15-60-75: Counting the Numbers Band

When I was in college, one could hide in a booth at Ray's Place in Kent and blend into the darkness while sipping a good, inexpensive draft beer. But if we wanted to see The Numbers Band, whose real name is 15-60-75, we had to go to JB’s down the road. We tried to hear the lyrics and see band members Robert and Jack Kidney, Gerald Casale (who formed Devo), drummer David Robinson, and Michael Stacey above the chatter and through the smoke.

We stood towards the middle of the club, watching the bass player's fingers expertly pick out the notes that spoke of the Deep South, the cradle of blues. The rocking blues sound of the Numbers Band got us dancing and was the background for people connecting.

I lost track of 15-60-75, JB's, and Ray's Place in the twenty-five years since I left Kent. I have fond memories of Gertie's famous burgers and tall glasses of wine weekdays after a lecture on Shakespeare or Goethe. I've hankered for a beer and burger place as much like home as Ray’s combined with the soothing and heart-rending lyrics and basstones of a great band.

I found the venue. The Parkside near Detroit and W. 58th Street serves up trays of burgers, good beer on tap, and the music of The Numbers Band to patrons ensconced in dark wooden booths. Since our adventure there in November, I've discovered The Parkside is a place people take their families on weekend afternoons and members of the Cleveland police department make it their after-hours haunt. Somehow the place escaped me as I spent my days in the retail and chain restaurant suburb I call home and downtown office corridors in which I work.

We were impressed. Robert Kidney on hip-man intentional vocals and lead guitar expertly and confidently lead the band with energy (he’s in his late 50s) while wearing a dark suit. The band's music is relentless, energetic, unhesitating, and powerful. Jack Kidney plays an unbelievable harpsichord, and we witnessed him switch to keyboards to guitar to vocals and then back to another dizzyingly wonderful harp solo. Terry Hynde serenaded the sax, and made her squeal deliciously. The bass player put down his electric bass and bobbed away on a traditional bass between his legs.

Yes, they play a distant Bo Diddley and heartfelt Robert Johnson. But they play renditions that are almost unrecognizable until you hear the lyrics. The music cuts through the room with feverish blues and explodes into euphoric frenzy. There was a whole lot of music and entertaining going on, and unlike some jam bands, The Dead included, there was no lull. But was this the blues? I heard some jazz and rock—the band has its own spiraling but controlled music with an angry undertone.

Robert Kidney was quoted in Creem Magazine as saying "We are not interested in making hits, we are interested in making history." The band's history began with Robert being asked to replace Gary Haawk in the band Pig Iron. Kidney changed the name of the band to 15-60-75, the sequence of numbers in The Blues Fell This Morning, written by Paul Oliver. Terry Hynde discovered that 15 divided by 15 is 1, 60 divided by 15 is 4, and 75 by 15 is 5, and 1, 4 and 5 are referred to as universal progression. The original band included Tim Maglione, who died in 2003.

Apparently, the Numbers Band has never stopped since 1969. Their album Jimmy Bell's Still in Town was a 2004 reissue of a 1975 live set that was performed while opening for Bob Marley in Cleveland. It was well received by The New York Times and Village Voice critics. Sean Campannella in The Eugene Weekly of May 20, 2004, said "Jimmy Bell's Still In Town is urban Robert Kidney's gritty yet abstract expression of street-lit vitality and finger-snapping determination."

A Wall Street Journal article written by Rob Tomsho on January 20, 1999, with Robert Kidney's comments, appears on the band’s website (http://www.numbersband.com). Kidney admits the band members have day jobs and that artists must have their day jobs, but when they what they love, "It's all about the music after all." Kidney's right to point out he has never catered to cultural dictates—he was playing blues when the records that sold the most were Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. "I refuse to be product of this culture. I will not allow my heart and soul to be bought and sold in the marketplace. I will remain a voice of obscurity, riling against the vast grayness created by the tellusourvision."

While I agree that The Numbers Band does their own thing, I suspect the band likes the attention it gets when it’s performing on stage, and they do want to sell their CD's. Musicians want their music to be appreciated and to touch others with its own vision and sense of connectiveness. Good music brings us together. And there's nothing obscure about that. Kidney also says Americans are leading frantically stressful lives trying to keep up with their neighbors and spending beyond their means and do not want to be asked questions, only to be entertained. Yes, we like to be entertained, but we are also coming to realize the soullessness of our quest and are looking for artists to tell the truth and tell it real. We're looking for bands like 15-60-75 to tell it like it is.

The Numbers Band recently played a Fan Appreciation Night at The Outpost in Kent on December 23. On New Year's Eve, the band played at The Northside in Akron. Ray's is in downtown Kent on the way to The Outpost, and hopefully the cowboys are still turning in the old lamp above the bar; the burgers should still be good and quality beers are on tap. When The Numbers Band is again at The Parkview, the burgers, beer, and mind-expanding music will combine again for another worthwhile outing. I'm certainly going to be checking out the band's Spring calendar.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia J. Taller ctallerwritesATwowway.com.
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