Lottery League Recap

To all those who have neg­a­tive things to say about the future of Cleve­land, I sub­mit the Lot­tery League.

I showed up to the Beach­land about 20 min­utes before the show start­ed and stayed for the dura­tion. The ache in my feet and knees today is a tes­ta­ment to the fact that I’m not as young as I used to be. How­ev­er, the beer flowed like wine and I start­ed out with a triple shot of Cuer­vo to get drunk as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. I knew I’d have to be sober 7 hours lat­er when the show end­ed. The tequi­la need­ed some play­mates, so I had 3 Straub to bal­ance things out. Then, they ran out of Straub. Straub is, I think, the cheap beer of choice for Cleve­land rock­ers. Any­way.

Noth­ing cool­er than last night is going to hap­pen in Cleve­land this year. Over 150 local musi­cians were ran­dom­ly shuf­fled into 33 new bands; these bands had six weeks to make music for a 10 minute set at the Beach­land Ball­room. The result­ing music was an out­stand­ing inver­sion of Stur­geon’s Law. There was a bit of every­thing from, Japan­ese pop [Dr. Wid­get] to death met­al [Born Raped [OK, no one else prob­a­bly thinks so, but I do.]] It was obvi­ous that some bands took their League sta­tus very seri­ous­ly, while oth­er were out to have a fun time. Yeah, a few of the bands sucked, but then there were bands like Free Moments and Post­cards From For­eign Shores who sent me shrap­neled in dif­fer­ent musi­cal direc­tions. The first few bands had shows with their offi­cial bands lat­er in the evening [Hot Cha Cha was play­ing in Detroit, I believe] and the last few had the tough job of pump­ing up the music-wea­ried mass­es that came to The Big Show.

The ballsi­est band, in terms of their angle, was Sem­per Fi. A bit of per­for­mance art punk rock that involved Abu Ghraib ref­er­ences and Nazi salutes. I don’t think any­one knew what to make of it, but thank­ful­ly there was The Big Show mas­cot ram­bling around var­i­ous­ly as a bear, a par­rot, and a croc­o­dile [at one point the croc­o­dile suit was on back­wards so the tail became an engorged rep­til­ian phal­lus.] One of the bands had a dude in a pan­da suit. Secret Cleve­land Fur­rys?

There was also plen­ty of swag, well made T‑shirts, pro­grams, tick­ets and the great­est col­lec­tion of local music for sale out­side of Music Saves. The sheer col­lab­o­ra­tive momen­tum behind the event is a tes­ta­ment to what Cleve­landers can do when they believe in some­thing. I talked about this with sev­er­al peo­ple through­out the night, but most notably, Pat from Pat’s in the Flats. The Cleve­land music scene does­n’t com­pete, they coop­er­ate, and all are bet­ter for it. That’s why we get to have awe­some events like the Lot­tery League and Straight Out­ta Com­pound.

Of course, I took some video. Swayze All Over:

and Post­cards From For­eign Shores:

More on the Lot­tery League:

• Lou Muenz weblog posts
• Lou Muenz pho­tos:
  • Lot­tery League Draw­ing
  • Lot­tery League Prac­tices
• Cleve­land Scene Fea­ture
• Plain Deal­er Arti­cle
• Ron Kretsch’s Weblog [By Invi­ta­tion Only, WTF?]
• Lot­tery League MySpace [Fea­tures many links to Lot­tery League band pages]