1997

As the year begins, on the northeast rim of town, miles of cornfield are being systematically bulldozed, clearing way for a giant shopping mall our cash heavy denizens apparently need. City leaders are pushing for a brand new arena downtown, to host our Columbus Crew soccer team, possibly, now enjoying their inaugural season with home games at Ohio Stadium. A half mile east of our house, near the 17th Avenue exit of I-71, in an eroded oasis of factories and the state fairground, the Ohio Historical Museum and the ghetto Linden neighborhood, neglected train tracks and graffiti caked convenience stores, minor league hockey squad the Chill toils in 5700 seat Coliseum obscurity, but they too might gain a new address should this measure pass.  

At the corner of Spring and Neil, blocks away from this arena’s projected home, the contaminated, environmentally hazardous site of the Ohio Penitentiary, host decades earlier to this state’s death row, meets its own demise, as gorgeous, sweeping wings of Victorian architecture are razed into a pile of rubble. Throughout Franklin County, unemployment hovers at a paltry three percent. Police chief James Jackson has been barred for months from entering his own office. 

January 2 – local radio listeners are delighted that Howard Stern is now an option. His nationally syndicated program finally debuts here this morning, on 99.7 WBZX (“The Blitz”).

January 3 – a free rally for the Rose Bowl champion Buckeyes is held at St. John Arena. Approximately 10,000 people with nothing better to do will attend. The team flew in via a Lane Aviation charter to avoid being mobbed at the main airport terminal. The unseasonably warm weather hits a high of 60 degrees today.

January 4  – A high of 67 degrees!

January 5 – Back down to a mere 65.

January 6 – A Monday, and classes begin at OSU.

Febuary 10 – OSU police officer Michael Blankenship is shot to death at the Wexner Center For The Arts. He is responding to a call on a break-in at the center, and the shooter, Mark Edgerton, manages to escape the scene unscathed. Ironically enough, Blankenship had been teaching a class on safety right before responding to this call. Though moving into swift action attempting to apprehend the culprit, with at least one helicopter circling the skies, beaming its spotlight upon campus, police never do arrest the shooter, as he evades their grasp. It’s only days later, when Edgerton kills himself, that he is eventually linked to the crime. Damon and I happen to be strolling about campus at the time of the shooting, and notice the helicopter above us with the spotlight, as we then backtrack and attempt to figure out what they’re looking for. You could definitely say we’re lucky not to have found it.

March 18

A small time pot dealer, Kyle Schaulin, is shot to death on East 11th Avenue, two doors down from my associate Amanda’s apartment. Her address was 83, his 75. Oddly enough despite Schaulin having three roommates present – one of whom even saw the suspects (three strange men had entered the apartment) – and this crime occuring in the middle of the day, no progress has ever been made on this case.

April 25-26 – Treasured local rock club Stache’s last weekend. On 4/27 they will host an auction.

May 6 – the big vote for Issue #1, to fund what will become Nationwide Arena. What’s curious about this is that the city hasn’t even actually been approved for an NHL team yet.

May 24 – U2 hit Ohio Stadium during their PopMart tour. 44K tickets sold, and thousands more loiter, camping, carousing, able to clearly hear if not see, in this field behind the action, the empty expanse of land between an OSU library and the Lincoln and Morrill Towers. Another merry swarm, collegiate and younger, mostly, rules the campus streets, too, centering upon Lane and High, but fanning both outward and inward across virtually every spare scrap of land. This may not equal, quite, the open container free zone of a Saturday morning tailgate bonanza, which the cops have given up on policing entirely and close off the surrounding streets to accommodate, but it comes close. Between here and there I encounter a dozen front porches sagging with keg party saturation, densely packed and chirping above random U2 albums, cranked full tilt, or a local radio station broadcasting the same. Local band Silo the Huskie works the parked car cabal, meanwhile, sliding flyers beneath windshield wiper blades, advertising an after concert show they’re playing at the Short North venue Chelsie’s.

