They've Torn Down Vet's Memorial, part three - by Ricki C.

The heading of my year-long Pencilstorm series has changed this month, as I read in my daily newspaper (a newspaper, how quaint) that the demolition of Vet’s Memorial is complete.  

JUDY COLLINS / March 20th, 1970

I would guess the first question longtime readers of Pencilstorm would have about this month’s entry is: “What the hell was Ricki C. doing at a Judy Collins concert?”  There are a variety of answers to that question: I’ve always had a soft spot (no pun intended) for acoustic music, even in my most rockin’ times.  In 1969 I loved The MC5 and Joni Mitchell with equal and opposing fervor.  The Mekons and Shawn Colvin probably shared roughly equal time on my cassette deck back in 1989, and right now Jack White and Dar Williams CD’s are both stacked next to my player.

Also, I probably wanted to see Judy Collins in early 1970 because I still LOVED Crosby, Stills & Nash in those days, and Stephen Stills had penned all those tunes about Collins: “Suite: Judy Blues Eyes” and the like.  (By 1973, only three years later, when the New York Dolls released their first record, I was ready to ship CS&N and all of their hippie brethren ilk out on the Japanese current.)  

Probably the biggest reason I attended Judy Collins, though, was that I was dating a girl named Linda Finneran at the time and Linda liked Judy Collins.  (There’s an entire blog about Linda and my schizoid senior year of high school – Linda Finneran & Scoring Heroin – in my former blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll.  Check it out if you get twenty free minutes.) 

I don’t really remember a whole lot about the show: I can’t even recall who the opening act was, and that’s very unusual for me, they must have been a genuine folkie snooze.  I do remember that Collins opened the show with a song called “Hello Hooray” by Canadian singer/songwriter Rolf Kempf, which, roughly three months later - June 13th, 1970 - Alice Cooper opened THEIR set with at the Cincinnati Pop Festival.  That has to be the ONLY song ever shared by  Judy Collins AND Alice Cooper.

I further remember that Ms. Collins displayed an absolute MANIA for being in tune.  She spent literally minutes at a time between songs tuning the six-string she started with and what seemed like HOURS fooling with the tuning pegs of her twelve-string acoustic.  Collins sang great, but the bouts of tuning REALLY began taking a toll on the show; people started yelling for her to just sing, to just get on with it.  (And those were the days before guitar tuners were invented: Collins just muddled along, tuning & re-tuning every string interminably.  It was maddening.)

Finally, after about 40 minutes in which I think Collins had managed to perform only five songs between tuning, she put down her 12-string and walked over to the Vet’s Memorial grand piano positioned stage right.  She sat down, played a couple of notes, put on a sour face and stood up to actually LOOK INSIDE THE PIANO.  At that point a hippie guy seated right behind Linda and I said – in a voice loud enough to carry to the stage – “Oh man, if she starts tuning that goddamn piano I’m LEAVING.”

The entire audience cracked up laughing at that, Collins looked pissed, and was perfunctory the rest of the show.  It was the best, and most memorable moment of the concert.  Nameless hippie heckler, I salute you.  – Ricki C. / March 17th, 2015.

SHOWS I SAW AT VET’S MEMORIAL MARCH HONORABLE MENTIONS

March 3rd, 1968 – The Jimi Hendrix Experience (full account at Growing Old With Rock & Roll, 11/13/13)

March 26th, 1969 – Steppenwolf  

I Helped Cheap Trick Get Elected to the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt

The Goal: Raise $1,200 to purchase a full page advertisement in Cleveland Scene Magazine asking "Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" It will run for a week starting April 15th. The actual rock Hall of Fame ceremony is being held in Cleveland Saturday April 18th. 

The Means: All we need  is to sell 60 "Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame?" T-shirts and the ad will be bought along with 10 website banners. We only need SIXTY Cheap Trick fans in the entire world to make this happen. And the shirt is limited edition and very cool. You have probably seen a few around. 

