Mulford & McClain back

Other Artifacts

If interested in anything you’ve read/seen/heard here, below are some of the related artifacts you might wish to pick up, for further exploration:

Books

Tom Betti & Doreen Uhas Sauer – Historic Columbus Taverns (book)

I ordered this one online without knowing anything about it, and was pleasantly surprised. It’s more high-brow than expected, a concise but in depth history book as opposed to little blurbs about bars or whatever. As an added bonus, it turns out the copy I ordered was autographed by the authors! Anyway, I would definitely recommend this if you’re interested in the subject matter.

Jason McGathey – One Hundred Virgins (paperback)

Riots Of Passage (paperback)

A little shameless self-promotion, here, but if I do say so these are pretty solid pieces of journalism, covering a year and a half living on the OSU campus scene. I would recommend the paperbacks (links above) – and yeah, you can download e-books on Kindle, Smashwords, et cetera, too, but surely you will want a physical souvenir to have and to hold, right?

One Hundred Virgins 2023 cover
Kindle cover for Jason McGathey's "Riots Of Passage"

Actually, if you would like a cheap and easy to read version that’s highly portable, you can’t go wrong with a nifty PDF for all your viewing needs. You can download that right here for just 99 cents:

One Hundred Virgins PDF

Riots Of Passage PDF



Doug Motz & Christine Hayes – Lost Restaurants Of Columbus, Ohio

This was a fascinating and highly informative yet fast-moving read, blowing through tons of local restaurant history in relatively short order. I remember reading some of Christine’s stuff in Short North Gazette and elsewhere, though this is the best material I’ve seen from her. Doug Motz is an unfamiliar name to me, but it doesn’t really matter, of course – they bring the equivalent of an unpretentious yet amazing three course meal to your table with this project. The only unfortunate aspect is that, surely due to cost constraints, the pictures are in black and white. Maybe this will really catch fire and allow them to use full color ones in a future edition. So do your part by clicking the link above and ordering the thing! Or at least ask your nearest library to purchase a copy…



Joe Oestreich: If a fan of local legends Watershed, or for that matter just into the music scene in general, be sure to pick up bassist/singer Joe Oestreich’s fascinating book about his time spent with the band, Hitless WonderThis is a terrific tome, and recommended even if you know nothing about the group. Part memoir, part a journalistic piece about life on the road, it also features some juicy details about the music industry’s inner workings and a few cameos by various well-known figures.




Music

8lb Pressure – The Awakening: Vol I (physical CD)

Some good old fashioned early 2000’s mainstream type metal, albeit with strong hooks and impressively smooth production for a local act.

Alvin Choate

Diamond in the Night (album)

This is one of my more enjoyable recent finds, a local musician who blends jazz, funk, rock, blues and soul into his own unique concoction. He plays all the instruments, most of them on a simple old Yamaha keyboard. Something about instrumental music can really send your imagination racing, too, if it’s evocative enough, and for me his compositions paint some vivid mental landscapes.

On this follow-up set, Alvin delivers the goods again with his own distinct spin on modern jazz. This time around, however, he also features his surprisingly good voice on a few cuts, including my personal favorite, Time. Here’s where to get your copy now:

Special Delivery (CD)

The Ark Band 

Love Is What We Need (album)

This popular live group that has been winning over audiences since at least the late 90s, if not longer. An eclectic Caribbean tinged ensemble featuring keys and horns delivers energetic originals as well as tastefully chosen covers. The above album, from 2005, has one of their more popular selections in the form of the title track, and is otherwise a diverse mix as we’ve come to expect. Three dub versions of earlier cuts close out this eclectic set.

Counterfeit Madison

Opposable Thumbs (CD)

Pick up the latest release from this soulful Columbus group with an amazing, powerful vocalist, Sharon Udoh. My favorite track, I Hope It’s Alright (found on the Spotify playlist in this here sidebar), has an old school, New Orleans jazz vibe about it…at least until she begins screaming f-bombs!