Home, bored, attempting to write something for hours in my disheartening dustbunnied bedroom, soundproof but for the muffled tv drone escaping Alan’s now closed door, I evacuate for round two, as the clock reads half past two. Discover that, without exception, the same houses reveling the last time around continue to do so, if sloppily, louder, but that High Street itself, stretching from roughly Hudson Avenue clear down into the Short North, is an absolute madhouse, wilder than any Thursday night, even in dreams. The Chelsie’s afterhours canceled, given up on by its queued hopefuls after an extended wait, so that by midnight, when the drunken owner staggers up with keys, only the furious Silo foursome remain outside, though stick around no longer than it takes to grab their equipment. No shortage of alternative venues await this howling horde, however, whereby even this all night convenience store I’m raiding for ice cream bears a shoulder to shoulder parking lot congregation, assembled for no discernible purpose, and with no other entertainment, unless their skateboards and boomboxes count, their rosy reenactments, across the street shout outs, one hit bowls and forties.

May 25

A liftoff celebration for Short North rock club Little Brothers, starring R.L. Burnside.

May 31 – Hempfest ’97 at Mirror Lake runs from 12 to 12. Triggahappy and Uncle Sam’s Dream Machine are among the performers, and there’s even a little bit of comedy gracing the stage.

June 16 – Paul is the master at finding ways to meet famous musicians. With Ozzy Osbourne slated to perform tomorrow, Paul works the phone lines and receives some solid information that the Prince Of Darkness might be staying up at the Worthington area Holiday Inn. If nothing else, it seems certain that Rush (who are playing a show at Polaris tonight) and Pantera, part of tomorrow’s Ozzfest bill, certainly are.

Paul, Damon, Alan and I cruise up to that Holiday Inn and hang out in the hotel bar. But then after just a few minutes sitting here, watching baseball highlights with the sound off, the bartender announces that they are closing for the night and we have to finish our drinks.

We move to the lobby and sit on some fancy furniture near an even more impressive fountain display. Trying our best to look inconspicuous, though only a handful of minutes pass and it probably doesn’t matter anyway, before this big burly figure enters the front doors with an incredible looking babe on each arm.

“Look, it’s some groupies!” Damon whispers. This is exactly what it looks like, too, a bouncer having secured fresh candidates for a conjugal visit, for whatever band’s employing him.

“Fuck, dude, let’s follow them,” Paul suggests.

So we get up and casually tail this trio, trying to not be too obvious about it. Except they get on an elevator, and, figuring this might be our only chance to find out where they’re going, we speed walk our way over to hop on the same car with them.

They’ve pushed in the button for the 4th floor, so we act like that’s a pleasant coincidence and pretend we’re getting off there as well. But as the bell rings and doors open, those three hang back to see what we’re up to, because we surely completely transparent and – if our hunches are correct – these seasoned pros have seen these moves before. So we have no choice but to exit the elevator, hanging a left, pretending as if our room lies this way down the hall. As we continually sneak peeks behind us, however, we notice that the others have gone in the opposite direction, before ducking into a nearby room.

Instantly, we reverse tracks and beat a hasty path down the hall, to observe the number, 424, they’ve slipped behind. Then regroup at the elevators and discuss our next plan of attack. Damon suggests that we just knock on the door and see if anyone answers. I dismiss this notion on the grounds that there’s no way Geddy Lee or Phil from Pantera or whomever would answer, even if there were a rock star in that room.

“No, but maybe you could see past the bouncer or whatever to who is in the room with him,” Paul suggests, while Alan continues smirking but not saying a whole lot.

Somehow it’s decided that I’m going to be the one to knock, while the other three snicker just out of sight. Though knowing damn well there are at least three people in this room, nobody answers, and why would they? Assuming anyone even bothered coming to the door to peer through that fish eyed lens, they’ve already glimpsed us idiots clowning around on the elevator.

