Last night as I was driving along Carnegie Ave., I was listening to WCSB -- or was it WRUW? -- broadcast last month's International Bluegrass Music Association Awards.

I tuned in just in time for a discussion of the record labels of the mid-20th century. Turns out there was a lack of major label support for country and western, and there weren't many independent labels. So Syd Nathan, in Cincinnati, Ohio, stepped up to the proverbial plate with King Records.

The King label went on to showcase a number of influential bluegrass acts, including the Stanley Brothers. Syd later decided there was a lack of support for gospel and rhythm and blues, so he also founded the Queen label. King and Queen, get it?

The IBMA inducted Syd Nathan into the 2006 Hall of Honors. The man ran everything out of the King HQ on Cincy's Webster Avenue -- the recording, the mastering, the pressing, the designing and printing, the shipping.

It's pretty exciting to imagine all this happening in Cincinnati! Long live independent record labels in the Midwest.

Okay. I'm generally not one to complain. I say great things about restaurants, cities, people, bands (well, maybe not all bands), whatever. I probably even say great things when mediocre things might be more appropriate. But here I am, about to complain.

My girlfriends and I went to Lago last night. Lago recently opened up in the Tremont space that was Theory, and before that, Mojo. The decor is -- weird. There are some faux touches on the walls that are supposed to represent exposed brick with some water damage of sorts, but instead look more like an incomplete idea and incomplete execution of said idea.

Now, maybe we went into our reservation expecting too much. But in our defense, any restaurant with entrees in the $17 - $32 range probably considers itself a fine-dining establishment, and from those I expect, well, fine dining. My lobster ravioli was just okay. I'd had better at the now-defunct Fulton Bar and Grill, where the dish was half the price and twice as good.

The main problem of the night, however, arrived in the form of my friend Sherri's dinner. She ordered the grilled salmon. We each took a bite of it and she sent it right back. It tasted like pure alcohol, according to Sherri, or medicine, according to Jess. Turns out the chef had accidentally used the cognac instead of tomato water. Why those two were next to each other and how one could mistake one for the other I haven't a clue. The restaurant was not packed, by any stretch of the word, so it's not like the kitchen was completely slammed.

She ended up with the cavatelli, which, like my ravioli, was merely eh. On the plus side, we all ended up with comped dessert and accompanying wine. Of the three desserts we sampled, two were mediocre, and one was too rich for the other girls but completely sublime to me. And, our server was really nice.

In short, I'd only go back to Lago to sit at the bar and have a glass of the Nebbiolo d'Alba Ochetti ("heaven in a glass" is what our server called it) and a slice of the Chocolate Hazelnut Cake. And then I'd go back home, thinking great things. Dinner will be saved for Lola and Parker's, at least before it closes.

For a different take, read the Plain Dealer's review:

I'm a big fan of coincidences. I guess the universe was looking out for me in some weird way when my friend and I hit the 'burbs on a recent Sunday afternoon.

We began in Westlake at that suburb-within-a-suburb, Crocker Park. Hey, even city girls like me need to shop every now and then. And I'll tell ya, there isn't too much shopping to be done downtown, these days. Anyone with good tips on that front, pass them along, please.

As we're strolling along the tree-lined avenue -- I mean, along the sidewalk lined with storefronts -- we see my hairdresser and her husband. To make it even more coincidental, I'd seen the two of them earlier in the week at Melt.

Okay. Stores closed, our stomachs growling, we hit the road in search of food. We (finally, and after more than one cell phone call) opted for Danny Boy's in Rocky River. Closed. So we went to the nearby Max's Deli. Over our sandwiches we talked about the people we knew who'd (a) served at, (b) cooked at, and (c) frequented Max's. Lots of people fit in one or more of those categories, it turns out.

We ordered dessert to go (it's Max's!!) and headed down the street for Mitchell's Ice Cream. I originally wanted the Pink Ribbon Peppermint Chip Ice Cream, which won Scene's "Best Reason to Eat More Ice Cream" in its hefty Best of Cleveland issue. I accidentally got the mint chip, but it was still good. I'm funny like that, sometimes.

Finally, as we're sitting on a bench eating our ice cream, we see a couple I'd seen at Lucky's during a recent Saturday brunch. Life gets no cooler, nor more coincidental.

