Glenn Schwartz is alive and well

and still playing regular gigs around Cleveland, Ohio. I have been listening to Glenn Schwartz play electric guitar live for forty-one years, beginning with his James Gang days in the mid 1960's, and following him right along to this very day.

I caught his homeboy gig at the Beachland ballroom this very evening and as usual was rewarded immensely by his style of play.

Glenn and his bass playing brother Gene are Collinwood natives and raised not far from the Beachland Ballroom on Waterloo Road. I make no bones about my belief that Glenn Schwartz is one of the top ten electric guitarists working today. Period.

Sure, the stories are the stuff of legend and yore. Jimi Hendrix did request Glenn to play guitar at his final birthday party before his tragic early passing. Glenn did perform for Hendrix, and his ascended style of fretwork gave him truck with a wide variety of fellow blues inspired guitarists the likes of Beck, Clapton, and Page among others. Brother Gene served as both bass player and automobile driver to the late great Robert "Junior" Lockwood, who held high opinion of Glenn's guitar playing.

His Beachland Ballroom gigs are polite affairs, not to be confused with the often drunken crowds who trade barbs and act in a confrontational fashion concerning the often preaching style of Glenn's raps and rants while playing his weekly Thursday evening show at Major Hooples bar on Cleveland's west side.

Glenn plays in a unique blues style, completing the task of playing intense, sonic lead riffs and runs simultaneously, while accompanying himself with stiff rhythm chords for effect. -- Truly amazing stuff.

Equivalent to the amazing way a Bert Blyleven curve ball would break over home plate in baseball parlance. Combining the basic blues with psychedelic melts, and then runs at precise rhythm and blues, makes for an exiting evenings listening.

Glenn is a born again Christian, and often relates in an honest heart-felt manner his sometimes graphic vision of our next world and common fate. Calling the media out on their collective lies, referring to the television as the "gooftube" and warning us away from its ill affects also a part of Glenn's rants and raps.

He speaks of going twenty days without food and having to shoulder quarters of beef for delivery while working driving a truck at the NOFT at Fortieth Street and Orange Avenue, just east of downtown Cleveland.

This is so common in America today or yesterday, give our true artists and musicians chain saws, power tools, knives, and meat hooks and tell them to earn a living with their hands.

Glenn talks about his gigs at Cleveland's Warrensville Workhouse, Coolie's Farm, where the "black people called me slide," and Glenn breaks out his slide and works out a few musical numbers using this piece of round steel for incredible bent notes and explosive rapt points.

When Glenn plays the slide guitar, I close my eyes, and can here the industrial noises of the former Coit Road Chevrolet plant that was formerly on Coit Road in Collinwood until the early 1980's.

As a nod to the season Glenn, Gene, and their drummer played a magnificent version of the Christmas classic Holy Night. Unique and authentic was their read of this hymn.

When we were young men we would visit the fields at the edge of town, take all the wmms buzzard t-shirts we could find, placing the t-shirts over and around stumps, or with the t-shirts fastened to propped up logs, we would kick back, load up our guns, and blast the living shit out of the stinky buzzard rags, leaving them pocked with holes, perforated strips of cotton cloth flapping in the breeze.

It was only in this rather inert fashion that we could achieve any real satisfaction and cathartic response from the radio oppression that that lousy bunch of east coast pirates were peddling in our home town.

Revenge is best taken cold. We once appropriated a buzzard statue and dragged it along to our shooting site, though it only took a few shots from our guns to reduce it to plaster and dust. Big deal, the lousy image of the wmms buzzard was swiped from the Kansas Jayhawk likeness, and always seemed just as phony as that tasteless radio station wmms was in the day.

Iron Gut alert.A Middle Eastern Buffet is serving up an all you can eat spread on west 117Th street north of Lorain. We attempted this fare twice with mixed results. The meats are mostly back of bird chicken, utility lamb, and ground beef, and fairly uninspired stews of these meats combined with various vegetables:

eggplant and beef: oily yet surprisingly fine tasting
squash and beef: mealy
lamb, ribs and okra: slimy and chewy
potato and chicken: mushy
chicken with lemon: dry
No fish in sight.
Salads are standard fares
humus, babaganoush, tabbouleh: predictable.

plenty of plain white rice and pita bread for starch. pickled radishes, turnips, cucumbers, and a sparse green salad rounded out the mess. Beverages are extra, and if you desire water bring your own.

Desert was limited to a single philo-dough based cheese pastry. Tea, coffee, and sodas are available as well. My bride suffered mightily from the effects of the beef meatballs and cold falafels.

I had stomach pains for twenty four hours after eating at this spot.

Most food seems to suffer from sitting around on the steam table a bit longer than it should, and when we arrived at six p. m. on a Tuesday night we were only joined by one other couple while we supped.

Would have preferred to boil the wmms buzzard and serve it back to the buffet folk instead of ever consider eating there again.

Book Selling Time!

As remedy to the bad buffet , and to acknowledge Glenn Schwartz's wisdom considering the merits of a good appetite and the fine tasting and comforting food we are provided in substance with while dwelling our short time on planet Earth may we suggest a copy of the Time Life MIDDLE EASTERN COOKING.

This finely illustrated and historically accurate cook book will cure any ill effects from a local iron gut buffet.

Thanks again to Kim, John and my Family.

If you can pass or forward this post to a friend. Glenn Schwartz and the Beachland Ballroom are a great combination. Come out the next time that the Schwartz Brothers Band plays and make an evening of it. The Beachland Kitchen puts out a great dinner these days. telephone ahead for choices. And please support these two great Collinwood institutions and their unique symbiosis.

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