Katkin Reviews Mirrors, Home and Garden & Rainy Day Saints

Mirrors / Home and Garden / Rainy Day Saints

Saturday July 19, 2008 Beachland Tavern (Cleveland, OH)

2008 has been an incredible summer for seminal indie-punk reunion gigs.  I have been thrilled and blessed this summer to have caught outstanding (and improbable) performances by The Feelies, Mission of Burma, Half Japanese, Versus, and Great Plains (though I sadly missed gigs by The Vaselines and Wire that I really would like to have caught).  But perhaps the most improbable—as well as the most unheralded—of the summer's many amazing reunion gigs took place on a pleasant July Saturday night at the homey and unpretentious Beachland Tavern in the Collinwood neighborhood on Cleveland's far east side.  There, the nearly-original five-piece lineup of Mirrors (not "the Mirrors") featuring original members Jamie Klimek, Paul Marotta, Jim Crook, and Craig Bell (plus Styrenes drummer Paul Laurence, replacing the absent Michael Weldon) played together for the first time since September 1975.  (A stripped-down trio version of Mirrors played some gigs in NYC and Cleveland—and released an album—in the late 1980s and early 1990s).

Mirrors were perhaps the most Velvets-inspired band of the Cleveland punk explosion of the mid-1970s, and in many ways were not as avant-garde or experimental as contemporaries such as Pere Ubu, the Styrenes, or the Electric Eels (with all of whom Mirrors shared band members).  Led by singer/songwriter/lead guitarist Jamie Klimek, Mirrors infused Velvets-style song-structure with heavy dollops of stunning protopunk gtr-heroism and heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity.  (The Velvets themselves played Cleveland fourteen times between 1968 and 1971, and the young Jamie Klimek is credited with having recorded some legendary bootlegs of a few of those gigs).

About Klimek's speedy and feedback-laden but subtle playing, Pagans singer Mike Hudson recently had this to say:  "Cleveland had been blessed during the late '70s by the presence of four world-class guitar players—Mike Metoff, Cheetah Chrome, Jim Jones, and Jamie Klimek.  I had the chance to play with them all and there was very little any of them couldn't do.  Each had his own style and his own great strengths, but Jamie was far and away the most complex and musically trained of the bunch."  Mike Hudson, Diary of a Punk 108-09 (2008).   More contemporary Velvets-influenced feedback-wielders such as Ira Kaplan and Alan Licht owe great debts of gratitude to Jamie Klimek.

Like his fellow (then-)youthful Velvets-fanatic Jonathan Richman, Jamie Klimek seems to have understood the Velvets as being far more sincere and artless than later generations of listeners (who could only appreciate the Velvets through the lens of familiarity with Lou Reed's later artifice-laden solo material) could ever comprehend.   Although they are not lacking in humor, nearly all of Klimek's songs—at their core—are heartfelt songs of love and romance.  As Julian Cope has noted:  "the real strength [of Mirrors] is in Klimek's disarming vocals, which ain't like Lou at all and seem wholly original.  . . . Klimek's his own man and he's spoken to by the Goddess, the great female, in a manner that the cynical sometime pseudo-homo Lou could never have approached.  Indeed, from that angle Klimek's as much of an anti-Lou and Jonathan Richman's "I'm Straight" persona was.  Klimek's songs are all girl songs, be they about dead Shirley, star-fucking wannabes Cindy, Cathy, Bobbie and Jackie, or impenetrable female mists both Classical and barbarian."

Klimek retired from music in 1993, and prior to this gig had not stood on a stage while holding a guitar in 15 years.  He is the only Mirror who still lives in Cleveland:  Marotta and Laurence now live in New York City; Bell in Indianapolis, and Crook in upstate New York.  (Psychotronic Video publisher Michael Weldon, Mirrors' original drummer, who did not participate in this reunion, now lives amongst the wild horses in Chincoteague Island, Virginia).  The idea for this reunion gig took root earlier in 2008, when former Mirrors bass player Jim Jones, who also played in Pere Ubu, died in Cleveland.   At a memorial held at the Beachland Tavern in February 2008, members of Mirrors and Home and Garden (another Jones project) discussed staging a joint reunion gig to honor Jones, which came to fruition in July.  Mirrors' members rehearsed individually for the gig, but were not able to practice together as a band until the very day of the gig.

