Not So Secret Agents Of Change, Flobots Concert Rises Above Mean Spirit of Unreal NEO

Thanks to Sudhir, I had the opportunity to check out the Flobots [1] at Peabody's [2], Sunday night. If I'd browsed the Cleveland Scene Magazine [3] concert preview, beforehand, I probably wouldn't have bothered going. The 100s of fans who enjoyed the show agreed that would have been a mistake.

The Flobots are a smart, talented, inspiring and good spirited group of beautiful people offering a dynamic, fun, all ages, fairly sophisticated meld of rock, hip-hop and classical musical styles and instrumentation, with diverse vocals from all of a 6-piece band, and upbeat "Change you can believe" songs that are speading around the world. Flobots are an influential band for these Obama times. "Not So Secret Agents Of Change" is how the Flobots promote and present themselves, best expressed in Cleveland by the band members stepping out to the edge of the stage, at the end of the show, and literally shaking hands with all the people in the audience they could reach.

The Flobots were very open in showing their love for the full-house of fans, Peabody's, and Cleveland, on their first visit ever, and they were not secret in showing their disgust for their welcome from Michael Gallucci, who wrote the preview in Scene, which Flobots violist Mackenzie Roberts [4] read in full to the audience at the end of the show.  In his promotion for their concert, Gallucci described the Flobots as "clogging the airwaves with one of the summer's most annoying songs", "a global hug that's as inept as it is naive", and "includes a viola player, who weaves in and out of the unplugged hip-hop and sounds as out of place as you'd think." They came in a bus from Denver for that? What do you think they will say to friends and the world about Cleveland, now.

The violist was clearly insulted by such a personal and en mass attack by the media against a local concert, happening before the show even happened. So, at the end of the concert, with a full house of fans cheering her on, Mackenzie physically ripped Scene to pieces, threw them into the roaring crowd, and dedicating the closing number to Michael Gallucci... a rocking rendition of Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker"... saying, like, "I'm going to Disneyland and you are staying right here in Cleveland, for fucking ever, sucker. " So perhaps this band has some edge and fight, afterall.

I'm glad I didn't see the Gallucci preview, as it may have kept me from seeing an uplifting show, with 100s of cool bright people, at one of my favorite concert clubs, on a beautiful Summer Sunday night in Cleveland. I had seen Flobots on Jimmy Kimmel Live and was impressed. John Cale (Velvet Underground, in collaborations and solo) has made me a big fan of viola in rock, so I don't have a problem with it in hip-hop fusion.

I'm sure I am as cynical and mean spirited as anyone at Scene, having grown up in Cleveland in the 1960s and 1970s, on hard-core punk and experimental, but I don't kick Barney in front of my three year old and don't bother trashing the 1,000,000s of lame-ass people in the world who do me no harm. Question of the Day? Does it make sense for the media to insult an out of town band - or any artist - before they even have the chance to perform? Should Scene be torpedoing shows at Peabody's, before the fact? That costs people money and hurts the economy.