#akron Ohio

[jahtheexplorer]

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

[middleland]

O'Neil House (2) (3) (4) by Jaime Klein

[90s-2000s-barbie]

Nirvana Live at James A Rhodes Arena (Akron, Ohio October 31, 1993) 🎃 🦇

I personally saw Foo Fighters in Cleveland back in September 20, 2011. Dave Grohl told many stories and reminisced about Kurt Cobain / Nirvana because this was their first tour with Pat Smear being a core member back in the band since 1997. In particular Dave talked about Halloween 1993. He said it was the last time Nirvana played in Ohio and Kurt dressed like Barney and Pat Smear dressed like Slash and they had a guitar solo battle. And I quote Dave said, “Slash kicked Barney’s ass!!”

[vyva-melinkolya]

Vyva Melinkolya “Heather Rhodes” (Carissa’s Wierd cover) Akron OH, 7/18/2023

[fallauween]

Autumn Reflections at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens by Arthur Oleary

Fall colors at peak in the Japanese Gardens at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens.

[scribblelegs]

Local punk show flyer 05/06- AKRON OHIO

[dreamstates-music]

DreamStates performing at Akron Pride on the main stage!

Photo: Jasper Martin

[jahtheexplorer]

Cuyahoga Valley National Park

A rainy morning on the first National park I ever visited. I didn't even know that Ohio had a National Park. Must say, that Cuyahoga Valley was my motivation to visit this state.

Every person would ask me, why are you visiting Ohio? What's there? Making me feel, that Ohio it was just a boring state not worth visiting. But, they were all wrong. If you know where to go, and go beyond on what Internet recommend, you can have a nice experience there.

[middleland]

O'Neil House (2) (3) by Jaime Klein

[mywifeleftme]

341: The Waitresses // Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?

Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful? The Waitresses 1982, Polydor

The Waitresses were such a peculiar project: considered a borderline novelty band based on their two hit singles (no wave-y stripper anthem “I Know What Boys Like” and wondrous ska noel song “Christmas Wrapping”), their membership connects dots between the ‘70s Akron scene (Devo, Tin Huey), Television, the Psychedelic Furs, and John Zorn, and featured an actual waitress on lead vocals. Said waitress, Patty Donahue, was a true natural at the post-punk sprechgesang thing. For other singers, a flat affect was often a way to mask shyness or to de-emphasize the vocalist’s personality. Donahue was cool enough to simply be herself up there, sarcastic, fabulous, smart, and messy. She makes the lyrics sound so natural you assume she’s basically singing her diary—which is why not a day goes by without some bright young woman, who’s felt utterly seen by a song like “No Guilt,” giving a startled “Oh!” at the realization the very much male Chris Butler wrote all the words.

Their debut Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful? is often nearly as prog as it is punk (try to follow the zig-zagging “Quit” or “Heat Night”), the songs crammed with wild hairpin tempo changes and skronky bridges that somehow still sound like something you might hear playing over the PA at the grocery store. They need all that busy-ness to accommodate Butler’s absurdly verbose lyrics, which have the respect for meter of a jazzy spoken word recital (so none, I mean). The musicians need to really have their working boots on to keep this stuff feeling poppy, but for the most part they nail it with panache.

And those lyrics! I can think of few albums as legitimately clever as this one, even forty years on. Donahue’s glib performance of a young woman getting her shit together on “No Guilt” could describe any number of girls I knew in college and, from what I glean from social media anyway, still works for the present generation. And truly, today’s assembly line of singer-songwriters trying to score clout by writing the most withering lowercase boy-bye diss (see Kara Jackson’s damp “therapy” for one) wish they could do what Butler does with “Jimmy Tomorrow.” The potshots are sparkling (“There's nothing that's wrong with me / That money can't cure / But I don't want to be somebody else's / Learning experience / Some rich kid's way to spend his allowance”), but Butler understands that the woman in the story’s more intriguing than the bad ex, and by keeping her the focus of the monologue he finds both a pithy diagnosis of her social ailments (“It's what happens when your choices / Are narrowed to fashion or violence”) and her emotional ones (“I guess I set impossible goals / And I don’t know when to quit / Is that it?”). On an album with no ballads and little sentimentality, Donahue’s vocal finds something really resonant in these lines, even as the band absolutely goes off behind her. But for the Waitresses, angst was always best used as a springboard for a brilliant punchline, and they end the album with an all-timer: “My goals? / My goals are to find a cure for irony and make a fool out of God.”

The band didn’t last long (two LPs and an EP), and it’s not clear whether their very specific brand of schtick could’ve survived the transition from new wave to alternative rock without losing its dazzle. But Butler and Donahue deserve to be mentioned when the all-time great lyricist/vocalist tandems are discussed, because like a good kitchen / front of house pairing, they make a very complex business look seamless.

341/365

[route22ny]

Akron, Ohio street scenes, 1979

source: Hemmings Motor News

[emmaklee]

[dannybflat]

[tredawakandan]

Congratulations To Lebron for this Achievement

[nando161mando]