Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival, June 1970

It's hard to believe it really happened.  A year after Woodstock, moon landing and Manson.  Mere days after the Kent State massacre, with University of Cincinnati graduation ceremonies canceled and the campus on lockdown, just in case of sympathetic "unrest."  It was a major music festival held in the final days of Crosley Field, home of Cincinnati Reds baseball.  Better yet, the show was videotaped by WLWT-TV and the edited highlights aired later that summer as Midsummer Rock with simulcast audio on local FM rock radio stations.  This was of course before our once-great local media (with shows like Midwestern Hayride, 50/50 Club, etc.) deteriorated into generic corporate mush.  (I can't stand WEBN radio "personalities" and music programming, WLW is a haven for simpletons and blowhards, and local news is a shallow and uncritical repetition of corporate and government press releases spiced with sensationalism of murder, molestation and weather hysteria.  They should save the money they blow on weather radar and hire some real reporters.  Or for quality entertainment it would be great if Nick Lachey hosted a revived 50/50 Club broadcast live daily from the Aronoff Center, with Bootsy Collins leading the house band.  They both seem to care about the town.  How about it Nick & Bootsy, are you reading this?  Stan Aronoff, get the ball rolling!)

Marcy & I attended the screening of the video at the Main Public Library (which happens to stand on the site where her grandfather had the first-ever Cincinnati-style chili restaurant back in the 1920's, but that's another blog post).  I wore one of my special wild shirts as a magic charm to ensure the attendance of an old acquaintance of ours (Bevo) who also owned the same style shirt.  It worked:  he was there, but did not wear The Shirt.  The can be only one, and I am it.  In the meeting room where it was shown there were plenty of old hippies.  One nice chick moved her oxygen tank so we could have the end seat for the wheelchair.  She and her gal-pal had both been at the concert and it was a real kick to hear them reminisce.  Another nice hippy touch was the free slices of watermelon offered to all.

 

There were opening remarks from the organizer then video magic began.  There was a large lineup (Bob Seger, Mott the Hoople, Ten Years After, Zephyr, Savage Grace and more) at the all-day concert but the video included only 5 bands:  Grand Funk Railroad, Mountain, Alice Cooper, Iggy and The Stooges, and Traffic.

Grand Funk was first on screen.  My old band mates always liked them and we played a few of their songs even within the past year but after watching them flog away at "Inside Looking Out" for over 20 minutes I'm not sure if I can ever stand to see or hear them again so I won't bother you with any pics or video.  Mountain was up next.  They did some OK bluesy rock but the song "Theme For An Imaginary Western" stuck with me.  Enjoy.  I seem to have an aging hippy moment and goofed up my HTML code so click here for that video.

Next act on the vid was now-famous Alice Cooper but this was before he had any hit songs.  He goofed around with some unstructured sounds and silly theatrics and then started the old swinging-a-watch hypnosis bit on the audience until somebody flung a big hunk of cake that smacked him right in the face.  To his credit he smeared it around into his own face real good then flung it back into the crowd.  Move on.

The next act was what we had come to see:  Iggy and the Stooges!  They were not the most musically sophisticated band by any means but the simplicity and intensity of the performance earned Iggy the nickname "Godfather of Punk."  The Age of Aquarius is so over!  Iggy probably was the first to stage-dive and to crowd-surf, even crowd-walk as in this iconic still pic from the vid. So rock-n-roll!  They were long overdue for their induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year.

Now watch this AWESOME vid and check out the square they got to host.  He doesn't know what to make of it!  Iggy got the best reaction from the crowd at the screening.

I would love to know what became of the sketch that one person in the crowd was doing, and I'd love to see snapshots taken by the kids that Iggy was diving amongst.  Are you out there kids, and can you share those with us?

Last act on the vid was Traffic, featuring Steve Winwood.  They were great musically, very eclectic.  I especially like this song "John Barleycorn" because it feels timeless and has some rather challenging harmony.

They say they pulled the plug on Traffic promptly at midnight.  The screening was over.  There was an intermission to be followed by a panel discussion of some people involved and then a book signing by Bob Seger's manager of his book of photos.  But we were ready to roll on out into the hot summer with songs of 40 years ago running through our heads.

House on the Corner

We're old and withered but we still have all our own petals.

So we're still tying up the loose ends of the cafe business that closed last July.  We thought we might do the right thing and get a few bucks to boot by returning some premix syrup tanks and CO2 cylinders to the local Pepsi distributor.

 

Turns out we get no deposit back because the gas cylinders have wandered their way from various places, not from them.  Syrup tanks are non-deposit.  We wrapped ourselves in the warm fuzzy feeling of doing the tight thing.

While we were out we decided to cruise by our old Cafe and eyeball things.  A few locals on the street spotted us driving by and gave us a wave.  The Cafe looked about the same, still standing vacant, no neon stickers on the door.  We turned the van towards home.

