The Isley Brothers - What Would You Do?
I’m gonna cut to the chase. The Isley Brothers make sex music. What’s more, they’re very good at it, having released several Top 10 Singles and Albums.
Originally from Cincinnati, Ronald Isley (AKA Mr. Biggs) formed the group, with his brothers, in 1957. Yes, 1957. Considering that they’re planning another tour this year, that will be 52 years. How he’s maintained such a silky smooth voice into his late 60s is beyond me, but he’s clearly done it.
There’s a lot to say about guitarist Ernie Isley, but we’ll save that for another post.
BONUS!
via savageaphid: vruz: jhnbrssndn:What Makes The Pie Shops Tick
Kid Cudi - Pursuit Of Happiness ft. MGMT, Ratatat
Kid Cudi (Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi) comes from Cleveland to remind us that folks from Ohio are still writing songs you have no choice but to put on repeat.
He’s worked with a truly impressive number of talented folks including Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Common, Jay-Z, MGMT, Ratatat, and the list goes on.
It’s safe to say he’s just getting started.
(via upload.wikimedia.org)
In case the U.K. television series didn’t convince you that Guided By Voices is both famous and awesome, here’s a little more proof. Los Angeles and, at least, eight other cities have declared a day to be Guided By Voices Day.
I was originally going to post more GBV trivia like “Tobin Sprout’s an accomplished painter” and “Jim Macpherson, of The Breeders, The Amps, etc. also played for GBV” and “Robert Pollard was a fourth-grade teacher”, etc. etc., but I’m too busy singing along to “Teenage FBI” to stay focused, so let’s close out GBV Week with a playlist (scroll down). This is just the tip of the iceberg of GBV on YouTube. Take a look around. There are some real gems out there.
“have you heard guided by voices?”
Listening to Guided By Voices gives you a little nerd cred, as you can see in this clip from the U.K. sitcom The IT Crowd, but it’s funny, because Robert Pollard is actually a bit of a jock and I’m not just talking about his famous high kicks on stage.
This current rockstar is a former tri-sport (basketball, football, baseball) varsity athlete and the first person, in the history of Write State University, to throw a NCAA no-hitter.
Bob and other members of GBV even beat The Beastie Boys and Billy Corgan in a basketball game.
For more of Robert Pollard’s sporting life, check out: Guided By Voices History Part 1: 1983-1994
I don’t want to end with sports trivia, so here’s some footage of one of my favorite GBV songs taken during their last Dayton show. The crowd clearly loves this band and sings along to every word.
Guided By Voices - I Am A Scientist
Here’s a personal testimonial: Dayton’s Guided By Voices cured my completism.
Before GBV, if I really liked a band, I’d feel compelled to collect their entire recorded works to that point. The first time I heard “I am a Scientist”, I knew I’d need everything GBV ever recorded. It was perfect. It was the right song at the right time. Then, I learned just how many albums they already had, not to mention how many singles and EPs. It seemed like everyone I knew was the friend of a friend of someone who had an ultra-rare 7-inch single or cassette. They were so prolific, no one had everything. It was impossible to collect everything, unless you were Bob Pollard himself.
If you’re more tenacious than I, I wish you luck and recommend comparing your GBV collection to the Guided By Voices Database (GBVDB).
For no particular reason, let’s call this GBV Week, here at Fuck Yeah, Ohio. We’ll be back with more Lo-Fi goodness on Wednesday.
Today, we present the late great Kenner toy company.
Cincinnati’s Kenner Products was responsible for a long list of iconic toys, including My Little Pony, Play-Doh, Spirograph, Stretch Armstrong, classic Star Wars action figures, the previously mentioned EASY-BAKE Oven, and the list goes on.
Sadly, Kenner was eventually sold to Hasbro and closed in 2000, but many of their most famous toy lines live on. Plus, we’ll always have our nostalgic fondness for their classic commercials, like the one above.
Just look at that thing.
That there, my friends, is an EASY-BAKE Oven and it is beautiful.
Can you name even one other toy that encouraged children to take up baking? No. No, you can’t.
Cincinnatian Ronald Howes invented the EASY-BAKE Oven for Kenner, back in the early 1960’s. He had already helped reformulate Play-Doh to make it safer, but he wanted to make baking safe enough for children as well. This little lightbulb-powered oven was the happy result.
With about 20 million sold, I’m going to assume he inspired at least a few kids to grow up to be bakers of cakes, pies, and other pastries, and for that I will be eternally grateful.
Sadly, Mr. Howes passed away recently, but his work will live on for generations.
