St. Stanislaus and the Polish Festival

Even been to St, Stanislaus? Beautiful Church on the east side over in Slavic Village. Its dates from the late 1800s, although its been remodeled a few times.  Once in 19089after a tornado took down its then 217ft spiers. Which the city of Cleveland refused to let them rebuild, but they are still impressive.

It was also renovated in the 2005, with the goal of looking more like the original church. Buts its pretty impressive as Churches go.

Yet Another International Day

This one was at the Cleveland Museum of Art and was called Cleveland International Community Day. It wasnt bad really. The had two stages set up in the atrium, and that place is always nice. And some of the acts werent bad. But for the most part it smacked of a little bit of amateur hour thrown together.

The Hingtown Hoedown

OK, right off the bat I think the whole Hingetown is silly. You cant create a a Hip Neighborhood out of thin air just because you want another hip neighborhood.

But the idea of a bluegrass festival is good, very good.  And I have to credit the guys from Honeybucket for making it happen,  The music was pretty good, there were some very traditional bands and some some of new era bluegrass bands like Honeybucket.

The funny thing was the guys from Cleveland wearing overalls and dancing like the guys they saw in O' Brother Where Are Thou. Stop that right now, you look stupid.

And you do realize those ridiculous beards that our the fad now are going to in 15 years or so be viewed the way we view Mullets and Rattails now down you.

Still, good music.

The Ohio City Festival

Just for the Record, Ohio City might be my favorite neighborhood in Cleveland. Once a very long time ago, as in before anyone alive was born, say from 1836-1854 Ohio City was actually it's own city.

Now it's just one of the cooler neighborhoods in our region. And a few weeks back they had a street festival.  Now that main drag, West 25th, was littered with stores and restaurants that had set up little stands on the street to serve their best foods and wares.

 

One of the cool hidden business' in the are is the glass blowing works facing the West Side Market Parking Lot, and they give classes in case you want to learn the craft.

Lots of Live Music as well, a favorite of mine, Brent Kirby, opened the day.

THE ARMENIAN FESTIVAL

So over on the east side of Cleveland there is an Armenian Church. St. Gregory of Narek on Richmond Road. And the people there  are as friendly as you could ever imagine. Just good people.

And its a good festival, amazing food and you actually learn some stuff.  As some of you may know this is the 100th Anniversary of the start of the Armenian Genocide.  From 1915-1918 the Turks slaughtered roughly 8,000,000 to 1.5 Million Armenians for, well there are several theories. But really does it matter why? Turkey still denies it happened while most civilized countries have recognized it as a Genocide.

There had been a monument to the Martyrs of 1915 at St. Gregory's for some time, but this year of course they had some videos and pamphlets so we non-Armenians could understand what happened there.

Good People and Good Food and a little history. My kind of day.

Hop In The Heights

OK, Cool idea. All up and down Cedar Road, near the intersection of Lee, if a place can get a stage in the place then they have live entertainment.  The Yoga Studio, The Coffee Shop, The Mediocre Restaurant and the actual Bar that often has live Music.

Here is a hint, next year bering it a lot more RnR Band, the singer songwriters going on and on about the bad relationship they have with their Fathers was a bit much,

Aviation Heritage Fair

Gotta Admit, I was a bit disappointed. I thought there would be more than 6-7 planes there that fall under the banner of Heritage.

Don't get me wrong, that handful that was there was cool.  Even had an old prop plane. And I'm all about supporting any sort of scholarship program-and I was led to believe the $5 I kicked in would go to scholarships for KSU Kids going to Aviation School.

Plus it was in Stow and I like to support anything in the Hometown.

So I guess it wasn't that bad.  But I really Hoped for More.

The Akron Greek Festival

I first stepped foot in the Akron's Greek Orthodox Church in 1983.  They opened their church up a a restaurant for students on I believe Thursday back then.  And Back then a Gyro was some pretty unique food.

My Friends Lou, Lisa and Rene all went there. Ive been there for events over the years and its always been inviting.

The Last couple of years Ive gone there for the Festival the have at the end of September.  I realized the other day that a Greek Festival and Mythos Beer more or less define the start and finish of summer for me.

In May I have a Mythos at the Greek Festival in Tremont, and in September I have a Mythos at a Greek Festival in September. The start and finish of summer.

I Love Chuck Prophet

So Chuck Prophet needs to be a whole lot more famous that he is. So many great songs and one heck of a stage performer. So Much fun.

