This sticker was promo associated with the first Raspberries album. More than 30 years after its release, it smells like raspberries (chemicalized, of course). I’m not about to scratch it now because it’ll smell even stronger. A memorable and appropriate artifact from the embryonic days of power pop indeed.
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Northern Ohio’s favorite rock group was all over the area in the early to mid-’80s, the heyday of the Michael Stanley Band. This is a SEALED air freshener from those days. Designed to mask unpleasant (and at times, perhaps illegal) car odors, the MSB Star Freshener is a period tchotchke almost as rare as the fabled Donnie Iris and the Cruisers air freshener.
My wife and I eagerly ventured into downtown Cleveland for a meal and entertainment Jan. 20. A man I know through table tennis invited us to share dinner with friends of his, and we ended up at a table at a Vietnamese restaurant. The company was good and fresh—and the bill, for all 10, was $106.13 (for my wife and I, the total was $26, including tip, because I had a glass of wine). Great food, great value. We’ve spent more on dinner for just us two.
After the meal, we went to a concert featuring several semifamous singer-songwriters. The tickets were $10. Imagine: a night on the town, including good food and a concert, for a shade over $50 (the $8 parking put it over the top). It can be done, which is amazing and heartening.
Too bad the performance was lame, particularly since I wanted to hear Guy Clark, Joe Ely, John Hiatt and Lyle Lovett, all acoustic, each with his guitar. Those $10 tickets got Karen and I seats one row below the top of the State Theater balcony. We could barely see the performers, though the acoustics eventually settled into adequate.
The show was maddeningly linear: Clark would sing a song in his Kristoffersonian voice, then Ely would overemote. Hiatt was the winner; his guitar was the most interesting, his writing sharp and vernacular. Lovett’s rounded tone was caramel, as usual, but his banter seemed strained.
What was weird was the lack of interplay. I like all these guys solo, but I wanted to hear how they’d interact. Early on, Hiatt added some guitar improvisation to an Ely tune, but that was about it. An hour and 20 minutes in, I turned to Karen and said if the next number was boring, we should leave. It was. We did.
Why didn’t these veterans, each fearless in his own right, collaborate, jam, dare each other? Was the arrangement political so they couldn’t change position or sequence? I’ve reviewed pop music for years and never encountered anything quite so stiff—or was it flaccid?
The phrase, “you get what you pay for,” assumed new meaning that cold Saturday night.
I’m going to do a Cleveland Rock & Roll Memories signing Jan. 22 at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Legacy Village. It’s one of the biggest bookstores on the East Side. It’s also going all-out with in-store publicity. Joseph-Beth tells me I can keep the poster after the event. All I have to do is find a really big wall.
I’m reviewing the messages on my Treo a few days ago and come across a picture of a guy in a hospital bed, with an associated phone number. I don’t recognize the guy or the number. I call and a woman answers. “Who are you?” I ask. She doesn’t ask who’s calling, identifies herself as Maureen, tells me she’s from around Pittsburgh, and that’s a picture of her father-in-law, who’s dying. It’s a peculiarly personal phone call for complete strangers.
I tell her her number is linked to this photo and she says it was her first try at sending a photo. She apologizes; she must’ve hit the wrong button.
I wonder how many others got the photo of Maureen’s dying father-in-law. I wish I’d kept it for its weirdness and sadness. Isn’t technology wonderful? Maybe not.