For me this year is especially of interest because it will feature a world premier by John Ray, a writer whose work I know from the days when I was a regular both as an audience member and performer at the Performance Times Arts Series. I remember a play that had partially to do with (if memory serves) the real and (moreso) imagined events of Martha Stewart, a play that included the very talented actress and writer Elizabeth Logan Harris. One of the things that impresses me about John is his ability to write plays that are damn funny at the same time that they address, unflinchingly, some dark issues. His new play is called The Sweet, Burning Yonder, and there will be five performances, all at 1317 Main Street in Over the Rhine.

When I asked John what the play was about, he said, “The sweet burning yonder is kind of reimagining Lewis and Clark’s imagination through Louisiana Territory but it’s kind of hijacked in time to the post-Katrina world. A pair of EPA technicians testing the poisonous flood waters discover a Katrina survivor who is able to taste the water and tell you the poisons and toxins in it and also tell you where they came from. She leads them up the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers in her quest to find not only the toxins but a mysterious sweet burning in the waters. It turns out that Katrina has dislocated everything in time, as well and they kind of telescope American history on their journey. They run into Indians and settlers, all the people who’ve lived there in the past. So it’s kind of a dreamscape.”

Another way of looking at it: “a comedy of disaster and discovery, with dolphins.”

The director of the play is Michael Burnham, and the cast includes Omope Carter Daboiku, Dan Britt, Sarah Fischer, Jared Taylor Wilson, Don Volpenhein, Sarah Wolf, Wendy Braun, and Paul Morris. Performance times for The Sweet, Burning Yonder are:

Wednesday May 30 at 8:45 pm

Friday June 1 at 9:15 pm

Sunday June 3 at 4:15 pm

Wednesday June 6 at 8:30 pm

Friday June 8 at 7:00 pm

In spite of the fact that when I walk in there Motr Pub is often packed, I still run into people who have no idea that it exists, so let’s start at the beginning: Motr Pub is a new bar (it opened in September 2010) located at 1345 Main Street in Over the Rhine, and it’s a great place to hear local, regional and national bands. The cover is zero dollars, but I suspect they make a buck or two with their great (and changing) selection of draft and bottle beers, other liquids as well as a menu that includes their much-loved Motr Burgers.  The artists I’ve seen perform there include Akron/Family and Richard Buckner, and I feel fortunate to be able to drive just a couple miles to see artists of that stature.

Beginning this Sunday, something slightly different is going to take place at Motr Pub. From 2 pm to 3:30 pm on three consecutive Sundays (May 20, May 27, and June 3) Jim Tarbell, also known as Mr. Cincinnati, will be talking about a slice of Cincinnati musical history and its impact on Cincinnati. According to the MotrPub website, “Jim will discuss and answer questions about the uptown music scene including The Ludlow Garage, The Black Dome and more during the 1960s and 70s and the impact the scene made on him and the neighborhood.  Host David Rhodes Brown will facilitate the event then play a set with his band Brown Grass after. This is a Q&A event and  it will be recorded.”

For me, the timing couldn’t be better. Recently I embarked on an article discussing the period when the paths of James Brown and David Matthews crossed. Their connection ultimately involved many other musicians who became names in Cincinnati and around the world. David Matthews performed at the Ludlow Garage, and I’ll bet Jim Tarbell saw him perform with the Sound Museum before that,  so I have some questions to ask. If you don’t know who David Matthews is, here’s a cut off his Grodeck Whipperjenny album, which James Brown produced:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WklioyKHNvQ

The Faux Frenchmen consist of four musicians with diverse musical backgrounds who all share an affinity for the gypsy jazz Django Reinhardt and the Hot Club of France played in Parisian cafes in the 1930s.

Each performance feels like an informal workshop witnessed by a loyal audience. Sometimes a game of music chairs occurs, with guest artists joining the group or the core lineup getting juggled around, and the set list always changes. Along with some originals and classics from the first half of the Twentieth Century, the quartet has also applied their gypsy jazz sound to compositions by such unlikely artists as the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Astor Piazzola and Raymond Scott.

The Gaslight District is lucky to have music like this in the middle of the week. The music The Faux Frenchmen play requires virtuosity on the part of guitarists Brian Lovely and George Cunningham, bassist Don Aren, and violinist Paul Patterson, but their performance feels like a gathering of friends. Perhaps that’s one of their CDs, Swing Shift, consists of a Sitwell’s performance.

 Those are some heavy hitters, and Charlie was every bit their equal. And he still plays the piano and performs now. I caught him and King Reeves a few times at the Greenwich, and I’ve always wanted to document their performances, but unfortunately all I have to do that with is a cheap Kodak. That’s the reason the screen is almost completely dark in the video that I posted on youtube and included as a link to this blog. Even with the lights out, though, you can feel the connection between Charlie and the audience – and you can also sense his talent for improvising compositions where “the main theme” that the human mind has been trained to seek out gets hinted at but never fully revealed. Here’s the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTP-I1WCr70

I’m going to try to arrange to have Charlie Wilson and King Reeves perform as a duet at the Blue Wisp in the near future – I’ll let you know more about that as soon as those plans materialize. Might I add, before I end this blog, that Charlie and King are two of the coolest, sweetest and nicest people I’ve ever met – and funny. And they’re jazz musicians to the core.

