Jim Snivley continues to host Monday Night Open Mic at McNamara's Pub!

With a mellow voice, a room-filling confidence and a friendly ease of manner Jim Snivley arrives armed with a stack of original songs and an unbeatable acoustic guitar tone. He is one of my favorite open mic performers and a fine singer songwriter who has made a consistent effort to show up for many of the local Open Mic events and its always good to see him. Jim has for the past few weeks been hosting this Open Mic and it's great to hear that he is going to continue to do so.

Come on out to McNamara's Pub at W87 & Lake Rd. just south of Don's Lighthouse Restaurant on Monday Night's from 7:30p/10:30 - grab a nice cold tap beer and listen to a varity of Open Mic performance from poetry to singer songwriters and beyond!!!

Sign up starts at 7:00pm


Steven Wilson (AKA: The Infamous Steve2) begins hosting the fabulous Wednesday Night Open Mic at the sprawling Arabica 'Coffee Mansion' University Circle!


It's true! Steve2 is assuming hosting honors at the 'Big Coffee Mansion', and am I excited?? Oh yeah!! It seems to me that only a couple of years ago this was a really happening night at The Mansion with singers and songwriters turning up in droves to fill the nightly roster. Recently this Open Mic event seems to have lost some of its vigor and is suffering an inconsistent turn out - I was there last Wednesday at about 10:45PM and played for an hour to only a few patrons and there were no singers or guitar players in the crowd other than host Branden. I had already heard that Branden was very busy with school work (working on some masters degree) and was filling the host duties on a 'temporary' basis (since Dusty Reins moved on) knowing this I mentioned to him that I was very interested in assuming the host duties. Branden sat kindly to listen to a few songs, gave me the un-official approval, and agreed to pass the batton. Wheee! He passed the idea along to Mark and the rest is history in the making!!! I hope to see Jim Snively, Unsub, Tim Fry, Josh Koppen, Brian, Tim Keo and many others in the near future - and with the summer heating up this ought to turn into a real happening once again!! Whooopeee!

Here is a BW art photo of the infamous Stella (My 1940's Chicago made guitar) - heh - I have played this guitar in the train station in Chicago - it has a VERY cool sounding sound - check it out on the mP3 pages by streaming "Snuggly Places" to some really BIG speakers - oh, and turn up the bass knob some.

My friend Ryan Smith (see link off to the right there...) is posting some really great stuff to his weblog, I have been checking it almost daily to see the witty running commentary, click the links, and view the pictures.

Went last Thursday to Arabica Westside (Rocky River) for the Coffee and Comfort Series to hear some music, and I had hoped to see a good sized crowd. What I found instead was only a handful of listeners sipping drinks and kicking back in the comfy couches and chairs. I bought a mug full of tea and read the Scene mag. and when Patty came in I tried to ask her about resurrecting the Wednesday Open Mic night - Patty indicated disinterest or at least she wasn't willing to discuss it with me in any detail saying only that she was 'working on some ideas' with Jim. However, I couldn't help notice that she WAS willing to spend several ten's of minutes chatting with Mr. Joe Rohan, one of the regular Thursday Night performers.

This night Joe was not performing and had instead come to hear his friend Annie Boxell, singer songwriter and piano player - she was in from 'out of town' (I think she said Charleston SC) - maybe that had something to do with the micro sized crowd.

After a night like that one I have to ask myself why the new owners of Rocky River Arabica continue to pay for top-tier talent when the crowds don't seem to be turning out in great enough numbers to support them - Annie Boxell was a perfect example of an up and comming 'out of towner' with a great voice who looked and sounded terrific but who obviously has little or no following in CLE. Maybe the new owners need bigger ads in The Scene or the Free Times?? Course, big ads cost big bucks - or maybe the owners ought to reconsider both the direction of the music program and the size of the budget - unless of course they plan on putting themselves out of business by hemorrhaging money into an upstart music schedule that appears to be producing little crowd response.

A smaller budget could be put to greater effect by bringing in more talent from the next tier down in the talent pyramid (so to speak), there are just so many talented amateur or semi professional local artists who want and need a greater degree of exposure, and many of them willing to work for less than half what a Joe Rohan or an Annie DeChant want for an evening of entertainment. In fact, the Open Mic concept is one inexpensive method to consistently and inexpensively draw attention to the fact that the cafe HAS regular music at all! I seem to remember seeing locals Tim Fry, Unsub, Xela, Mary Clare and Jim Snively at the open mic night and where are those cats now?

At this time, it does not seem that the Rocky River Arabica has developed a suitable reputation as a music venue. Paying for top tier talent to play there once a week is not going to build that reputation any faster than playing host to a variety of less expensive local musical acts.

C'mon' Jim and Patty get it together already - how many more money-losing Big-Top Thursday nights do you two need to schedule before you get with the program!!

Bring back the mid week Open Mic night and start booking some amateur and semi-professional local talent into the cafe for Saturday nights!!

New MP3 files posted to steve2.net!

