Mac's Backs will host Steve Traina, author of La Cave: Cleveland's Legendary Music Club and the '60's Folk-to-Rock Revolution at The B-Side, 2785 Euclid Hts Blvd in Cleveland Hts. (Below the Grog Shop). The event takes place on Saturday, March 16th from 5-7 pm. Light appetizers will be available. Steve will have a presentation with photos about La Cave's history.
In it's day the club featured performers Phil Ochs, Jimi Hendrix, Buffy Sainte Marie, Janis Ian, the Velvet Underground and many other influential musicians on their way to musical history.
From the Epilogue:
La Cave blasted off a month after fellow Ohioan John Glenn sped into space and circled the fast-shrinking globe, and played its last note during the same month that yet another Ohioan, Neil Armstrong, took his small first step for mankind. The club’s story fits neatly between those two achievements. The advances apparent in those two launches reflected just how much the world had advanced technologically in seven years. In the same manner, the La Cave story reflects the sociological revolution that came about in the 1960s. La Cave was a tiny club wedged into a dark basement room that barely held 300 souls, and yet it helped catalyze those social changes in ways much larger and long-lasting than its unimpressive physical appearance dictated. When the newspapers referred to La Cave as a “launching pad,” there was no hyperbole in that description. La Cave helped launch dozens of world-shaping musicians into the public consciousness and various Halls of Fame membership. At the same time, it launched into adulthood thousands of young people who found safety, comfort, and some damn good times in a troubled world. Many graduates of this informal school have gone on to live talented, productive and socially conscious lives. La Cave’s importance as a small part of a much bigger sociological awakening cannot be overstated.