The Result: Everybody visiting Cleveland for the rock hall ceremony will thumb through the local magazine only to notice a giant "Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame?" staring back at them in the newspaper and on the internet.

Look, I don't want to call out my fellow Cheap Trick fans  but not only have I ranked every single Cheap Trick song for your enjoyment, I also started a band called "Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame?" that will again be playing TWO FREE SHOWS this year of all Cheap Trick covers that will surely make you long for the real Cheap Trick. Between missing work to practice, filling up the van with gas and pricy marriage counseling, being in this band is a big sacrifice. But it is our way of kicking in to support this most worthy of all worthy causes. 

We only need 60 fellow Cheap Trick fans to purchase a shirt or one really rich Cheap Trick fan to purchase all sixty (you save on shipping). We don't care how the numbers add up. We are pleading with you to help us find the answer to the question, "Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" Won't you please help us?

"Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" shirts are $29.99 + shipping with $20 of each sale going directly to purchasing the advertisement. Wear the slogan on your chest and help us put it in the paper. What is NOT to like. Do it. Do it. Do it. This is the year. Thanking you in advance, Colin Gawel

Click here to purchase a T-Shirt and help us raise $$ to help Cheap Trick Get Into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

Why Isn't Cheap Trick In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? will be performing April 17th @ Ace of Cups in Columbus. OH and Saturday April 18th at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. (Afternoon show!) Teenage Fanclub Fanclub opens both shows and both are FREE. Details below.

 "Why Isn't Cheap Trick in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?" returning for the third year with two FREE shows of all Trick covers, 

Click here to sign an online petition supporting the cause.  

Click here to sign another petition supporting the cause.

Reelin' and Rockin' @ The Gateway Schedule is LOADED - Elliot Smith, Mekons, Devo and more.

Hola, fellow rock n roll/movie fans. Brian Phillips and myself would like to thank all of you for supporting the Reelin' and Rockin' @ the Gateway Film Center film series, which is still going strong three years after we hatched this crazy plan in a bar somewhere.

To get you up to speed, a rock n roll movie is shown the 3rd Wednesday of every month at the fabulous Gateway Film Center. Drinks at 7 pm, movie starts at 8pm. Tickets are only $5, and all profits benefit CD1025 for the kids. 

Check out these upcoming movies:

March 18th : Turn it Up! A Celebration of the Electric Guitar.

April 15: Revenge Of The Mekons.

May 20: Heaven Adores You (New Elliot Smith doc).

June 17th: Devo Hardcore Live. 

Hope you can join Brian and myself for one of these great flicks - Colin G.

Click here for a story of the first twenty two Reelin and Rockin movies.    

Click here for the Reelin' and Rockin' Facebook Page.

Random Willie Phoenix Stories, Part One - by Ricki C.

(from Ricki C. - It seemed like we were getting a little too serious and devotional in our Willie coverage, so I thought I’d throw in a coupla mildly scabrous, “when-we-was-young” rock & roll stories from back in the day.  Apologies to everybody involved, not many names were changed. Click here to hear two FREE songs from the Willie Phoenix Tribute Machine and links to all things Willie Phoenix)

I

When I first met Willie in 1978, when he was leading Romantic Noise, the band (Willie, Greg Glasgow on bass & vocals, John Ballor on lead guitar & vocals, and Dee Hunt – the pride of Beckley, West Virginia – on drums) all lived together in a house on 4th Street, right around the corner from that little strip-shopping center on Summit, near Oakland, where Café Bourbon Street and The Summit are located.  (I’m not sure Willie lived there all the time.  As always, his living arrangements were and are a mystery to me, but he was consistently there whenever I dropped by to visit.)

Frequent visitors to the 4th Street house were The CookieBakers: three teenage girls – Erin, Kim & Cindy, by name – who came to all the bands’ gigs and, true to their name, baked cookies for the boys.  It was all really quite innocent & charming; the girls really did bake cookies and bring them to the house.  They weren’t groupies exactly, but Kim and Willie “dated” for quite some time and Erin later married and still later was divorced from Greg, so more than chocolate chips got exchanged, if you get my drift. 