Goofy Guys

Veteran jokemeisters can nonetheless occasionally play their instruments with a semblance of chops. Here are some live improvs recorded in the basement at 1795 Gerrard Avenue:

1795 Gerrard Avenue basement
1795 Gerrard Avenue basement

Return Of Scallop Man (MP3 download)

Daddy Dawg (MP3 download)

Smoky Mountain Mother (MP3 download)



The Judas Cow

Though inactive now, there for a while in the mid-aughts, I would say these guys were my favorite local songwriters. Spearheaded by Kevin Spain (formerly of Silo The Huskie), they began as a trio before eventually adding a second guitarist. In either guise, though, these fellows delivered the goods.

To purchase either of these releases, please click on the album covers below.

If interested in learning more about this seminal though underrated band, by all means also check out their dedicated page.





Kevin Spain

As far as I know, Kevin hasn’t formally released any solo material. However, there for a while he was handing out this excellent, mostly acoustic CD he’d recorded with the help of Phil Minor and a couple of others here and there. Below are my favorite two tracks from that collection:

Inspired (MP3 download)

Weave (MP3 download)

Kevin Spain - A Year At Mulford & McClain
Kevin Spain – A Year At Mulford & McClain

And finally here’s a little bonus treat for you. This is an unreleased song he recently sent to me, which is unavailable anywhere else:

“Window View” by Kevin Spain

Lions Of March

Scars Scatter (CD)

Lo-fi to say the least and mostly recorded right here in C-bus, from ’01 to ’03. Released August 2004. The cover is a shot of the ART monument outside of CCAD, in case you’re not from around here.

Scars Scatter cover

Lydia Loveless 

Indestructible Machine (CD)

This 2011 effort by favorite newly discovered artist was her 2nd album, and recorded in Grove City. If you like modern alternative country, this one should be right up your alley.

Tony Monaco

A New Generation: Paesanos on the New B3 (CD)

Fans of the classic jazz sound of a Hammond organ will love this, the Columbus legend’s debut disc. Also, you should definitely check out his website, http://www.b3monaco.com/, which has one of the coolest layouts of all time.

Monster Truck Five

Columbus, Ohio (CD)

Bonus points for the nifty cover, photoshopped onto the Tee-Jaye’s at Morse and High. A sign which only looks ancient because it is, incidentally, dating back to the Jerry’s Drive-In days.

 – Othello

I had somehow stumbled onto and was already digging this album…and then happened to discover my old buddy Dan Bandman contributes quite a bit to it, on lead guitar mostly. When weird stuff like that happens, it’s kind of cool, and makes you think you were meant to discover something. But anyway, on to the actual music – it’s a really crisp, professional sounding effort of mostly uptempo rockers, and some clever touches here and there which you might not expect. Quite catchy throughout, too.



Teeth Of The Hydra 

Greenland (CD)

iTunes has this categorized as “alternative,” which seems a bit wacky, to say the least. Make no mistake about it, this is skull pulverizing metal of the highest order. If in doubt as to which track you should spin first, picking by song title alone is not a bad strategy – The Garden of Rotten Teeth or Sawing Through The Ice are surely the champions in that department. Sadly, another of their classic cuts, Tokyo Under Martial Law, is not found on this album, but it’s still a killer set regardless.



The Top Heavies 

Feed The Beast (CD)

Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments

Bait And Switch (CD)

SPIN magazine has rated this one of the “top 10 weirdest major label albums of the mid 90s.” Which might sound like a tiny niche, but it’s not – that was actually a strange era where the big boys were releasing all manner of adventurous stuff. Having said that, I don’t think this is that out there, it’s just uncompromising rock music. A group featuring notable locals Ron House, Bob Petric, Phil Parks and a couple of others, they also issued these other releases:

Straight To Video (follow up album)

You Lookin’ For Treble? (collection of older material released prior to major label signing; might actually be of most interest to Cbus historians)

No Old Guy Lo Fi Cry (final album)

Two Cow Garage

Please Turn The Gas Back On  (CD)

Released in 2002, this is their debut album, the beginning of an illustrious career which has exceeded all expectations. These alt-country stalwarts continue to tour and record at a breakneck pace to this day.