So this wouldn’t rate as one of Paul’s more successful missions. All is not lost, however. As we climb aboard the elevator and descend to the ground floor once more, someone passes us in the hall, a tall figure wearing a black ball cap with an O on it and a minus sign struck through it. It’s not until the following day that we realize this was someone connected with Type O Negative, who are also on the Ozzfest bill.

June 17 – Ozzfest at Polaris which devolves into a riot. In slightly less controversial news, the NHL announces today that Columbus is indeed getting an expansion team, which will begin play in 2000.

June 27-29 – This year’s Community Festival, a.k.a. Comfest. 6 stages of music, an arts tent with live theater, et cetera.

July 1 – It almost feels like getting two concerts for the price of one. Though bummed at the time, if not actually rioting ourselves, it’s kind of cool in some weird way that the pair of headliners from June 17 are finally getting around to honoring their obligation only now. For tonight is the Ozzy Osbourne/Black Sabbath makeup show, free to anyone holding a ticket from the Ozzfest debacle.

This time around, just six of us ride over together: Alan, Paul, Mandy, Damon and his girlfriend Shannon, and me. Many original attendees of the Ozzfest can’t make it and probably, rightfully, consider this rescheduled show as total horseshit, but there are some positives. Among these are that hardcore metal fanatics like Mandy, who couldn’t make the original date, are able to score tickets to this one in a free handoff. But also, and while I’m aware this sentiment sounds like granting a hall pass to wastoid rock star shenanigans, we have no doubts that Ozzy Osbourne sounds better tonight than he ever possibly would that day of the riot.

You might lump an opening act who weren’t on the original Ozzfest bill, Neurosis, into that “added benefit” category, although this is probably a matter of taste. Some of us are of the opinion that any free entertainment amounts to a bonus, while others are less charitable. I would never claim that Neurosis are the best opening act I’ve ever seen and certainly not that paying money to see them as headliners sounds like a swell idea. But they do have this pair of guitar players who also pound on floor toms during select intervals, which at least produces a unique sound. Paul, however, is flipping through a concert program and scoffing at this entire enterprise.

“Man, why couldn’t they at least get somebody like Pantera or something,” he grouses.

And right then, as if not only on cue but actually hearing Paul’s comment, the lead singer lets out a blood curdling wail.

“That’s the sound he’s gonna make when I come down there and beat his ass,” Paul adds.

We sit in silence for a while before Paul asks, “you remember me telling you that Korn was the worst band I ever saw live?”

“Yeah?” I say.

“Well, not any more,” he concludes.

Alan and I are on record as kind of liking Neurosis, though the other four members of our party think they suck mightily. But all is forgotten anyway as soon as Ozzy takes the stage, or for that matter before the band even appears in person. As an introduction, a short film flashes on the big screen, depicting Osbourne spliced into numerous famous music videos, replacing the original members. The best of these shows Ozzy in that iconic car from Alanis Morrissette’s Ironic clip, reenacting some scenes precisely, although also leveling down to a segment where he has her panties on his head.

I don’t know if this makes any of his current music relevant. Then again, he has landed major mainstream hits as recently as 1995, which is a mind-boggling accomplishment for a hippie era burnout who was left for dead by Sabbath nearly twenty years ago. And while it’s a strange, possibly inconsequential take on his continued popularity, I think that his hilarious and surely off the cuff Ironic riffage does demonstrate that he’s more dialed in to today than most of his contemporaries, which might explain why people perceive Ozzy as being, however flawed, more real than most of his fellow moldering rock stars, and why we still expect him to deliver the goods.

Prior to Osbourne’s arrival, Damon, Paul and I decide to see if we can gate crash the pavilion with our lawn seats. This turns out to be no challenge whatsoever, as nobody is checking ticket stubs, and we are able to slide into three open seats unopposed. And soon enough, Ozzy takes the stage with his current solo band.

His voice doesn’t sound the greatest, and personally, I don’t care much for the fretburner on guitar. But in an unexpected twist, he does have Faith No More’s drummer, Mike Bordin, playing with him now, and this is fine by me – he has an odd style, though one I’ve always liked.

