professionalagainster-blog

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Columbus Halloween shows at Legion of Doom+The Summit 10-27-18

Legion of Doom is a long running D.I.Y. venue near the OSU campus. This was my first time going to a show here but I turned out I knew one of the people from the house via seeing them at Used Kids Records a few times. The show was just three cover bands starting with a young fella doing about 5-6 Bright Eyes covers - usually not my thing but he played really well and put a lotta heart into. Next up was Gary Numan which was just one person and she pulled off his sound really well with just a pretty minimal synth and some sampling she had done on her laptop. Visually she went for the “Berserker”-era as on his early covers like “Pleasure Principle” he’s not quite cyborg-y yet. Next up was a the guys from the also excellent Malibu Stazi who I saw awhile ago at Dirty Dungarees the same night I saw Mixed Deuce, Son of Dribble and Ron House’s recent-ish band, Psandwich (across the street at Ace of Cups). Malibu Stazi did a rousing set of all Scratch Acid covers. I twas a really fun night even before the bands played as a bunch of us had some good conversations about current and classic horror movies - especially since the original “The Fog” and “Mandy” were playing down the road at the Gateway Theater. Although no one currently at the house seems to know if they named it after pro wrestling’s The Road Warriors or the D.C. comics heel faction. 

After the show I went over The Summit and saw even more costumed cover bands for their “Weirdo Halloween 2018” which was a very apt title. I got there a bit late which caused me to missed the Insane Clown BAND (I.C.B.) who were obviously the tribute to Detroit’s famous Faygo lovers. The trio (as it they didn’t have just a Violent J and a CentralOhioggy 2Dope but also another juggalo hanging out with them though I dunno if she was in the band or not but I still joined them in a chorus of “whoop! whoop!” and “fam-ily/fam-ily!”). Said musical clowns also put a few flavors o’ Faygo on the bar which I sampled from. I believe it was a 2017 Red Pop from Detroit - excellent bouquet and a bit fruit forward. Unfortunately we didn’t get a localized version of ICB vs. The Headbangers but maybe next time. 

Then my night’s music here started with Red Threads who played as ESG and did a great job of it - it made me wanna go back and listen to them as I know they had a been sampled by a truckload of hip-hop artists and were considered ahead of their time. Essentially lots of cool drum/percussion patterns via drummer Ray Gun and guitarist/sample pad player, Rachel who were anchored by the neat n’ often funky bass playing from Stacey. The cool thing all 3 of the band members sing on different songs or trade off verses and choruses. 

I also just saw Red Threads do a set of (mostly) originals this past Friday at Dirty Dungarees which was also very good (more on this in a later post). Next up was This Is The Worst Vacation Ever who were an ode to the Bay Area oddball pop/indie(?) band Xiu Xiu whose singer I knew briefly as he was roommates in Oakland with a friend of mine and we watched “Army of Darkness” at their place once. Anyway, their singer as “Jamie Stewart” was quite trippy and had a toy cat perched on his should the whole set. One of the guitar players dressed as Chewbacca and another guitarist was in a somewhat Cheri Oteri cheerleader get-up. To top it off, ShaggyOhio 2Dope from I.C.B. was on keyboards and effects. Last band of the night was Bed Wet Pills doing a buncha Fall covers which was also interesting and they definitely committed to the gimmick as their singer in a very-Mark E. Smithian way said “We’re The Fall - and I just fired the drummah!.” They played a few numbers I knew and others I couldn’t quite discern. (”Telephone Thing” and/or “Hip Priest” might’ve been in there). Seemed like they did a 9-10 minute version of “L.A.” which I’m totally fine with but I guess my brain / ears were trippin’ from staying up late 2 nights in a row with horror movies and a lotta music. I dunno where the hell the rest of my photos from here are at the moment but uhh... just go check out all these band ‘round Columbus and elsewhere if they play in your area. 

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Hang on Sloopy - The History of Rock & Rock in Ohio by Nick Talevski book review (part 1)

i is a pretty crucial book for this blog. I checked it out awhile back from the Main Library in Columbus and really got into it. It starts with the history of the song that inpsired the title which has an oriign via Findlay, OH jazz singer Dorothy Heflick and her father , Fred Jr. who also was a jazz musician. Heflick was later nicknamed “Sloopy” in the late 40′s and she was part of the duo “Dixie and Sloopy”. The song title comes from a night where the duo was playing to a very rowdy crowd in Columbus. Her bandmates told her “Hang on, Sloopy”. 