Watershed

Three Chords and a Cloud of Dust (live) (CD) (1994)

vital live document not only recorded by one of Columbus’s most popular bands, but from a live gig at the Newport Music Hall, too. To read more about this group, please visit their dedicated page.

Star Vehicle ’98 (CD) (1998)

The More It Hurts, The More It Works (CD) (2002)

The Fifth Of July (CD) (2005)

Three Chords and a Cloud of Dust II (CD) (2007)

There is something very hilarious and weird about the Columbus music scene that I’ve never been able to quite figure out. It was this way at least as far back as the late 90s, and hasn’t really changed. Bands in extremely major cities, like NY and LA, don’t even act like this – but then at the opposite end of the spectrum, it’s not a clique-y little college town atmosphere, either. This is a phenomenon wholly unique to Columbus, in my experience.

The key word here is suspicious. Columbus musicians are very suspicious of your motivations for being into them. If you see a band playing out, or attempt to contact them, their first response is a highly skeptical Why? They will purse their lips and furrow their brows and ask who you are, again, and what are your credentials? Not all of them act this way, obviously, but a surprisingly large percentage always have.

I’ll give you one specific example of what I’m talking about. The numbers given here are 100% accurate. I stumbled onto a Cbus group I liked on Spotify, and their only album was a decade old. They had 10 monthly listeners and a total of 12 followers. Still had a website, though, so I contacted them on there, wondering if I could maybe email them a few questions to write up a little piece about this album. Two different band members emailed me back right away, but the gist of these exchanges was basically…who are you? What is the meaning of this? Why would you want to write about our album? I sent them a response and never heard from either person again.

You could say this is a humorous anomaly, but it’s not. This is exactly what I’m talking about. I feel like any LA band I’ve ever contacted would respond with a “yup, let’s do this,” within 5 minutes. An NYC band would have sent me this massive and really cool looking press package. And going in the other direction, at the slacker extreme, I realize there are probably boatloads of bands in places like Athens or Chapel Hill or whatever who would be too cool or too indie et cetera to even have their music on Spotify, maintain a website, you name it. Or not even bothering to reply in the first place, yes, that would make some sort of sense. But this attitude is nowhere on that spectrum. It’s off to the side somewhere, so distant it might as well sit on another planet.

If I had to summarize what I think is going on, the basic mindset seems to be, “well, we’re not surprised you are into us, mind you. It’s just that any day now, a ton of really important and cool people are going to get behind us and we are going to explode. We have to be careful who we allow to listen to our music, because it’s possible you might compromise this.”

It’s like, are you people insane? Call this a zany theory, but I think maybe I’ve spotted something in your analytics to explain why you have 12 followers after a decade.

There’s an even more telling example. Recently it occurred to me that I have this Columbus, Ohio playlist on Spotify with 70+ plus bands on it (the one featured on my website here – and FYI, there is no “Xavier Thomas,” that’s a dummy profile) but that I’ve never bothered to follow most of them on Instagram. So I went through and found in the neighborhood of 50 with Instagram accounts, followed all of those. That was 3 weeks ago. Thus far, zero have followed me back.

Now, you could argue there are all sorts of different things which might explain this: these bands are too indifferent and never noticed; they think they’re too cool/big/whatever to have to trifle with the likes of mere mortals; they know who I am somehow and want to make a point about not being a fan; et cetera. But I don’t believe any of this stuff is the case, or at least not to any significant extent. There’s probably a little bit of anarchy in the ranks, sure, people not paying attention to their accounts. I could buy this. No doubt there are some who think they’ve crossed a certain plateau and therefore don’t need to suck up to us peasants. Yet out of all these bands, I think only one had the blue checkmark as far as being a certified major artist – and I wouldn’t exactly expect RJD2 to follow me back, anyway. So that’s probably not it. And finally let’s just say I’m not under any delusions that any of these people are familiar with my writing or anything else about me, either, and at any rate, this attitude was prevalent around town long before I’d published a word.

