New Additions: Praise The Load by The Load

Part of the fun of unlocking the mysteries of Columbus music history is digging into the releases on Owl. Unfortunately, like with Raven, other original releases are hard to come by, including the 1976 album Praise The Load by The Load. Forget trying to get a vinyl version, the best option and what I opted for is the 1991 compact disc re-release on The Laser's Edge label, which includes two songs not included on the original album. From all the descriptions I had read, this was going to be a headtrip on par with the heavyweights of 1970s progressive rock, and they were right.

Shit-Fi.com - Back to Ohio Blues Reissue Review

At Shit-Fi.com, there is nice in-depth review of the Back to Ohio Blues album by Raven, here is a sample of that:

This record, from 1975, could be considered a progenitor to the unique admixture of forward-looking sound and retrograde, gutter lyrical subject-matter associated with rocknroll from Ohio. Raven doesn’t approach the cerebral proto-punk of a band like Pere Ubu in any way; rather, the darkness, nihilism, and desperation of Electric Eels or even H-100s, as well as the fuck-you-I’m-gonna-do-it-my-way independence of Vertical Slit or Mike Rep, are apparent here. (Mike Rep wrote the liner notes to this reissue; although they’re enthusiastic, writing basement guitar riffs is clearly his forte.) The context of Mike Rep’s “Rocket to Nowhere” and “Mama Was a Schitzo,” both cream-of-the-crop skeletal early punk songs recorded circa 1975, comes into focus listening to Raven. This record doesn’t diminish the shit-fi achievement of Raven’s Columbus compatriot, but rather, when listening to them side-by-side, affinities emerge that make punk rock’s musical rupture less stark than we often consider it to be. Ohio from 1975 to 1978, when “Rocket To Nowhere” was released, was a long way from Kings Road or even The Bowery, but knowing that the Velvets played in Ohio often and Iggy & co. began only three and a half hours away, I would like to think that Johnny Ramone or Johnny Rotten would have heard a sound in both Raven and Mike Rep and the Quotas that made sense to them and their respective interpretations of what would be named punk rock.

Video: Back to Ohio Blues by Raven

Cleveland Scene: Mad Jam Man - Raven brings his badass biker blues to the Beachland

After the reissue of Raven's lone album Back to Ohio Blues, he actually did the thing - came back to Ohio (from California) and played a show. In this case, it was in 2008 at Cleveland's Beachland Ballroom along with Times New Viking and Mike "Rep" Hummel, the man who helped resuscitate the album. Cleveland Scene wrote up a piece on it at the time:

"He made the music because it was inside of him and needed to be expressed," writes Rep in the liner notes. "Like a shark has to swim to breathe, Raven has to record his gut-wrenching creations - perhaps exorcising his demons onto wax, one could say." 

As so, many of Raven's messed-up eulogies to drugs, death and sleaze were derived straight from his outlaw biker escapades throughout the early '70s. "I was in Florida working for this guy [who] would fly his Learjet to Columbia and bring me the kilos to cut up with my musketry," recalls Raven in a phone interview. "I walked into his place, and there was nothing in the house but brown paper bags full of pot. There must have been one living room, one kitchen, three bedrooms full of dope."

When I started this project, I knew there would be obscure and unusual records important to understanding the history of Columbus music. Pretty early on, someone tipped me to Raven, and the story of his 1975 album Back to Ohio Blues. It's the sort of ear candy anyone doing research wants to investigate. A lone release, decades old, produced only for family and friends, no name attached, finding an audience (albeit small one). After almost thirty years, a vinyl reissue is done in 2012 thanks Mike "Rep" Hummel, signed and numbered. Total collector bait, but worth it nonetheless. The record is wild primitive blues, drugged out and disjointed, but compelling, easy to see why it would turn into a legend worth repeating.

Know Yer Band: Raven

Band: Raven

Members
Anonymous

Releases
1975 - Back To Ohio Blues album (Owl)