Music

I went to Vegas once, bet $18 and won 25 and quit while I was ahead. Blowin' dough in a scam where the house owns the odds is for fools. You want to gamble, own a record store in 2013. No, I took my 30 percent winnings and principle and blew them over the course of the next 24 hours as I gorged myself on three of those 'all-you-can-eat' casino buffets which are awfully damn good for eight bucks. This really jammed my sperm count into overdrive with New York strip steaks headlining each meal with plenty of refills. Three cheers for meat products! So it was this past weekend, where I did better than three oranges in a row when I saw the Fleshtones, Los Straitjackets and Neko Case. Each knocked it out of the ballpark and in the case of the 'jackets, knocked the skin right off the ball. But how did I do better than a trifecta? Throw in the best emcee this town has ever seen: Bruce Nutt, promoter for the 'shtones and 'jackets at Woodlands Tavern Sunday night, and a most wonderful old-school huckster/fast-talking/big-city-slicker who outdoes Wolfman Jack when it comes to firing up an audience and presenting the acts. Dude has a talent for presenting talent.

Lonnie Holley serenaded “Thumbs Up For Mother Universe” to the Wexner Center crowd on Friday with a textured and undeniable intimacy. The Atlanta-based contemporary folk artist/musician sat warmly at a piano backed solely by a guitar player. The sparse set-up allowed Holley’s soulful, harmonized affirmations to resonate a call for humans to respect the cosmic beauty in themselves and others while the musical undertones provided an ambient calm. Holley described himself as a “spiritual vessel.” The 63 year-old man came to Columbus this past weekend for the aforementioned Wexner performance, and also to open his “My People Shall Perish From Lack Of Knowledge” Art Show at the Lindsay Gallery in the Short North. In between the events Holley stopped to work with students at the Short Stop Youth Center and OSU’s Sculpture Department. His Columbus appearance follows a positive career trajectory for Holley, who also played at the Whitney in New York in chorus with their presentation of the “Blues For Smoke” exhibit that is currently at the Wex.

Christian Howes was nominated recently for jazz “Violinist of the Year” by the Jazz Journalists Association, Christian was voted first place in the 2011 Downbeat Critics Poll (rising stars/jazz violin). The Minneapolis Tribune calls Christian “arguably the most intriguing young violinist in jazz." He performs worldwide with his own ensembles and as a guest soloist with orchestras and bands, and is widely regarded as one of the leaders in jazz violin. A local musician answers five Free Press questions. Christian Howes FP: Put together your fantasy band, dead or alive. CH: Luckily my fantasy band is the same as my actual band, although we don't get to play together consistently on a regular basis. When we can, it's a real blast. The group consists of Hamilton Hardin on keyboards, Cedric Easton on drums, Dean Hulett on bass and Josh Hill on guitar. After living in New York City for eight years, and having a chance to play with a lot of world-class players, I can't overstate what a joy it's been to be able to put together a true working band with world-class players based in or near Columbus.

When listening to Ron House’s new band Counter Intuits, (with Times New Viking’s Jared Phillips) one can see the how the Columbus icon rolls with a similar clever and cynical take on punk culture that he had in his 80s days in the seminal Columbus band Great Plains. It is easy to tell the guy who asked, “Why do punk rock guys/go out with New Wave Girls” in 1986 is the same guy on who wrote Counter Intuits “Anarchy on Your Face,” off the band's 2013 album released on House’s own Pyramid Scheme imprint. “It’s a mild joke song. One of my favorite lines: ‘crusty punks are very smelly but the odor is fortune telling.’” Ron explains that particular musical composition’s satire from the porch of his North Campus home of 22 years while we both somewhat ignore a rowdy, mid-afternoon game of beer-pong that his next-door neighbors are partaking in. I ask the 59 Year-old House if the college kids ever irritate his townie life, now complete with a wife and a kid. House observes that the generational diversity of North Campus isn’t so bad, “I think that students are more mellow than they were before because they have to be more serious in school.

I wasn't sure what my column's topic this week was going to be about. A moment in Giant Eagle this morning as I bought a roll of Scott's toilet paper and a roll of paper towels (I often get the purposes mixed up) decided for me. In the meantime, I'd been mulling over three ideas: 1) A preview of this year's kinky sex rave at Trauma's new basement addition, an invitation-only exhibition of "15 rooms of psycho-sexual terror" called ironically enough, "Bliss," as promoter Nick Wolak of Evolved put it to me. "I've been concerned Trauma's been getting vanilla-fied over the years. This'll put the edge back on. Nobody from the Doo-Dah Parade will be able to complain," he said with a laugh, referring to Evolved's suspension-pulling team hauling a huge truck, a cringe-worthy spectacle that had a few Doo-Dah folk complaining.