I really believe it is this: suspicion. Suspicion about who you are and why you are following them. I’ve been hanging in the shadows for years without saying anything, attempting to figure it out, but have to conclude at this point that there is nothing else to figure out. Things are exactly as they appear in this case. But it’s pretty damn strange, and while I would never claim to have all the answers, I think for most local artists, if you want to get anywhere with your music, you might want to rethink this stance. It’s just a suggestion.




C-bus residents/artists/enthusiasts: While we’re sort of on the subject, if you have any old Columbus area newspapers, magazines, photos, books, et cetera you would like to get rid of, by all means hit me up. Or even a hot tip, anecdote, for that matter anything else you might like to share at all. Feel free as always to drop me a line (jasonmcgatheywriter@gmail.com) for this or basically any other reason . It would be nice to restore some of these links in the chain, so to speak. Thanks!

8 thoughts on “Other Artifacts

  1. couldnt find another way to contact you so leaving this here. stumbled in on Love letter to Columbus going down a rabbit hole looking for Club Dance/ Bourbon Street photos. I worked there in 94. Lived on OSU campus 90-93. Lived in C-bus until 2009. This is an Amazing comprehensive study here. thank you.

    1. Dave: Thank you so much! Glad you like the site. It’s off to a decent start but by my estimates my work is only about 1/10,000th of the way finished here, ha ha. That’s cool you used to work at Club Dance! I would love to pick your brain about that experience. Did you have any luck finding photos? My search has not been real fruitful for that bar. Of course, if you have any stories and/or photos you would ever care to share, that would be killer. I’m also on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc if you’re ever on any of those sites. And can be reached via email at jasonmcgatheywriter@gmail.com. Anyway…thanks for checking out my project!

  2. Hi, me again. I had subscribed, but just now noticed the last 3 postings (notification of them) didn’t show up in my email the way they have in the past. I tried re-subscribing in case something had gone wrong, but it simply said I already subscribed. No problem, because I keep checking back (sometimes for some re-reads!) but wanted to let you know in case something was on the fritz.

    1. Doug: Thanks so much for checking out my blog! I actually get the emails myself just to make sure everything’s working correctly, so as far as I know nothing’s out of whack – all I can think of is I did recently “upgrade” the site , so maybe that messed something up. But hopefully you’re getting the emails okay again in the future.

      By the way, I did check out Bela’s blog as you recommended…as it turned out I was already subscribed to it! But you’re right, it’s a great project he’s been working on over there.

      Anyway…good to hear from you!

      1. Just one other note. There’s a couple of different ways to “enter” the postings on his blog – the one you want is where you see a vertical listing of all the postings; there are over 50 going from now back to Jan.2009. Other ways of getting in only show you the most recent, and some of the involved stories go back much further. Some of the postings are only a page or less but some cover larger periods of time and are several pages.

        1. Cool, thanks!

  3. This is not related to “Artfacts” but on the Love Letter to Columbus site, this is the only place I found to communicate with the writer of the site. If that person is the person currently reading my email, I strongly recommend you read Bela Koe-Krompecher’s Blog. It spans several years and is probably best read in chunks over several days. It is a deeply personal journey of a person who was active as a record-store clerk / buyer (Used Kids) and person booking several indie / “alternative” bands to Columbus clubs in the 90’s. He founded Anyway Records and is I believe a therapist or social worker of some sorts in Columbus now.It follows his journey with addiction, the lives and deaths of several dear friends, a detailed history of Columbus from the 80’s through to the present. He does not blog every month, but some years he does most months and some only 4 or 5 months. It is very moving in places and a fantastic read.

    1. Doug: Thanks for reaching out! I will try searching for his blog. I’m familiar with who Bela is as a figure around Columbus. He was working at Used Kids back when we used to shop there constantly and of course has had numerous pieces written about him too. I’m glad you mentioned this blog because it sounds like exactly the kind of in-depth history I need. Thanks again!

      Jason

Leave a Reply