You Can, Sort of, Go Home AgainDespite my fears and misgivings, the Cincinnati CityBeat article turned out beautifully. For a short time it remains at:
http://www.citybeat.com/current/music.shtml
I think it will be archived after that, and I'll try to find the archive location. I may even reproduce it here if it completeley goes away.
The show at the Southgate Saturday was incredible. I am almost afraid to write about it as I can scarcely do it justice. Lopez Sophisticates, with Grege Fernandez, opened the show, and was very well recieved. The performance was a little loose and chaotic at the edges - Lopez performances usually are. But the crowd liked it.
My solo act, followed by what's left of the original 11,000 Switches (lamb, todd Witt and me) followed. "Uncle Dave and the Lookout Boys" was Cesar Perez, Matt Mason and I. Someone told me soundman and musician extraordinaire Jim Davidson was trying to count the meter in our piece "Chinese Takeout" but couldn't follow it. That's okay Jim, I don't know what it is either!
The Switches were true to form, sounding very much like we did in 1981. We actually managed to exhaust the original songs we could do without a second guitarist, so if we continued this we'd have to find somebody to help out. But it went well, and it was a blast to work with Lamb and Todd again. The rehearsal we held the night before was almost as fun as the show itself.
Cointelpro wasn't as lucky in terms of rehearsal time - we only had one runthrough of our four numbers during soundcheck. But in the performance we were ON FIRE. The crowd was going nuts, and Tim Schwallie was jumping around and screaming he was so happy. It WAS a rush, I'll tell you. I was almost out of voice by this point, so I just hurled my words into the mike, preciptating the sore throat I still have as I write this, further aggrivated by the smokiness of the club.
BPA were awesome. There were so many songs I hadn't heard in a long time, and had forgotten how much I loved them. My wife particularly liked "Killing Me with Kindness" -- she said "I could sing that." She gagues how much she likes music by the extent to which she can sing along with it while driving.
Human Zoo closed. I had seen this band SO many times back in the day, and with so many variant lineups and in half-assed outings that I wasn't expecting a great deal from them. And the blew me away. Karl Meyer came down from Chicago and played bass; he was the Zoo's original bassist but left town early on to go to school. Last time I saw Karl he was a kid - now he's a balding, somewhat pudgy middle aged guy like me. But he sure was pounding the hell out of that bass. I was amused by his comment "We were on Hospital Records too!" in response to some heckler. Hell yeah they were, and I was always glad to have them there, although I had little to with their LP. It was funny hearing someone else cite personal pride on being on a Hospital Record.
We partied for short time afterward, and I didn't get to bed until 5:30. The next day we enjoyed a Puerto Rican brunch in Northside with Cesar, his sister and their family, who are beauriful. The food was delicious; we then went to fetch Mixx Remy from my parents and started the long journey home.
The next day was diastrous. My voice was gone, and it is only slowly coming back - I have no idea what I will sound like on radio Thursday Morning. I was wiped out tired, inolved in a project that was getting me nowhere fast, and worst of all, all that goodwill from the show had evaporated. That is why it is important to have times like Saturday was; it helps make the rest of the time, the months and weeks of plugging in data and answering the phone, well more bearable.
Uncle Dave Lewis
udtv@yahoo.com