That seems to be a non-issue, however, at the Listing Loon, a new craft beer and more store on the main drag (4124 Hamilton Ave.) in Northside.

When I dropped in the first time to ask how business was, our conversation kept getting interrupted by people buying beer—which was impressive considering that the Listing Loon had been open less than a week.

Some of the more popular beers already needed to reordered, and when I returned a couple weeks later the same “dilemma” occurred, which is not to say that me and my parvenu drinking buddies walked out empty-handed either time.

All this underscores the fact that Cincinnati is overdue for places like the Listing Loon. The recent beer fest was wildly successful, and during beer week it was all you could to show up at a bar before the kegs ran out of special beers. Evidently people in Cincinnati are ready to move beyond Bud Light, and why shouldn’t they be?

“This is a city steeped in beer history,” said Dave Mikkelsen, the co-owner of the Listing Loon along with Beth Harris. Apparently he felt the force of history since opening, as people have been quick to dial in a place where beers like Bells, Brew Kettle (from Ohio), Belgian ales, Saison, sour ales, Old English Ales, IPA’s and Fuller’s were available.

As soon as possible, The Listing Loon wants to sell wine and serve both beer and wine on the premises.

“Tastings are a big part of what we want to do,” Mikkelsen said. “We want to become a venue.”

The Listing Loon’s hours are Monday to Thursday, noon to 10 PM; Friday and Saturday, noon to 11 PM; and Sunday, noon to 6 PM. Their phone number is 513.542.5666

Strangely, I may have enjoyed the early part of the movie the most. The first 45 minutes or an hour focused on Bob Marley before he broke (Catch a Fire in 1973 was the LP that made the world notice), which means there was none of the excitement of the stage shows that electrified audiences seeing him for the first time (although there was plenty of that in the film, and I enjoyed it as well).

Through much of the period Marley was dirt poor. Although the movie makes clear his struggles, it keeps the emphasis on his music – as did he.

It was interesting watching the people who grew up with him talk about those early days. Some of them were musicians, and some of them were not. Some of them of when on to fame, others did not. Regardless of how their lives turned out, all of them came across as deep, soulful, righteous people.

You can judge a man by the company he keeps, the saying goes, and if that’s true, Marley was blessed.

After he became rich and famous, he continued to live in Jamaica (until the attempt to assassinate him, that is), and while he was there people lined up to ask him for money and other favors, and he was very generous to the people in his community.

That humanity shines through in the film – not just in Marley, but in his friends as well.

And the whole time great music was being played.

A few months ago I attended a Jimmy Webb concert that took place in Cincinnati. This was a very rare opportunity to see a unique and extremely talented artist, and although some time has passed since the event, I’m assuming there are some music lovers floating through cyberspace who might find this of interest. 

Because the Internet can tell us anything we sometimes have a concert memorized before the band takes the stage. We’ve studied the setlist, know every possible encore, we’ve watched youtube from earlier in the tour, and the only potential for surprise would be a power shortage. Personally, I try to avoid overpreparing for concerts, but sometimes it’s difficult to achieve a state of total ignorance before sitting down at a concert. Before I attended the Jimmy Webb concert that took place at St. Xavier High School in Finneytown I pictured, because it was a high school, a gymnasium where someone placed hundreds of folding chair on the floor and called it a concert venue. Already I could smell the cafeteria food from lunch hour and the sweat from gym class.

Still, though, I wanted to go because—well, because Jimmy Webb wrote “Galveston,” “Wichita Lineman,” “By The Time I Get to Phoenix” and all kinds of other songs that I thought I was too cool to like when I was a kid growing up in Des Moines. To me it was mom and dad music, the kind of thing that mothers would have playing at a low volume in the kitchen or a record fathers would spin on their stereo console. (Us young folks knew that portable record players were the only way to go). I thought I was too cool to like music like that, but I liked it anyway, just like I liked the theme from Midnight Cowboy and “Love is Blue” and all that other schmaltzy stuff that seemed to stem from a distant land.

In other words, I was down with more easy listening than I thought I was, and let me throw in one other song that by time I was ten years old was already haunting my imagination: “McArthur’s Park,” a lengthy Jimmy Webb composition on which the singer, Richard Harris, laments the fact that he left a cake out in the rain. That song stuck out because it was so damn dramatic, even for the late 1960s, which is saying something. And here’s the rather extraordinary thing about that and every other Jimmy Webb song I heard: even though by a young age I became quickly dubious when singers laid it on heavy, whenever I heard a Jimmy Webb song I always believed that the emotions behind it were genuine.