Ozzy opens with I Don’t Know and the crowd goes absolutely berserk for this one. Again, it’s difficult to think of too many classic rock dudes who would have their post-getting-kicked-out-of-the-major-famous-band hits received in such fashion, much less start a show with them. From here, he rips through all his solo classics, with an obligatory encore thrown into the mix. Then, following a short break, he’s back out on the stage again, with the band that made him famous, Black Sabbath.

“Well, I still don’t feel too fucking great, but I’m here,” Ozzy cracks in a break between songs, his thick British accent only decipherable after years spent doing so.

Two of the other three original members are also present, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler, with only drummer Bill Ward absent this time around. I ask the resident expert, Paul, who probably knows more than 99.999% of those present, band and their flunkies included, about the current situation. Except it seems even he isn’t quite appraised of current Black Sabbath intrigue, and is forced to speculate.

“Bill Ward was the one who kicked Ozzy out of the band the first time,” he theorizes, “so I’ll bet when it came time to do a reunion, he decided to leave Bill out.”

They play most of their hits, of course, the best being signature tune Black Sabbath, during which Ozzy makes a bunch of ominous faces and delivers the most demonic laughs we’ve ever heard. And of course, he’s balancing this out with that weird little hop of his, where he gets on all fours and bounces around here and there. That, and occasionally he throws buckets of water out on the crowd, in fact they’ve laid carpet onstage to accommodate such a thing.

Geezer’s fingers seem to be flying a hundred miles an hour on the bass, although if you stop to listen, what he’s actually playing doesn’t sound that fast. We can’t figure out what the hell he’s doing up there, only that it looks mighty strange – but sounds just as it should, which is all that matters. Ozzy’s voice is a little ragged throughout, though he pulls it off, and it’s nothing but smiles all around for the band between one another, which is probably the real cue you are looking for.

After playing a full set, Sabbath comes back out for a two song encore, including crowd pleaser Paranoid. By now, Damon, Paul and I have trooped back up the hill, where Alan and Mandy have dedicated their day to drinking as much as possible and Shannon seems a little less than pleased at being left in charge of them. For entertainment, while strolling back to my car, we take our sweet time cataloging the state of the current fence, where obvious pieces have been slotted in to replace those destroyed by the riot. Mandy, who alone among us wasn’t even present for that completely insane day, can’t stop laughing about this and other signs of carnage, even after we’re in the car and I’ve started driving. Then again, I guess it is pretty hilarious, all things considered.

July 25-30 – Garth Brooks sells out 6 straight shows at Cooper Stadium.

July 26 – Something called the 3rd Annual U.S. Open Of Music is held at Ruby Tuesday: MK Ultra, Big Foot Nixon, and a bunch of other bands who aren’t worried about this Garth Brooks character will perform.

August 2 – Hideki Irabu pitches 7 shutout innings for the Clippers against Rochester. George Steinbrenner flies into Columbus to watch the game.

August 6 – Irabu takes the mound again, also at home, pitching 8 innings and striking out 11 Richmond Braves.

August 15 – OSU holds a farewell ceremony for the Big Ear telescope, which is being retired in favor of a golf course. Though actually located at the Perkins Observatory up in Delaware (more proof, in case you needed it, of how far OSU property reaches), it was this telescope which famously received, to date, the only intelligent transmission ever recorded from outer space, the infamous Wow! signal of 1977. Lasting 72 seconds, it was captured 20 years ago on this date, and is still unexplained as of this writing.

August 21 – MadLab opens a makeshift theatre in a Brewery Station warehouse.

September 19 – Watershed play at Chelsie’s

September 21 – Dub Narcotic Sound System play this curious gig at a house on East 12th Avenue – 115 E 12th, to be precise, at the corner of Indianola. Word of mouth had been circulating for weeks, but there are also plenty of flyers to be found around campus, too. Flyers which come in handy night of the show when I’m walking to it from my house, but can’t remember the exact address now, and wander aimlessly until spotting and grabbing one.