Pitchfork TV and revered Seattle-based record label Light In The Attic (Last Poets, Lee Hazelwood, Jane Birkin, Black Angels, etc.) are in the midst of filming a 6 video road trip series that focuses on record stores between New York and Chicago. This documentary is set to hit Columbus on Saturday, October 19th with visits to Lost Weekend, RPM, Spoonful and Used Kids Records. P4K and Light In the Attic’s visit comes on the heels of Used Kids Records 27th Anniversary, which was Saturday October 12th. This celebration of the Columbus music institution had performances by the Redbuds, Nom Tchotchke, Headtaker, Bloody Show, Second State Butchers, Dead Girlfriends, Pink Reason, The Ferals, and Nervosas. I took the time before The Ferals performance to peruse and appreciate Used Kids’ eclectic and unique selection. You had new releases by the Connections, Danny Brown, Boldy James, the Raspberry Bulbs and RJD2. There were a plethora of used rock n roll vinyl recordings ranging from the obscure to classics from the Cramps and Led Zeppelin. Used Kids has a huge selection of soul and jazz records for beat diggers or just for people who just like to listen to soul and jazz.

Connections are set to release their second album “Body Language” on storied Columbus imprint Anyway Records. The formality of writing about Connections calls to mind that band members Kevin Elliott and Andy Hampel were in 84 Nash. Kevin’s brother Adam is in Times New Viking. Dave Capaldi was in El Jesus De Magico. Philip Kim is the slightly younger member who connects them to a different generation of Columbus indie rock people. Because of the band's line-ups legacy in Ohio music, the second formality is to mention they are influenced by Guided By Voices (GVB). As I sat listening to garage pop tales of ordinary Ohioans on “Aimless,” “Jeni & Johnny,” and “Girl’s Night Out.” It dawned on me three members grew up in Congressional District 8 (John Boehner’s district) before moving to Columbus. Because of Boehner's part in causing our current government shutdown, I facebooked Kevin Elliott, and here is where this review turns into an an interview: WF: Hey, Kevin. Reviewing the record. I know the album isn’t political but just remembered you grew up in John Boehner’s district.

Columbus’ own rapper/singer Chris Dickerson won the 2013 Most Improved Artist award at this year’s Ohio Hip Hop Awards Show (OHHA). Dickerson used to be known as Distinct 1 when he was a rapper, but people started calling him D1 and it stuck. The 29-year-old won the award “…for most improved all around - music, image, marketing, live performances, etc. The nomination process is partially chosen by fans and the Ohio Hip Hop Award panel, but the actual voting process is all done by the fans,” D1 told the Free Press.

Wednesday set off a pretty vibrant week in Columbus. I started off my evening catching the tale end of the Acid Reign Screening presentation of films for the aforementioned NYC Public Access program at downtown art space Skylab. The presentation supplemented itself with Columbus made videos. Two of the films were a flip on normal advertising methods. One shot workers at womyn-run Alternative Auto Care fixing a car presented with an arty realism. The other was almost an adbuster style anti-commercial for a cruise line that had dialog about the survival-of-the-fittest indifference of the ocean to the living beings in it. This could either be read for a parable about capitalism with the idea of someone wealthy taking a luxurious cruise while others suffer or it could be a parody of a dark humored overly serious indie film. After watching Acid Reign, I headed over to see Har Mar Superstar at Double Happiness. Har Mar Superstar is a left-field R & B singer from New York via Minnesota that looks like The Critic’s Jon Lovitz portraying porn-star Ron Jeremy.

Twas a Saturday night and I don't remember if the moon was bright but yours truly went a-roving. First stop: the Basement, my most favorite place for near-guaranteed intimacy in Columbus, where you can technically get close enough to the performers to untie their shoes (though I prefer not, but when the Stones played the Shoe and I was photographing them I could've undone Mick's laces; I successfully fought the urge).       And honest to goodness and Lord Byron's club foot, too, I went to hear the two acts absolutely entirely and only because I liked their names and nothing more (at that point): Bass Drum of Death and headliner Hanni El Khatib. The former had much to live up to--and I do admire true boldness; and the latter, too, in this day and age of religious war with the Middle East, a name like that invites raised eyebrows but then again, I know from growing up in several entirely different regions of America what it's like to be an outsider. Fighting led to friendship, that's the American way.      My unpretty hunches paid off handsomely.