That, in turn, led me to believe that Jimmy Webb must be a super-serious kind of guy, and perhaps there’s been some truth to that. However, that impression led to mistaken assumption #2 of the concert: I expected the performer to be arch-serious, brooding, painfully introspective. In the one Jimmy Webb concert review I had ever read—and I skimmed at warp speed—the writer went on about the fact that while other singers had changed some of the lyrics to “McArthur Park” in order to tone down the wayward metaphors, Jimmy Webb hadn’t, and that was all I needed to read to expect an artiste to appear on stage that evening. A Keith Jarrett type, maybe, a tortured artist who took himself quite seriously.

Mistaken prediction #1 hit me upon entering the room where Jimmy Webb was going to perform. What I saw instead of folding chairs in a gym was a beautiful room with comfortable seats, great sightlines, an intimate feel, and a grand piano sitting on the stage. It was so nice that I wondered how many great concerts I had missed in that venue. Information about upcoming St Xavier shows appear as part of the Greater Cincinnati Performing Arts Society website and can be found at this link:

http://www.gcparts.org/Schedule.php#next-up

Before and after the opening act an emcee or two or three went on about what a great thing the music series was and all the discounts you could receive if you did this, that and the other. To their credit, the crowd managed to stay awake through all this, but I feared that, when it came time to introduce Jimmy Webb a speech would be given that would induce severe narcolepsy on the entire crowd. Something strange happened, though—about the time the speech was set to launch a lackey appeared from the behind the stage and told the emcee to hold on, and shortly thereafter the lackey reappeared to say, “He’s ready.” The emcee had about two seconds to speak before the lights dimmed and Jimmy Webb was standing behind the piano.

I think that happened by design—Jimmy Webb’s design. I think he found a way to make an abrupt entrance in order to kill the overkill that was bound to occur if the emcee had his way. That’s just conjecture, but there you have it.

Jimmy was dressed quite well that evening, in a dark suit, his long hair parted stylishly in the middle. He looked damn dapper for a man about retirement age. His first notes seemed tentative, like he wasn’t sure he wasn’t sure what he was going to play—either that or was testing out the piano. “This is my soundcheck,” he said a ways in (he still hadn’t sung anything yet). “Every piano has a distinct personality,” he added, and the way he said it made me wonder if this one had a personality that didn’t agree with him.

I don’t think Jimmy Webb hasn’t toured very much, and I suspect that very few people in that room had seen him before or knew what to expect. I don’t think many people had any idea that he was going to turn out to be such a character. It turns out he was quite the raconteur, with enough crazy life experiences that, were he to write an autobiography, would require several volumes. A tortured artist? Not nearly, at least not while on stage. Although the music he played was, for the most part, ultra-serious (the clearest exception was “Up, Up and Away” by the Fifth Dimension), he was a hoot and a howl. His Leonard Cohen imitation was hilarious, as were his drinking stories with, among others, Richard Harris (“Jimmy Webb, I want you to sleep in the bed where I was conceived,” Harris told him on one of their drinking nights).

He may have spent as much time telling stories as he did performing, and I welcomed that. I learned a lot about Jimmy Webb that night. I learned he was from Oklahoma, which surprised me at first, but the more I listened the more I suspected that the epic sweep that characterizes his music stems from the wide-open terrain of his home state. And for the first time I think it struck me just how out of key he was with the rest of the music world during the 1960s and early 1970s. It wasn’t just that he was a songwriter when the focus shifted to singer-songwriters; it was also his sound, and the lyrics that he wrote. Actually, if the 1960s hadn’t happened, I’m still not sure Jimmy Webb would have fit in. There’s something singular about the way he slings metaphors around and constructs his songs that I’m not sure that he ever would have reminded us of anybody else.

His performances that night could have been more polished, and I think it was a better concert because of that. It was as if the songs were under a microscope; you could tell how various parts were stitched together, and the intricacy of his compositions was more apparent with just piano and voice than with full orchestras, as on some recorded versions. Vocally Jimmy Webb is limited, but he has a nice voice and knows how to use it. When he sang “Galveston” and “Wichita Lineman,” I heard a master at work: a superb songwriter, a fine accompanist, and a singer who was able to put across the emotions with authority.

Unfortunately, I never had a chance to see Bob Marley, but I definitely would have made the road trip because it was clear that he was a brilliant musician. I still play the Marley records I bought when I was in college, and I’ve watched a lot of footage – but the closest I’m going to come to experiencing what my friend experienced when he saw Marley in concert will take place when I watch the documentary Marley that is opening this Friday, May 4 at the Esquire Theatre in Clifton.

The movie goes back to the beginning, and along with interviews it has lots of concert footage. In other words, this is one documentary you need to see on the big screen and hear on the big speakers. Reggae music has a laid back and sensual quality, but live Bob Marley was a force of nature. I can feel that even when I watch him on a laptop and listen through mini-speakers; now it’s time to up the ante.

