There have been times when Case Western Reserve University’s radio station WRUW 91.1FM has been hard-pressed to stock its day-long annual free outdoor show Studio-A-Rama with quality local bands, given its rule that bands can’t repeat more than once every four years.
This is not one of those times, with great new bands cropped up seemingly every month.
Last year’s show, local from beginning to end, was breathtaking. Even the headlining slot, usually held by a national act, was filled by a Cleveland act, Cloud Nothings.
This year’s show, the event’s 32nd iteration, promises to be just as strong — and not just because of the headliner, buzzed-about psychdelic popster Mikal Cronin from San Francisco, who records for well-regarded indie label Merge. He’ll be on somewhere around 10.
But there’s plenty of great music in the meantime. It all kicks off at 1pm with Wingtones, followed by Tuk 2, Shitbox Jimmy, Smooth Brain, Ma Holos, Blaka Watra, Home and Garden, GoldMINES, Obnox, and, at 9PM, co-headliners —an act that Cleveland music history obsessives will be drooling to hear — ’70s underground rockers Mirrors.
Mirrors, the brainchild of musician Jamie Klimek, was part of a small obscure but fertile Cleveland music scene that produced Rocket From the Tombs, Pere Ubu, Electric Eels, and the Styrenes.
These bands took influences from dissonant, experimental acts like the Velvet Underground and Captain Beefheart as well as poppier artists and more or less banged their heads together to create something only a handful found listenable at the time. Many have worshipped them in retrospect.
The elusive Mirrors, formed in 1972, played a handful of gigs to crowds of a few dozen before vanishing in 1975, to play only a few sporadic gigs after that. Their last gig was also a show for WRUW, taking place, as Studio-A-Rama does, in the courtyard behind the Mather Building where WRUW is located.
Klimek recalls that it was put together by Michigan Mom, a legendary WRUW air personality from the ’70s and ’80s whose cutting-edge tastes introduced many artists to Cleveland audiences. The bill also includes the Eels and the Styrenes.
“It was our last show and the Eels’ last show, and the Styrenes’ first show,” recalls Klimek. (Klimek also played in the Styrenes.)
It’s a long time to wait for an encore, so you don’t want to miss it. Klimek says ’70s members Craig Bell, Paul Marotta, and Jim Crook will be augmented by a couple of extra players for a four-guitar frontline that Klimek says might be great or a trainwreck, but we’re betting either way it’ll be a fascinating.
All of Studio-A-Rama is broadcast on WRUW. But since it’s free and great people-watching, why not come down?
http://www.wruw.org/article.php?id=1433
Top image: cover of Mirrors’ 45 “Shirley”/”She Smiled Wild,” released in1977, two years after the band broke up
Bottom image: Mikal Cronin