The Unknown have been performing their brand of “punky power-pop’ for nearly a quarter century, not only around Cleveland but with national tours as well as Europe.
This show was a reunion show for The Unknown and despite a last minute lineup change [drummer], they still sound crisp and hold on to their loyal following.
The Zapguns opened up the show and performed a rousing cover of “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”.
The video playlist below has a handful of tracks from Saturday night, my still shots are here.
http://www.theunknown.us/unkwebsite/ // http://thezapguns.bandcamp.com/
I have just about uploaded everything I’ve gathered from the two month LL season.
The final set from the Big Show included Fancy Bastards / ..and you will gnome us by the trail of bread / E=MCfunk [memorial] / Jean-Claude GodDamn / Rustbelt Revival / The Van Man / Kill It With Fire / Douglas Adams Family // Photos / Slideshow
All 42 bands [photos] that performed at the Big Show can be found here. The band practice photos that I was able to capture, are here. All photos pertaining to the 2013 Lottery League are here. My loumuenz.com posts concerning [photos, video + commentary] the 2013 LL season are here. That last link will have any future posting of videos or whatever.
http://loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // http://lotteryleague.org
Set three from this evening included: Disaster Transport / Dinosaur Throat / Feed Me A Stray Cat / Canadian Pharmacy / Queen Of Hell / Charlton Heston’s Cold Dead Hands / SCMODS / Wyld Bal5 / Louise + ECT 3
Set four includes: Psychic Thrills / Surface Of The Earth / The Dirty Connotations / BAANTUU / Evil Asteroid / Comet 77
Part two of the Big Show at the Cleveland Agora. Bands included in the second set [4:45-6:45] include: Dinosaur Coffin / Sex Cake / Robosexual / Dark Magic Ponyride / Favorite Russian Spectaculars / How To Stay Alive In The Woods / VALISystem A / Sudden Onset / Jagues Jamz
http://loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // http://lotteryleague.org
I shot quite a few photos at the Cleveland Agora and was able to catch all 42 bands. It is going to take me a few days to go through all 14 gigabytes of raw files, so I’m posting each of the five sets separably and hope to have photos from each band up by the end of the week.
This set includes the following bands: 38% Special / La Rascasse / Payback From Wayback / Amplified Gentleman / Shark Martian / Midwestern Electric / The Predicament / The Egons / Soy La Barba / Hot Dignity
http://loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // http://lotteryleague.org
VALISystem A [band 18] consists of Elliott Hoffman, Eric Koltnow and John Pasternak. They named their band after a Philip Dick novel, I’m currently reading ‘The Man In The High Castle’ but have yet to read any of that trilogy, Your guess would be as good as mine, why the band chose one of the last books published by the author.
VSAs beginning came to an inauspicious start when they had their guitarist ghost on them, as the saying goes, you can chose your friends but you can’t chose your Lottery League band mates.
Eric was playing a vibraphone, the instrument is similar to a xylophone but has pedals that the user can use to damper the tone. The vibraphone also has aluminum bars that gives the tone a mellower feel than the xylophone. JP is the bassist and I’m guessing that this is the first time he has had a vibraphone in his band, Elliot rounds out the troika as the drummer, tonight those three were working on their continuity and tempo.
VALISystem A, might be performing the only jazz set at the Big Show, they go on at dinner time [6:15] on the Jakprints stage and should provide a good contrast to the long day.
The video below has the band going through the progressions of piece they were trying to complete, my photos are here.
Queen Of Hell [band 9] is: Morte Treehorn, Matt Clement, Ed Stephens and Adam Spektor. QOH practice this evening was held at ‘The Hooded Tomb Of Doom’ AKA: Morte’s basement. The week prior, Morte had converted a dark quarter of his basement into a pimped out practice space, complete with Japanese screens flanking the hot water heater, bamboo shades covering the walls, oriental throw-rugs on the ground and strategically placed fog-machine and lights,.
After the other band mates arrived, they all spent a few minutes to apply their makeup and don their robes/cloaks. Once the band assumed their positions, Ed was briefed on a few changes that were made the week previous during the practice he missed and soon, the Queens of Hell were rocking the Febreze bottle off the washer.
Morte takes care of most the lead vocals and had written some rich image inducing lyrics that were all neatly typed out on several sheets of paper. Adam shares lead guitar and vocals with Morte and described his vocals as sort of a sludged-out Bryan Ferry but Adams leads sounded to me, closer to Freddie Mercury, or at least in delivery. Ed was on a bass that had recently been customized, that guitar has a great sound, Ed undoubtedly had something to do with that. Matt Clement is another veteran of Lottery League, It has been a while since I’ve seen him on drums and forgot how well he is on them.
Queen Of Hell is another band that I’m looking forward to with their 8:15 performance at The Cleveland Agora. The audio on my video below came out better than usual considering the cement basement, the rug and curtains that Morte had hung, happened to make a difference, having the mics properly wired never hurts, either.
The photos are here.
loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // lotteryleague.org // facebook.com/queenofhell
E=MCfunk [band 31] consists of Peter ‘Salt Peters’ Woodward, Ted ‘Theodore Wigs Null, the Younger’ Flynn, John ‘Professor Void’ Cunningham and Ashante ‘AK Decline’ Allison. After going through their ten minute set at their practice space located in a Parma basement, Peter asked me if any other Lottery League bands are performing a Funk set. I believe he meant this current year but I had to think for a moment till i was able go out on a limb and say, of all the [100+] bands that have been created in Lottery League that E=MCfunk is the first band that has a full set devoted to Funk. I did no research for that conclusion and I’m relying on memory, so I could be wrong.
