Cleveland Bus Tour, The Compound, The Red Krayola

Sat­ur­day was an extreme­ly full day for me. I rode my bike down to the Han­na build­ing and then took a 6 hour neigh­bor­hood tour of Cleve­land. Once that was over I went to a free all-day local band rock show at The Com­pound and then went to Parish Hall to see the leg­endary The Red Kray­ola.

The bus tour only con­firmed what I’d already felt about Cleve­land; there are no bad neigh­bor­hoods to live in, each one has its own dis­tinct fla­vor and style that is exud­ed in the work being done by their respec­tive res­i­dents. That’s not a very good sen­tence. I went through St. Clair-Supe­ri­or, Glenville, North Collinwood, Uni­ver­si­ty Circle/Little Italy, Buck­eye, Tremont [I gave the tour here], Ohio City, Detroit-Shore­way, Bel­laire-Puri­tas and Cud­ell-Edge­wa­ter and saw the gamut of Cleve­land incomes and lifestyles. In each neigh­bor­hood we saw a project that was being fund­ed by Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions. It was good for me to see that all the read­ing I did ear­li­er in the year has been real­ized in the work of those who received the fund­ing.

After the tour end­ed, I rode my bike back to Tremont, stopped at the Jef­fer­son Library and dou­ble-checked the loca­tion of Straight Out­ta Com­pound II. It was on E. 63rd and St. Clair, and I was­n’t about to ride my bike back down­town, so I drove. This end­ed up for the best since I gave Lou a ride back to Tremont a few hours lat­er. The Com­pound is a chain-linked dusty grav­el lot and a few old brick build­ings that many local bands use as prac­tice space. I’d missed the first 4 or so bands, but caught 4 more while I was there, had some water­mel­on and a brat from the WSM, some ice cream and some indie girl eye can­dy. I saw State of Ohio, This Moment in Black His­to­ry, Sounder and Argyle Denial before we hit the road for…

BLKTYGR, Home and Gar­den and The Red Kray­ola at Parish Hall on W. 62nd and Detroit. An almost mir­ror-hop rock-show-swap venue menu of ban­da­li­cious­ness. My friend Was­co told me I should go see The Red Kray­ola, as it would like­ly be a once in a life­time expe­ri­ence. I was utter­ly unfa­mil­iar with them, but I’ve since done some research, since the show was so awe­some. They’ve been around in one form or anoth­er since the mid-60s always ahead of their time musi­cal­ly. And, it seems, even ahead of most peo­ple who are ahead of their time. Their music was polit­i­cal­ly charged, but not heavy-hand­ed like that sort of con­tent often comes across. BLKTYGR was awe­some too, it was my first time see­ing them play. Home and Gar­den did­n’t get me going at all though. They were too sor­ta jam-bandy for my taste. I end­ed up home around 1am, so I reck­on I spent about 2 awake hours in my apart­ment on Sat­ur­day. All pho­tos from the day are here.