Electricity & Music

Note the offending amplifier
Findlay Market plans to more stringently enforce it's ban on amplified music performed by artists. Currently Delbert Williams (pictured above) uses a small amp for his acoustic guitar. He doesn't really nead it to be heard but it gives the guitar a different sound. It's more "blusey".
The issue should not be how the instrument makes sound but how loud it is. It would be pointless to play an electric guitar or keyboard without amplification & through amplification one can add numerous effects like reverb, wah, distortion & such. It seems insane that I could not take a keyboard, laptop & small amp down to the market & play at a volume lower than the din of shoppers. I wouldn't necessarily need my MG100DFX to power my SG down there but with the master volume control I can play super distorto overdrive madness at the volume of a whisper. Of course, if I were to play in public I would probably want something lighter so I could get away quicker when people started throwing crap at me anyway.
Historical Findlay Market may be Ohio's oldest continuously operated public market but it's the 20th century. Electronic instruments, like refrigeration are here to stay. The market's and, for that matter, the city's policies prohibiting electronic music on the streets is obsolete & needs to be changed.

Fishwrap story here.

Bicycle Hatred at Findlay Market

Findlay Market makes great use of their shiny bike racks by using the space for garbage cans.
ok. They have bike racks at each end of the cross shaped market. This north end bike rack was the only one that was blocked. All the racks had at least 1 bike.
still....

A Tour of OTR With Johnny Cash
and Eli Wallach


Friday would have been Johnny Cash's 78th birthday. I celebrated the guy's life watching The Pride of Jesse Hallam, a made for TV movie filmed on location in Cincinnati around 1980. I have babbled here about watching old movies & TV just to watch the backgrounds before. Route 66 is super duper megacool. A film called Wanda, shot in Pennsylvania around 1970, is another gem. This movie is fairly low budget & the disk is made from a pretty crappy print. It's out of print but is available from second hand dealers (cheap).
It's filmed in OTR (Eli Wallach has a stand at Findlay Market), Hyde Park, Clifton, Mt Lookout, Downtown & the riverfront. Some places have changed considerably, some look exactly the same. I moved to Cincinnati a couple years after the movie was made. The scenes around Findlay Market show a market with a very different vibe than what is there today. It had a much more "old world" thing going on.
It's not a great movie, it's ok & the backgrounds are a lot of fun.