Music

Musically speaking, it was a brutal September. The quality locals were apparently spending their time putting together the perfect Halloween costume, and I couldn’t get a sitter to go see George Clinton. According to Songkick.com, on September 19th some guy named Ben Davis, Jr. played a show in some place called Chillicothe. Which sounds about right.

  Otherwise bored, one Saturday I decided to head up to the Dublin Chiller and play some drop-in hockey. While fussing with the radio, I heard the opening riff from ZZ Top’s “La Grange.” Excellent, I thought and turned the volume up. As the last magnificent pinch harmonic faded out, I heard station identification for QFM96. Wow, I said to myself, it has been about a decade since I listened to these guys.
  ZZ Top was to be expected, but I was surprised when the next track was Nirvana’s “In Bloom.” Goodness me, Classic Rock now encompasses the grunge era! Intrigued, I kept the station on for the rest of the half-hour drive. When I got to the rink, I grabbed a notepad and tried to recreate the experience in something approaching chronological order:

I despise white musicians who can't play in rhythm. Which means two things: I'm inferring black musicians generally can; and I dislike a lot of white musicians. Correct on both accounts. Sieg heil, baby!
  Thus it was at the Rumba Cafe Sept. 3 when these two main subspecies of whitey got together: one band with heaven in its loins; the other, the opener, rhythmically clubfooted, knock-kneed, subtle as a flying mallet and about as amenable to groove maneuver as the battleship Bismarck. I'm talking about the venerable Americana roots quartet The Blasters who own not only the biggest balls in the genre but possess as well as a juke-joint IQ perhaps unparalleled in extant American bands. Opener was from New York City -- a pedigree I'm suspicious of -- the egregious but properly named Gas House Gorillas. What assholes.

Once you have taken the top-40 cover bands out of the equation, the undisputed king of Columbus music is the jam band. Of the 30 or bands playing in Columbus on any given night, it’s a reasonable expectation that eight or nine of them will be jam bands, playing a brand of music that is now on its third generation.
 What is jam band music, anyway? Basically, it’s rock music which observes the standard structure of verse/chorus/verse during times that vocals are being sung. When vocals are not present, however, a jam band runs through a song’s primary chord progression an undetermined amount of times while one or more members play improvised melodies. There are some predetermined arrangements (typically a short, recognizable guitar melody), but it is largely left to the winds of fate.

 Or, according to their detractors, bands that play long-ass impromptu guitar solos which end only when the singer walks back up to the microphone or the drummer quits.

My initial exposure to Columbus punk band Putrid Cause was a few weeks ago at a weeknight Bourbon Street Show. Putrid Causes’s front man Chuck F*ck took all of his clothes off during the bands blistering set.

The Messr’s had played earlier in the evening and set it off well. Bo Davis of the Messr’s was wearing a Deathly Fighter T-Shirt that had appropriated a 70’s punk Malcolm McLaren/Vivienne Westwood’s design which has has two cowboys exposing their male reproductive organs.

So when Chuck of Putrid Cause decided to be the human embodiment  of that t-shirt; it was somewhat of a powerful moment.

I met up with Chuck and the rest of Putrid Cause at their North Campus punk bunker that is located adjacent to a Halfway House that had police cruisers sitting outside. The point of sitting on their porch was learn about Chuck’s antics, Putrid Cause in general and their upcoming performance at the upcoming Pet Without Parent’s Hardcore/Punk Benefit on September 13th at the Bobo/Summit complex.

Ah, owning a record store on High Street--as if daily life isn't tough enough. You've got your one-legged drunken wheel-chair assailant enraged to the point of swinging because you don't want them interrupting a phone call (true story). You've got the infantile college boys who can't form a coherent question but just want you to be their motherly personal shopper--when they're not trying to shoplift. You've got your angry men from the 'hood who are absolutely sure you're a racist because you won't buy their decrepit Bing Crosby 78s found in a dumpster. Oh, I could go on. Strangers can be so strange.
  And then there are the people you know. Specifically, our High Street celebrity slob-gods. They can be a lot worse.

If you were on a computer during the past 2 months yon probably are aware of the backlash from members of the Columbus music community that led to R. Kelly dropping off this weekend’s Fashion Meets Music Festival. Some people weren’t feeling past sexual misconduct allegations made against R. Kelly. While this online outrage was transpiring, a group of people began organizing another festival called Femme Fest which will have 11 show 3 day benefit/festival that will also take place this weekend.

Laddan Shoar, a Femme Fest organizer explained to me how the online protest turned into a festival.:”There was the Facebook onslaught of trolling that kind of occurred with out outrage. It definitely helped to get our message out. But where it came from for us; Our concern was a little from that. Ryan and Raeghan had talked. Once they read the Village Voice article basically about R. Kelly’s sorted past. I’ve been following the story for year. They got together. They said they want to have this festival.”

Dr. Elaine Richardson is a very accomplished human being. She founded the OSU Hip Hop Literacies Conference which has brought the Dream Defenders, Chuck D, MC Lyte, Dr. Christopher Edmin and many other prominent Hiphop thinkers to our fair city over the years. Dr. E has won countless awards including the Ohio State University Community Cultural Icon Award. Ohio State University College of Education Diversity Award and National Council of Negro Women Community Service Award. In 2013, Dr. E was named one of Cleveland Ohio’s Top 25 Most influential African-American Women Award in 2013.

Saturday, August 9th Dr. E will be performing at the Frank Hale Center’s MLK Lounge, 154 12th Avenue on OSU’s Main Campus in support of her recent memoir PHD (Poor H* on Dope) To PHD: How Education Saved My Life.

PHD to To PHD openly details how Dr. E. used education to escaped the fatal dangers of prostitution and drug addiction via education. Dr. E was kind enough to talk to me about her book, life, her SIsterFriends program, the importance of media literacy, and more.

As you may or not be aware, on Friday, August 29th the “Fashion Meets Music Festival” will be coming to the Arena District. From a cursory review of its website, it includes hipster bands, “Access to Excess VIP Badges” and the kind of people who hang out at the patios on the 670 cap. Also, “urban camping,” presumably a cleaner and puma-free version of regular camping.

Frankly, the thing looks like a hurricane of suck, some sort of Lolapalooza for idiots wearing those nice black shirts with the subtle patterns. Admittedly, my general preference is that fashion not meet music, so take that with a grain of salt.

Headlining the festival will be R&B singer R. Kelly. Kelly is famous both for his music, which is terrible, and for 2002 allegations that he made a professional quality sex tape with a 14 year old girl which included footage of him urinating on her. He was acquitted of the charges brought against him, likely because prosecutors were unable to establish the identity (and therefore the age) of the female in the video. 

In 2004, the transplanted Nashville act Old Crow Medicine Show came into the public consciousness with their massive hit, “Wagon Wheel.” Unlike standard millennial country acts, OCMS was an all-string ensemble of double bass, banjo, fiddle, guitar, and something called a gitjo (presumably a distant cousin to Bertie Wooster’s banjolele). They billed themselves as an “old time string band.”

In the wake of “Wagon Wheel,” old time string band acts have sprung up like daisies. It’s to the point that upstanding American youth are forsaking their Stratocasters and developing a lyrical obsession with geography, particularly mountains and bodies of water. Indeed, geographical terms frequently work their way into the names of these acts -- Yonder Mountain String Band, the Lost Bayou String Band, and the On Pearl Alley Right Behind Long’s Bookstore String Band. Like goddamn Mapquest with fiddles, really.