Anyway, one day in early spring ’78 we were all at the house and Erin was telling an elaborate story about something that had happened at high school that day.  She was wearing a longish skirt, but the skirt was also really sheer and once the setting sun starting pouring in the picture window in the front of the house, she might as well NOT HAVE BEEN WEARING A SKIRT AT ALL.  So Erin’s jumping around, acting out the story and the guys and I are all stifling laughs, just staring at her essentially naked from the waist down form, when Kim walks back in from the kitchen and yells, “ERIN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!!!?”

She pulls a confused Erin out of the sunlight while the rest of us just fall over laughing.  Erin turns beet-red and flees the room, pulling her skirt tighter well after the fact and Kim soundly reads us the riot act: “That wasn’t funny, you guys, that was just mean.”  I think she might have actually cuffed Willie on the head, and then she spun on me, saying, “I would have expected this from these guys, Ricki, but I really expected better behavior from you.”  What the hell?  Was my twelve-years-of-Catholic-school-upbringing really that apparent, even at that late a date?

“I’m just one of the boys,” I said to a livid Kim, “you’d best not expect that much of me.”  That became only truer & truer as the year went on.  

II

It’s after a gig at Bernie’s Bagels.  I’m packing up gear and Willie initiates a conversation with my lead singer & girlfriend Nicole, whom I’ve brought along to the show that night:

Willie – “Hey Nicole, why don’t we go out to my car?”

Nicole (feigning naivete, she’s seen this Willie show before) – “What would we do in your car, Wilie?”  

Willie – “Oh, we’d just talk and stuff.  It’d be no big deal.”

Nicole – “Well, we could talk right here, Willie, we’re talking right now.”

Willie – “Yeah, but in my car, we could listen to music, or we could talk more private.  Or do more private things.”

Nicole (in a tone like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth)  – “Oh, I’m not sure Ricki would like it if we did more private things, Willie.”  

Willie – “Oh no, Ricki would be cool with that.  Ricki’s a cool guy.”

Ricki – “WILLIE, I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE.”

Willie (glancing briefly in my direction, and then totally ignoring the outburst) – “So, whattya say, should we go outside?”

Nicole – “We’re not going out to your car, Willie.”

Willie – “Okay, just give it some thought,” patting Nicole’s hand and walking over to a random girl standing by the bar, “Hey, why don’t we got out to my car?”

III

Drummer Dee Hunt, Willie & I are having a bite to eat at that Wendy’s across from campus by Schoolkid’s (now Used Kid’s) Records and Willie starts telling us – apropos of not much – that he scored the night before with a Hare Krishna girl he picked up at the airport.  Dee & I exchange a glance, and then Dee says, “You made it with a Hare Krishna girl?”  “Yeah,” Willie says, nonchalantly, like this is an everyday occurrence in the little rock & roll circles in which we move.

“Didn’t it creep you out that she was bald?” Dee asked, in those long-ago pre-Sinead O’Connor days of the late 70’s.  

“Well, I made her wear a hat,” Willie deadpans, and I laugh so hard that some of my Frosty comes out my nose.

Willie was my hero.

I miss the 1970’s. – Ricki C. / March 4th, 2015.

Willie Phoenix & Dee Hunt / May, 1978

Miles Nielsen is the Opposite of Sammy Hagar's Kid and that is a Good Thing. - by Colin G.

A little while back I wrote a story titled "Sammy Hagar's Kid and the Dark Side of Crowd Funding". You can click here for the full read, but the basic gist of it is that a rich son of a rich rock star wants you to give him $100,000 so he can record songs he hasn't written yet. Needless to say, yuk.

Do you know who else is a son a a famous rock star? Miles Nielsen, the son of an actual rock legend, Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen. Miles goes about his business in a slightly different manner than Hagar's kid. Miles writes and records great music and doesn't ask you for a single dime to make it happen. Unless you want to buy a record or go see him and his excellent band The Rusted Hearts performing live.