Don’t be distressed if you walked over to the old place and saw an empty storefront. Now located at 343 Ludlow Avenue, Ludlow Wines only moved a couple doors down. It’s officially open for business, although the grand opening will take place on Saturday, June 2.   (Don’t worry, we’ll remind you.) In the interim you’ll have more than 150 beers to choose from as well as a huge selection of wines.

Ludlow Wines is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am to 8 pm. Starting in June, wine tasting will take place every Friday and Saturday from 5 pm to 8 pm, and on Saturdays beer tasting will take place during the same hours. The phone number for Ludlow Wines is 513.751.3727. When I dropped in early this evening, in spite of the fact that there were boxes all over the floor of unopened inventory familiar faces were milling around and drinking wine just like in the not-so-old days; it almost felt like a family reunion.

Are you sold out yet?

There are some tickets still available. They are fifty dollars per person. It includes a gourmet meal, open bar, a jazz quartet from CCM and a DJ after dark for dance music. You can contact me for information and tickets at 706.3149.

And it’s actually at the school?

It’s at the school, 3545 Clifton Avenue; parking is off Resor.

What can I bid on at the auction?

We have a lot of sports experience, meaning interactive sports things with the Bearcats. We have some summer camps, one of them is a Roger Bacon basketball camp, another is the Clifton children performance theater, a summer camp there. We have opera, Playhouse in the Park, Ensemble Theater, Shakespeare Theater tickets. We have Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks tickets, and we have several gift baskets that are all price ranges that appeal to all types of people. There are gift certificates to local restaurants and businesses. We also have original artwork by Andrew Van Sickle and Tom Lohre, plus a lot of vintage jewelry and sports memorabilia and collectibles.

What do you like best about the event?

What I enjoy most is it’s kind of like the end of spring, a kickoff event to really get people in the spirit in Clifton to mingle and get ready for summertime. You see people you haven’t seen since the fall….People have been inside. You see some familiar faces you don’t get to see all year around. It’s more of a Clifton even than it is for the school, because it really is an event that is so Clifton.

Why should people attend the Annunciation Gaslight Gala?

It’s a fabulous event. The food is delicious and the music is great. Most importantly it’s an opportunity to see people in the community. It’s not just the Clifton community; it’s the community at large. It’s such a small world; people run into someone they haven’t seen in years and renew old friendships. 

What do people seem to enjoy the most?

People every year say, ‘When is this going to be next year’ because they enjoy it so much. They have a fair number of alumni. People who don’t get together any other time of year, they get together here.

Tell us a little about the school…

We are as unique as the Clifton community in which we’re located. We have the most diverse student body of any school I know in this area. We have students representing 18 different countries in this school. We celebrate the diversity of our student body with  the annual international festival..

What do enjoy most about the event?

What warms my heart the most is that so many people who have no personal connection with Annunciation come out to support it.

Late this week I’ll share some Q & A’s with Claudia Taylor, who has been an enthusiastic  supporter of the event since the beginning. In the meantime here’s a link with more information about the event:

http://www.annunciationbvmparish.org/GaslightGalaMain.html

“I don’t see many fish,” I said.

“That’s because I ain’t caught any,” he replied. “But they’re in there somewhere. I’m about to dive in after ‘em.”

For weeks I’ve been planning to contact the new manager of Bogart’s, who in an interview made it clear that she had every intention of rescuing it from the dead. For some reason for some time there’s been disconnect between Bogart’ s  and the community that’s had nothing to do with the community, and I was eager to talk to the person heading up the efforts to change that. And when I was walking down Vine Street something told me that, even though I’d never seen a picture of her, the woman standing in front of Bogart’s and talking on a cell phone just might be the manager. After she got off the phone I asked if I could interview her sometime, and she (Karen Foley) said absolutely – and when I asked for a card, we went inside to get it. Once we were inside she gushed about all the changes taking place there (I’m saving that for another blog) while I snapped photos (those will be in the other blog as well). We must have spent twenty minutes wandering around while Karen described all the improvements. She was so enthused about Bogart’s (me too) that when we got outside we realized that she had forgotten to give me her card.

But she went back in to get it, and more (much more) on that later. When she came back outside and I was still in snap-photo mode, Karen urged me to take a picture of the flowers that had been planted, I asked her if she would pose with the flowers, and ta-da:

I’ll be writing a lot more about Bogart’s, but right here right now we have a more immediate concern that Karen mentioned several times during our conversation. This Saturday morning (April 21) Cleanup Corryville will be taking place.  I’ll let this link fill in the details:

http://www.uptowncincinnati.com/things-to-do/cleanup-corryville-part-great-american-cleanup

After Karen went back inside I stood in front of Bogart’s and looked around. I saw one side mostly vacated and one side filled with businesses that have mostly been around for a long time, and I thought hey, ya gotta start somewhere – and the cleanup is a step in the right direction. (The flowers, too.)

