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Saturday, December 18, 2010

RIP Captain Beefheart 12.17.2010












5X7 Handbill from Beefheart's April 19th, 1974 appearance at the Toledo Sports Arena

















Items # 5 & 8 of  "Captain Beefheart's Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing," two sentiments that reside near toke!'s heart:
#5. If you're guilty of thinking, you're out
If your brain is part of the process, you're missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.

#8. Don't wipe the sweat off your instrument
You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music. 
An interview with Beefheart conducted at Toledo Sports Arena on the very date of the handbill pictured above can be read here: Don Van Vliet

Below:
Dick Clark: "And that's the story of the vanilla wafer. Hey, got a minute? I've got a great idea for this hilarious blooper and practical joke show..."

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

11.09.76 ZZ Top & Montrose, Toledo Sports Arena





















Click on image for large view
"It's not a picture about truckers, but about the people in this incredible new world of CB," said Fields, a superagent. Well duh.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Red Hot Chili Peppers Flea & Anthony "Blazin' a Trail of Red-hot Funkiness" in 1984


Fresh-faced and fully dressed, Flea and Anthony drop a little funky-freestyle in the early stages of their quest to "spread the cosmic love vibe across the world-and universe," no less. Note Anthony's spiffy US131 Dragway attire, a motorsports facility located just south of his boyhood home in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Not content to play second bass-fiddle to the dapper-rapper front man, Flea makes a statement of his own in an always fashionable "CD Presents" white-T, a not-so-subtle shout-out to the California-based multimedia entity that will be forever linked to the subculture of the late 1970's and '80's. CD Presents was the brainchild of "international outsider-culture impresario" David Ferguson, who would later found the San Francisco-based non-profit, The Institute for Unpopular Culture.

Video shot in the Hall of the Marriott Marquis Times Square during the 1984 New Music Seminar.

-toke!


Sunday, August 29, 2010

Monday, April 26, 2010

4.29.69 MC5 at the FireHouse, Toledo, Ohio


By all accounts, Jams were kicked out. Allegations regarding the abuse and mistreatment of jellies, chutneys, and dairy-based spreads continue to trickle in.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Free-Range Art of the Toledo Region #2

Rise Above
Click on images for a larger view

Mission statement successful. Artistic consistency and vision, not so much. New York it ain't.

opposing view:

Annihilate This Week

I've long marveled at just how succinctly suburban burnouts managed to condense the collective works of the Beat Generation and the cultural revolution of the 1960's into two catchy little words: "Do Bongs."
And who is this "Rich Wash**(type faded)**?" Does he in fact, "Do bongs?" Or is this simply a communique of encouragement to Rich from peers and well-wishers?

Each year, there's an approximately two week-window when the intimate details of Perrysburg's municipal drainage system are in full public view. Not yet obscured by the overgrown foliage of Spring, yet free of the perspective-impeding leaves, ice, and snow left behind from the previous seasonal cycle. I caught this full-frontal graffiti installation display Friday of this week, and even after a close inspection, I'm baffled as to it's date of origin.

Could this be an artifact from the golden-era of the early 80's Perrysburgian punk empire, when Messrs. Montgomery, Groch, Bella and the Brothers Gumpf (and Roger and that other kid who I can't recall the first or last name of) ruled the punkdom with clenched fists and open beverages? Or Is this Black Flag tribute simply the current product of a momentarily disenfranchised youth with a can of spray-paint, just dabbling in delinquency before heading off for a four-year academic enlistment in Columbus?
-toke

-Photo details
Where: US 20 in Perrysburg, under the southbound lane directly in front of Kroger.
When: 4/24/10
What: Sony Ericsson phone/camera

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Record Store Day, April 17, 2010


Here at PDGB, every day is record store day. And while nothing gets us more excited than seeing others get excited by music -not to mention art, dance, beer, booze, food, heaven, hell, and/or any form of inspired self-expression regardless of cultural origin- we're hoping that National Record Store Day continues to be an annual rite of spring and celebration of passion and human interaction. A few wrong moves and N.R.S.D. risks alienating its intended audience and simply becoming another crass, desperate attempt to prop up the remnants of the music industry's old guard.

Art and commerce have always been strange bedfellows, and the cutout bins of history are littered with failed attempts at balancing a checkbook with artistic vision and heartfelt passion. Fight the good fight indie retailers.