As luck would have it,  Miles Nielsen and the Rusted Hearts will be playing my hometown of Columbus, OH on Tuesday March 10th at the fabulous Natalie's Coal Fired Pizza. Showtime is 8pm, Tickets are just $10 and can be purchased by clicking here. 

I am ashamed to say, despite being the world's biggest Cheap Trick fan (click here for my bona fides) I had never checked out Miles before this week. Is it possible Miles suffers from reverse nepotism? Does that term make sense? I finally put on the latest Rusted Hearts record and guess what? It's great. In fact, I would put in on par with any recent record by Ryan Adams, Steve Earle and the like. 

I shouldn't have been surprised. Music flows in the Nielsen family like water flows down the Rock River.  Hell, Miles' grandad owned a music store in Rockford and his brother Daxx is the current drummer for Cheap Trick. I suspect the topic of music has come up a time or two around the Nielsen dinner table. 

I guess the point of all this is that it is easy to pick on a rich guy's kid and more often than not, the spoiled little bastards deserve it. Let's face it, the country is crawling with people born on 3rd base who act like they just hit a triple. Just scroll down a list of U.S. Presidents if you need further evidence. 

But there are exceptions to the rule and Miles Nielsen deserves not only your respect but more importantly, he deserves your ears. You won't be disappointed. 

Colin Gawel wrote this at Colin's Coffee where he started Pencilstorm. "Hitless Wonder" tells the story of his life and the band Watershed. Check it out.

Somewhere between a bar and the recording studio, Miles Nielsen's stirs up his own pop rock brand of Beatles-eque Cosmic Americana. Pop rock arrangements and sunny melodies tucked between a long lost country folk steel guitar floating through speakers around crashing drums, bouncing bass lines and smooth as butter keys.

Video by Barton Bishoff - www.bartonbishoff.com Recorded live at The Midwest Sound in Rockford, IL by Daniel McMahon Miles Nielsen - Vocals / Acoustic Adam Plamann - Clarinet Daniel McMahon - Electric Guitar / Vocals www.themidwestsound.com www.milesnielsen.com www.rotownrecords.com

Nobody Roots for Amir Williams by James Baumann

 
“Nobody roots for Goliath.”
 
This sentiment was famously uttered by Wilt Chamberlain, the basketball playing behemoth famous for once scoring 100 points in an NBA game and, later, for boasting of scoring with many times that number of women. Still, for all his accomplishments, the public always seemed to add a figurative asterisk to everything Wilt did. “Of course he can score all those points and snare all those rebounds,” they implied. “he’s so much bigger than everyone else.”
 
Wilt was correct. Nobody roots for Goliath. And now, after collecting four years’ worth of evidence, let me posit that nobody roots for Amir Williams either.

Now, I am not saying that the Ohio State senior center is comparable to Chamberlain. Other than their heights, the item they probably most have in common is the amount of scorn fans heap upon them. The difference is that where Wilt was berated on the road, Amir has suffered at the hands and mouths of his hometown backers.
 
This is not to say that there haven’t been times that he deserved it. I am not an Amir-apologist. Teams like their big men to have hands like catchers’ mitts to gather entry passes and errant shots. Amir occasionally plays like he had ping-pong paddles surgically implanted at the end of his wrists. He has the incredibly frustrating habit of carrying the ball at waist height as he gathers himself to go up for a shot, or after coming down with a rebound. This is despite the fact that this is the number one thing that coaches have been telling him not to do since he first stepped onto a court as a child. On defense, his arms are often at his side rather than over his head. His knees are locked, rather than flexed. And he moves side-to-side about as easily as a grocery cart with a wonky wheel.
 
Still, despite everything I just said, I will not join in with the rest of the Buckeye fanbase that blames Amir for everything that goes wrong within a seven-foot radius of either hoop.
 