When you're in Canfield, Ohio, and Plaza Book and Smoke Shop closes for the night, what do you do? Certainly not return to your hotel room at 9:00 pm on a Monday. Oh, no. My colleagues and I found ourselves driving along 224, looking for an appropriate late-night spot in which to continue an evening-long conversation.

We'd gotten a few recommendations throughout the day, and since we'd already hit two of them: Rockne's for dinner and Plaza Smokes for cigars, we decided we were in luck when we spotted the Blue Wolf Tavern. I'd heard that name mentioned at some point that afternoon. There's an attached bakery, and at first we only saw those hours! No late-night bar for us?

But a door down, the bar hours were listed: no need to worry. Were we eating? the hostess asked. Negative. So we went into the bar room, saw no trio of seats at said bar, and grabbed a booth up a few stairs along the wall. The hostess came over, apologetic: "If you're not eating and you sit here, you'll have to go order your own drinks." Ha -- fine by us!

The men ordered beers, expertly poured into tall, frosted glasses. I spotted Macallan scotch and went with that. "Neat or on the rocks?" he asked. I took it neat but with a glass of ice on the side. I got carded (yes!) and then we carried our glasses to our table. There were TVs surrounding the bar and the booths even had their own private sets mounted on the walls of each.

The Blue Wolf was a funny mix of local dive bar and upscale eatery. Combined with great drinks and intense conversation, it was a fitting spot at which to close our night out in Canfield.

Read another blogger's take:

I'll have to write a few entries on my recent stay in Canfield, Ohio. First of all, Canfield is right outside Youngstown. It's near Boardman, Struthers, and a few more even smaller towns. And these are small towns, people. My colleagues and I never back down from a challenge, though, so first day of work, requests were made. "Where do we find cigars?"

And did we get answers. "You go to Plaza Smokes, that's what you do." "Well, isn't there one over by...?" "Naw, that closed down years ago. Go to Plaza." So we went. We had dinner at the Ohio chain Rockne's, which was good -- great sandwiches, plus Great Lakes Dortmunder on draft -- and then we headed for the cigars.

Now, I don't smoke. Anything. But this was my first visit to a cigar shop, and it was pretty cool. It smelled really nice, of course: the coffee bar plus the cigars? Yeah. There were magazines in the back but we never made it past all the cigar cases.

My colleagues tried to give me a crash course. The man of the shop, Nicholas, looked about fifteen but was closer to thirty, and he really knew his stuff. He advised the cigar-smoker to try the Flor de Oliva. The pipe-smoker was given a Natural Drew Estate, among others. They showed me the tequila cigars and the Maker's Mark cigars and even the cognac cigars, but I was steadfast.

Tempted? Yeah. But I'd rather enjoy the smell of my friends' smokes. And since they enjoyed their cigars, and we all truly enjoyed sitting in the shop until closing time, I'd say the outing was a resounding success.

I even found a cigar-dedicated blog:

Early this morning, I was in a hotel in Canfield, Ohio. I poured a cup of coffee and chose a table with a Cleveland Plain Dealer on it. The front page's second item made me gasp, quite literally! Mitzi Jerman, who ran the St. Clair Avenue bar known as Mitzi's, died on Sunday!

Mitzi's is a gem of a bar. There are cheap drinks, an awesome jukebox, a pool table. You even have to get buzzed in the front door. Once in, it's welcoming and comfortable. Well into this year, Mitzi would be there in slippers, with tennis balls covering the feet of her walker.

She'd call you "honey" and offer a bowl of pretzels or chips. In the pool room: "D'you need more light?" "Oh, no, Mitzi, we're fine!" "No, no, no, here, let me just turn this light on for you." Her dog would be there, too, either hanging out or running around the bar.

Last time I was there, some smart friends and I had a long Blogging Ohio-worthy conversation about Cleveland and its merits and lack thereof. The bartender kept the beers and the bags of Cheetos flowing. (Dinner. Once every few years, it has to be done.)

Mitzi was born in the apartment above the bar her parents started and ran even through Prohibition. My condolences go out to her family and friends. What a full life that lady led! We'll miss seeing her. But we'll keep drinking at Mitzi's, which lives squarely in the "merit" category of this town.

