Just be prepared to stand up for it.Laura’s Home for women & children in crisis needed help, so CIA students are hosting a bash at SPACES. Screw Factory artists only throw an open house a couple times a year, and luckily this weekend you can wander the halls of their converted factory and duck into their makeshift, cozy studios (and buy something for your mom!). Take A Hike always offers a fascinating look at our history from street view, now taking on our region’s ethnic legacy. If you’re itching to discuss the dire political situation, join other obsessive progressives at the Unitarian Universalist congregation to dissect the first 100 days of the current administration. But make me a promise you will next go out and do something about it. The May Day National Day of Action at the Free Stamp on Saturday, and elsewhere this week throughout the region, would be a great place to start.Make a dent in the trash piled up along the banks of the Cuyahoga, calm your nerves and make a deposit in your karma bank at the latest RiverSweep. Get a dose of Night Fever at Akron Art Museum’s Circa Disco Party. Carol Leslie will make you feel better when she offers classic jazz and pop at BOP STOP. We remember presenting Robert Lockwood Jr as the featured artist at the first ever Ingenuity Fest in 2005 a year before he passed, and this weekend you can celebrate his 110th birthday at an all-star blues throwdown at Tree Lawn.
Heal yourself and explore your relationship with the natural world with a forest bath, as CoolCleveland Correspondent Claudia Taller recounts. The Rock Hall announces their latest (controversial as always) class of Hall of Fame Inductees, including Chubby Checker, who I had the pleasure of interviewing. CoolCleveland editor and Cleveland’s premier rock & roll photographer Anastasia Pantsios was there taking pictures at Rocket from the Tombs’ first-ever performance, and she offers a most well-informed obit of the recently departed David Thomas. If there was any justice in this world, her words would be picked up and reprinted worldwide, and Pere Ubu would be inducted in their hometown’s hallowed Hall. In the meantime, whatever goes down, be prepared to stand up.
On March 21, 1974, a ragtag band of writers from Scene Magazine, Cleveland’s music and entertainment weekly, took to the stage of the House of Bud. a little downtown club. On this night, editor Jim Girard, and writers “Crocus Behemoth” and Mark Kmetzko, who co-wrote a local music gossip column called Croc’o’Bush, were going to live out their rock & roll fantasies as the Great Bow Wow Death Band.
That was the first stage appearance by David Thomas, aka Crocus Behemoth, and he got bitten by the performing bug—hard. He immediately put together the first lineup of Rocket from the Tombs, and then another that became Pere Ubu, which broke out of Cleveland to become revered all over the world by musicians and fans of quirky, artsy, clamorous music that didn’t fit any mold. Thomas kept the band going until his death, with other projects sandwiched between releases, and had a new recording and his autobiography almost finished when he died at his home in England. Read more.
Too many people follow the news obsessively and work themselves into a state of panic. While it’s important to be informed, it’s also important to know when to let go. CoolCleveland writer Claudia Taller, who is also a yoga instructor, recently took part in a Forest Bathing session at the Cleveland Metropark Bradley Wood, a mindfulness practice that raises awareness of the sights, sound and smells of nature.
“I’ve always been keenly aware that when I’m in the woods, I feel better,” she says. “Stress and worry dissipate the same way that breathing and meditation soothe the central nervous system. While walking in the woods and paying attention to the birds, trees, and plant life, breathing and meditation happen naturally. We have this wonderful connection with nature that is enticing and calming. I wanted to know what I would feel during a ‘real’ guided forest bathing experience.” Read more.
On Saturday September 13, FreshFest returns to Rid-All Farm for the sixth time with an all-day lineup of music headlined by pioneering woman hip hop artist MC Lyte, tons of food and drink, vendors, yoga classes, a basketball tournament, a kids’ playground and roller skating rink, and many other activities. It’s currently looking for vendors, volunteers and people who want to sign up for that tournament. Read more.
Every year when they announce the Rock Hall inductees, there are countless arguments about who is “rock and roll enough” to deserve it. But inducting rap artists isn’t the reason the credibility of the choices is failing. It’s in large part the categories, which no longer make sense when non-musicians are cited for “Musical Excellence” and “Early Influence” becomes “Musical Influence,” something supposedly a criterion for ANY nominee—and Patsy Cline still isn’t in at all. Read More.
SPACES was founded in 1978 as an artist-focused organization, and it fulfilled that mission over many decades and several locations, before landing at its custom-renovated space in Hingetown in 2017. In 2019 executive director Christina Vassallo, who spearheaded the move, left, and then the pandemic hit, leaving SPACES adrift in recent years. Now with the hiring of Thea Spittle to head it up, it’s looking ahead to a new era. Read more.
Will this be the catalyst that causes the movement to go national? Activists are planning over 1000 demonstrations nationwide over the May Day weekend. On Thu 5/1, May Day itself, events are planned at Market Square Park across from the West Side Market in Cleveland and on Cascade Plaza in Akron. On Fri 5/2 speak out at Garfield Park in Mentor. On Sat 5/3 the action moves to the Free Stamp in Cleveland, and then on Sun 5/4, it arrives in Chardon, at the Marc’s in Chardon Village Plaza. Read more.
WED 5/7 Kick It with Klezmer
The soaring arches of Trinity Cathedral will ring with the lively sounds of klezmer, one of the many Eastern European folk styles performed by Cleveland band Harmonia.