I saw him at The Beachland Ballroom for the 4th time a week or so ago, and while he wasn't as good as he was the last time. He was Damn Good, and a lot better than most acts.

Plus as always he stayed and signed stuff, I dont know how many signed pieces of Vinyl I have from Chuck these days.

I filmed this, so be kind

The NeoCycle Festival

So things don't always work the way you expect them.  On the first day of the NeoCycle Festival I had all sort of plans to see Brent Kirby at the Festival.  

But then it started to rain, not hard but it did start to rain. I was still Planning on seeing a couple other bands that day, two of the over at the Studio-O-Rama Show on the other side of town.

But Elizabeth, the lady I was with

Didn't want to sit in the rain so we went over to Toast Wine Bat and had a couple glasses of wine and some amazing tomatoes. Plus we hung out with my friend Joy. I missed Joy, best bartender.ever.

But then we decided we wanted cocktails, so over to Luxe we went, and my friend Sonia Joined us.

Then somehow I found myself at Happy Dog, just at the time the acts I wanted to see on the other side of town were coming on.

It should have been a bad day, as I missed three bands I wanted to see. But it wasnt. drinking with friends make up for a lot.

But Then I Went To The Polish Festival

So when last I was prattling on about how the Middle Eastern Festival was not so good. 

After leaving the Middle Eastern Festival we ran over to St. John Cantius Polish Festival in Tremont.

The Polka Band was Killing it, like a band at a Polish Festival should be. Both the Polka and the Killing it.

And you could just smell all the polish food.  It just had that hearty kind of smell.  

The Church was also pretty nice, not the best Polish Church Ive seen in Cleveland mind you, but very nice. I especially liked the fact the church's first bell was still on display.

Was It a Middle Eastern Festival?

I do not want to criticize any of the ethnic festivals in our region, I love um. I really do, every last one of them.  But wow, this years Middle Eastern Festival at St. Elias on Memphis Road was kind of a bust.

An Italian Band was playing all day. An Italian Band? Why? And while the food was good it wasnt exactly unique, or really screaming middle eastern.  Now St, Elias is a Middle Eastern Christian Church, which doesnt matter one way or another, other than the fact I really wanted to see the interior of the church to see how being from Lebanon colored how your Christian Church was designed.

It took us an hour to find out when Church Tours were, and until then the Church was locked up. No Visitors.

No Good at all, it was like one of those festivals at the fair ground where they say its an Irish or Italian Festival but they are still serving Bud and Elephant Ears.  Think ill Skip it next year,

Mojo Nixon

Yet Another Column of mine from over in the UK

Track	Album
Jesus At McDonalds	Mojo Nixon And Skid Roper
Burn Down The Malls	Get Out Of My Way
I Hate Banks	Frenzy
I'm Living With A Three-Foot Anti-Christ	Frenzy
Elvis Is Everywhere	Bo-Day-Shus!!!
Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child	Root Hog Or Die
Don Henley Must Die	Otis
Destroy All Lawyers	Otis
Perry Mason Of Love	Otis
I Wanna Race Bigfoot Trucks	Otis

There was a time in American music, OK there have been several times, when things got pretty bad quality wise. One of those times was the mid 80s when according to some, rock and roll was being killed cause the people making music had no soul. And the music they were passing off as rock wasn’t rock and roll at all, but bad, whiney poetry sung by posers.

One of those who railed against this supposed trend seemed particularly bothered by Don Henley, and especially him winning a Grammy for Best Rock Vocalist. It seemed to one rocker Henley sounded like an over serious, pretentious, wounded beagle.

Mojo Nixon rode into the American public consciousness to save them from over seriousness music and make rock and roll fun again in the mid 1980s along with his less talented musical partner Skid Roper. They recorded six albums together before Mojo put out a solo album in 1990 and he and Skid parted ways. Most don’t give Skid that much respect though. Mojo wrote most of the songs and was the duo’s front man; in fact many just skipped the Skid songs on their albums. He was kind of like our John Lennon in that sense.

After that there were four albums with the Toadliquors, one with Jello Biafra, and a one shot group called the Pleasure Barons with Dave Alvin and Country Dick, and one last sorta kinda solo album in 2009.

He has since retired from recording and only performed live a few times in the last several years. Instead he has thrown himself into projects and ideas such as supporting free file sharing or recordings, because he says he is “Not an asshole like Metallica”.

He was the honorary Captain of the U.S. luge team for a while. He has worked as a DJ, best known for his long stint on Sirius Radio and has found time to appear in a few movies. My favorite performance of Mojo’s was as Jerry Lee Lewis’ drummer in 1989’s Great Balls Of Fire.