I have finally broken down and paid for a FULL YEAR of web hosting - sixty bucks - no more banner ads, sigh. What a flippin RELIEF to be out from under the brick like banner ads at the top of every page, whew. I posted a PAYPAL DONATION button on the site allowing any who care to donate a buck or two to the Steve2 Recording and Hosting/Promotion Fund - heh, pretty clever huh? Yeah I thought so to.

You will now find that the site is looking pretty sharp and that there are BRAND NEW FRESH MP3 files up there to listen too - yup, and if you are making a movie, maybe you can toss me a soundtrack bone?? Hmmmm? I am itchin' to get into some soundtrack recording so if you like the two songs and you are MAKING A MOVIE then drop me line wontcha'??

Cleveland Music Festival

Looks like these guys (whoever 'these guys' are) now have a new web presence - hmmmm, the email newsletter sign up feature is broken, it looks like they are trying to program the feature in PERL - whatever, its broken - and I wonder how long it will take them to get it working.

The site has lots of great information about the fest. and of course theband registration information.

Hope we see Xela and Matt Gerovac Implosion, Brent Kirby, and Infinite Number of Sounds all getting good prime playing times and spots.

Oh, and how about those Vanity Crash guys, don't they have a record deal yet?? Gee, they are practically ooozing rock and roll glory from just about every angle and pore, whats the frickin' hold up??

The Return of the Evil Martian Bunny Ears!

A few days ago I found myself surfing and blogging about the Opportunity Rover and the Martian Bunny Ears photos, and I posted a few links to photos and articles that I thought were funny - and just the other day I found an official' version of the story posted to the JPL website regarding the mysterious "Bunny Ears". This is a nice article, very analytic and official - basically, the antidote to all the foolish nonsense that was posted when the ears were discovered in the panoramic photos.

I had gotten caught up in the bunny ears hype - Martian Bunny Ear Fever - and linked up a couple of cute websites that were riffing on the Ears, but missed posting this link to Martian Crabs Dot Com which is site design and concept completely devoted to the Martian bunny ears - sweet.

At this point I think I have pretty much worn this whole concept out, however I am writing a song called Evil Bunny Fuzz

Course, none of this has ANYTHING to do with open mic, but I was at PHO Open Mic last night - it was great - they have a house PA now!!

More later...

The Open Mic scene down at the old Mudhouse on Madison in Lakewood has really picked up just recently, no surprise, Spring is on the way and the birds and bees will all be buzzing, the folk singers will all be, well, humming strumming and folksinging about the town - I have attended a couple consecutive Friday nights and have found that the whole scene has re-invented itself - in a good way - you might remember that things had gotten a little crazy/cozy over there at one time - depending on what night you were there. All that has changed, the bartender Joe regularly wears a tie, its all very high-fahlutin - nah, just pulling yer leg (Joe really does wear ties though).

What I have seen is a parade of talented hosts (so far no hostess) for the Friday night show: Have heard/seen Tim Fry, Darren Branch and Kevin McCarthy host the Friday Night Open mic. In addition to those guys, have seen and heard from the usual stalwartly individuals (including myself and Josh): Jim Snively, Terry Writz, a couple of other guys - a guy named Brian playing/strumming really confident guitar and singing Americana style folksy cow-polksy originals in a most refreshing and assuredly room-filling tone - recently had the pleasure of the company of one Tim Keo who plays a really tuneful Martin acoustic bass AND a little squeeze box accordion, super cool sounds from the Squeeze box hope to hear Tim play again real soon - heard a handful of poet's (most of whom I find don't have a very exciting delivery or stage presence - but there have been a couple of exceptions although none yet have come anywhere close to reaching the heights of bombastic delivery of one of Bearcats kids - I can't remember his name, Julia's brother, whatever his name is).

Anyhow, Jim Snivley is also running an Open Mic now - I don't have the flyer handy, oops - will get that information up here as soon as possible.

Perspective:

OK, today one of my fellow co-workers (Mr. Glenn) tells me he watched the Mel G. movie (The Passion) over last weekend and that its entirely accurate and true to the actual story - so, now I am just going to have to put the effort into reading the new testament in order to get some additional historical perspective. I still feel like the sheer gory detail was a little too much, at least it was for me, but I am kinda wimpy in that regard. If the Mel movie is portraying the event the way it was supposed to have really happened, well it was cruel and awful and bloody.

On an entirely different topic, however relative to perspective in general - the crater at Meridiani Planum that the rover Opportunity is exploring is only about 65 feet in diameter (20 meters or so) and the rim of the crater, where all the interesting rocks are, is supposed to be about 10 meters (32 feet) from the rover - and I thought it was allot bigger - heh - well, it looks bigger in the pictures ive seen so far.

I have found this discussion thread regarding the search for water and and somewhere in there another thread with a reference to evil bunny fuzz on mars, very strange.

Here is a link to an official JPL/NASA panoramic shot of the inside of the crater with the evil bunny fuzz in the lower right corner of the shot.

Here is the link to the very funny evil mars bunny story that was written up in the NY Times - my kiddo keeps two bunnies as pets so this is especially funny to me.