NIPTDWTT (Nuthin' In Particular To Do With Toledo Thursday) Post

Although many Toledoeans may find it to be of particular interest.

Cry Baby: The Pedal That Rocks The World from Joey Tosi on Vimeo.

NTDWTT (Nuthin' To Do With Toledo Thursday) Post

Social Media in the Workplace: A Cautionary Tale

"P.S. Stan Polley is a soulless bastard. I will take him with me."

3.5.71 TU Field House
First date on Badfinger's second US tour. 

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.