And All is Well With You . . . May 23, 1992: Hezekia Storm and Mindpower, Good Tymes pub

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Twenty three years ago I started a blog, Art of BG Noise, to showcase the collection of local rock and punk flyers I'd amassed from my involvement in the local Crystal City music scene. That blog folded relatively quickly but I've decided to re-up the old posts, to document the ephemera produced by the small, unheralded, but vibrant community of underground musicians and fellow travelers. Their stories are important. They created the moments in which we once lived. 


This was Art of BG Noise's first uploaded flyer, and now this blog's too, a nice hand-drawn invite to see Hezekia Storm (yes, the flyer is misspelled) open for Mindpower--or was it the other way around?--on Saturday May 23, 1992 at Good Tymes Pub. Hezekia Storm were a Lima, Ohio metal band (Michelle Lee on vocals and Richard "Storm" Spradlin on guitar). Mindpower was one of the many side projects of Scott Cramer who occupied a unique musical niche in the Crystal City in the late-'80s and early-'90s with his bands HOA, XHOA, Mwowm, Scabb, Satan Tortilla/Tortilla Diablo, and Uncle Mike's Nightmare. 


Mindpower were a lo-fi three-piece (Cramer on bass, Jim Grant also on bass, with Taurus pedals, and yours truly on drums) and we played long, droney improvisations accompanied by a light show. We might have fit right in with today's psych/noise/experimental underground but it was the Northwest Ohio rock scene of the early '90s, so not so much. 



The quotations at the header and footer of the flyer (and the name of the band too) are taken from "Mind-Power," a ten record set issued by the Cambridge Institute of Los Angeles from the 1950s; by playing the LP while you slept, the soothing hypnotic voice of the nocturnal educator turned you into a successful Organization Man on waking. This voice was mixed live into the unforgettable Mindpower sound.

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