Read the Plain Dealer article:

I am in the middle of running behind on a huge deadline, but I just got news that literally made me cry, so I had to take a warranted break and write.

Cleveland has always had a truly independent DIY music venue. Years ago, there was the legendary Speak in Tongues, The Black Eye, Inside/Outside Gallery, The Tower, and, most recently, The Church. These spaces are supported and loved by local bands, touring bands, and all the independent music fans around. They are necessary -- and I do not use that term lightly -- to the existence and growth of our small scene.

These spaces become homes-away-from-home for many; we spend multiple nights a week at them, we've been known to sleep in them, and sometimes we live in them. The Church, which came into existence after In/Out was closed down, carried the legacy of the Cleveland DIY venue proudly and well.

The Church was closed down last night for good, and I'm sitting here, surrounded by math books and a restless cat, crying hard. I feel like something was just stolen from me. In a way, something was stolen from all of us, and I know we'll be feeling it hard in the weeks to come.

Check out the Church's website for details, and read Lou Muenz's blog:

From your reclusive, introspective blogger comes this:

The seasons are changing, the wind's been blowing ferociously all day, I've got a stack of work in my apartment -- perfect night to hit Melt for the second time since it opened last week. Order the fried Twinkie; you won't be disappointed. You might want another, in fact.

I spent more years than I care to remember in Lakewood. Lots of memories, some great, some horrible, but all necessary. Melt has given me the best reason to travel back, the whole fifteen minutes back, in, say, three years. Cheers to that!

I met a group of friends -- they all had sandwiches, I had the, uh, Twinkie. We had a round of stellar beers, none Stateside-brewed but the Rogue. Sandwiches and Twinkie devoured, half of us left for home and the other half discussed further options. I had, until tonight, been quite reluctant to revisit those old Lakewood haunts. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was my uncertainty about the oh-so-blurry tomorrow, but I decided to join the crowd for a few at the Five.

The Five O'Clock -- what a joint. Tonight was really quiet, which was weird, but it was also awesome. We sat around a booth and laughed at the old-timers who'd done unspeakable things while we were bartending. We talked fondly about the unspeakables we'd each committed. Toasted a few to those, and to others, and then I left to tackle the pile of work next to my laptop.

I'm glad it was raining, I'm glad I rambled down memory lane, because, as it turns out, once you're away from a scene long enough, it becomes almost comfortable again. The places are familiar enough, but the feelings aren't so raw, so present. Good to know, because I swear I'll be at Melt twice a week for the next year. And the Five-Oh? We'll see. If it's raining, I'll go.

Not to reveal the secrets of my World-According-to-Email, but I have to share two items from my Inbox yesterday morning. First was a forward from my friend Sharon sadly informing me that Sage Bistro is closing as of October 1. Second was the Cool Cleveland newsletter with a bit on Melt, a new bar holding its Grand Opening tonight.

Not only is Sage closing, but Sharon also added that Parker's will be closing at the end of the year. It's pretty accurate to say that I'm pretty heartbroken over this. I made a habit of Sage's happy hour; an infusion martini or two plus crab cakes or grilled tenderloin tips acted as dinner a few times a month. Parker's creates art out of local, organic foods. Their philosophy of relying on nature and local agriculture to guide their menu ought to be practiced by more area restaurants, in this girl's opinion. The loss of both of these makes me very sad.

The good news, of course, is in the opening of Matt Fish's new space. Melt Bar and Grilled -- no, that's not a typo -- will serve culinary delights of the cheese variety. Grilled cheese lovers, take note! Lakewood desperately needs this restaurant -- there aren't too many options other than the hundreds of dive bars and sports bars and occasional ethnic eats.

I'm excited to go to Melt; I'll probably make it a regular destination. But I will terribly, terribly miss Sage. I might try to go to happy hour every day this week. In black, for mourning.

Read the Cool Cleveland interview with Melt's Matt Fish:

Brunch at Lucky's always starts the weekend off in the best possible way. As evidence, I offer the story of a nearby church. As my girlfriends and I were heading back to my apartment after eating the greatest sausage gravy and cheddar biscuits this side of, oh, Chicago, we saw a handwritten sign proclaiming, "Church Open! Come and See!"

