The Hotelier, Rozwell Kid, Beach Slang, and Johnny Manzielbow: While We’re Waiting

What’s up everyone? Hope you had a nice week and hope you have plans for an even nicer weekend. Here’s my entry in the contest to distract you until you can reach that weekend. While we’re waiting…

Cleveland has a Johnny Manzielbow…

The world is full of hashtags, branding, and the people who hate it. This week with the news of Johnny Manziel’s sore elbow, I knew it would be short order before my twitter search for “manzielbow” would turn up enough results to fill up an entire University Hospitals campus.¹ It had me thinking about social media and branding and hashtags and all those kinds of things and mostly what I came up with is that I’m happy we don’t have another “gate.”

I was criticized on these pages when I referred to “bountygate” sometime over the past couple years and it made me salty. I get that “bountygate” is at it’s core very dumb, but I don’t think it’s fair to lay that at my feet for using it a couple years after it was so well established by the American sports universe at large. I am not saying that the criticism doesn’t have merit, but it’s something that happened over my head. I, of course, do want to try and hold myself to the highest possible standards, but sometimes you have to recognize when the issue is bigger than you.

That’s my current feeling on hashtags and short-hand names for things. I don’t have the energy to fight them and I am trying hard not to uber-critical of everyone all the time. Although, don’t ask Dave Sterling if that’s true. I kind of felt bad how cantankerous I was on our latest podcast, lobbing criticisms at him and some of the things he said. I was trying to be funny, but I think it just came off mean.

Your weekly moment of soccer zen…

You know you’re living right when you can fall down on your back and still guide the ball over the keeper’s outstretched arms for a goal.

The Hotelier, Beach Slang, and Rozwell Kid put on one of the shows of the year at Now That’s Class! in Cleveland

Sometimes entertainment lives up to the hype and other times it explodes past any expectation level you could build up in your mind. On a Monday night in Cleveland, three bands took to a tiny club on Cleveland’s West Side and I went from loving one band – The Hotelier – to loving three. Anyone who partakes in live music knows what a rare occurrence that is. Usually by the time the headliner comes on stage you’re wishing you had stayed home to watch another Seinfeld re-run or read your kid another Curious George story. This night at Now That’s Class! left me satisfied that I left that incorrigible monkey at home.

(First of all, apologies to the local opener CityCop who I missed. I checked out their Bandcamp and their music is a really interesting mix of acoustic guitar and hardcore vocals. I wish I had not missed their set.)

Rozwell Kid was setting up when I arrived and when they started I was shocked at just how poppy the sound was. It was like someone found Weezer’s mid-90’s mojo, took a few more guitar lessons and then started touring in a younger body. They just rocked. Guitar harmonies protruded from the distortion-heavy riffing. On top of that, these guys were their own best salesmen from the stage. Where lots of bands have a tendency to take themselves too seriously, these guys were naturals talking between songs and engaging the crowd in a way that kept it fun even as they tuned.

Next up was Beach Slang from Philly. Their music is layered and big and fuzzy-sounding, and normally a band like that wouldn’t be capable of having fun. Like Rozwell Kid before them, these guys have great charisma and chemistry on stage and with the audience. It’s such a difficult thing to do, but Beach Slang made it look shockingly easy. Lead singer James Snyder has a quirky troubadour personality onstage and he seems desperate to converse with the audience. Meanwhile he projects a vulnerability and his bandmates seem to take turns roasting him in a nice way and they seem like this is what they’d act like wherever you see them.

Weirdly enough Beach Slang made me think of the Goo Goo Dolls because I’m old enough to remember that band before they wrote beautiful prom songs and motion picture anthems. Beach Slang recalls the old days when I saw the Goos touring in support of Superstar Car Wash. Anyway, it’s not an insult.

Finally, the moment I was waiting for arrived and The Hotelier jumped onstage… missing one of the members of the band. In place of Ben Gauthier was a female guitar player who I’d never seen before. Lead singer and bass player Christian Holden informed us that their guitar player had mono and that the girl we were looking at had learned the songs in five days via YouTube. That might have spelled disaster for most bands and Alyssa struggled a little bit here and there, but nobody judged anyone. She ushered the band into songs – sometimes awkwardly – but the room picked her up from her bandmates to the club full of fans screaming every word back at them.

I couldn’t find any video posted from the show, but just watch the first 30 seconds of the first song of the set (at least) and you’ll see what the experience was like this week.

I can’t say it any more strongly how amazing this night of music turned out to be. It’s even more incredible when you consider how much live music I take in on an annual basis and to think it was all in a small club on a Monday night for barely more than the price of one album. Small bands in small clubs are the last bastion of musical arbitrage available in this world. All you have to do is show up and attend.

That’s it for me this week. Thanks for playing along with all my musical and sports musings. Hope you have a great weekend.

1. Cleveland Clinic would have made for a better joke, what with the alliteration, but unfortunately the Cleveland Browns denied me that joy by switching official health providers. [↩]