Mojo came to save us all from bad music, and I like to think to some extent he did with his psychobilly stylings which often seem to be ridiculously comical but usually included some serious commentary on how Mojo sees the world. But then sometimes they were just ridiculous comical.

In 1985 Mojo and Skid released their first album Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper. They showed promise with the single Jesus At McDonalds, as well with a few others from the album. But they hadn’t quite hit their stride yet. The song though has become a staple, and fan favorite, in Mojo’s shows for decades.

On their next album, Get Out Of My Way, Mojo and Skid took to social commentary with the warning that America was turning into a sitcom and our only recourse is to Burn Down The Malls. In the middle of the song he goes on a little bit of a rant about not being to able to buy beer at 20 but you can get drafted and get married, which would really screw up your life. And although he wasn’t what you’d call a huge commercial success he did become a frequent presence on MTV, as he was about as Counter Culture as they could handle.

They started to really hit their stride with Frenzy. I Hate Banks was one of those songs that seemed to be a crazy rant but was making some serious points about, well, how much banks suck. I’m Living With A Three-Foot Anti-Christ was not really about making a point, unless you feel children should be called out for being as awful as they are.

Elvis Is Everywhere from Bo-Day-Shus!!! might have been their first great song. In it he lets us know that Elvis is everywhere and in everything. In fact Elvis built Stonehenge and the Pyramids, and the Bermuda Triangle exists because Elvis needs boats.

Music critic Robert Christgau, who had previously criticized Mojo for misogyny, called Root Hog Or Die Mojo’s finest artistic achievement up to that point. He also said he was pretty sure underneath it all Mojo had a good heart because of his loyalty to Skid as Christgau found Skid’s songs “the usual yawn”. It was many things, but the first song on this album was anything but a yawn. As I mentioned, MTV had been using Mojo as a spokesman of sorts, but Mojo cut ties with them when they refused to play the video for Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child. Winona Ryder, who Mojo was working with in Great Balls Of Fire, played Gibson (see clip at foot of post). While Gibson took it somewhat good naturedly, it was clearly an attack on what Mojo saw as ridiculously bad corporate produced music.

In his first solo effort Otis, and by fair his strongest album up to that point, he ridiculed soft rock, the legal profession, politics and Shane MacGowan. Well, actually it was MacGowan’s teeth and not MacGowan himself.

If Mojo has ever had a hit it was Don Henley Must Die, which warned against tortured artists, poets of despair, pretentiousness idiot poetry and rock with no soul. He counseled us to be wild, young, free and dumb and to do whatever we could to stop the possibility of an Eagles reunion.

Pretty much every song on the album is a highpoint, but for me the heartfelt emotion behind Destroy All Lawyers comes through too strongly to not include it. Perry Mason Of Love is probably the best love song in Mojo’s catalog. How can you not love a song that has the lyric “you look as sweet as Della Street”. It’s just flat out fun.

So is I Wanna Race Bigfoot Trucks, how can you argue with a man who has that as a primary goal in life.

Otis had big breakthrough written all over it. But shortly after its release the label, Enigma, went bankrupt. This left his back catalog and the current album in limbo. He sort of jumped around after that doing really much of nothing. Occasionally he released a really good song such as Bring Me The Head Of David Geffen, Orenthal James (Was A Mighty Bad Man) and Tie My Pecker To My Leg. Which of course was his lament at being unable to walk around easily like other men. Clearly Mojo had no interest whether his songs were hits or not.

For a short time he tried his hand as an advice columnist in Peterbelly Magazine under “Life Fixin’ with Mojo”, but for the most part he just hosts a whole bunch of Sirius Radio shows. He has three the last time I checked.

In 2009 he did release a solo album that was essentially old demos he claimed he found in “an old shoe box full of cassette tapes under my front porch”. He then set it up for his fans to download the CD tracks for the album, and his previous albums, for free off of Amazon. He did this because he felt:

We can’t wait for Washington to fix the economy. We must take bold action now. If I make the new album free and my entire catalog free it will stimulate the economy. It might even over-stimulate the economy. History has shown than when people listen to my music, money tends to flow to bartenders, race tracks, late night greasy spoons, bail bondsman, go kart tracks, tractor pulls, football games, peep shows and several black market vices. My music causes itches that it usually takes some money to scratch.

He is Mojo Nixon, The Perry Mason of Love.