Cleveland’s leading satirist tackles unique aspects of the city

It’s Thursday night and you suddenly get the urge to go to a riverfront workingman’s bar to see a mad guitar genius play transcendental blues while spitting fundamentalist Christian devil epithets at you and your girlfriend through his maniacal, toothless grin.

Can you do this in Paris? No dice, mon ami. London? Sorry, fresh out. New Orleans? Possibly, although their resident maniacal Christian-anarchist-blues-spitting guitar genius was last seen using his Les Paul as a paddle to row a plastic garbage can lid up the mighty Mississippi.

Only in Cleveland can you experience Glen Schwartz at Hoople’s on Thursday nights.

The ill-defined legend goes something like this: Schwartz was a member of The James Gang in the sixties before they scored modest hits with Joe Walsh on guitar. Jimi Hendrix loved his playing and had him play at his last birthday party. Glen quit the Gang in order to join a band called Pacific Gas & Electric and then quit the rock and roll world to join a cult-like fundamentalist Christian sect and ultimately a mental hospital. I’m told he now drives a milk truck. He apparently hates drinking, drugs, smoking and women.

I’m sure Hendrix would find these dislikes perplexing, were he alive.

As an intellectual exercise or as performance art, Glen is mesmerizing, in a “plane wreck as art” sort of way. His guitar playing is without a doubt amazingly original. See him and you will think about it and question it for weeks…

Did I enjoy it? Did it make me think? If so, what does that mean? What the fuck, over?

Only in Cleveland can you raise these questions. Thanks Glen.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Clyde Miles

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