The Imperial Theater or: The Need For A Venue

3. You need to train yourself to believe that the world cares about what you have to say.

-John Hodgman, “The Six Essentials”

Yes, it has been a while, and I’m getting back to blogging. Hopefully the above quote explains why I stopped blogging, and writing in general actually, and why I’m also getting back into it. I could do a lengthy paragraph (or nine) about stopping, the reasons behind it, the great sense of indifference I felt towards casting off words to be maybe/maybe-not read by the internet masses, but that’s boring. Let’s just get back into things. Now, I will say that the blog entries will be coming to you in a diminished volume relative to the last go around. For whatever reason, I was forcing myself to churn out two-to-three blog entries a day. This led to three things:

1. More daily entertainment for you. That’s a good thing, of course.

2. Annoyance that I had to write that much. Funny thing is though, it was entirely my own doing.

3. A lack of things to write about. I was really stretching at times towards the end. Stretching for subjects is hardly enjoyable.

But let’s move past this and talk about something, something that I’ve ranted about many-a-night to my friends while imbibing a few cocktails. Some claim its funny when I get ranty, but I have a hard time believing that. Either way, let’s talk about venues, as in we don’t have one where there should be one. Brace yourself kids, this could get long.

Think of the concerts you’ve been to in the past few months. Where did you see them? If you are like many people, Midpoint notwithstanding, you were at one of the bars in Northside, Southgate House or (shudder) Bogarts. In the past few years the amount of venues has dwindled drastically. With Top Cat’s, Alchemize and Sudsy Malone’s closing, the city was left with a great deal fewer places for bands to play. Thankfully Northside Tavern recognized this and opened up the beautiful back room. But I want to propose to you a different kind of venue. As Cincinnati concert-goers there will most likely be some things about this hypothetical venue that you won’t like, but hear me out. 

Show Calender – 10/9 to 10/16

Musically, we’ve got a wonderful bunch of things coming up in the next couple of months. Noticeably absent from this list, as well as any potential lists I would have made in the past few months, is the Southgate House. What’s going on over there in Kentucky? Their calender has pretty dern weak lately in terms of national acts, with the exception of a We are Scientists gig. Hopefully the combo of upcoming Stars and Bell X1 shows, as well Midpoint will re-energize the venue. I mean, I’ll be seeing TV on the Radio, and maybe the Against Me!/Ted Leo show, at Bogarts, but I’m not particularly excited about those shows being there instead of the Southgate House. Tiny rant over. Let’s look at what’s coming up!!!

September 11 @ Gypsy Hut – Chicago electro/housey act Culture Prophet make a stop at the Gypsy Hut for the newly minted Clusterfuck night.

September 12 @ Northside Tavern – Cincinnati’s own The Hiders and The Chocolate Horse, the later opening for WHY? during Midpoint and the former playing the Southgate House for the same reason, will be playing the Tavern.

September 12 @ Gypsy Hut – Great Ennio Morricone inspired band Spindrift will be cowboying the Gypsy Hut with The High and Low. I saw Spindrift open for someone a few years ago (for Supergrass maybe, not sure) and thought they were fantastic.

September 13 @ The C&D – Sorry, gotta shill for myself a little bit. Kendall and I will be DJ’ing at the C&D on Saturday under our collective pseudonym Party Garbage. As always, I promise a lot of mess, confetti and me turning into my once-a-month-free-PBR mess of a person! Gonna be fun! Promises!

September 16 @ Gypsy Hut – North Carolinians Beloved Binge play the Gypsy Hut. The duo sounds like a lot of the post-hardcore albums Dischord put out once they got tired of being punk rawkers and decided to settle down.

That sould hold you for a little bit! On the horizon we have, of course, Midpoint, TV on the Radio (“Dear Science,” is fantastic), Against Me! w/ Ted Leo, Matt & Kim, Sunset Rubdown and plenty of other great things! Remember, thouse you may just want to stay in, you going to at least one of these shows does a little bit to benefit the city and our reputation. Even if you’ve never heard of any of these bands, just go out and see them. Cincinnati is an odd city, and good in a way, in the sense that most of the shows are free. We really take this for granted. You aren’t losing a thing by going and checking out a band you’ve never heard of. Oh and if a show is 5-10 bucks, don’t scoff, just remember you haven’t probably paid for live music in months. You can do it every once and a while! Go see a show, it helps the city bit by bit!

