Yinz Cleveburgh and Random Art Links: April 4--15

Ooops, there's a lot more stuff I coulda/shoulda put on here. I'm way behind on this. Anyway, a few news items and stories from the Cleveburgh region.

Cleveland

The tenth, Cinema Wasteland Movie and Memorabilia Expo.



Music Draft Lottery. A great idea, that would be hard to make up.

"The 2008 Lottery League was a surprising success. It yielded 33 bands that convened to play 10-minute sets at a blowout show at the Beachland. Last year, several of the acts contributed to a compilation CD, and some bands kept going after the "Big Show," earning their way into the Lottery League's "Hall of Fame." Because of the amount of work involved in coordinating the project, council members decided to wait until this year to launch a sequel."

Cleveburgh

New Northeast Ohio economic development website, Theplus.US up.

Kent

The Youngstown Vindicator is seeking images, memories and stories of Kent State, May 4th 1970.


Akron

25 Hill, a new movie about The Soap Box Derby, is a labor of love for people in Akron.

Pittsburgh

Null Space gives a rundown of the many contradictory Marcellus Shale and other energy stories. In the near term, Natural Gas prices are near record lows and far away from levels that would make recent projects pay off.

Barge Traffic reached 15 year lows in 2009 partly reflecting lower regional power demand for coal. Coal, in case you don't know it is the primary fuel for American power plants. Your green Electric Car--is fueled by coal, dude!

The Pirate's milk the baseball revenue sharing welfare system for all they can.

Keystone Commons Industrial Park, on the old Westinghouse site expannds amid a surge in occupancy. Pipe needed for Marcellus Shale projects may be a big factor.

What's so interesting here is how close the current use of the site fits with it's original purpose as a place for hard core "tinkering", metal working and industrial R&D. Westinghouse Air Brake, now known as WABTEC still has it's headquaurters here.

If you have thoughts or insight you want to share about art, music,film, urban design, architecture, transit or history in the Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Youngstown, Erie, Morgantown, Akron, Canton region--Cleveburgh, email me diggingpitt@gmail.com

This is not Hyper Local media, but regional media seeking local viewpoints.

Great Cleveland Idea: Lottery League 2010

Draft Night 2010







OK, it would have been a pretty extreme stretch for me but I was sorely tempted to try to get up to see the 2010 Lottery League performance @ The Beachland Ballroom.

"I’ll rehash the League comp CD liner notes for the uninitiated (though you should of course buy the CD for the full story, nudge nudge): the Cleveland Lottery League started in late 2007, when six CLE indie-scene habitués bemoaned the tribal tendencies of rock recidivists, and hit upon the notion of a lottery as a way to reshuffle things and force collaborations between strangers. The Lottery took place on February 2, 2008 (Groundhog Day has a weird significance to this crew, which I’ll maybe cover in a later post), and resulted in 33 new bands from 144 musicians. All these new bands had 10 weeks to concoct a 10-minute set with at least one original group composition. (As it turned out, every group did all originals, the sole possible exception being mighty debatable — the band Boris Karloff's version of "Monster Mash" was entirely too fucked-with to properly count as a cover.)

At the end of the 10 weeks, on April 12, 2008, all 33 bands played one giant show with three stages. Nobody flat-out sucked it, and some went completely all-out. Homelesssexual performed with an accompanying narrative film. Semper Fi staged a fake war-on-terror battle (I’m pretty sure Iraq won, but honestly, I’d had a few drinks by then, so who knows?). Rad Bathhouse performed in ancient Roman costumes. Stimulus Package, Mohammed Cartoon, Free Moments and Hapsburg Lip were so completely fucking excellent it strained belief to think that their members had only been introduced a couple of months beforehand. It was one of the single greatest days in CLEmusic history, and we’re doing it again this year. Big Show Mk. II is on April 10 at the Beachland Temple of Rockawesome. Watch this space."

Gets back to why cities exist in the first place as a place to mix shit up. Seems it all started as an outgrowth of a Cleveland band opening up it's practice and recording studio. (Ever wonder how many of those were once in a place like The Lower Hill? Ever wonder what was lost, or never born?)

"In the summer of 2006, Jae Kristoff, Nate Scheible and Mike Wilkinson, all members of the experimental band Self Destruct Button at one time or another (another disclosure: this writer is currently on the inside of the SDB revolving door), opened the doors of Zombie Proof studio in midtown Cleveland free of charge and one hour at a time for three full days. Musicians were invited to each record one hour of music, sound, stuff breaking, whatever. More than 40 people took them up on the offer, and the results were edited together into songs, collaborations of a sort between people who may have never even been in the same room together."

The Lottery League: The Big Show.

When: 5 p.m. Saturday.(This Past Saturday)

Where: Beachland Ballroom & Tavern, 15711 Waterloo Road, Cleveland.

Suppose we had an Art Lottery league?

Do you know a lot about the Cleveland art or music scene and want to tell people in a wider area your perspective? Shoot me an email: diggingpitt@gmail.com. We have enough hyper local media.