After not even a moment's hesitation, we wandered over to the church in question -- St. Theodosius Orthodox Christian Cathedral. Its beautiful green onion cupolas are visible from 490-West as you approach the West 7th exit, offering a brief respite from the surrounding industrial landscape.

The inside is even more stunning than the outside. The small church is filled with intricate iconography, candles, stained glass, all in larger quantity and higher quality than any I'd ever seen. We looked at the relic of bone, we explored the balcony with its music stands, we peered into the small, ornate room behind the altar.

I didn't even realize that this church -- the oldest Orthodox Christian Church in Ohio -- still held services; I've often biked past and imagined the inside. Well, you start your morning at Lucky's, and your imaginings, too, will not be in vain. Much of the writing inside is Russian, but services are in English. Darn...

Click the Read link to see some of Lou Muenz's stunning photos of this stunning cathedral:

A colleague and I had the good fortune to work in Sylvania, Ohio, recently. For my part, I had to look at a map to even figure out what part of the state Sylvania is in. Turns out it's a suburb of Toledo.

Sylvania is small; we found one highway exit and one hotel. The hotel is very nice, and there's even a beaver that hangs out in the stream out back. My colleague lives in Philadelphia, and we passed time commenting on the lay of the land.

I dubbed the main drag "commercial row." Talk about shopping centers -- Monroe Street has a few dozen, one after the other. We hit the road, as it were, to eat at a mall in nearby Perrysburg. As we drove along the highway, we talked about the Midwest and the East Coast.

I suggested that major cities in Ohio have all the things East Coast cities have -- good restaurants, music venues, art galleries, etc. -- but in smaller numbers. Our land isn't quite so filled, either, so it seems more spread out. In New Jersey, you're hitting a new town every five miles. In Ohio, it's every twenty. (Rough estimates, of course! I'm currently accepting more exact measurements. Feel free to contribute.)

We ate at Bluepoint Fish Club, where we snacked on calamari and salads, and drank martinis and margaritas. My colleague talked about Legal Sea Foods in Boston, and I said I knew of Legal because it's the one restaurant that we frequent in the mall near my parents' house in New Jersey.

I guess malls are malls, wherever you are, but maybe the Midwest has as many of them as does the East Coast, and since we have less of everything else, it seems as if we've got nothing but shopping strips. Sylvania felt that way, in any case!

I'll eat pretty much anything. And it's hard for me to play favorites when it comes to food. Having my family in town recently was a good exercise for me; restaurant whore that I am, the dining selection fell squarely on my shoulders.

I say "squarely," in fun, because my top choice for dinner one night was Sushi on the Square. This Shaker Square spot has my favorite sushi in town. My parents were keen on this idea. My aunt, however, tosses out, "Well, have you ever been to Balaton? It's got the best Hungarian food in Cleveland."

Not only had I never been there, I also had never heard of it! Shows how astute I am. So we decided to forego edamame and dragon rolls, this time. Balaton is a cozy place, unpretentious and comfortable.

I alone opted for a Hungarian white wine, which everyone tasted and admired. We had it all: soups, salads -- both cucumber and beet -- potato pancakes, chicken paprikash, Hungarian goulash, fresh bread.

When it was all over, dessert menus were passed around. I, again alone, ordered a Hungarian dessert wine -- sweet, rich, wonderful. And then the dishes were brought: strudels, tortes, chestnut puree. Sadly, the kitchen was out of crepes, but I'm planning to enjoy those next time.

But next time, how will I ever make up my mind? Sushi or spaetzel? It's always so hard.

Read a Shaker Square tale, with a guest appearance by Balaton's chicken paprikash:

I don't know if it was watching some guy on a crotch rocket ride wheelies on the shoreway, or if it was listening to WCSB's deejay play Belle and Sebastian and then The Stone Roses, or if it was the combination of both, but I know I got the chills on my way home tonight. And once I was in Tremont, away from the 60 mph wheelies, I thought about the other noteworthy events of the day -- namely, the small stray dog carefully following the sidewalk outside my window (how did he know to stay on the sidewalk?), and the fact that our garbage truck didn't come (why didn't it?).