Love,

John

Your Sunday Show Prep…Thao and The Get Down Stay Down

In my effort to get a few more people out to exciting national acts coming through the area, as well as fantastic local types, I’ve decided to take a few extra steps. The first one was yesterday’s show calender (scroll past the little rant, I promise those won’t come with every forecast) and today is the first installment of the second step. Now, generally I don’t like going to shows where I have no idea what I’m getting into. Even if I’ve heard and digested only a couple of songs by an artist I tend to have a million times more fun than if I have no background with them. So today well highlight an artist who will performing at the Northside Tavern (new back room!) on Sunday, Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. Normally I’ll do these a little closer to the show (day of or before, generally) but I’ll be out of town for a couple of days and won’t be able to keep up as much. So let’s get started a little prematurely, shall we?

Doing my part!

Full disclosure, I live with the guy.

Look, it’s Soft City Lights! Kevin makes videos for the world with a nice Cincinnati focus. We all love our city, you should too. (I know all this stuff looks better on vimeo, but wordpress is being a jerk about that.)

There’s plenty more videos where that came from, and more in the foreseeable future if Mr. Bayer ever gets around to editing them. Busy, I know.

Welcome to the neighborhood Mr. Kevin Bayer!

Oh, and he and some of my cohorts made this for 48 hr. film festival. It’s a lesbian western and features the music of locals Turnbull AC’s, Billy Catfish (plus his acting talents) and Moon High:

Now it’s been blogged about twice!!! I took part in Pizza Infinity’s production for the same deal. It’s not online yet, but as soon as it is you’ll be seeing it.

AAAAAAAAAAAH,

John

The first monthly music round up…

There are two things I know, and that you should know too. The first is that I love music, the second is that I have no desire to write exclusively about music. This does not mean that I won’t occasionally talk about it though. Don’t like it? Deal, jerk. Not everything’s gonna be new, not everything will be old. So just sit back, listen and consider. I promise it won’t be too painful.

It’s not a mystery to most people I know that I mostly stick to electronic music. Within that I tend to lean more towards the dance oriented end of things. It’s not that I dislike slow things particularly, it’s just that most of the time fast things with a beat fit with my mental state. If a song doesn’t totally glue itself into my skull after a couple listens, I’ll pretty much give up on it. You won’t generally see me at noise shows. Nothing against those cats, I just could give a damn. So let’s move and shake, shall we?

Oh yeah, and just in case (thought this seems highly unlikely), if anyone playing this music has an issue with me putting this stuff up here, just be nice and ask. I’ll take it down.

First up is a song by Panico from their 2005 album “Subliminal Kill.” It’s called “Transpira-Lo” and it’s in Spanish. Grooves abound.

This next one is a song called “Remember Love” by Noze. I know absolutely nothing about these guys except that the piano line and chorus of this song was wedged in the front of my brain for days.

I had a hard time picking one song off of Copy’s “Hair Guitar.” I chose “Zipper Problems” for its name and because its sounds like Dr. Dre producing music on a GAMEBOY.

Man, I’ve had this Shinichi Osawa record on my computer for ages, I’ve barely ever listened to it. This song, “Star Guitar,” came on during an otherwise uneventful iPod shuffle. I totally lost my shit for its 6 minute length.

About a year ago, this guy on a message board I go to started posting albums off of the Active Suspension label. I downloaded a lot of it, but Hypo’s “Karaoke A Capella” was the true standout. This track is off of Hypo’s collaboration with lady-type EDH. It’s called “Naughty Place.” Its weird and catchy as hell. More people need to pay attention to Hypo.

This last one is a totally amazing song. French synth disco. How amazingly dissinterested does that singer sound?!?! It’s awesome! I present Thirteen at Midnight’s “Other Passengers.”

Love,

John