Let me digress for a moment. After a lifetime of watching Ohio State basketball, the first year I had season tickets for the 2006-07 campaign. This was the year of Greg Oden, Mike Conley, Jr., and the run to the championship game. For virtually all these games my oldest son, Evan, who turned 10 during that season, accompanied me. The seats next to ours were filled with a rotating cast of characters (who had obviously bought their seats on the secondary market) except for some of the marquee games when the true owner, a 50-something white-haired man, would show up with his squirming grandson to actually watch the best basketball team Ohio State had fielded in a generation.
 
He never cheered the entire season.
 
Not once.
 
As he sat in his seat with his arms clenched across his chest, the closest thing he would offer was a gravely “Come on Bucks,” through teeth gritted so tight you could strain coffee through them. Actually, it ended up sounding more like one word, “C’monbucks.” And this growl primarily occurred in those situations when the team had displeased him, or a lead looked like it was in danger of being fretted away.
 
There is a unique sound when a home crowd gets apprehensive about how the game is progressing; usually a murmur then an attempt at a reassuring cheer and clapping, and maybe a “Let’s go Bucks,” chant.
 
I think the semantics of the cheer are worth noting. “Let’s go Bucks” implies that we are all in this together and we are moving forward. “Let’s go!” It’s what you say when you are heading out the front door with your dog on a bright summer morning. “Let’s go, buddy!”
 
On the other hand, “C’monbucks” is the sound of someone who clearly feels that he has been wronged. He is where he wants to be and wants the rest of the world to quit lollygagging behind. It implies, “I have my ticket. I’ve done my part. Why aren’t you playing as perfectly as I desire?” It’s what you snarl when it’s six degrees outside and you just want that dog to finish taking a leak and get back inside the damn house. “C’monbucks!”
 
After a season of Evan and I rolling our eyes and shrugging our shoulders at the grumpiest man who ever lived, “C’monbucks” quickly became the Baumann family shorthand for the person -- Ohio State fan or otherwise – that is never happy. Any points given up or any shot missed or any game lost simply must be due to the fact that their team failed to do something. They can’t grasp the fact that sometimes the other team simply makes the better play or plays the better game. And, unfortunately, there are many that occupy the Schottenstein Center who have been afflicted by this plague.
 
Which brings us back to the last four years where “C’monbucks” has steadily been joined with “C’monAmir.” Arriving at Ohio State as a highly-touted high school basketball player, and possessing the tall and wide body that virtually every successful Big Ten team has had in the middle since about the dawn of man, there were a lot of high expectations for Amir. Since then it has been four years of glimpses of what everyone hoped would happen, but it’s never come completely around that curve.
 
Again, I would argue that while Amir may not have turned out to be what everyone hoped he would be (AKA Greg Oden 2.0 with an upgraded knee system), the problem might lie in the amount of expectation put on an 18-year-old kid. And, if I may play armchair psychologist for a moment, I will offer that it comes down to the Goliath complex. Every exasperated sigh or set of hands thrown up in disgust alongside the cry of “C’monAmir” is really just the fans’ collective subconscious screaming “If only the world had seen fit to make me 6-feet-11-inches tall, you can bet I would never squander that gift by missing a hook shot!”
 
When Goliath is successful, he’s just doing what he’s supposed to. When Goliath is felled, he’s let everyone down. Take, for example, the early part of the this season, when Ohio State was experimenting with playing a zone defense. During one game a lowly team successfully completed two back-door alley-oop dunks. “C’monAmir,” the crowd rumbled. In both of those cases, though, it was another Buckeye on the backside defense who got sealed off allowing the play to happen. Yet Amir gets the blame. Or consider the scene when a three-point-shot is taken and an Ohio State opponent gets a long offensive rebound near their foul line. “C’monAmir, get a rebound!” the crowd yells. Well, the fault there is the guard who failed to block out after the shot. Amir is positioned five feet from the rim, not 15.
 
As of this writing, Ohio State’s men’s basketball team has two regular seasons games left. They probably need to win both and get some help to earn the double-bye in the Big Ten tournament. Then they probably need to win two games there to rise anywhere above an eight-seed in the NCAAA tournament.
 
