January 11, 2008

2008 will be the end of you.

The Schwartz Brothers @ Hoople's, Cleveland, OH -- 1/10/2008

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Glenn Schwartz, former guitarist of the James Gang, Pacific Gas & Electric, and the All Saved Freak Band, is one of those "lost" 70s guitarists whose past is likely now more myth than reality. My dad told me that Clapton, Hendrix, and Page all saw Schwartz play, and each agreed he was better than they were. Now more outsider-musician than rock legend, Glenn and his brother Gene, playing as the Schwartz Brothers, are the Thursday night house band at Hoople's, a bar on the west bank of Cleveland's Flats district. Due to Schwartz's history of religious salvation, abuse at the hands of a cult leader, and resulting mental illness, his blues sets are often erratic and unpredictable. In mid-2007, a Slate article on "The freaky origins of Christian rock" provided a short history of Schwartz's time in the All Saved Freak Band:
The All Saved Freak Band is a different kettle of fish—at once more powerful and more disturbing, and a reminder of how apocalyptic convictions, Christian or otherwise, can go sour. The band began when a drugged-out Chicago guitarist named Joe Markko moved to Ohio, where he met a fiery street pastor named Larry Hill. Convinced that the Chinese and/or Russians were coming, Hill set himself up as patriarch of an isolated survivalist Christian commune, replete with guns and goats. When he performed, Hill wore a wide Amish hat and a priest's habit, and he sang to hector and convert. But the band didn't really gel until Hill and Markko were joined by Glenn Schwartz, an incendiary blues shromper who had played guitar for the James Gang but had publicly renounced commercial rock. Living collectively, the band made a handful of intense and very strange records, including the Tolkien-inspired folk-rock rarity For Christians, Elves, and Lovers. In 1975, in response to Hill's authoritarian brutality, Schwartz's family attempted to kidnap and "deprogram" the guitarist. The attempt failed, and the band's third record was called Brainwashed.
Schwartz's lyrics are invariably apocalyptic; in last night's opener, the first words he said were "2008 will be the end of you." A minor earthquake had hit the Cleveland area a few days prior, and he pointed to this as a signal from God of the coming End. Later, he advised the audience that we'd "better get out quick, 'cause that chemical warfare, it's gonna make you sick." Early in the set he stopped the music and began to chastise/preach to the audience, referring to certain spectators as "lame brains" and "dummys", yelling at them for drinking beer "full of chemicals". He also told us that 1 out of every 2 people has cancer, and that there were 14 people with cancer in the room that night. Given his extreme fundamentalist views, his tirades are also often laced with invective against women; last night he warned us of the "females in power [who] don't even have the good sense to wear a dress ... women in pants is disgusting, it's disgusting." Later in the set he stopped again, this time relating his experiences as a medic in the Vietnam war, referring to Vietnamese soldiers as "slant-eyes" and "japs", then segueing into anecdotes about cancer-stricken relatives who had been saved through the power of prayer. At this point, the bartender had enough of the ranting, and turned the stereo on, leaving Prince to drown out Schwartz. Following a talking-to from the bartender, the 2nd set was largely uneventful, with Schwartz sticking to the music. Mental illness aside, Schwartz is an incredible guitarist in the blues-rock style, coaxing sounds without the aid of any pedals or effects. At one point early in the first set, he took out a comb and did his hair with his right hand while soloing on the guitar's neck with his left. Later, he jumped up on an automated bowling machine, surprisingly nimble for his 60+ years. As much curious spectacle as blistering blues guitar set, it was remarkable to see such talent survive in a man whose mind had left him long ago.

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Gene Schwartz, Glenn Schwartz, and one of their revolving group of drummers.

2 comments:

parallelliott said...

sweet post. cults is cool.

colleen said...

it's so passe to hate women and foreigners.