“Free concerts every Thursday in April from 6 – 8:30pm!” reads the website for the Cincinnati Zoo, and on Thursday, April 19 the concert will feature The Tillers  as headliners with Shiny and the Spoon opening. Although The Tillers are an impressive Americana act, you should definitely also check out Shiny and the Spoon, who combine solid songwriting, sweet harmonies, and a recently expanded lineup that includes Pete Brown, an upright bass player who also happens to be the maintenance supervisor for Gaslight Property.

So where to go? For starters, Shake-It Records in Northside is opening early that day (9:00 AM). Expect a line and a crowd…but you can get up early one Saturday a year and fight the crowd, can’t ya? Everybody’s Records in Pleasant Ridge is also celebrating the event; their day includes live music performances from 1 pm to 6 pm. I actually don’t know it Mole’s Record Exchange is planning to do anything – I’ll have to check with them.

I could go on for hours about how happy I am that vinyl is making a comeback, but I’ll try to limit my thoughts because once I really get going on this subject I notice that people nod off…First of all, I’ll say that I think the comeback is real; it’s got legs. I was there when the CD began its meteoric rise…and I’m witnessing its crash. I don’t have anything against the format, but I do have something against the corporate mindset that, for artificial reasons, eliminated a medium that was so much a part of our culture that it seemed absurd to just snuff it. I responded by becoming a vinyl patriot more than I had ever been before. In ten years I bought about two CDs and ten thousand records. Now most of those are gone, but I still have a few things to listen to. People have asked me, what album that you own is closest to your heart? That answer changes regularly, but lately here there’s been that particularly intrigues me. Take a look:

Obviously this record is a masterpiece. Even simply conceiving it is an act of genius. It may well be my favorite record, and I say that even though I have never actually played it. Let me explain: it’s not that I’m afraid the record would disappoint me in any way; I’m sure it wouldn’t. But I’m afraid that once I heard it I’d feel so disdainful toward all my other records that I’d simply say the heck with it and get rid all of all of them. If you click this image, it will expand, and you’ll be able to see that, for this particular record label – it’s called Fax – the number is 1001. To think that, by the time they released their first record, they had already created a timeless wonder. Perhaps they stopped there, or perhaps they went on to create…I can only imagine…

You can see why I love records.

“What’s special about the Northside market is that it’s a pure community driven market,” Sara answered. “The vendors and the exhibitors have a strong connection with Northside. It’s a community taking care of a community. The farmers that aren’t from Northside have been there for many years, and Northside is the only one they do. Also, it’s the only year-around farmers market besides Findlays market.”

“Right now it’s inside at the North Presbyterian Church at 4222 Hamilton Avenue,” Sarah answered. “On May 16 we’ll move outside to Hoffner Park. We’ll have children’s activities, food trucks, live entertainment and music and local Northside artists selling paintings, jewelry and pottery as well as about twenty five local farmers selling produce.”

That kind of took me aback; I ran out of mean, tough-guy questions.

Remember, then: Wednesdays 4 pm to 7 pm. Northside is a hop, skip and a jump away from Clifton, and I have to think that simply knowing that the market exists would be enough to send lots of UC students over the viaduct.  And visit them on facebook too:

http://www.facebook.com/CinciNorthsideFarmersMarket

Also keep in mind Mayday in Northside. Located at 4227 Spring Grove Avenue, Mayday was called the Gypsy Hut in a recent incarnation. You never know who will play Mayday – I recently saw a great set there by The War on Drugs, and now Sharon Van Etten is slated to perform there on April 27. If you don’t know who Van Etten is, I recommend checking out a couple videos before she hits town, because otherwise you could end up kicking yourself later for missing one of those special concerts at an intimate venue.  A nice voice, well-crafted songs, and a unique sound that will appeal especially to those who prefer their songs on the dark side.

“We’ll be here on a regular basis,” he said. Reluctant to pigeonhole their music as solely jazz at the same time that he was wearing a t-shirt with images of jazz icons, Kenneth said, “We’re creative artists. We do creative music, mostly spontaneous, real spontaneous. We try to create according to the environment.”

“We’re all visual artists,” he added. “Our approach to the arts is basically in the same spirit.”

Sitting down, I watched people mosey into the café and start smoking from giant hookahs, an image that always puts me in mind of a great Marx Brothers poster that I used to see on the walls of headshops. The place was starting to fill up when The Last Boppers began their set. At first two guys were playing keyboards with preset rhythms while Kenneth blew the trumpet. The sound reminded me of the kinda funky early 1970s sound of say Les McCann or Bob James—something along those lines….Then Kenneth played some keys while someone else played sax….While listening to the music and looking around the room Leslie’s comment about creating according to the environment came back to me. This was definitely music for chilling out and smoking hookahs; even just drinking a vitamin water, I knew I had come to the right place. I got the feeling that I was watching three old friends who loved playing music together and hanging together; there was nothing but good vibes in that room. The door was open, and at times people peeked in off the street with “what the hell” faces—we call that free advertising in the business.