This is all after a March 1 home game against Purdue that, in many ways, displayed Amir at his Amir-iest.
 
Earlier this season Amir temporarily lost his starting job. Then, everyone took notice when Amir registered a DNP (coach’s decision) against Indiana and OSU won convincingly playing small ball. Obviously the switch from starting center to bench warmer was coach Thad Matta sending a message. But it also was a coincidence in the schedule, as Indiana didn’t have a starter taller than 6’ 7”. The height and bulk of Williams wasn’t needed against the Hoosiers.
 
In the following games, Amir got back into the rotation. When Anthony Lee was hurt, Amir’s minutes per game jumped again. Many had their eye on the upcoming Purdue game where the Boilermakers would be trotting out two players more than seven-feet-tall. Would Ohio State be able to survive inside?
 
But here’s the thing. Williams is better when matched up with a player of similar size and speed. This is most evident during games when he has to leave the key to guard the opponent’s pick-and-roll play. When he hedges away from his man, he often fails to cut off the smaller, quicker opposing guard and just ends up escorting him to the rim for a layup.
 
For Purdue, though, the plan is for the guards to feed the ball inside and let the trees go to work. And with Lee still hurting, that meant it was up to Amir and Trey McDonald and their 10 available fouls to hold down the fort. Purdue’s plan worked pretty well, with both centers combining for 20 points. For most of the first half, Purdue had a double-digit lead.
 
Meanwhile, the referees made pretty quick work of the foul situation (ugly calls going against both teams all night) and with about five minutes left in the game, McDonald had fouled out and Williams was playing with four fouls.
 
Still, Ohio State had battled back to even the score with Purdue and the teams were trading baskets. With just more than four minutes left in the game Purdue’s Rapheal Davis drove to the hoop. Williams shuffled his feet along side him, kept his arms straight up, but otherwise could do little to stop Davis from making a layup and tying the score at 54-54.
 
“C’monAmir” bellowed a voice from behind Evan and I. “Play some defense!”
 
I snapped and turned my head to see a man who looked not unlike a walrus in scarlet and gray. “He has four fouls. There’s nothing he could do there,” I said before turning back around.
 
“Well... Why would he start now?” mumbled the walrus under his breath.
 
Evan and I looked at each other and shrugged. We didn’t say it, but we were both thinking it.
 
“C’monbucks.”
 
A few more minutes pass, a few more points are scored until, at the one-minute mark (“… and Michigan still sucks!”) D’Angelo Russell makes a layup to give Ohio State a one-point lead. Now the Buckeyes need a defensive stop to cinch the game. Purdue set their offense and everyone in the building knows that they want to get it to the center. But while Williams is playing strong defense behind Purdue’s A. J. Hammons, OSU’s Shannon Scott is cheating back and sitting in Hammons’ lap. Unable to make the pass, Purdue’s designed play falls apart, the shot clock is running down, and a Purdue guard has to try to drive. However, this time he isn’t going straight at the rim; instead he is floating down the left side and this is where Williams is dangerously effective. At the last second, Williams steps away from his man, blocks the shot, and grabs the rebound.
 
The crowd is cheering. Players are bumping chests. A couple of free throws from OSU and it’s looking like the game is locked up. In 28 minutes, Williams has scored
six points and recorded two offensive rebounds, three blocks, and a steal.
 
Still, with less than three seconds left and down by four points, Purdue throws a desperation pass the length of the court. Williams and Hammons jump for the ball, it falls to the floor, and Williams picks it up. The Purdue players start to walk off the court. Everyone assumes the game is over. Then everyone notices the referee’s whistle.
 
Amir has shuffled his feet. The ref has called travelling with one second left. It doesn’t make any difference in the final score. Still, I know, somewhere in the seats somebody was yelling one last “C’monAmir.”
 
Nobody roots for Goliath. But given the option between rooting for the player or joining the chorus of “C’monbucks,” I think I’ll take the player every time.

James Baumann roots for the Buckeyes, the Reds and The Kinks among other things. He writes stuff too.