Along the way, we noticed the changes in the businesses we used to consider partners or competitors.  The  Mexican restaurant that got shut down for selling drugs had re-opened to sell pizza by the slice.  That might work.  Another restaurant that sat vacant for a long time had opened selling "comfort food."  Good luck with that.  Your customers will all tell you they do it better.  The Mudslide Tavern was under new ownership and Andy's Cafe had become Someplace Different.  That one was a surprise.  On up the road in Hartwell, what used to be called Someplace Different had become The Last Laugh.  We turned left on Galbraith and began the climb out of The Valley.

  We felt a bit snacky and decided to hit the Taco Bell at the top of the hill.  No dice.  It was empty and for sale.  Since when does that happen to a Taco Bell?  We decided to go around the corner to visit the nice Indian folks at Brentwood Spirits, our assigned liquor supplier when we ran the Cafe.  Guess what - that space in the strip mall was empty, for lease.  We even checked the back service entrance to make sure.  It was getting weird.  Oh well, we decided to stop at Village Thrift at Northbrook Shopping Center near our house to drop off a couple of bags of donations and do a little shopping.  The big sign on their door said the store was Permanently Closed.  How bad is it when the thrift store goes out of business?  We went on home and sat down to rest, TV on.  News update:  another home invasion and double shooting just a few streets over at the corner of Wenning and Sacramento.  No motive, no suspects.  A mother pit bull & pups were removed from the home for safekeeping.

An intricate cascade of electric guitar notes flowed down from Derek's room.  Over and over, faster and faster.  I closed my eyes and let the sound wash over me, glowing behind my eyes like an audible stained glass window.  Again and again he drilled himself in his air conditioned solitude, striving for perfection.  Eventually he halted playing and bounded down the wooden stairs and into the kitchen to make coffee.  I went in to slice some melon.

"Hey, kid, you learning a new piece?"  "Nope, just practicing something I learned a while back and hadn't played in a while - 17th Century Chicken Picking by Impelletteri."  "Oh yeah," I said, "he did some work with Ken Mary, who drummed for Alice Cooper and produced that record that my cousin Kelly McAnly did."  I told him about the shooting.  He said "I really hate this neighborhood."  Coffee in hand, back upstairs to his arctic fortress of solitude. 

"Athena" Melon, $1.48 at Kroger.  Chilled overnight, so ripe, so sweet, so juicy.

 

 My sundial said "time for melon."  My heart said "time to sell this house."  The music soared above me, unfettered and unafraid.

Asian Food Fest 2010

Last Saturday morning we were "getting ready to get ready," sipping strong Kroger French Roast coffee (it's a dollar cheaper on the can than Columbian) and watching Fox19 on TV.  We had no plans for the day other than stopping at the bank before 5 o'clock. Our ears perked up at the report of the day's events:  Asian Food Fest 2010, free admission, free parking, free entertainment, food from all over Asia, and just a few miles away at Kolping Center.  The plan is set:  bank first, then swing by the festival.

We headed out around 2 p.m., travelling along a residential street called Niagara to avoid the congestion typical of Colerain Ave.  Suddenly a Colerain Township police car came flying down the narrow street with sirens & lights going.  Hmm, wonder what's up?  There is always some kind of drama within earshot, but we found out later that this turned out to be 4 people shot, two of them dead.  Our kids know that you can't walk to Northgate Mall without getting jumped.  And Northgate Mall is going through foreclosure.  Welcome to slum-burbia!  But at that moment the biggest threat to us was the sky.  A silent stroke of lightning etched the horizon as I exited the bank after appeasing the bank with another monthly mortgage payment.  The atmosphere is muggy and heavy for so early in the season.

Minutes later we pulled in to the spacious parking lot of Kolping Center, cruised past an ongoing softball game, and parked in one of the many handicap slots near the shelter/building.  The paved walkways were wheelchair-friendly; the grassy area that held the various food booths was not to hard for me to push over.  There were a few known restaurants represented but most of the booths seemed to represent countries or regions of Asia.  We selected a chicken paad thai and a Korean meal and found a table under the spacious shelter.  Oh, I forgot to mention there was a light drizzle going, so much for a good hair day.

Under the shelter a demonstration of a martial art called akkido was beginning.  According to the old sensei, the main feature of akkido is to use your opponents momentum against him.  Not much striking or kicking, lots of spinning and flipping.  Check out the pics.

After the akkido demo, there was a group of kids that did the dragon dance.

Apparently dragons eat dollars.  After all, this festival is helping to raise money for Haiti.

Do you still have all your fingers, Marcy?

Dragons also go for peaches on a red plate.  Good luck?

The dragon crew posed for photos with anyone who wanted.  This young lady was one of the volunteers who made sure we had fun.  In fact, several people asked us if we were having fun.  The answer was yes!  We're already looking forward to the 2nd annual Asian Food Festival.