Using a cheap little Kodak digital camera, I have yet to win any photography awards, but I must say that on that evening I outdid myself. Check out this photo of the artists at work. I have no idea how those bubbles ended up in the photo, but it certainly underscores the far-out vibe that was in the air:

And last, but not least, for the first but not the last time in this blog, the overheard Quote of the Night: a woman walked in and sat down with a man who had been hookah smoking by himself for a good twenty minutes and said right off the bat, “Why do you look fancy when you don’t have to anymore?”

Already people are starting to sniff it out. I know, because I pop in and out of the Bohemian Hookah Café so often that, as customers have started to filter in, I’m beginning to feel like I’m watching time-lapse photography of a budding business. For me the burning issue right off the bat was the fact that the folks had an acoustic piano left over from the Golden Lions that at least to these ears sounded pretty much in tune—close enough, anyway. I’ve actually been huntin’ ‘round for a place to play chords while I sing the songs in my folder labeled “My Songs.” When I broached the subject the man running the ship said cool, no problem.

What I could tell right away as I looked around the room was that I had found a perfect place to chill. As you can tell from the picture, the owners painted the place some cool colors and threw in some comfy couches and chairs, so that even non-smokers like me will want to hang there. (The front door has always been open when I’ve dropped by, so you don’t get smoked out.) Along with all the sweet-tasting tobacco there’s lots to drink, including espresso, cardamom ginger chai, loose mint tea and the drink that intrigues me the most, Turkish coffee. At one point I had a roommate from Turkey who made me a cup of Turkish coffee, and by the time that wore off I’d written the first half of a novel, filled out my tax forms, cleaned the bathroom and changed the muffler on my car—I can’t wait to try it again. I should also note that the first time I visited the café they were playing Thelonious Monk, which left a good first impression.

Recently when I popped into the café the proprietor told me some jazz musicians would be performing there that evening and that I might want to sit in with them. At that point I sat down at the piano and said, “You don’t understand. Now listen closely.” At that point I began to tickle the ivories—except that’s not the right expression. When I play the piano I sound a bit like a robot would if you told it to play a simple sequence of chords; someone once compared my internal rhythms to those of a Russian marching band. After a short audition the proprietor agreed that perhaps for this event I might wish to be an audience member.

Which is what I did—& you’ll hear all about it in Bohemian Hookah Café Part 2.

]]> http://www.gaslightproperty.com/bohemian-hookah-cafe-part-1/feed/ 0 http://www.gaslightproperty.com/utopia-alcohol/ http://www.gaslightproperty.com/utopia-alcohol/#comments Tue, 27 Mar 2012 04:22:53 +0000 Jeff Wilson http://www.gaslightproperty.com/?p=2029  

I’m sure that most people reading this blog feel as if they’re living in a utopia, but something happened recently that will make our world even better. For what seems like years (maybe it was just the anticipation) rumors have been circulating about a change at The Esquire Theatre on Ludlow Avenue that will add a whole new dimension to movie-going, and it finally happened. That’s right, folks: our very own movie theater now has a bar! 

The ramifications of this transformation are huge. I mean, imagine how different the movie-going experience will be with a beer or, better yet, a cocktail in your hand. Those esoteric art films that eluded you in the past will suddenly make perfect sense, and if they don’t, well, keep drinking and it won’t really matter! And imagine watching one of those countless films where the protagonist gets liquored up and matching the poor guy or gal drink for drink – surely that would enhance your appreciation of the film.

This whole notion of cinema & alcohol is intriguing; an argument could be made, perhaps, that every genre of film demands its own drink. Take westerns, for example. There may have been one western made where someone entered the salon and didn’t order a whiskey, but I’ll guarantee you he didn’t live long. The wine The Esquire serves seems appropriate for more highbrow films, beer for the rowdiers ones, and - well, you tell me….

P.S., etc., update, new news: The night after I wrote this blog I returned to the Esquire and learned through one of the staff members that The Drink Matches The Movie Equation that I imagined is already in full swing, as evidenced by the fact that, for the sold-out Big Lebowski midnight movie, not one, not two, but sixty-plus White Russians were consumed. That gives me goose bumps….

After putting if off forever, the other day I finally starting counting up my coins and slipping them into the paper coin wrappers I grabbed at my friendly neighborhood bank. Counting the coins took some time, but no problem: in my mind it was like free money. When I arrived at the friendly neighborhood bank I walked up to a teller and showed her my vast array of coin rolls, and she looked at them and said:

“You know we have a machine for that now.”

“No kidding?”

“And it doesn’t charge you or anything.”

“Sounds like a bargain.”

“Do you mind putting them in there instead?”

“I’d be happy to.”

Another bank customer might have been miffed to learn that he/she spent so much time preparing coin currency to be transmogrified into paper currency, but I’m too upbeat to let something like that drag me down. Gleefully I walked over to a machine that was about the size of R2D2 in Star Wars and, come to think of it, looked kind of like R2D2 in Star Wars. After pressing a couple buttons I opened the lid, cracked open a roll of dimes, closed the lid, pressed another button and then watched as the machine counted my money.

