* Cleveland hot dog joint and local music hot spot, The Happy Dog, has launched a new Kickstarter to record and release a live album by the classical music group, Ensemble HD , a collection of Cleveland Orchestra musicians and their friends. The goal of $15,000 may be on the ambitious side, but so is the mission of Ensemble HD. How many other classical troupes have regular gigs at rock clubs? That's a rhetorical question. * In the past couple years, Cleveland musicians Nick Tolar and Tony Vorrell have seen their profile rise thanks to their work [...]
* The Dreadful Yawns and Expecting Rain will be playing tonight's edition of Cleveland Sessions, the free concert series at The Rock 'N' Roll Hall of Fame. The show starts at 7. In other Yawns news, the band will be celebrating the release of their latest album, Take Shape, this Saturday night at The Beachland Tavern. *Following the lead of Jay Reatard , who's released four 7" singles this year on Matador, with a fifth one on the way, Columbus' Times New Viking will release their very own 7". [...]

A random ten to listen to as you meander your way through the middle of the week and on towards the weekend. Zen. The Feelies - Slipping Into Something Buy The Good Earth Joy Division - Colony Buy Closer RunRunner - Bad Timing Buy [...]
It was last Spring when The Library Is On Fire debuted their Devo inspired video for New Corner (for Kadinsky) . Since that time, they moved their base of operations from Akron to Brooklyn, and they put the finishing touches on their self-released disc, Cassette. With influences shifting between noisy art-punk and big room guitar anthems, it's the type of alterna-rock album once common 10 years ago, but currently missing in today's micro-niched music scene. The Library Is On Fire's CD release party for Cassette is this Friday at [...]

Man where did those holidays go, it was a short week for me this week but it still dragged on forever. Back to the work,work,work a day world for a while. Hey, but like broken hearts and too many empty whiskey bottles it inspires a lot of good tunes, here's a mere five. Have a great first weekend of 2008 everyone! 1 : Elvis Costello - Welcome To The Working Week [...]

A little reprieve from the Christmas music for a moment. A totally random mix of ten old and new songs to clear the palate a bit. Stay tuned, the best of 2007, more giveaways and other fun stuff coming up soon. Expecting Rain - Emily The Poseur Gang Green - Alcohol Magnetic [...]

My first exchange with Expecting Rain went something like this, "Hi, we're another fine band from Cleveland called Expecting Rain. We have all the country members from The Dreadful Yawns, and we don't play country either." Not that there's anything wrong with that. I happened to be quite fond of the country Yawns. For those of you not in on the joke, a few weeks back, I opened my track review for The Dreadful Yawns, "Don't Know What I've Been On," by quoting current Yawns guitarist Eric [...]