A crowd of about 150 people showed up, including a few local celebs such as Bernie Joelson (of Bernie and the Invisibles), Johnny "Dromette" Thompson (Pere Ubu's longtime graphic artist who also owned/operated the Drome Records store and label), Steve-O and Dave Swanson (of Death of Samantha), Scat Records honcho Robert Griffin, and longtime Cleveland rock critic Anastasia Pantsios (who previewed the show in Cleveland's "Free Times" alt newsweekly).  I have to say that I was a little disappointed that more old-school Cleveland punks didn't turn out, though.  Where was Peter Laughner's widow Charlotte Pressler?  Or Jamie Klimek's own brother Andrew—formerly the leader of Ex Blank Ex—who still lives in Cleveland?  Where was John Petkovic, who played in Cleveland with Cobra Verde the previous night?  Where was Mike Hudson, who lives just a few hours away in Niagara Falls?  (I will give a pass to legendary hermit Chris Stigliano, who has done perhaps more than anyone else to publicize '70s Clepunk over the decades, but who is known for never leaving his Sharon, PA environs).  Other than Invisible Bernie and several members of the opening bands, I don't think that a single musician who ever recorded for Cleveland's legendary Drome, Hearpen, Mustard, Terminal, Herb Jackson, or St. Valentine's record labels was in attendance at the gig!  (On the other hand, a dedicated Mirrors fan who plans to start a new label called "Violet Times" to issue a vinyl LP containing some old Mirrors recordings from the 1970s did travel all the way from Portland, Oregon to attend the gig—and landed up camping on the streets of Cleveland for two nights to do so!).

But maybe the lack of celebrity glitter in attendance was for the best:  it made the show feel more authentically "Cleveland," and also reduced the pressure on the already-nervous Klimek.  From the stage, Klimek was personable and funny, deadpanning reams of bullshit without any hint of guile (e.g. Klimek introduced drummer Paul Laurence—with whom Klimek performed in Mirrors and the Styrenes in the 1980s and 1990s—by announcing that "I just met him today, but he seems to know the songs").   But Klimek was also somewhat fidgety: often his facial expressions disclosed some discomfort about performing, or some disappointment with the quality of his (or his bandmates') performances.  On a few of Mirrors' best songs, however ("I Think I'm Falling", "Hands In My Pocket", "Shirley"), Klimek signaled with an introductory smile that he was ready to burn, and each time his smile was observed some stunning guitar soloing followed.  (On those songs, the entire band was tight and scorching).  In about 75 minutes, Mirrors got through the lions' share of their catalogue, and then were finished, probably never to play together again (although Klimek has written a few new songs).

It was a pleasure and a privilege to have attended this show, and well worth the 500-mile roundtrip drive.  Mirrors are truly part of punk rock's secret history, and this unexpected, unpretentious, low-key, low-profile, high-quality, hard-rocking reunion was as historical as it was secretive!  In a summer in which so many other old-school punk/indie reunion gigs are (deservedly) attracting a lot of attention, I didn't want to let this one pass totally unnoticed.

Both opening bands—each of which contained some Cleveland rock royalty—were pretty good.  Home and Garden are sort-of a way-station for former Pere Ubu members; in fact, by my lights Home and Garden contains more Pere Ubu members than the current version of Pere Ubu does!  However, H&G unfortunately lack David Thomas's formidable songwriting skills, and none of their own material really engaged me as much as when they covered "Laughing" by Pere Ubu (though for all I know the members of H&G may have played as much of a role in writing that great song as David Thomas himself).  Rainy Day Saints are a longstanding '60s Rock/powerpop combo led by former of Death of Samantha guitarist Dave Swanson, who were quite fun to listen to but also suffer somewhat from a lack of memorable songs.