As it turns out, I show up a mite earlier than anyone else I know. Admission is a scant five dollars, and then I find myself temporarily standing alone in your standard old unfinished basement with just a handful of strangers when the opening act, T Tauri (stylized lowercase on the poster, t tauri, in case this matters), plug in and start playing. They’re bad, like Velvet Underground as junior high school students or something, and yet I dig them anyway.

After they are finished, there’s a short break, during which time a bunch of my friends finally start filtering in. Dan and Travis, Steve and Dave, Kevin and Vanessa, and some redheaded girl who turns out to be Andy Thomas’s older sister. Jeremy’s sitting along one wall, conversing with some tall, dark haired dude, and I walk over to say to say a quick hello before walking off. Except Jeremy smirks, and says to his colleague, “I’ll bet he doesn’t recognize you.”

“No, I don’t,” I admit, “should I?”

Jeremy explains that this is Jack Edinger, whom I haven’t seen since high school. Even he would admit he was more than a little on the jolly round side back then, but is now looking slim and sort of debonair. His hair is even darker and if I’m not mistaken he might even be taller.

“Don’t feel bad,” he laughs, “I didn’t recognize you, either.”

The second band now occupies the corner which passes for a stage. They’re called Foxfire and are like some creepy outfit from the 1970s. But they also happen to rock. Most songs, they’d start off slow and the singer would belt it to his heart’s content, then the musicians would fade out with a long instrumental jam.

A third offering coalesces in pieces. When complete it’s a trio called D Plus but to start with there’s just one guy, plunking on a bass and singing. Halfway through this song, another guy with a beard strolls onto the scene, sits down and puts forth some percussion. But then starting with the next song and continuing through the end of their set, the original singer moves to drums, the bearded guy picks up the bass, and some final dude appears to handle vocals and guitar. They play simple little songs with funny lyrics and are vaguely catchy. The drummer likes to pretend he’s sleeping but then awaken to rip off a sudden drum roll. It’s awesome. He even plays some overhead basement pipes during one of their cuts. And his kit consists of kick, snare, one tom, and a ride cymbal, that’s it, which are arranged from the center and fanning out to his right – there’s nothing to the left whatsoever.

During the next intermission, Dan Bandman and I and a couple other people are hanging out, chatting with this black dude, Larry Butler. He’s pretty funny and while Dan was obviously aware of this, having just strolled up out the blue, I wasn’t aware that Larry would soon be climbing behind the kit himself. He’s the drummer for Dub Narcotic Sound System and chatting with him might be the highlight of the night.

Let it be said that I really don’t care much one way or the other about these headliners. In fact, I’ve never heard a note before tonight. However, I am quite familiar with their leader, Calvin Johnson, a semi-legendary indie dude who kind of helped get that whole Seattle thing off the ground in the late 80s and early 90s. I’ve read a great deal about him, seen him interviewed in at least one documentary, heard a smattering of his fairly decent other, earlier bands. But as for this current project, Travis is correct when he jokes, “you could fast forward a tape of theirs to any spot and it would sound the same…Dub Narcotic Sound System…bzzz-zzzew-zzzzt…Dub Narcotic Sound System…”

They play what I guess you’d call a plastic form of funk, and are okay, but about as repetitive and tedious as this wisecrack would imply. Calvin has a baby face yet sings in basically the lowest register detectable by human ears, and yes, most of the tunes do seem to revolve around him just chanting their name over and over again at some point. I feel like this has be some kind of ironic art piece, an in-joke, because there’s no way they are this intentionally robotic and one-note, but whatever the case I don’t think this act is going to take off anytime soon.

The best part of their set, in fact, occurs between songs when from somewhere in the crowd behind me, a very drunk Dave Kemp asks somebody, with complete seriousness, “is Calvin here?” loud enough that the entire room can hear him.

