Funk Babblings

Last Saturday was the fourth Ohio LinuxFest, at the Columbus Convention Center. ( Read more... )

( Football? )

( Finally: Music )

The schedule for Comfest has been posted!

Friday through Sunday, June 23-25, I'll be in Columbus spending almost all my time in Goodale Park. Here are the parts of the schedule that currently have the most interest for me:

Fri noon-1 (Live Arts Stage) drum circle
Fri 2:30-3 (Live Arts Stage) Kate Weilnau (poetry)
Fri 7:50-8:20 (Solar Stage) Marcy Mays (ex-Scrawl)
Fri 10-11 (Bozo Stage) The Sun

Sat noon-1 (Gazebo Stage) Room Nineteen
Sat 1:30-2 (Solar Stage) Michelle Lundy (ex-Dogrocket)
Sat 4-5 (Offramp Stage) The Townsmen
Sat 6-7 (Bozo Stage) Watershed
Sat 6-7 (Jazz Stage) Circus of Cool
Sat 7-8 (Bozo Stage) Willie Phoenix Band

Sun 5-6 (Live Arts Stage) Poetry Slam
Sun 6-7 (Live Arts Stage) drum circle
Sun 6:15-7 (Offramp Stage) Red Dahlia

Obviously there are a couple evenings when I'll have to make a decision about what to do....

Update: I somehow missed Marcy Mays on the Solar Stage when I first looked at the schedule, and was surprised not to see some Scrawl presence. Too bad Manda And The Marbles are still missing; I think they're trying to figure out who their guitarist is. (Watershed and Willie Phoenix are others I'd be surprised to see absent from the schedule, but happily they're there.)

Tonight at Oldfield's On High in Columbus, Room Nineteen is playing. Since the venue's calendar lists another band and "TBA", while the band's website mentions two bands besides themselves, I'm assuming that Room Nineteen is going on second of three. Edit: Turns out they were headlining, on last, and didn't get to start until after 1am.

Tomorrow night, former Room Nineteen member Fletch is playing at the same venue, apparently playing first of three bands.

We're going to Columbus this weekend (and nontacitare likes both of them), so I'm hoping to be able to catch at least one of these and maybe even both.

Friday evening I went up to Cleveland to see Room Nineteen and the Prodigals at the Grog Shop, sans nontacitare, who likes the music but not the process of driving an hour to a bar and standing around for a few hours. Unfortunately I didn't check the starting time of the show until after 7, when I discovered that it was scheduled to start at 8. It takes about an hour for me to get to Cleveland, plus a bit more to get to the east side neighborhood where the Grog Shop is, and attempting to follow the Grog Shop's unclear directions didn't help either. (On the last part, luckily the part where I diverged was close enough that my previous knowledge of the neighborhood got me there easily.) On top of all that, this was my first time going to the Grog Shop since their move to the opposite end of the Coventry Rd strip (to a former BW-3 location), and just figuring out which door to enter was difficult.

So I got there at about 7:40, in time to hear Room Nineteen's last two songs. Both were old songs from when they had Fletch in the band doing backing vocals, and it was interesting to hear the songs without her voice. But I really wished I'd made it there earlier.

The Prodigals were up next, on tour to promote their sixth CD. The last time I saw them was sometime in the late 90s at the Dublin Irish Festival, when they had only two CDs out. They were about what I remembered and expected, but with some rhythm section personnel changes, including an amazing bassist keeping up with the accordian note-for-note. (I could barely hear the guitar at all most of the time, but this is hardly a guitar-driven band.) I ended up buying three more CDs, omitting "Live at the Beachland Ballroom". But I got too tired to stick around for their second set -- and it was only 11:30 when I left.

At that point I noticed that the Coventry Rd strip really needs more late-night restaurants, considering the late-night bars there. A La Bamba ("Burritos as big as your head, open till after the bars close") would be great there, since Que Tal seems to close at 11. It seemed that my only choice for dinner at that point was a pizzeria. (My original plan had been to stop at Chipotle or Baja Fresh in Akron on the way to Cleveland, but my late start eliminated any hope of that, and they close at 10 or 11 too.)

Going home I attempted to follow the official directions (backward) that I'd only partially successfully followed to get there, but got fairly lost. Luckily my basic knowledge of Cleveland geography (E. 114th St is more west and closer to downtown than E. 116th St, and so on) became useful, so I was able to head in basically the right direction and eventually get to the freeway.

Hey cool, Room Nineteen is playing Friday at the Grog Shop in Cleveland, along with Celtic rockers The Prodigals. I might get to drag nontacitare to this one....

This Friday is one of those many times when I wish I could be in two places at once....

( Bob Mould in Cleveland )

( Room Nineteen in Columbus )

( Saturday, Cleveland and Canton )

I think I've finally straightened out my schedule, at least for the next couple weeks. After that I'm still a bit uncertain.....

A couple good shows in Columbus this weekend -- tonight is Room Nineteen at Skully's, and tomorrow night is Watershed at Little Brother's. I might even be able to make it to the Watershed show!

But before I head to Columbus should finish getting my car fixed. Last night I took it in for an oil change and general checkup (I could hear and feel that it needed help), and it turned out it needed quite a bit of work: the brakes and tires were shot (got that taken care of last night), and an oil leak caused the main belt to be shot too, not to mention a holey muffler (getting all that taken care of tomorrow). $1700+ in all. Ugh.

I'm also getting a little closer to buying a new CD/MP3 stereo for the car. I found an install kit just for the weird shape of my Saturn's dashboard. I also found a store-brand stereo at Best Buy with a USB port (with a loose flip-down face that gives the buttons a bad spongy feeling), and JVC sells some nicer ones that take SD/MMC cards (such as the KD-AR5500 and the KD-LH910, but I prefer knobs over buttons, and buttons over touch-screens). I'm not sure I've found just the right one yet though, especially among those I know are available now.

Looks like I might have some interesting schedule-balancing to do tomorrow night. While I'm in Columbus attending Marcon, Room Nineteen is playing at Club 202 a few blocks away. Even nontacitare likes Room Nineteen, though I doubt she'll leave Marcon to see them.

But going to see the band might mean missing braider's performance in the "Once More With Feeling" Buffy musical at midnight.....

Ooh, tonight begins season two of The L Word. Great show, interesting characters. Guilty pleasure.

If you haven't already heard by now, the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie trailer (direct QuickTime / Windows Media / RealMedia) is now available. Looks like fun. You know I'll be there April 29.

Finally, I'm trying to figure out how up to date the Room Nineteen web site is. If the merch page can be believed, they'll be releasing some stuff "soon". This would be a good thing, since the only CD of theirs I've gotten my hands on is their 1993 CD "Heretics", though I did just find a sampler of new stuff at the Cringe store, and they have some sample MP3s on their web site that I'd never heard before. It's great full-sounding acoustic-driven Celtic-influenced rock. (Also check out Fletch, a former Room Nineteen member who went out on her own, and not to be confused with the fictional character created by Gregory McDonald. That website definitely doesn't appear to have been updated in two years, but there is music available there.)