But I digress. You rightly wonder, where was I coming from? Well, any person who's been following any part of the Cleveland music scene over the past few years knows of Chris Kulcsar. Perhaps from the Chargers Street Gang, perhaps from This Moment in Black History, maybe from Vernacular, maybe from his deejay moniker, CK*1, possibly from his art shows, particularly the one at which it was reported he had died and the reporter didn't realize the claim was a hoax and published it as fact. Oops. Well, ladies and gents, the very much alive CK*1 is leaving us.

He's heading south, to Cincinnati, to get his master's in art. And before he does so, he wanted to get one last show in. A solo show, as it were. This project is called Jukebox Value, and it represents the, er, calmer, softer side of Chris. He held his solo show at the fantastic Music Saves, where I was smart enough to buy a few CDs and pet the in-store cat, Vinyl, after the in-store show.

Jukebox Value represents a mighty change from the guy who bum-rushed the stage at a local music awards show a few years back. Tonight, it was just Chris and his acoustic guitar. He abandoned the amp he had carefully dragged in. He didn't stage-dive, or scream, or thrash about wildly. His songs were mostly sort of... slow, and maybe sad, and possibly best described as he facetiously did, as bummercore. Sort of shoegazing for the wilder types. He did throw a rockin' cover in there, for the sake of thoroughness.

I've been told he's coming back to Cleveland in November for a final This Moment show. But I sort of worry. Because a ton of local talent has already left or is planning to leave our fair Mistake on the Lake! Photographer Michael Larkey took off for the L.A. area this year. This week alone, Chris Kulcsar is heading south, and artist Kim Tran is heading to Santa Monica.

All this leaves me wondering -- should I follow suit and bail for finer cities? Or should I lovingly stick around Cleveland and hope others do as well? Dear readers, tell me what you think. But please don't do wheelies on your crotch rockets on the highway. Better yet, don't ride crotch rockets at all. I think listening to WCSB is just fine, though.

Rob Younger, the frontman for Aussie punk legends Radio Birdman, told a packed crowd at the Beachland last night that rock 'n' roll is Cleveland's heritage. Well, my God! I certainly hope so. After all, cheap apartments and rock 'n' roll are really the only two things keeping me here.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Radio Birdman's show last night. They haven't played together in twenty-some years. But they've gone all out -- they're touring, they've recorded a new album of new material, they've added a new rhythm section.

There have been quite a few old bands who've come through Cleveland in the past four years or so: Stiff Little Fingers, The Buzzcocks, The Undertones, The Dictators, X, The Cramps, The Damned, to name a few. And Radio Birdman definitely held their own in that gene pool. They just rocked, in that old-school way that all young kids in bands aspire to. And they weren't all washed up, either.

We spent a few minutes debating which songs would be encored; I argued that since "Murder City Nights" made it onto many of my mixes, it had to be included. (Made sense to me.) I was right, along with those who said "New Race" would close out the set. And, of course, "Steve, I want to say thank you / for all you've done for me."

I certainly hope Cleveland will continue to impress upon seminal artists the importance of it's, uh, rock-ness. Heritage, indeed. But I also wonder, when these old bands finally do hang up their guitar straps, who will replace them?

Read what another Cleveland blogger wrote:

When I moved into my new apartment, my door was sadly lacking a knob that would fit. So I threw the whole steel-plated door in my mostly-trusty van and drove around town until I found someone who would drill a new hole for the existing knob. I told my landlord he owed me a drink.

I got home from work that evening to find him standing outside with a bottle of wine in hand. "Hurry, we've got a 7 o'clock at Ty Fun. Elizabeth is driving." I dropped my bag and hopped in her car. They introduced me to the lovely sort-of-new restaurant in the oft-changing space on Jefferson, east of Professor, in Tremont.

The place is small and tasteful and always crowded. It's BYO, hence our wine. We started with the prawn rolls and soup and ended by sharing the duck and pad thai. It was all delicious, and I decided I could drive my neighbor's door around, too, if he ever needed.

A month later, my parents came into town. They hadn't visited me in Cleveland in years, and arrived hungry. Of course I wanted only the best for them, so I called Ty Fun and said we'd be there in five minutes if there was a table. There was, and we were. This time, iced coffee instead of wine, but still the prawn rolls and soup, followed by tofu and pad thai to share.

It was a good meal with which to welcome my parents. It was, in fact, a good beginning to a visit filled with food. When you find things that work -- meals, doorknobs, vans -- stick with them!

Read another blogger's take: