All The Little Chicks With Their Crimson Lips..........

"Your sunrise knocks me to the ground,
Your sunrise oh I must be going."

Blackout by Aloha


I will be traveling to Cleveland next weekend to visit my youngest sister Shannon. On Saturday, we plan to visit the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame and eat at Michael Symon's Lola restaurant. Sunday, we will go to see the Indians play the Washington Nationals with pitching phenom Steven Strasburg starting for the Nats that day. Cleveland is often called "The Mistake By The Lake" and sometimes with good reason. The weather can be nasty in the winter and hot, sticky and rainy in the summer. It is in the heart of the Rust Belt and conjures up images of industrial wastelands and slums. This would all be true, but it does have its charms, some of which I have listed above.

I got to know Cleveland back in 1975. I went over to Steve's house and heard a great radio station emanating from the stereo in his living room. He explained that it was an FM station called M105 from Cleveland, Ohio that he was able to get by attaching his TV cable wire to the back of his receiver. I was hooked! They played all the great album cuts and tracks you could never hear on any of the pitiful London stations. I even pestered the hell out of the manager of the pizza place I worked at until he got us hooked up with cable there too! It was the height of FM radio in the 70s and they played all the stuff I was into back then like Led Zeppelin, Todd Rundgren and the rest. I was in teenage radio heaven! Through the commercials they played on M105, I got to know the names of all the smaller places around Cleveland like Cuyahoga Falls, Akron and Elyria, where Shannon now resides.

Cleveland has always been a great rock music city, which is probably one big reason why the Hall Of Fame is located there. It has been immortalized in song quite often too, most notably in Ian Hunter's Cleveland Rocks ( see the quote in the title of this post). My latest discovery to come out of there is a band called Aloha. They are a four piece band that began in 1997 and their sound is hard to pin down. Their songs are based on strong melodies, but they often incorporate elements of progressive rock and jazz into them. I love the sound of the keyboards on their records, and the drumming is first-rate. Singer Tony Cavallario's voice is perfect for their sound as well, urgent but not forced at all. Their latest album is called Home Acres and was released earlier this year. I won't do a song by song breakdown of this one, but I do recommend that you high-tail it over to your closest record shop and grab it. It is quite simply a fantastic album and I play it nearly every day. I would also recommend that you get their 2006 release Some Echoes while you're there. The other releases by Aloha are:

That's Your Fire (2000)
Sugar (2002)
Here Comes Everyone (2004)
Light Works E.P. (2007)