Watershed Really Blew It (Again), By Not Playing FMMF by Jeff Hassler

Well, the big weekend has finally arrived! The Fashion Meets Music Festival is taking Columbus - and the United States - by storm. THIS is the festival that will put Columbus on the map. THIS is the festival that will dwarf Comfest and rival SXSW for national credibility. And you know who turned down the opportunity to perform? You guessed it, my pals in Watershed. 

What makes it worse is that Colin didn't even ask the other guys in the band if they were interested in doing it. As hard as this is to believe, I happened to be standing with Colin both times he was asked. Once at a certain coffee shop, and once before a happy hour show at a music club in Grandview. Both times he nearly cut off the person asking by quickly responding, "Thanks for the offer, but we aren't available during that time. Good luck!"

I happened to know that Watershed was more than available during "that time" since we are having our  Pencilstorm fantasy football draft that same weekend. When I asked politely why he was so quick to dismiss such an opportunity at a new, first class festival he got short with me as usual. 

"Hassler, look at me. Look at what I am wearing. Why would Watershed perform at a Fashion Festival? I mean, I write songs because pretty boys who dressed nice got all the girls in high school anyway. At least the ones left over from the jocks. What's next? Should we play at Reggae fest? Or maybe between matches at the state high school wrestling tournament?"

See what I mean? Such a smart ass. Well, I hate to break the news to Colin, but once again, the joke is on him. Turns out they could have possibly been opening for O.A.R., one of the hottest most respected rock bands in the world. For a band like Watershed, that is most famous for having a book about them called, "Hitless Wonder," you would think Colin would recognize this could be THE BIG BREAK to signing with another major label. FMMF is going to as big as SXSW (or at least NXNW) and WSHED might have had a plum spot. We will never know. Think of all the successful music executives from LA and New York who could have turned out to catch their set. 

To make matters worse, Colin and the Watershed guys are all excited to drive 600 miles to open for Cheap Trick at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach in October. OK, let's play Rock Manager 101: Option #1) Drive 600 miles to open for a band not even in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame; or #2) Drive 5 miles to open for a band - OAR - that most likely WILL make the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. 

In full disclosure, I have to admit I am a huge OAR fan going back to my fraternity days at OSU. In fact, my ex-wife Kim and I got pinned right before at one of their early shows at the PHI Delts Nookiefest party. (Lighten up, all proceeds went to stop human trafficking, or at least that's what the frat brothers told Kim.) It was obvious that night these guys were going to be stars. At least what I remember from it. Long story!

Anyway, because the Watershed guys are my friends and I want what's best for them I tried to appeal to Ricki C. to talk some sense into Colin. I mean, Ricki loves arguing about the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. I would have expected him to see my point. I had Ricki check out the FMMF website and all he said was, "Jeff, the opening sentence of their press release has a grammatical error in it, and the second paragraph has a misspelled word, which in my eyes tends to undermine the hugeness of the event, in that they couldn't be bothered to hire a semi-competent copywriter and/or proofreader.  And if it is indeed 'The Nations...largest and first collaborative fusion festival,' doesn't it follow that it also  could be the first and smallest, the first and mangiest, the first and hungriest, the first and stupidest? I mean, it is the first one, after all."

Leave it to Ricki C. to get all bogged down in grammar.  

When I made one last appeal to Colin to reconsider, I argued how fashion had indeed influenced his music. "How is that, Hassler?"

"Uh, maybe your biggest song, "BLACK CONCERT T SHIRT?"

"Jeff, will you please, please, just shut up."

OK, Colin, have it your way, but don't blame me when all the other bands at FMMF get signed and once again you guys are left wondering what went wrong.

I love ya brother, but you blew this one. Just sayin'. 

Jeff Hassler is recently divorced and lives in a one bedroom apartment near Grandview Yards.

Click here to read his other stories featuring Bon Jovi, Kiss and Dead Schembechlers.

OK, Hassler here again, Don't take my word for it. Check out this clip of OAR performing live at Madison Square Garden playing my favorite OAR song, "Crazy Game of Poker". If you look close before the first chorus you can see my ex-wife Kim briefly (though we were "taking a break" from dating that Spring. Long story!) This song has it all: balls, reggae, great lyrics and showmanship. Below that is some clip of Cheap Trick that Colin makes me sit through every time he has more than eight beers so needless to say, I have seen it A LOT. It is in some park or something. Sad, really. I think you will see my point. Hassler is out.