Peter has performed in rock and punk bands but it’s probably safe to say that he hasn’t fronted a Funk band, he pulls off just that while playing bass on 3 or 4 strings of a six string guitar that sounded convincingly like a bass guitar. Ted was playing guitar with a slide, Tony was on keyboards and Ashante was manning the drums.
I’m not very knowledgeable about the Funk music genre but it sounded that E=MCfunk, gleamed most of their influence from listening to soundtracks of 70’s porn movies. With that said, it’s apparent that E=MCfunk has put some thought into their sound and I’m anticipating their midnight slot at The Eucld Agora, the night of the ‘Big Show’.
The videos below were shot in a small room while I managed to stay out of the way. This was a practice and Peter mentioned that they still lack a lil ‘pop’ [paraphrasing]. I was entertained but you be the judge. My photos are here.
http://loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // lotteryleague.org // http://facebook.com/EequalsMCFunk
The Lottery League Bowling night was held at Madison Square Lanes last Thursday night. This event is where each of the 42 bands select their time slot and stage they will perform at the Big Show and will be held at the Cleveland Agora on April 13th. Bowling night is also the halfway point of the season, not surprisingly there was a large turnout and unlike previous seasons, each band was represented with at least one member if not a few.
Former LL member [Ghandi SS] and Melt Bar and Grilled proprietor, Matt Fish, catered the event gratis, with sandwiches, chili, fries and various casseroles. The bowling was also free, courtesy of Madison Lanes.
The last band the hopper chose was ‘Payback From Wayback’, they’ll be the next band I feature, after sitting in on their practice last week. Hopefully that will be posted within the next couple days. My photos of the bowling night are here.
http://loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // www.lotteryleague.org
The Dirty Connotations [band 32] are; Ryan Kearney, Sarah Paul, Jeff Curtis and Ken Blaze. The band practices in a small upstairs room above the Spitfire. I was present for the third band practice and the four were going over three songs that sounded nearly complete. TDC are the first band I’ve sat in on that utilizes two bassists [Jeff + Ken], that sound more in the vein of The Fall than Sunn O))), Primus or Cleveland’s Megachurch. At first listen I thought a guitarist may have been using an octave-pedal or maybe a baritone guitar until I realized that there was actually two bassists, Either way, this gives the band a darker sound and works real nicely for them. Sarah takes the lead on most of the vocals and FX pedals though Ken and Jeff compliment her vocals on a couple songs. Ryan rounds-out the group with clean percussion work, I’m not sure if Ryan has ever performed with a punk band before but seems a natural with the ‘Connotations.
The two videos I have below were shot in a small, dark room with other bands jamming in adjacent rooms, therefore the audio and video is dim and noisy. My still shots are here.
http://loumuenz.com/tagged/LotteryLeague // www.lotteryleague.org // http://facebook.com/TheDirtyConnotations
Lottery League 2013 got underway Friday night at the Beachland Ballroom. This will be the third season of the league and the first that incorporates technology with specially designed software for the draft process that determines compatibility, a dedicated website [that live streamed the entirety of the draft] http://lotteryleague.org and a Twitter account @LotteryLeague, LL still has their FB page http://facebook.com/LotteryLeague
LL3 is also larger than the previous two, having 42 four person bands, that is eight more than the previous high in 2010. With that said, the concept, rules and motives of the league remain the same, this interview w/ the ‘Council of Chiefs’ from whopperjaw.com does a good of job as any explaining the first part of this sentence.
I shot some ‘natural light’ pics after running out the door without my flash, those can be seen here.
The 2013 version of the Lottery League begins tonight [Friday Feb. 1, 2013] at the Beachland Ballroom/Tavern, when the draft commences. The draft is the most important night of Lottery League, It is the night where participants get selected to a band via getting their name picked out of a bingo hopper.
There are plenty of sites on the internet, some that I have listed below, that will explain exactly how the Lottery League process takes place, so I won’t bother you with all the details. I’ll be using the hashtag #LotteryLeague for my posts documenting LL related events such as the draft, practices, etc. I’ll also use this hash-tag on Twitter.
Below are archived links to photos, video and words I have from previous Lottery League events.
A few short practice videos from 2008, are here.
LotteryLeague.org / Official LL Blog / @LotteryLeague / Sissybar Blog
(Source: loumuenz.com)
I have a set of photos I shot of an early Christmas morning from 2003, here. Most of the photos were shot in the Metro Clark and Tremont neighborhoods of Cleveland.
(Source: loumuenz.com)
Pat’s In The Flats annual Thanksgiving Day bash took place last Thursday with the Prisoners as the headliner for the second consecutive year. Shit-Box Jimmy has been around for a few years now and put on an excellent live show, their sound is a mixture of garage and rockabilly, more in the style of ‘Dead Moon’ than the Stray Cats.
Glass Cities has been together for about a year now but this was the first time I actually had a chance to see them perform. Checkout GC’s Bandcamp page for a better description of their sound.
I’ve posted about a dozen photos of the night, here. The YouTube playlist below has videos from ShitBox Jimmy + Glass Cities.
http://shitboxjimmy.bandcamp.com
http://buzzbinmagazine.com/home/2012/08/03/shit-box-jimmy-staying-true/
http://glasscities.bandcamp.com
http://clevelandprisoners.bandcamp.com/album/pass-the-stone
(Source: loumuenz.com)
