed from a New Years Eve party I attended that Musa and Hamadi deejayed.
People were having fun but eventually the party got shut down by the police who maced celebrators and arrested some residents.
At some point I watched someone burn an American flag while black humans explained their opposition with the abrupt ending of the evening to the police.
Hamadi recounted his vantage point from behind the turntables, “We dropped acid that night. We were on acid playing the largest house party I had every seen. I remember being on acid feeling the floor shake.”
Musa explained that the house party ended when police came knocking, “One of the residents got pulled out of their house and they pepper-sprayed everyone that tried to help her back into the house.”
An old bag lady waits for the COTA bus downtown. She gets on at 11 a.m. She rides it as far as it goes and gets a transfer to another bus and repeats the action. She rides 10 buses through the course of the day. Eventually she ends up in the same spot where she started. She is older when she finishes than when she started out. End of story.
This, my friend, is what the new Bob Dylan album, Shadows In The Night, is like. Nothing more. Maybe a little bit less. Except it's not circular, it's flat like Kansas.
But here's the riddle, if not the punchline, and it is so goddam Zen it makes you love Bob even more than you already do: He's doing entirely Frank Sinatra songs!
It's a joke, right?
No joke, chump. The joke would be if he did Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers album in its entirety. That would be funny. Nope, the Chairman of the Croak does the Chairman of the Board. Fuggettaboutit.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Bobby Keen, Lyle Lovett’s college friend at Texas A&M and author of that most inadvertent of sad songs, “Feelin’ Good Again.” Notwithstanding the success of 1989’s “The Road Goes On Forever,” Keen never got big enough to forget how to write songs, and although his recent albums have been spotty they have still contained gems like 2009’s “Goodbye Cleveland.”