O.A.R. - Headed to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.....

Cheap Trick, not in the Rock Hall of Fame.... 

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I'd Rather Clean All The Bathrooms In the Schottenstein Center Than See Journey Play There - by Wal Ozello

Journey's coming to Columbus, Ohio on September 9 to play the Schottenstein Center. Tower of Power is opening for them.

You couldn't pay me enough money to be there.

Even if you're not a fan of Journey, even if you hate Journey and everything it ever stood for, let me put this in clear perspective for you.

Seeing Journey without Steve Perry is like seeing the Rolling Stones without Mick Jagger. Led Zepplin without Robert Plant. The Who without Roger Daltrey.

Heck... it's like seeing the Jackson 5 without Michael Jackson.

What makes it even more pathetic of a show, is their new lead singer is a sound-a-like.  As if you're tricking me into thinking it's really him. Who are you, Obi-wan Kenobi? You think you can do a Jedi mind trick on me?

Thank you Eddie Van Halen for finding a David Lee Roth replacement that was totally different. While Van Hagar wasn't anything like Van Halen, at least it was new, refreshing, and exciting to listen to.

But I digress... here's the whopper.  Journey thinks they are going to fill a huge arena (the OSU Basketball team plays there) and have people pay upwards to $90 to see them. Folks, the nose bleed seats are $72!

There's a lot of better ways you can spend that $72.  Go see a movie, buy a couple of CDs, visit Colin's Coffee (shameless plug for Colin's shop), come to my book signing at Colin's Coffee on Aug 16 from 10 am to Noon (shameless plug for my new book Revolution 1990), or even donate it to a homeless shelter.

But for the love of God, please don't feed Neal Schon's ego with it.

Wal Ozello is  a science fiction techno-thriller novelist and the author of Assignment 1989: The Time Travel Wars  and Revolution 1990. He's a resident of Upper Arlington, Ohio, a frequent customer at Colin's Coffee, and a long-time Steve Perry fan.

Learn more about Wal Ozello and other Pencilstorm contributors by clicking here

Ray Davies is the Best Songwriter: Exhibit I

We didn't forget about our semi-regular Sunday series systematically laying out the case why Ray Davies is the best songwriter ever in rock & roll, we just got busy. I put out a new tune, click here to listen, and with summer and gigs and the coffee shop and... anyway, let's get on with it.  Enjoy! - Colin G.

Click here for Ray Davies is the best songwriter exhibit H

The Kinks -  "Working at the Factory" written by Ray Davies

Sure, Think Visual isn't a masterpiece relative to other Kinks efforts, but as always, it has a number of gems scattered throughout. Considering this is TWENTY FIRST album released by The Kinks makes the it that much more impressive. Or put another way, has your favorite band released twenty- one records? That's what I thought. Get bent. Ray Davies is the best. 

"Working At The Factory"
 

All my life, I've been a workin' man
When I was at school they said that's all you'll ever understand
No profession, I didn't figure in their plans
So they sent me down the factory to be a workin' man

All I lived for, all I lived for
All I lived for was to get out of the factory
Now I'm here seemingly free, but working at the factory

Then music came along and gave new life to me
And gave me hope back in 1963
The music came and set me free
From working at the factory

All I lived for, all I lived for
Was to get out of the factory
All I lived for, all I lived for
Was to get out of the factory

Never wanted to be like everybody else
But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf
They sold us a dream but in reality
It was just another factory
I made the music, thought that it was mine
It made me free, but that was in another time
But then the corporations and the big combines
Turned musicians into factory workers on assembly lines

All we live for, all we live for
All we live for is to get out of the factory
We made the music to set ourselves free
From working at the factory

All my life I've put in a working day
Now it's sign the contract, get production on the way

Take the money, make the music pay
Working at the factory
All I lived for was to get out of the factory

Never wanted to be like everybody else
But now there are so many like me sitting on the shelf
They sold us a dream that in reality
Was just another factory

Working at the factory

Shadowbox Live Presents "Louder Than Love" (Grande Ballroom documentary) Sunday, July 20, 7 pm / Bonus Content by Mike Parks & Ricki C.

