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weneverlearn · 1 year

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Death of Samantha and the Blizzard Drive

Death of Samatha, 1988, on the shores of Lake Erie, most definitely not in the wintertime

Among the many fun-if-maddening things about YouTube is the odd ways in which fanatical nabobs post things. Let's just say they're not all SEO experts.

While anyone who has followed this blog, read my book, or spent more than 25 minutes talking to me at some point knows, I 'm a huge Death of Samantha fan. So I recently stumbled on these YouTube clips that do not list DoS at all in their titles, and hence were a treat to discover.

I was actually at the February 26, 1990 show in these live clips. New Bomb Turks guitarist Jim Weber drove up from Columbus, OH, to Cleveland with me and our roomie pal, Brian Duran. It's about a two-hour trip, but well worth it cuz DoS were always good, and hadn't been down to Columbus in awhile. Hard to tell from the dark, somewhat static film work here, but believe you me, it was a great show.

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Nothing to do with snow, but gives you an idea of the pretty good local TV we had in Cleveland at the time that informed Death of Samantha's sense of the absurd...

The club was the Babylon a-Go-Go, a small, narrow joint tucked into an alley off W. 25th St., then a fairly desolate area (except for the excellent Great Lakes Brewing Company, where Eliot Ness used to hang out at the end of his career; it's still there). The "stage" was just the area right next to the bar, so you sort of sat on stools craning your neck at the band, or stood around.

As per usual with such wonky joints, it nonetheless made for a great place to see a band. Dates escape me at this point, but as the club gained a lil' following, they knocked down a wall, added a proper stage, and continued on as a solid club for I think about 4 more years. I saw an amazing L7 show there, Jonathan Richman, lots of good local bands, and they held Stiv Bators' official wake there in June, 1990, a monumentally interesting and fun event I have previously written about here -- check the bottom here and see the video tribute John Waters sent that was played at the event (along with ones from Iggy Pop and Lydia Lunch).

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Bloated with fine rock'n'roll and craft beer (then a new trend in Cleveland), we hit the road home -- only to drive right into a huge blizzard. As traffic stops got increasingly packed, we tried a couple side road exits that got us nowhere, and ended up back on I-71 into more scary, slippery two-mph slogs.

Death of Samantha, 1988

At one point, while sitting in a miles-long jam, it was decided that getting out to pee on the side of the road would no doubt coincide with the traffic starting to move, and one of us chasing the car; but more pertinently, it was just cold and blistery as hell out. Then suddenly, the empty Pringles can (that night's dinner on the way to the show), smiled up from the car floor, offering relief.

Let's just say that that moment, in that dark backseat, with the strains of the Replacements wafting out of the tape deck, I learned the rough volume size of my bladder, as did the floor of that back seat.

It took us nearly seven hours to get back to Columbus, finally bounding out of the car with no regrets. That's how good Death of Samantha was. (Easy for me to say though, I didn't do any of the driving.)

The infamous blizzard of '78 in Cleveland

Climate change has added another layer of nostalgia to this tale, as it seems we just do not get big snowstorms like that anymore. Yeah, it still snows in Cleveland, but not in those massive pile-ups that remain stuck on the edges of sidewalks and mall parking lots gaining smog and car exhaust veneers until they gamely try to ward off the late-March melt...

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#deathofsamantha #ClePunk #yellow snow #john waters #stiv bators #Youtube

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