Midpoint, Main Street, and Myo

For a city that at times seems freakishly conservative when it comes to the arts, Cincinnati has a surprisingly diverse music scene. (That and our profilic past in the brewery industry baffles me to this day.) Once home to King Records, the city has produced its fair share of artists who made it to the major labels and some renown. Bootsy Collins. Afghan Whigs (and Twilight Singers). Ass Ponys. Over the Rhine. Throneberry. Not huge household names (well, except maybe Bootsy), but well known in their respective circles. Peter Frampton moved to Indian Hill a few years back. Mojo Nixon was a DJ on WEBN for a while.

(We're responsible for unleashing 98° upon an unsuspecting world, too. Yeah, we're to blame for Mr. Jessica Simpson himself, Nick Lachey. This is balanced on the great karmic scale of music by the presence of 97X, which happily returned to an internet format a few months after selling the radio frequency/physical station itself.)

Adding to the list of musical accomplishments, the city became host to Midpoint Music Festival a few years ago. As a music fan who has for years wanted to trek down to the SxSW Festival in Austin in hopes of discovering the Next Big Thing, this was an exciting development.

I'd kind of fallen away from the local music scene. My friends in bands started to get real jobs, get married, settle down. As we all got older, it became harder to get up in the morning after a long loud night at Sudsy Malones. And who had the money to check out 5 bands a week when the gas and electric bill was due?

I regretted losing that part of my life. So when faced with the opportunity to see a ton of unsigned bands from all over the place for really cheap, I jumped at the chance. (Besides, I figured it would get me out of the house and hopefully give me something to write about.)

The website for MPMF had mentioned the availability of a "three day all venue badge" at the conference registration table downtown, so after work on Thursday I came home, took the world's fastest shower, changed my clothes, and set off for the Crowne Plaza in hopes of getting there before registration closed at 7:00. I made it, plunked down my credit card, and was presented with my very own... neon yellow plastic armband. (Yes, the kind you can't remove intact after you put it on. So I was going to be stuck wearing this thing for the next 57 hours. Work is gonna love this.)

Not knowing what kind of crowds or parking situations to expect, I headed over to Jefferson Hall on Main Street to spread out my schedule and my CityBeat guide and plot my course for the evening over a beer. The schedule was overwhelming. 254 bands spread out over three nights and several venues (many of which I'd never been to) up and down the street. I highlighted a few bands in each time slot, making a backup plan just in case my first choices were not my thing.

While poring over the schedule and sipping at my Bass Ale, the stage manager - hi Tim! - for Jefferson Hall introduced himself and offered to get me a copy of the sampler. (He'd seen me scribbling in my notebook, and asked me who I was writing for; I explained my plan to write about the event on my website. Behold the power of the pen.) I thanked him, and set off for Lava to see sleepybird.

sleepybird had a lo-fi alt-folky feel to them which I quite enjoyed. They're a 2:00 am kind of band, the kind of music you listen to while sitting at a friend's apartment discussing world philosophies by candlelight after too many beers and cigarettes.

While watching the band, I ran into my friend Jason, who was playing with The Minni-Thins at 10:00 next door at Crush. I promised I'd come check out part of their set.

When Jason had warned me that The Minni-Thins were a "bit different" than sleepybird, he wasn't kidding. Loud, aggressive power punk, with hints of The Pixies thrown in for good measure. Fun, if you're in that kind of mood. I wasn't, and ducked out after three songs.

Back at Lava, .andrew. had taken the stage. Described in the "You'll Dig It If You Dig" tag of CityBeat as "Nick Drake, Crowded House, a choirboy gone slightly wrong," both the bartender and I were impressed by his set. No CD yet, but he swore he was working on it when I talked to him after the show. (Oh, and he was very nice, which goes a long way in my book.)

Stephanie's Id from Asheville, NC was up next. I hadn't seen any out-of-town bands yet (well, sleepybird is from Dayton, but that doesn't really count), so I decided to stick around to check them out. Good choice. If you threw Fiona Apple's When the Pawn... in a blender with Portishead and a vibraphone, set it on frappé, and served the resulting mixture in a swanky jazz lounge, you'd have a pretty good idea of what they sounded like. There's not a mainstream radio station in the world that would have any idea what to do with them, but there should be.

I headed back up the street to Jekyll and Hyde's to check out Idle Mirth, and ran into Dave from The Green Room on my way. I assured him I was coming to see them Friday night, and he tipped me off that his wife's band LovelyCrash was playing at Neon's around the corner. I promised I'd check out the end of their set.

Idle Mirth, billed in the "Dig It" description as "Portishead, Hooverphonic, Fiona Apple" proved to be (in my opinion) none of the above. The singer had a lovely voice, but it was completely drowned out by the guitar and drums. It may have been a bad mix or an issue with venue acoustics, but I wasn't feeling it and headed for Neon's after a few songs.

I unfortunately only got to see the last two or three songs in LovelyCrash's set, but I was pretty much blown away by them. CityBeat described them far better than I could ever attempt to: "The Breeders and Scrawl beat up the Bangles while the Ronettes fashionably look on and spit. Later, the Cramps come over and tell their surf guitar friends to stop by as well and everybody gets drunk on Cosmopolitans and Gran Marnier. Gorgeous harmonies, catchy hooks and memorable lyrics, bass and drums that'll kick your ass. I'm out of metaphors. You get it. Go see 'em." I hadn't realized that Beth was in the band (or that she had previously been in Perfect Jewish Couple), nor did I have any idea that Jen (Dave's wife) could sing. I awarded them my "Band to Watch" award of the night, and bugged Jen about the upcoming CD after the show.

As the night drew to a close, I stopped back at Jefferson Hall to say goodnight to Tim and apologize for not seeing any of the bands there that night. (Most of the bands there seemed to be of the more mainstream rock genre, and none of the bios really appealed to me.) He shrugged. "Hell, I don't care. You're here. You're seeing the bands, and you're covering the event." (I explained to him that I only had a handful of readers, and one of them was my mom. "Eh. Still doesn't matter," he responded. Tim is my new best friend this weekend.)

I took inventory of the evening as I repacked my messenger bag for work the next day. 11 pages of notes, four CDs (I purchased sleepybird's no flood, Tim gave me the official MPMF sampler, and I'd wound up getting a couple of two-song samplers from patientZero and Tuesday Conspiracy.), five stickers, one promotional matchbook, one promotional postcard. Not a bad take for the night.

Oh, and one neon yellow armband that I was going to have to conceal with a long sleeved shirt the next morning. Sometimes it's hard to be this glamorous.