First the details, below that some great MC5 readin' from Ricki C. & Mike Parks. 

Shadowbox Live (503 S. Front Street, phone 416-7625) will present Louder Than Love, the acclaimed documentary about Detroit’s legendary Grande Ballroom this Sunday, July 20th, at 7 pm.  The Grande (pronounced Gran-DEE) was Detroit’s version of the Fillmore East and West, Chicago’s Kinetic Playground or the Boston Tea Party, the great rock & roll ballrooms of the 1960’s.  Produced & directed by filmmaker Tony D’Annunzio, Louder Than Love won Best Documentary Award at the Las Vegas Film Festival, Best Independent Standout Award at Hell's Half Mile Movie & Music Festival, and has had 16 consecutive sold-out screenings. 

Shadowbox Live plans to provide a true Grande Ballroom experience with the award-winning film interlaced with authentic light shows, original poster art and artists.

Legendary MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer will join Shadowbox house band Bill Who? as they kick out the jams on tunes by not only The MC5, but also Led Zeppelin, The Who and more.

Some of the greatest bands in the world got their start or made their name at the Grande Ballroom in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  Louder Than Love is the greatest untold story in rock & roll history as revealed by the musicians, artists and people who lived it.

Schedule of Events:

4:00pm – Doors Open to the Backstage Bistro.  There will be a gallery and sale showcasing authentic rock art and photography

6:30pm – Doors Open to Shadowbox Live

7:00pm – Louder Than Love Begins

For ticket prices and more information on Louder Than Love, Sunday July 20th, please visit www.shadowboxlive.com.

The MC5 and The Grande Ballroom by Mike Parks 

The MC5/Grande Ballroom symbiotic relationship: linked together forever. 

Detroit and Ann Arbor in the late 1960’s were violent, high-voltage and dangerous.  The MC5 was the response, referred to as “The fathers of metal & punk,” but they were in a category by themselves. 

My involvement in the 5’s story happened by accident: a fork in the road.  To celebrate my expulsion the last day of my senior year of high school, my hitchhiking partner and fellow musician Phil Stokes and I decided to go to Chicago to a Spooky Tooth and Bo Diddley concert.  En route we were tossed off the Ohio turnpike by a patrolman who suggested we go to Detroit where we might find satisfaction. 

That night we ended up on the doorstep of the Grande Ballroom, where the MC5 were playing.  This was a pivotal moment.  After the show we met the sole member of the road crew who offered us a road gig and a floor to sleep on at the MC5’s Hill Street house.  We accepted and turned one night into a summer of electrifying shows. 

Fred “Sonic” Smith and Wayne Kramer were two of rockdom’s best dual guitarists – tight and damaging.  Rob Tyner was a fearless front-man.  The rhythm section of Dennis Thompson and Michael Davis: NUCLEAR.  Each live show outperformed the last, and obliterated the politics and bad management that surrounded them. 

The MC5 was like no other band. 

A True Testimonial.  - Mike Parks / July 17th, 2014

THE MC5 IN 1968 by Ricki C.

“I was 16 in 1968 the first time I heard The MC5
Rock & roll was, at that point, the only thing keeping me alive”

Ricki C. / “If All My Heroes Are Losers” / © 2000

I first heard of The MC5 sometime in 1968.  I can’t remember exactly how, it was just part of that Teenage Jungle Telegraph that existed back in those days.  There was no real Rock Press to speak of back then, Rolling Stone had just started publishing, and you could only buy it in head shops on campus, not in every Meijers and Kroger’s.  There was certainly no internet or YouTube.  If you wanted to see a band you had to GET IN YOUR CAR, DRIVE TO A VENUE AND PAY MONEY TO WATCH THEM.  (How very quaint.)  And there were no Smartphones, Spotify and Rhapsody: if you wanted to hear a band you had to go downtown to Marco Records or Lazarus and BUY A SLAB OF VINYL.  (Grandpa, what was vinyl?)

