02.11.75 Queen and Kansas at University of Toledo Student Union Auditorium

PDGB can only imagine the backstage interaction between a hot-panted and purse-lipped Freddie Mercury and the burly, bearded -yet curiously progressive- heartland rockers of Kansas.

Mercury, seated before a personalized tea service whilst clutching his velvet-draped scepter: "Hmmmn, hmm, hello boys. Join me in a cup of tea?" 

 Kansas members, replying in satin tour-jacketed unison: "Helmet laws suck motherf#*%er!"

Faintly, from a Kansas roadie in the distance: "Peavey Ruuuuules!"

Within a year or so of this gig, I read a quote (a bold pull-quote, no less) in Creem Magazine from a member of Kansas regarding the artistic integrity of the then chart topping media darling, Bruce Springsteen: "That's not talent, it's just two chords going back and forth." Suddenly, the phrase "Comparisons are odius" made complete sense. I like to think that somewhere, the narrow chest of my seventh-grade English teacher* swelled ever-so slightly against the constraint of his cable knit sweater vest. If they can't see something in it's own light, so be it; I'm not going to try and change any minds. But that didn't mean I had to give a shit about any of them.

Later that week I picked up the Ramones first Album.

*Mr. Kratzman was my seventh-grade English teacher at Gateway Middle School In Maumee, Ohio. In addition to banging his head against the wall in response to our generally knuckled-headed juvenile existence,  dropping the occasional Lydgate, Cervantes and (attention pecksniffs: feel free to argue the spelling/origin of odius here, I haven't the time or concern) Shakespeare reference, he could bang out show tunes night and day on the old Gateway upright piano, often accompanied by Mrs. Uhause(sp?) on vocals. He was truly the son my mother wished for. If only the Maumee curriculum specified for a yearly visit from TRCKAK(The Rock Combo Known As Kansas), we'd all be editing the Westminster Review by now.

Reunited and it Feels So Good, Reunited to Kick the Jams Born in the Maumee Hood...

To celebrate all the freshly minted audio excitement, it's only fitting the guys reconvene not only to rescale the sonic summits of their formative years, but ultimately to try and eclipse them. As the sage in-between Maumee rocker (i.e., he's older than H & J, but younger than the Necros) and guitar wunderkind Kelley Cimney once profoundly inquired from high atop his post-party throne of beer-soaked Ramen noodles: "Are you high? Well I wanna' take you higher!" Cimney, who generally chose to voice this query in an aneurysm-inducing falsetto shriek that could shame Rob Halford  into a taking work as a telaflora phone representative, clearly liked to get to the point and stay there.

Likewise, after Henry & June members Jimmy Danger, Dooley Wilson, Ben Swank and Johnny Walker stood up together for the last time, each moved on to various bigger and debatably better things without disowning their collective past:  Danger and Wilson to Boogaloosa Prayer; Swank and Walker to the now-defunct Soledad Brothers. When the band took the stage for a one-off reunion gig in April 2010, someone had either the foresight or folly to hit the REC button and commit the performance to tape, the results of which were apparently impressive enough to warrant an official release. To provide the proper context for the 2010 live recordings, a selection of choice cuts culled from the classic "rehearsal tapes" familiar to close friends of the band make up the remainder of the two-disc set.

Henry and June, 1993

  


  
WHERE AND WHEN: 

THURS. FEBRUARY 10TH-COVINGTON MASONIC BALLROOM COVINGTON, KY 
FRI. FEBRUARY 11TH- MAGIC STICK DETROIT, MI

SAT. FEBRUARY 12TH- OTTAWA TAVERN TOLEDO, OH
FRI. FEBRUARY 18TH- BAYPORT BBQ BAYPORT, MN
SAT. FEBRUARY 19TH- CACTUS CLUB MILWAUKEE, WI

DANGER LIMITED

01.27.97 Legendary Detroit Televison Movie/Trivia Show Host Bill Kennedy Goes to the Big TV Studio in the Sky.

Faking sick and staying home from school hasn't been the same since.
More
More Yet

01.12.74 New York Dolls, Toledo Sports Arena

UPDATE 01/20/11:

Try as we might, PDGB can't find a single Toledoen who both attended this gig and retains enough unpolluted gray matter to produce an even remotely-lucid recollection. Lucky for us, we found this nearly decade-old interview with Sub Pop Records founder and Toledo Native Jonathan Poneman floating around on the interwebs: 

"The New York Dolls played in the Sports Arena, not in the main arena, but in the little exhibition center right off to the side of it, and there weren't very many people there. It was really funny. I remember everybody sitting down and kind of like... I didn't get it. I was like a Creem magazine reader, and I remember buying the first [New York Dolls'] record and going "Wow!" I was into Todd Rundgren, and Todd produced that record. I was going, "What the fuck's up with this?" There's no (Poneman proceeds to imitate an insanely fast guitar solo). I didn't really get it. This is before The Ramones; it was even before [The Stooges'] Raw Power came out, as far as I can remember. And, so, that's the thing about my earliest experience with punk rock is I thought it sucked, because there weren't enough notes. I was much more [a fan] of like Skynyrd and Allman Brothers and even barfier than that."

You can find the entire interview here:

And if you were there, let us know. A little street cred is a good thing. 

01.07.83 Misfits, Henry Ford Community College, Dearborn Michigan

photo:  Mark Wakabayashi

Doyle, romancing the .016's while sweating out his 20-piece McNugget and McRib sandwich pre-gig appetizer. Wait! Is he wearing Pajama Jeans?!

In the crowd: Foxy Greg Boker, John Gumpf, toke!, and, directly in front of the D-man's strumming hand, Anna, sister of Larissa Strickland(Stolarchuk) of L-Seven and Laughing Hyenas.

Second on the bill were one of toke!'s all time faves, Big Boys from Austin,Texas, with Toledo's own Radical Left in the opening slot. Featuring long-time Glass-City scenesters Joe Testa on nicotine-stained screams and cries of social injustice and all-around good guy Mark Podany bashing the skins, the short-lived and virtually forgotten Rad Left remained unapologetically themselves and did what they needed to do regardless of trends or criticism. And that is about as punk as you can get. Except for maybe a big honkin' semi fully-laden with reproduction punk ephemera destined for Hot Topic mall stores crashing headlong into a Broadway theater auditorium during a command  performance of Green Day's American Idiot. That would really fuck society up.
 
If only Henry1 was around to see his namesake institution of higher learning finally actualize his dreams. But history indicates he was more into the D.K.'s anyhow.

Flyer source

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..."

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.

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!

I ♥ New York, But I Fuckin' Love Detroit!

 Premiering 8/30/10 9/8/10 on Palladiumboots.com
Check it:

 There's a million ways this could suck. Let's hope it doesn't.

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.

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

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

04/11/75 Aerosmith and Baker-Gurvitz Army-Toledo Sports Arena

Baby I'm a Dreamer
Found My Horse and Carriage

Friday, April 11, 1975