After the show, everyone wants to meet Calvin. He has a peculiar attitude to say the least. Though if as seriously pissed off about being here as he is acting, you would think he would just leave the scene, instead he leans against the side of the house with his hoodie pulled up and snarls at anyone who attempts talking to him. I feel like a complete dork telling him they sounded good and even flashing a thumbs up which I immediately regret, to which he says, “okay…,” as though this were the most awkward comment ever. And yet even so, I come off relatively unscathed. Kevin tries a real conversation with him, returns to our little circle in the lawn reporting that he was extremely rude. The next casualty is Dan. While we again approached Larry Butler and found him as affable as before, and the ever networking Bandman even handed Larry a Superstar Rookie cassette, when Dan returns from his own Calvin encounter, I ask if he was cool and Bandman replies, “no, not at all.”

Then again, even we are howling as Dan relates to us how his own aborted discussion went. Attempting to make it a bit more personal, beyond the standard ass-kissing fan worship fare, he observes that Calvin “has a baby face but a deep voice, like Rick Astley.” Upon which he takes it one step further, pantomiming that he is holding a microphone as he sways side to side and croons the chorus to Never Gonna Give You Up. To say that Calvin came unglued at this display is an understatement.

So we’re all standing around, attempting to pool our notes and determine why, exactly, Johnson here is such a dick. Leave it to a quiet, uninvolved Jack, however, to piece together the clues and figure it out for us.

“He’s a WEIRDO, guys,” Jack butts in to explain, “keep this under your hats, okay, but the guy’s a little weird.”

September 27 – The Rolling Stones are at Ohio Stadium. My friend Miles attends this show, getting so drunk he tumbles down a number of seating rows and gives up drinking for months thereafter. Elsewhere in the crowd, Damon and Paul are also paying customers. Prior to the show, Paul openly scoffs at the fact that Mick and company based their decision on how many tickets to sell upon U2’s numbers here in May.

October 1 – Fleetwood Mac at Polaris Amphitheater.

October 4 – Lisa and Maria attend a Buckeye football game at the Horseshoe.  Will wind up at the impound lot after to retrieve an illegally parked car. I had suggested to Lisa before the game that she should park near my house on Summit, which she refused, saying, “no, it’ll probably get towed!” Okay then. OSU does clobber Iowa 23-7, however. Go Bucks!

October 11 – Adrian Belew of King Crimson plays a free 7pm show at some arts festival in the Short North, near 4th Avenue and High. I only find out about it and attend by pure happenstance. My ex-girlfriend Heather and I were supposed to go out for the first time in almost two years, but then she calls at the last minute to cancel. “Life goes on,” I tell her before hanging up, then walk down to Flying Tomato alone for pizza. Am flipping through The Other Paper looking for something to do when I spot this offering.

The show is set to transpire in an open plot of lawn between two buildings on the west side of High. A local guy I’ve not yet heard of, Harold “Happy” Chichester, is set to open. Later I will learn he was a member of Howlin’ Maggie, a modestly successful local band. Happy’s playing alone, just himself and a keyboard, and the first song is his highwater mark – it’s something called I’m A Slut, the chorus of which is stuck in my head forevermore after just this one listen. Years later I will bother to track down the album version, but really kind of prefer the performance I heard this evening, and am saddened that (as far as I know) no recordings exist.

I like some of this other stuff, but the stripped down arrangement here does grow a little boring after a while. He has a strong voice and can play the piano skillfully enough, yet there’s just not enough variety with this format to sustain a lengthy set. Fortunately, after a very short break, Belew drifts upon the scene.

After cutting his teeth a session musician and live performer with the likes of Frank Zappa, David Bowie, and the Talking Heads, Belew joined King Crimson in 1981. Tonight he mixes in familiar Crimson offerings such as Three Of A Perfect Pair and the newer One Time, with stuff from a side group called The Bears whom I’ve never heard. It’s just him on acoustic for the most part, although he does pipe in sound effects like birds chirping, rain, and trains barreling through the P.A. He also breaks out a steel guitar for exactly two songs. Explaining that, however cliched, his two greatest influences were McCartney and Lennon, he proceeds to cover a song from each – Blackbird and Across The Universe, respectively.