Anyway my rock & roll best friend Dave Blackburn and I somehow discovered The MC5 (I’m betting by some connection to The Who) and became Instant Raving Fans.  We were lower-middle class West Side boys – although attending a rather genteel Catholic high school, I must admit – who had mortal blows delivered to our beloved jagged-edge Power Rock & Roll by the Summer Of Love bands in 1967.  I mean, I’m sure Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead meant well, but let’s face facts, they were hardly delivering the likes of “My Generation” or “Get Off My Cloud.”  (And indeed, it was during soundcheck at Detroit’s Grande Ballroom that The MC5 – who were opening that night for rather lightweight Boston folk-rockers The Beacon Street Union – first issued the timeless invocation “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers.”)

Dave & I and our West Side compadres were hippies for about 20 minutes, but even as early as ’68 we were looking for something a little wilder and a lot louder & harder, ya know?  And The MC5 and all the other Detroit bands fit that bill to a tee.  Plus they were only one state over from Ohio, so they played the Midwest like the local bands that they were.  (I saw the Bob Seger System at the Sugar Shack on 4th Street more times than I can count.)  

And then in February 1969 the first MC5 album – Kick Out The Jams – was released and OUR FUCKING BRAINS EXPLODED!  Really, I can’t overestimate to you the effect that album had on our teenage psyches.  From the very first moments of Brother J.C. Crawford’s intro straight through to the last outer-space noises of “Starship” this record is one for the ages.  (Is it the Greatest Live Rock & Roll Record of All Time?  It was until the expanded version of The Who’s “Live At Leeds” was released in the CD era.  And some nights at my house even now, 45 years later, the original vinyl edition of “Kick Out The Jams” still kicks Pete & the boys’ asses.)

Okay, okay, okay, I promised I’d keep this at 500 words, we’re rapidly headed for 900 and I could go on like this all night, so let me just say this: The MC5 were one of the five greatest bands EVER on this planet.  They kicked out a truly fearsome noise, they had killer stage outfits and they did unison dance steps, like a punk/metal Temptations or Four Tops (they were from Motown after all).  In some ways they were like James Brown backed by The Who, and what more could you ask for in a rock & roll band?  The MC5 never made it big because they were just too loud, too smart, too uncompromising, too political, just flat-out too bad-ass to play The Great American Entertainment Game and become Big Stars.  (It’s widely held that The MC5 were the target/inspiration for The Beatles couplet:  “And if you go carryin’ pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t gonna make it with anyone anyhow” in the song “Revolution.”  For a West Side boy like me, those whiny limey bastards putting down my Midwest crew was just too hard to stomach.)  (sidenote – It was only five years from The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show to The MC5 at the Grande, five years from “I Want To Hold Your Hand” to “Kick Out The Jams.”  Where have we gone in the last five years in what is today laughingly referred to as rock & roll: from Mumford & Sons to Imagine Dragons?  God help us.)

The MC5 were, in many ways, their own worst enemies: they refused to play by the rules, refused to keep their mouths shut, made their fair share of bad decisions, managed to alienate both the Straight AND the Hip Worlds (The Velvet Underground in particular) and eventually tumbled down into Street Drug Hell.  Does any of that make me love them less?  No, it just makes me respect them more: because we were all lower middle-class boys and we were all supposed to be in this together.  Kick out the jams, motherfuckers.

(ps. The MC5 is not in The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame.  And that is why I do not go there.) – Ricki C. / July 15th, 2014. 

Mick Jagger Introduces Monty Python. "The Best One Died Years Ago."

Though almost a million people have already seen this clip of Mick Jagger (and Charlie Watts) introducing Monty Python via video, I just saw it recently so maybe you missed it, too. Thanks to Steve Quinn for recommendation. Good stuff. Enjoy! - Colin

Attention Families: Colin Gawel and The Lonely Bones @ Goodale Park Sunday July 13th, 12:30pm

Colin Gawel and The Lonely Bones are happy to once again be part of the Goodale Park music series. It is the PERFECT event for family fun. The band will be performing at the gazebo in Goodale Park from 12:30-2pm on Sunday July 13th. Admission is free and you can pack a cooler or hit up a food truck for your dining pleasure. They are the only band performing so plenty of parking and space will be available to all. 

Also, Colin just released a brand new song, "Podcast". Click here to visit colingawel.com and give it a spin. You will be glad you did.