Little Brother Blogs

Darkness heightens the senses.

At both Stache’s and Little Brother’s, we lit the stage and bar and allowed the audience to sink into the silent black nether regions. Besides, the furniture was kinda shabby and the Stache’s carpeting is best left forgotten.

One night of music at Stache’s was darker than any other.

Tex-Mex chanteuse Tish Hinojosa had played Stache’s a number of times over the years. Her warmth and charm, the beauty of her voice and the soulful humanity of her politically conscious lyrics made her a joy to both work with and watch.

Her last Stache’s gig came as I was actively looking for a new location. (And for those who don’t know or remember, Humpty Dumpty didn’t jump, he was pushed. )

After a short set, all of the power in the building shut down, leaving the place pitch black.  A quick trip outside confirmed that we weren’t alone. The whole block was without juice.

But the timing was magically fortunate — the trio was in between tunes, and had actually planned to stroll the club and play a completely unplugged segment of the show when the lights went out. The crowd stayed calm and joked about my not paying the power bills as my employees dug out candles. The beer was already cold and we had lots of ice on hand. As they waltzed into the crowd wielding an acoustic guitar, bass and accordion, the show went on as though the power outage had been scripted.

The three musicians promenaded and polka-ed through the aisles, serenading the audience members, who acted as the light crew with flashlights and lighters. They stopped for a while near the pool tables, then at the short wall that separated the bar from the club. Just as they got back to the stage, yeah, you got it, the power returned.  The stage was again bright, the sound system, A.C. and the cash registers all returned on cue.

Tish ordered three cervezas for the band and they finished their performance. On almost any other night at the club, that long of a power outage might have cleared the room. I can’t imagine Jesus Lizard or Laughing Hyenas pulling that off.

Side note: Also in the audience that night was the elderly couple that owned the former public library building that would soon house Little Brother’s. I was their tenant for three years before they sold the building to the Simon Legree who brought the place to its end.

GG Allin got naked on the Stache’s stage faster than a four-year-old home from preschool.

By the end of song one, he was bleeding from self-inflicted beer bottle gashes, had hurt our friend Liz with a mic stand, shattered an overhead light fixture and fan and chased all but nine of the 150 ticket-buyers outside to watch through the windows.

Five people hid behind the pool table, while local musician Bill Bruner and one other brave soul sat on the sidelines, within spitting distance.

I had booked them as a last minute fill-in on a Friday night. GG’s reputation was a scary one of self-mutilation, destruction, sexual and scatological antics and the claim that he would, at some unknown date and location, take his own life on stage.  They had played Columbus before at a private party, and I had heard about the mayhem they unleashed.

I didn’t want to book them, but my bar needed the biz, and I knew that the voyeuristic appeal of GG’s performance would draw a crowd. When his bass player called and said that they just needed some gas money to get to Florida for a much more lucrative gig, he insisted and promised that they would keep it tame. Soundman Curt Tuckerman, who had seen them on their first time through, concurred that by comparison, it was.

I had thought, out loud, while standing back by the soundboard, that maybe I should stop the show, but Curt insisted it would end quickly, and it did. The whole thing might have lasted 17 minutes, with the last five spent on a cover of the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” by a lonely nude GG sitting on a table, having just given up on trying to poop on the microphone, complete with facial constipation.

During my first years at Stache’s, I took it personally that some (especially punk rock and jam band) musicians saw and treated me as “the man,” when I thought of myself as a member of the counterculture.  I eventually (in most cases) accepted my role as the local ogre/promoter/cluboner.

To me, the most amazing aspect of this crazy experience was that GG’s anger was directed at the crowd and the support act (Razr), not at the bar or me. He yelled at the audience that they were poseurs and literally frightened them out of the room, hurling bodily fluids and gear. There was no protest when I deducted the cost of the damages  (about 25 percent of their pay), but I did end up with an empty bar at midnight on a Friday.

Postscript: Several months after playing Stache’s, Allin was convicted of assaulting a female acquaintance and spent more than a year in prison. When he got out, he started making the rounds on talk show circuses like Jerry Springer and Geraldo. He died of a drug overdose in 1993.

I knew the night would be special when I pulled up to the club and the High Street arches were illuminated. For several years, we had waited for them to light up. Now that I had the cruel news from the landlord’s attorney that we either accept a 40 percent rent increase in ten days or be ready to vacate the premises, it seemed ironic. After 10 years of bringing hundreds of musicians from all over the world and thousands of music fans from all over the region to the beleaguered portion of the neighborhood, I was going to miss out on its best-lit nights.

Irony was to be the night’s theme, as Chris Smither, the noted songwriter and road warrior, was playing. He and I discussed sobriety, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and the fact that neither of us could completely accept a “higher power” a.k.a. God. He told me what a friend told him. I don’t recall his words exactly, but this is the gist:

A normally intelligent man is told the following:
1. Yogurt makes you invisible.
2. Your wife is cheating on you.
3. There exists an omnipotent being who brought the entire universe to life and holds sway over our destiny.
That seemingly intelligent guy then asks for proof of the first two things.

Yet Chris has lived the last 24 years without the assistance of drugs and alcohol, often on the road, playing places like mine.

The title cut of Smither’s new album was called “Leave the Light On (I’ll Be Home Soon).” He played it last, as he started his encore. I went outside to admire the fabulous lights of the Short North. On all of High Street, only one arch was not lit – the one that sat directly in front of our door.

I went back inside. Smither had just finished.I told him about the lights.

“I think this is God’s way of saying she doesn’t exist,” I said.