“The wonders of technology,” I said out loud to myself.

I decided to crack open my coin rolls and dump them in descending monetary order: dimes, nickels and then pennies. As it turns out, I had way more pennies than anything. I can’t tell you exactly how many though, because, well, things didn’t go so well with the pennies. Somewhere in the middle of my penny count R2D2 broke down, which was frustrating because I could barely stand the suspense of finding out just how many pennies I had. After walking over an employee opened the machine with a key, only to find that coins that were supposed to end up in plastic bags were strewn everywhere.

“Damn it,” the employee said.

“The wonders of technology,” I said.

After ten minutes of bag surgery the employee closed the machine and pressed some buttons. As it turns out the pennies that had entered the machine but had not yet been counted we will never be able to be account for because when the machine turned back on it forget about all my other pennies and basically was waiting for fresh new coins to be deposited.

“Sorry about that,” the employee said.

I returned to the teller with the receipts that I signed for the currency that the machine was able to count.

“We’ll call you up if we find an imbalance,” she said.

“The wonders of technology,” I said.

Somewhere, on a private island, the person who invented that machine is drinking piña   coladas with the bank exec who invented the money-counting machine. Their lives will not be changed because the machine doesn’t work, and no one else in the bank will suffer, because ultimately its faults increase their profit margin. As for the rest of us, all I can say is that with time I think we too will begin to appreciate the wonders of technology.

I thought that was the end of my story, but it turns out it is not, for the other day I received a check which in turn sent me back to my friendly neighborhood bank. Although I was simply there to deposit the check, curiosity got the better of me: I found myself glancing over at R2D2, which now had a sign on it that, after the transaction was completed, I walked over and read. And here is what it said: Out of Order.

Staring at that sign, I felt impressed that it was my pennies that caused the machine to malfunction. In a way it gave me a feeling of power; in fact, I felt like a magician. What happened the day R2D2 malfunctioned proved that I had the ability to make money disappear (I suppose that’s been proven many times before, but still). By the same token, I have to give some credit to the bank, for not everyone can miscount your hard-earned money, shrug their shoulders, say “Sorry, Charlie,” and get away with it.

Rarely in this blog do we announce events more than a month in advance, but there’s one event that readers need to mark on their calendars now. Located in the heart of the Gaslight District, Annunciation Church has been a centerpiece in Clifton since it was built in 1910. Right next to the church, at 3545 Clifton Avenue, is the Annunciation School, which is nearing its 100-year anniversary (it opened in 1914). All the proceeds from the 5^thAnnual Annunciation Gaslight Gala benefits this preschool and K-8 school. The Gala gets bigger every year, and although I rarely make predictions, I’m just going to come out and say that this one will break all previous records. You’ll be hearing more about this event, but for right now here’s some information so you can mark your calendar:

5TH ANNUAL ANNUNCIATION GASLIGHT GALA: A Clifton Celebration
Saturday April 28, 2012
6 p.m. – Midnight Father Klug Center, 221-1230
Clifton Attire: “T-shirts to Tails”
$50.00/person or $350.00/table of 8
Includes gourmet dinner, open bar, & music
Large Silent Auction that includes tickets, art, & more
For Ticket Sales call 706-3149 or 221-1230
ALL proceeds benefit Annunciation School

Here’s the when and where for Tom Lohre’s show: 

Clifton Performance Theater, 404 Ludlow Avenue, Cincinnati, Ohio 45220, across the street from CVS

Monday, April 2 to Monday, April 9

Reception Friday April 6, 6 – 9 p.m.

Hours: Mon – Fri, Noon to 3:30, 7-8 p.m.; Sat & Sun, Noon – 8 p.m.

Nelson Slater Pays a Visit

I had a nice visit today with Nelson Slater, who dropped by to trade two LPs of particular interest to me for a box of 45s of particular interest to him. If you don’t know Nelson, he’s a fellow Cliftonite who has done contract work for Gaslight Property. Nelson attended Syracuse University in the early 1960s, where he befriended and played music with a guy named Lou Reed, who ended up forming a band that was pretty good and then went on to have a solo career as well. Nelson also penned a couple great song in the soul vein that have become what I will refer to as obscure classics: “Get Out” by Tommy Sears and “Symphony” by Andy & the Marglows. Here are youtube links to hear those songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rClPJOfCeDc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-CyeyZB064

In 1976 Nelson released an album called Wild Angel on RCA; Lou Reed produced the record and performed on it. He continues to perform all over the country and release new music. While Nelson was here I had a chance to catch up with what was going on musically and otherwise.   

What have you been up to lately?

Becoming number one in the world.

You were recently in New York City. Did you have any fun there?

We went to see Data Rock Friday night, and got to talk to them about doing some music with me, and then we played a concert that night on the roof of 197 E 4^th street on a wonderful roof with a steam plant in the background and us playing our music for the steam age.

Tell us about your recent vinyl release.

