Cedar Avenue Time-Slip

For some reason this warm late Spring weather that we've been enjoying takes me back to the early days of the Drome record store, when it was located on Cedar in nuclear-free Cleveland Heights, where more fun, jokes, and tricks were begun than on just about any squid-jiggin' ground...when it was cold weather, I'd usually just go as far east as downtown (when I was a kid, I thought that Petula Clark was singing about downtown Cleveland) to check the record stores, bookstores, and library there, but when it was warm, I would take the train to the University rapid station, then climb the hill to Hideo's Discodrome, as it was also known. Early on, I think Crocus Behemoth was even still working there, when he wasn't busy walking around and taking buses. His night job was to corral a bunch of Palcontents on the little carpeted loft above the salesfloor there to get them ready for their weekly forays into the Flats. If one peeked one's head up there, one could see some gear, some ashtrays, and some gallon jugs with a little bit of cheap red wine left in them. But that's neither here nor there; all of this is just a preamble to the memory of a favorite 45 of that time, by the French group Metal Urbain, though oddly enough, that name doesn't appear on the pic sleeve, just the word Metal with a red "U" superimposed...
But I was pleasantly surprised to come across this video clip recently:



Spindly fellows, ain't they?

" Rare uncut complete version vidéo clip from the original line up of Metal Urbain starring Clode Panik, Hermann Schwartz, Pat Luger and Eric Debris, filmed in late 1977.
Lady Coca Cola was the b-side of Metal Urbain first single anthem, Panik, originally issued on Cobra Records in may 1977."

They even did a reunion album four years ago, but I'm not going to go into that.

I still get over to that stretch of road frequently, because the nearest Dave's Supermarket is there, in the location of the Russo's or whatever it was...I think that was the store where an early Harvey Pekar story takes place (“Standing Behind Old Jewish Ladies in Supermarket Lines”). And I think that Dangerous Dave Norris, drummer extraordinaire and the Drome's jazz specialist (every store had one), still lives down on Grandview. Anyway, here is Crocus Behemoth more recently:

There might be a bad time for Suicide

but there's never a bad time for "Cheree"...

Suicide at the Hammersmith Apollo, 05/03/10:



At Hurrah, 1980:



A remix:



Here it is at the end of "Downtown 81":



And some Cinéma vérité of a recording session in San Francisco:

Non-Gratuitous Buses

"London's iconic double-decker buses are getting a design upgrade (and greener powerplants), as revealed today on the city of London's website. Scheduled to go into service in 2012, the new bus boasts a more "light and airy feel inside the bus" due to extensive use of glass, including along the staircases (there's two), and a "hop-on, hop-off" platform has been added to the rear."

Well, when I was a kid, I was really stumped by the lyrics of "A Day in the Life," at least the part where the unshaven Beatle talked about getting a bus, then making his way upstairs and having a smoke, because I didn't know anything about buses with a second level. Here's a story that takes place ten years later than that particular day in the life: some punk in London was on the steps at the back of a bus and was helping some other people up, I guess to ride for free, when some dude in loon pants tried to get on, at which point the punk kicked the guy and said "No ride for you, hippie!" Now I seem to remember that the guy on the bus was Jah Wobble, but that anecdote didn't appear in his autobiography "Memoirs of a Geezer," which I recommend if you (the hypothetical reader; I don't know who you are because only one friend of mine ever leaves comments)are at all interested in Wobble, PiL, or that general milieu. I got it from the downtown CPL.

Here are some videos to do with London and its buses:



It looks quite small; is it a bus for ants?



Blossom Dearie, a tough groove, and a hip solo...



Viv Corringham "Together Then Created a Journey that both Forgot"
Film by Helen Petts

Here's the long version of the London bus promo:



Londoners seem to hate it. Jah Wobble worked on the London Underground for a time, in the stations and later driving trains (after leaving Public Image, Ltd.). I wonder what he would think of it...