Etch-a-sketch (via unloveablesteve)
That’s right, kids. The Etch-A-Sketch is made by Ohio Art which is still headquartered in Bryan, Ohio.
Back in the 80s, you did not want to be the kid bringing a Magnadoodle to show-and-tell, when everyone else had an Etch-A-Sketch. Now that Ohio Art makes the Magnadoodle too, that may have changed, but you should keep a classic red Etch-A-Sketch around, just in case.
Sure, anyone can draw on a Magnadoodle, but it takes skill everyone can respect to draw using an Etch-A-Sketch.
Of course, George Vlosich III, the guy behind the knobs in that video, who is doing work that would be impressive even with a pen and paper, is from Ohio.
Once upon a time, this epic son of a bitch was my senator. And then he was like “lol, brb” and then he went to outer space. Again. Like a boss.
I’M SORRY, HAVE YOU EVER HAD A SENATOR WHO WENT TO GODDAMN OUTER SPACE WHILE STILL YOUR SENATOR?
Unless you lived in Utah in 1985, the answer is “NO.”
Fuck yeah, Ohio.
Obligatory reblog, because she said it much better than I did. “Epic son of a bitch” indeed.
We never expected to do a reblog here, but there’s no way we were going to let this one pass us by:
Unemployed Ohio Man Builds Igloo (Complete With Cable TV)
Jimmy Grey said that he’d been out of work for almost a year, and needed a project to keep himself busy.
So with the heavy snowfall that America has experienced this winter, the 25-year-old labourer got to work on an extreme igloo in his family’s yard in Aquilla, about 30 miles east of Cleveland.
Nice touch with the Ohio State Buckeyes jersey. Only in Ohio.
Let’s take a moment to talk about the greatest bar in the world.
The Treehouse, in Columbus, is very hard to find. It doesn’t serve food, unless you count packets of chips. It doesn’t have beer on tap, only bottles or cans. Parking isn’t even always adequate.
The Treehouse has no sound engineer on staff and no stage. The view of bands who play there is partly obscured by a large silver maple tree that grows through the middle of the room.
Despite all of this, Esquire Magazine says The Treehouse is one of the Best Bars in America and you’re not going to find many people, if anyone, who disagrees.
The staff is friendly and so are the patrons. Inside the Treehouse, everyone is family. Even sworn enemies, of the you-stole-my-girlfriend variety, have been witnessed to be perfectly cordial to each other, while there.
Bands and solo performers of every genre are welcome at the Treehouse where they play in a small room lit only by strings of holiday lights. On the best nights, when there’s a band playing music they love to a small crowd of friends and fans, it’s absolutely magical.
It’s like they say, the Treehouse is hard to find and harder to leave.
The Electric Grandmother is awesome. I’m not just saying that, because I took the above photo, or because my band has shared a stage with them more than probably any other band, or because Pete and Mary Alice are amazing people. I’m saying that, because… Well, Infinite Number of Sounds said it best:
The Electric Grandmother (EG) is a one-man musical-goodness machine. The inventor of the genre “Sitcom-Core,” EG has established himself as a favorite smart aleck of Columbus, Ohio. Musically, EG combines electro-beats and synthesizers with classic pop songwriting to create a brew of musical perplexity that pairs perfectly with his postmodern lyricism. The live show is a chaotic multi-media extravaganza, with his wife/live band member Mary Alice! handling live visual projection. To see EG perform is to participate in his performance, as you are drawn in by his slightly off-kilter sound and friendly sense of nostalgia.
The magic should be experienced in person, but you can enjoy some free MP3s and this (possibly NSFW) 10-minute interview from 2007:
Ohio Sessions are “live, intimate, acoustic recordings of musicians and bands filmed in unique environments in and around Ohio.” It’s one of those ideas that’s so immediately good you wonder why no one did it before. Then, you start wondering if maybe it was done before, but you just never noticed, because whoever did it before didn’t have Andrew Baasch’s skill behind the cameras.
To get an idea of what Ohio Sessions is about, here’s Super Desserts performing “Funeral”:
Super Desserts - Funeral from Ohio Sessions on Vimeo.
Tribute to Paul Newman (via NewmansOwnFoundation)
Paul Newman was, frankly, an amazing person.
He was born in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland, served in WWII, performed on Broadway, became one of the most famous and well-respected Hollywood actors of all time, got on Nixon’s “enemies list”, became a successful racecar driver, started a successful food products company that donates all profits to charity, co-founded a camp for seriously ill children, and the list goes on. I have to stop here, because several books could be written about his philanthropic efforts alone, not to mention his impressive acting career.