Our current EP, Steam-Age Time Giant, consists of live recordings from our 2011 tour, featuring four songs spontaneously combusted at events at clubs and venues in New York, Columbus, Cincinnati and New Jersey.

How can people buy a copy of the EP?

See me on facebook and we’ll take it from there.

If someone runs into you on the street, can you buy one that way?

If you catch me on the street the price is 11 dollars and 11 cents, or you can buy it at independent record stores including Kim’s records in New York, A1 records in New York, Rebel Rebel in New York, Academy Records, Used Kids in Columbus, Mole’s and Everybody’s in Cincinnati.

What’s coming up in the near future?

We’re headlining Record Store Day at Used Kids in Columbus April 21. And we’ll have the second run of copies of Steam Age Time Giant and test CDs of the new albums.

And the new album is called…

Curse of Writing is the name of the album on Are and Be records under our new affiliation to be announced.

I see “steam-age” language a lot in your band names and in conversation. Can you explain the significance of steam age?

It’s science concepts from the 1880s with Tesla, Jules Verne, Doctor Helena Blavatsky, with the secret to unlimited power for mankind. As often happens, swindlers like Alex Bell and Tom Edison saw the opportunity to monetize man’s birth right. Thus, we have little wires strung all over the world charged by the criminal act of burning life and producing toxic garbage. The steam age is the geothermal age and it is the ion generation of power as demonstrated in the great pyramids in Eqypt, the Mayan structures and the Tesla tower of power. If there is a future, it will begin with a reversal of the retro grade motion of science and industry in our recent history.

What’s your favorite song ever?

I thought of that the other day and I thought I’ll never remember it again…My favorite song ever? Jeez. Oh man. Let’s see. I guess it would have to be “Ghost Riders in the Sky” by Vaughan Monroe.

What do you like about that song?

It’s an apocalyptic sci-fi cowboy epic vision that tripped me out when I was five years old.

Have you been to the new hookah bar where the Golden Lion used to be?

Not in. My eyeballs looked in but that was as far as I could go.

Almost immediately, though, I ran into an old friend, someone I’ve seen on Ludlow Avenue for over ten years. Not too many street musicians make it out on in 39 degree weather, but Willy did, along with his son Haneef, out in front of Graeter’s. I’ve seen Willy play percussion on drum sets that were a mixture of pre-existing instruments mixed with handmade thingy-dingies that only Willy could make; the combination of the two looked like modern art. Walking up and down Ludlow Avenue, you could hear amazing polyrhythms coming from his exotic-looking instruments.  Tonight he was restricted to one conga, and for him that was all that was needed to lay down some rhythms that fit nicely underneath the fine flute playing of his son Haneef, who is talented beyond his years.

Although I don’t know how old Haneef is, what I can say that I’ve seldom heard musicians his age who can play like he does. He doesn’t only play the right notes; he has a feel for the music, he’s improvising, and every time I hear him he’s matured. It’s super nice to see a father and son playing such creative and uplifting music together on a Friday night on the main drag.

Willy, by the way, has an impressive history as a jazz performer, and the youtube clip below includes a performance where one of his bands plays compositions by the Art Ensemble of Chicago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdaQxnks6p0&feature=BFa&list=PL7CCAC7A9E783B133&lf=results_main

Located on Jefferson Avenue across from Burnet Woods, the Parkside Manor was designed by Samuel Hannaford, a famous architect who also built Music Hall, City Hall and over 300 other buildings in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The person who originally lived there was no slouch, either: historically George “Boss” Cox has earned his place at the Mount Rushmore of crooked Ohio politicians, a place that also includes, of more recent vintage, James Traficant (who got in a lot more trouble, by the way, for his actions; maybe it was his hair).   

This week, at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center at 3711 Clifton Avenue, the Friends of the Public Library will host a book sale that will help transform the Parkside Manor into the new Clifton Library. On Thursday March 15 the sale will kick off with a preview party for a Friends of the Library Book Sale. (the hours for the rest of the sale will be Thursday and Friday 10 am to 6 pm and Saturday 10 am to 5 pm). For reservations to the preview party, call (513) 369-6035.

If you’re strong enough to handle it, I ask you to look at the photograph below. It’s a picture that was taken one day when a big mob of Cliftonites got together at a friendly neighborhood church to discuss how to save Kellers IGA. Do you see how serious everyone looked?

Although I didn’t show up in that picture, I was there that day, and I looked as serious as the rest of the crew. And at night I had nightmares about what would happen to Clifton without a grocery store. Images of empty storefronts and boarded-up windows besieged my subconscious as I slept at night, and I was almost afraid to walk up to Ludlow and see if my nightmare was becoming reality.

Strangely, though, it isn’t. Good things are happening on Ludlow and Clifton in general, and I’m here to tell you about them. The new grocery store, a new Goessling Markets, will be here soon, and when it does it’ll have lots of happy neighbors, some old, some new, all contributing in some way to making Clifton one of the best neighborhoods in Cincinnati.