Must I remind PDGB readers of how the well-intended and formerly care-free and fibrous Oatmeal Muffin Day (Dec 19) unwittingly pitted Grandmother against Nana and Babushka against Matriarch, transforming supermarkets, craft supply stores, and suburban kitchens into combat-zones, ultimately bringing this once-great nation to it's knees for over seventy-two mildly irregular hours? Who can forget the tragic fall from grace suffered by (a moment of silence, please) the once joyous and dignified Ball Point Pen Day, (June 10) it's legacy so horrific and scarring it remains a source of national embarrassment and ridicule to this day? Dare I mention the less than harmonious circumstances surrounding our notorious day of infamy otherwise known as Barbershop Quartet Day (April 11)? A straw-boated jubilee of such perversion and far-reaching implication most experts agree it an enigma "best left unsolved."

Go forward with grace Record Store Day, and watch your back.
-toke!

Culture Clash Records Toledo
4020 Secor Rd.
536-5683

Ramalama Records Toledo
3151 West Central Ave.
531-7625

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Lemmy: The Movie

After the Apocalypse, only Lemmy will remain. And millions of cockroaches, all in tiny Motorhead T-shirts, contentedly schlepping his bass rig to the next gig.
Loved by many, hated by none, feared only by dilettantes and poseurs who run the all too real risk of having their little rock'n'roll charade exposed in light of the brutal honesty and uncompromising dedication with which Lemmy has lived his life. They don't make an app for this shit. Given that, any attempts at a "critical" analysis or dissection of the highly anticipated documentary, Lemmy: The Movie, would simply be a waste of breath. The film debuted this week at SXSW 2010 in Austin Texas.

Question: Who remembers the the Ozzy/Motorhead posters that hung for years in the Ontario St. window of Toledo's Pythian Castle? Ozzy's "Blizzard of Ozz" tour hit the Toledo Sports Arena on May, 10th, 1981, and the posters remained in the Pythian windows until maybe the early 90's. According to the 06/28/81 edition Toledo Blade, the concert did "very poorly" attendance-wise.

Do any PDGB readers have knowledge concerning the whereabouts of said posters today?
How about a photograph of the Pythian Castle that just happens to include the posters?
If you do, Let ol' toke! know pronto!
-toke!

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush at St. Francis deSales High School: This Week In Toledo, Ohio, 1975


Neckties Required/No Blue Jeans
Saturday, March 3rd, 1975

By the time Mahogany Rush hit the SFS High School Gymnasium in March of '75, the Frank Marino led power-trio had two LPs in the shops and a third on the way: 1973's Maxoom, 1974's Child of the Novelty, the release of 1975's Strange Universe pending. All three LP's were initially released on former Warner Bros. promo man Robert Nickford's Kotai Records and are reissued sporadically on a variety of imprints.

PDGB is curious regarding the circumstances that led to the booking of guitarist Marino, bassist Paul Harwood and drummist James Ayoub at the all-male preparatory high school, where cover bands were the norm. Just three weeks earlier, Mahogany Rush played a gig the Toledo University* Student Union Auditorium, located just down the street from SFHS. And in August of the same year, Mahogany would be opening the World Series of Rock Festival at Cleveland's Lakefront Stadium-see update below. Even by the comparatively innocent music-biz standards of the 70's, a bona fide recording act taking a gig at a high school must have been perceived as a step backwards. As the old show-biz adage goes, "Any gig as long as the check doesn't bounce," I guess.

Or had the tie-dye elephant on Mahogany's stage simply grown too large for the jaded college-age crowd to ignore? A skilled player to be sure, the riff on 70's-era Frank Marino was, uh, he sounded a lot like Jimi Hendrix. Like in a “I wanna wear your skin after I kill you in a bizarre ritualistic ceremony” kind of way. So perfectly did Marino's guitar and vocal work capture Jimi's unmistakable tone, technique, and laid-back urban soul, rumors began to spread regarding a spiritual, supernatural or biological oneness shared by Jimi and Frank. So much so, many listeners were stunned to discover that Marino was, in fact, Canadian.

UPDATE:

Recently unearthed Cleveland World Series of Rock (presumably unauthorized) commemorative T-shirt, confirming the appearance of Mahogany Rush. Note heedless rearrangement of billing order and subtle artistic license taken with Aerosmith type in order to maintain designers thematic "pyramid-power" statement. Actual order of bill was (top to bottom) Rod Stewart and The Faces, Uriah Heap, Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult, Mahogany Rush. Second "A" in Mahogany replaced with "O" due to totally lame Chartpak rub-on lettering sets including no more than eight of any single character except for "S." Pfffft.
-toke!


*Lovingly and consistently referred to as “Bancroft High” and “High School with Ashtrays” by guidance counselors and other supposed figures of authority and influence I encountered during the totally-gross ME! decade, TU concerts were legendary. Hendrix, Joplin, Springsteen, CSNY, Pink Floyd and Badfinger are but just a few of the A-list performers who performed at the University in their prime. Later, Toledo University would earn the right to officially change it's name to The University of Toledo (UT) in exchange for removing some of the ashtrays. Sexy.