The first verson was written by Bert Berns who had a huge hit with the Isley Broithers’  (and later that British bugs band) “Twist and Shout”. The song was first called “My Girl Sloopy” and was recorded by the LA doo-wop group called The Vibrations (previously The Jayhawks) who also had a hit in 1961 with “The Watusi”. 

Moving on into 1965, Berns started his own label with distro by Atlantic. One of his signings was a band called The McCoys which featured a young Rick Derringer along with his brother Randy who shorted his last name to just Z even though the full family name was Zehringer..Their single “Hang On Sloopy” came out in August 14, 1965 and was eventually knocked off “Yesterday” by that British bugs band off the charts on October 2 that year. Since the title got “Sloopy” and “Snoopy” often confused, Florida band The Royal Guardsmen put a few bars of into their hit “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron”. 

Derringer went to additional fame with the Edgar Winter Band and their early 70′s AOR jams “Free Ride” and “Frankenstein” the latter I heard at my first show in Columbus last October which featured the excellent Kid Congo Powers (The Cramps, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Gun Club) along with locals Thee Thees. 

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I missed this show but this is a fantastic flyer. Given the deep wrestling reference/imagery I’m gonna take a not-so-wild guess and say this was made by someone from Columbus’ noise-rock n’ wrestling champions, Unholy Two. 

[professionalagainster-blog]

 Tommy Jay makes some very nice Velvet Underground-ish mixed with hints of psych. His voice is really good and I love how he switches between regular vocals to seemingly random whispers. The strumming and guitar bends are also somewhat Tom Verliaine-ish or even The lo-fi tape warbles aren’t really an effect I’d image as this may have been just a garage or bedroom recordng. I got to listen to the whole CD and review for KZSU (Stanford radio) back in ‘08 as the great Columbus Discount Records were sending us a lotta stuff. I seemed to think it sounded more Jonathan Richman-ish but I dunno now.                              Jay has played in a variety of other local bands like Mike Rep & The Quotas (who’s work goes back to at least 1977 with their excellent “Rocket to Nowhere” 7″ but more on that another time), Ron House with his band Twisted Shouts  (who also was in 80′s band Great Plains as well as a big fave of mine, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments), JAYFISH which seems to be his more experimental side, and some bands I’ve not yet heard: Creeper Ohio, Ego Summit (with Don Howland of Bassholes, the organ-heavy power-pop/garage rawk of True Believers (back in 1980), as well as varations like Tommy Jay & Friends and the Tommy Jay Band. 

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Welcome to Professional Againster - This blog is gonna cover a lot the punk, garage and metal bands (and related styles) tnat the local media ignores or just gives passing menton to. Some of this was born outta obsession with how many great bands have come out of Ohio’s captail city - which I was learning about by scouring through Discogs, Metal-Archives, bandcamp and MRR over the years. 

Plus, back in 2006 when living in the Bay Area I knew the three women in the noise band 16 Bitch Pile Up who also told me about other C'bus noise artists like Mike Shiflet as well as the metal band Deadsea. The latter of whom you can check out here & hear them give 16BPU and some other OH friends a shout-out as well as some drunk people shouting “O-H-I-Ooooo!” 

16 Bitch Pile Up I got to know pretty randomly as they were on the bill one night at 924 Gilman St. with the Conan-obsesso power-violence act Crom. The show ruled and sure enough the next day they played S.F.’s The Elbo Room together. Some of my Crom pics ended up in the documentary on that band buuuut I have yet to see it.  

Anyway, we’re gonna start off with an all-time favorite, New Bomb Turks who I used to play on my radio show at  KSJS in San Jose. I saw them in ‘94  suprinsgly in the otherwise dogshit city of Palo Alto. They played at the Edge which had a long-ass history going back to The Keystone which hosted among other things Raven along with some local band called Metallica. Anyhow NBT just ripped through so many songs and had a truckload of energy - I was really impressed. Though I stupidly forgot about them or they were just in the background years later until around 2015 or so. More recently I saw them in March here in Columbus and they had that same energy and raw power. The other bonus was Erik their vocalist wore a shirt with a faded of Trump that said “American Psycho” and guitarist Jim had a shirt with a smashed up swastika that said “Gegen Nazis” St. Pauli futbol. While they’re not considered super political (but I’ll make an arguement for the anarcho-sydicalism of “Born Tolouse-Latrec”)  it was an rightful and bold statement.