And yet despite all this, the highlight of the evening, or at least one of the highlights, might be when he stops playing midway through his set and allows the audience to shout out questions. This is about the closest I’ve ever stood to a household name musician, at least up to this point, and I can’t think of anything nor work up the nerve to ask anything myself.

Someone does ask Adrian about the weirdest thing Zappa ever made him do, and he says, “oh, wear a dress for a Halloween show in NYC.”

“Mothers are allowed to wear dresses!” another guy in the crowd shouts out, inducing a laugh from the audience and Belew himself.

“What about Bowie?” someone else questions, right on the heels of this inquiry.

Belew offers a wry grin and says, “I can’t tell you that, but it was part of the audition.”

He closes with another newer cut, Dinosaur, one of my favorites, before returning for a two song encore. After he leaves, in keeping with this whole art festival vibe, film footage of some sort is projected against the side of the nearest building, which I watch for a couple of minutes before splitting. Another highly regarded local band, Nude, is set to play later, and while interested in checking them out, I’ve already committed to another Superstar Rookie show later at the Northberg Tavern.

October 13 – It rains for the first time in forever, closing out a ten day stretch of unusually warm weather. Thanks to one of those El Nino storms off the coast of California, beginning on the 3rd, we’ve experienced near record highs ranging from the low 70s clear up to 86 degrees on the 5th.

October 15 – An independent film tour called Fuel rolls into the Drexel.

October 24-26 – The Real Witches’ Ball. Occupies two blocks in the Short North. Bands, authors, Middle Eastern dancers, workshops, readings, and, of course, a costume contest.

October 31 – Sarah McLachlan plays Veterans Memorial. My friend Paul takes a girl he’d once dated, Jennifer, in hopes of rekindling the flame. I’m not sure if he was successful but all parties report it a great show.

November 2 – Tonic is at the Newport, with Jeremy Toback opening.

November 7 – The Newport Music Hall hosts an event called Arts for the Cure.

November 8 – George Clinton & The P-Funk All Stars are at the Newport.

November 9 – Gov’t Mule play Ludlow’s.

November 11 – Big Head Todd & The Monsters are at the Newport, which would imply that some people are still into this band. Abra Moore opens.

November 12 – KMFDM hit the Newport, with Pig as their opening act.

November 13 – David Byrne takes the tiny stage of Alrosa Villa.

November 15 – Running back Pepe Pearson is player of the game as OSU annihilates Illinois, 41-6.

November 16 – Exactly 10 years to the minute after his firing as OSU football head coach, Earle Bruce calls Rick Bay, so they can reminisce about that awesome time.

Jars Of Clay play Veterans Memorial.

November 20 – Lords Of Acid perform at the Newport.

November 21 – Fabulous Johnson Brothers play the Newport, followed by John Mullins.

November 22 – The Newport hosts “A Tribute To SRV,” featuring the Frank Harrison Group.

November 25 – semi-religious grungemeisters Creed hit the Newport, with Cellophane opening.

December 5 – The Fabulous Thunderbirds are at the Newport.

December 9 – Quite the action packed night. Damon and I catch The Mark Wehrling Trio play a gig at Sugar Shack, then scoot across campus for amateur comedy night at Northberg Tavern.

December 17 – The Northberg is on a sudden, unexpected roll. This Swabby character sets up shop on Wednesdays and Thursdays out of nowhere, and becomes what is, to date, the most well-received bar musician I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure when the residency began, but this is my first taste of it. And actually this initial performance is only so-so, which makes me think he’d only just started his run at the Northberg. My coworkers were absolutely raving about the guy, but I didn’t see it on this particular outing. The next night I catch him again, however, and he’s blowing the doors off the place from this point onward. I actually witness more than one show where dudes are ripping ceiling tiles out and throwing them onto the ground. Girls flashing the singer (and anyone else fortunate enough to sit nearby) is pretty much de rigueur, audience singalongs nonstop all night.