Soundbites

Club shows and some concerts are running far too late. One reason is that the folks who book the clubs are putting too many bands on the bill. For instance, two local bands played before Macha and American Analog Set at the Grog Shop July 31. Someone who went to the show says that Macha didn't go on until after midnight and played an abbreviated set to make room for American Analog.

This isn't to single out the Grog Shop. Club owners all over town need to examine the practice of turning concerts into endurance tests. Someone who pays for a national show, especially, shouldn't have to sit through two openers and not see the main attraction until midnight. Club owners will say that opening slots are great opportunities for local acts, which is true, but it's unlikely their motives for cramming bands on bills are purely altruistic. Could it be that more bands means a longer show, which means more time spent at the bar, which means bigger drink tabs?

Some of us aren't as spry as we used to be, and staying out until two o'clock in the morning is a challenge, especially if we live on a side of town opposite the club. Bar owners are used to the hours (up until 4 a.m., sleep until noon), so perhaps they forget that many of their customers run on different rhythms.

That's right: customers.

Seems funny to use that word in this context, but it shouldn't be. The people who come to the clubs don't have to be there. They could be doing a thousand other things with their time and money, so it's in the club's best interest to make sure they enjoy themselves (or at least don't feel like they've been beaten with a mallet). Send them home grouchy, next weekend they will be more inclined to go to a movie or a dance club or a putt-putt course. I shouldn't have to say this — it's Business 101 — but too often music fans are treated with an indifference that borders on contempt.

Annette Keys felt well enough to go dancing. Earlier that day, she sold her piano to an older couple who didn't bother to hire professional movers. So Keys helped push the piano across the carpet. She felt something tug in her back, but didn't think it was anything a couple of Advil couldn't handle. She woke in the middle of the night virtually paralyzed. After spine-fusing surgery, she spent a year in a hospital bed that was parked in her living room. "I learned how to play guitar lying down," she says.

This happened to Keys while she lived in San Francisco. The singer/songwriter left Cleveland for the Bay Area twelve years ago. She moved back to Lyndhurst last year to help her mother after her stepfather's death.

Since she's been back, Keys has been happy to see how far the city has come since its days of bankruptcy and burning rivers. "And I'm blown away by the acoustic scene," she says. "This is a great place for me to be now." Keys has been working the coffeehouse circuit and has a new CD of contemporary folk tunes, Standing on the Edge. The release party is Saturday, August 14, at the University Circle Arabica.

Not that she'd ever want to spend another year staring at the ceiling, Keys says that her convalescence helped her grow as a person and as a songwriter. "When you get laid up like that," she says, "you're stuck with yourself."

Synchronize your ovulation before Tuesday's Lilith Fair at Fem Fest '99, featuring a host of mostly regional female-fronted bands on Saturday, August 14, at Peabody's DownUnder and Patio. Adrenaline Rocket, Alexis Antes, Mary Cutrufello, Double X, Falling Blind, Figure of Speech, Honest Opinion, La La Land, Miko, Pepper McGowan, Margo O'Breslin, Shouting Mountain, Squib, Strip, the Trade, Tender Blindspot, Toehead, Tracy Marie, Anne E. DeChant, and others perform. The show, which benefits breast cancer research, starts at noon.

Speaking of Lilith, Marilyn Kopp, executive director of the Ohio chapter of Feminists for Life, is still upset with Lilith for its handling of her group's request for table space for the run of this summer's festival. Feminists for Life is a "pro-woman, pro-life" organization that promotes alternatives to abortion. Feminists for Life didn't hear an answer from Lilith until reporters started asking questions (the request was denied). Kopp believes that Lilith does not want the pro-life view represented at the festival. "They're avoiding the whole thing," Kopp says. "They don't even want to deal with it."

Kopp says that she has asked Blossom Music Center, site of Tuesday's show, to ask Lilith again if Feminists for Life can participate. If the group can't get into the amphitheater, she says, it will be virtually impossible to get its message across. "It's not like we can stand on the sidewalk and leaflet."