Once I almost died in a girlfriend's car. She was planning her future, I was planning the past, and we were both sitting still in the motionless car. We were listening to a pop station at the time, when through the speakers a song came on by Nora Jones, and for the next few minutes it was like 1952. I pinched myself because I couldn't process what had just happened. It was the shock that almost killed me, because in the middle of mostly mindless music programming, out had come this stripped down jazz composition, the likes of which hadn't slipped onto mainstream radio since the early 70's.
And now something I'd always dreamt about was happening. It didn't matter that the next song was fit for a center-of-town dance club, because that's how radio should be; the variety of our journey with inclusion of our departures and influences. But for a few minutes, a dream of mine played out, as corporate radio somehow forgot themselves and I nearly died in a dream. America is full of mythical times whose repetitions are longed for and dreamt about. For me, it's 1969. It's 52nd street in the 1940's. It's Chet Baker rounding curves on the Pacific Coast Highway in his convertible, before the Beach Boys.
And since Jack Kerouac's beat got stuck in my head, I've had fantasies playing in black and white on walls of coffee shops. Here, a figure with cigarrette in one hand, mic and stem in the other emerges from a stratus of smoke which hangs above the air. The figure captures a generation with the rhythm of words and a pounding of ideas into the willing palms and hearts of hungry and fed up souls. We inhale the words as quickly as they are breathed to us. However, this person on the stage is not our lone influence, but rather an extension of a bigger mind of artists and forward thinkers, teaching us how to "break on through to the other side." In reality, I know that a fantasy like this can actually be a vision.
In early November I felt the hint of something about to explode in Cleveland when I witnessed Eric Alleman, front man for "To Box With Man," at the HiFi. Eric was seated on the stage behind a desk, complete with a candle and a band, behind him was a giant screen with slow moving footage of abandoned factories and railroad tracks. He had a cigarette in one hand, and a microphone in another, "telling stories in a whole new way." And for that hour it was 1954, and easy to think that we might soon be leaving to see Kerouac down the street. Alleman was much like that figure in my daydreams, and was furthermore not a "lone" leader capturing our generation; he was and is part of a large pool of underground and increasingly exposed artists, gathering to show us how to arrive collectively as a society of thinkers.
Alleman is not alone, he's one of many who somehow end up being connected to Infinite Number of Sounds (INS), a catalyst for Clevelanders who leave their couches behind in search of higher ground. Lately, INS created a website aiming to be a central place for artists and audiences to connect. The upcoming unveiling of experimentalbehavior.com is not intended to be just one more site where a band or group promotes themselves and their friends. You can visit it now and meet the people behind it this Friday, January 30 at the Beachland Ballroom with performances by 9-Volt Haunted House, Swimming With Angels, Michael Salinger and Infinite Number of Sounds. Grab your friends and watch the beginnings of an explosion; it's going to be as big as us turning off televisions and exploring the radio beyond pop stations. It's going to be as big as those of us who don't plan to sit on the receiving end of radios and art galleries and newspapers, waiting for cool things to happen. Years, unlike cars, don't sit still. This is the new scene, whatever we choose to make of it. Remember: for the next few minutes, it's 2004. from Cool Cleveland contributor J Scott Franklin
http://www.experimentalbehavior.com
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