Yet Another Fanzine were aptly titled since Columbus was a fountain of many, many zines including one of the grand-daddies - The Offense Newsletter. The music and scene echoed the proximity to Cleveland and the first punk wave (Peter Laughner and his gang of merry men) and later no-wave (Pere Ubu, etc.) as well as the Akron weirdness but with a friendly, bent elbows around the bar feel. One of those scenes where everyone knew everyone and pretty much liked each other. There's something about Ohio that drives a man person a bit crazy but in that nice mid-western way. Of course, having a huge University nearby also contributed to the pool of musicians,aspiring songwriters and most importantly bars and people with Daddy's cover charge money.
I visited Columbus during this time, at the invitation of the great local college radio DJ (and psychologist), s. b. tobias who I met over the early Internet (the wild time between ARPA-net and Internet when several networks were duct-taped together). The weekend I visisted was also "Hands Across America" (no, we didn't participate) and we spent it drinking, hanging out with Ron House (then Great Plains now Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments), drinking, meeting Don Howland (then rock critic now 1/2 half of Gibson Bros.), listening to the Beastie Boys album, drinking and of course hanging with s. b.'s good friends Craig Koon and Keith Baker, who published Yet Another Fanzine and this tape.
White funk that by some alchemy generates not only a groove, which is rare enough, but also the irrepressible fun every garage band pretends to think it's having. Two of the originals are up to the two covers, Slick James's wasn't-that-by-Kiss? "Love Gun" and the Ohio Players' long-time no-hear "Love Rollercoaster." Couldn't have hurt their karma that lead singer David Ellison cut an Ohio Player's lawn when he was a kid, and somehow seems fitting that first pressing they got mixed up at the plant with a Christian heavy metal record. A-
Ed Goldstein and I would marvel at the band’s formidable rhythm section each time we had the opportunity to see The Mob when they took their seismic road show to Cincinnati. This rhythm section would include not just bassist, Harold Chichester, and drummer, Carlton, but also guitarist, B, who never took a guitar solo — a concept that completely bent my mind. Still does.
Washington-area readers (if, indeed, they exist) might be intrigued to learn that The RC Mob once tore up DC’s fabled 9:30 Club in 1987, back when the venerable venue was kissing cousins (abstract Abe Lincoln reference – get it?) with Ford’s Theater and locally famous for (a) “that smell” and (b) guaranteed encounters with over-sized rats should you dare to venture behind the club. Land of Sugar would also feature stand-out original track, “Get Off the Bus” which may not be as supportive of mass transit as I imagined it to be.
