North Park Lounge, Cranberry Township, PA

5/14/2011

Cranberry Township has to be one of the most boring places in the world and yet I find myself there a lot because it is the closest place with a decent book store, a movie theater and restaurants with edible food. In Western Pennsylvania this constitutes culture. In any event, I started out my day yesterday with no agenda to see bands but found myself trapped in the North Park Lounge for a few hours waiting out a violent rainstorm that hit the area. North Park Lounge has new owners and they have done a good job of remodeling the place, particularly the modular trailer in the back lot that serves as an outdoor bar. They opened up the front of the "trailer" and they cleaned up the rather moldy interior. And to their credit, they still have bands on Saturday night even though they sequester them to the far end of the bar and close off doors so the rest of the patrons won't be bothered. I'd be insulted if I was a band playing this place but I guess beggars can't be choosers given the state of live music in Western Pennsylvania. The first band I saw was named Acoustic Jammage. I had never heard of them and was encouraged during their warm-up to hear them play some power blues songs. And they did play a Stevie Ray Vaughn song early in their set but then wandered off into pop-country (?) and jam band territory. I have to say the most annoying thing about this band was their one light which you can see behind the bassist. It's bad enough that this place offers no stage and no lights for their bands but then  this band brings a light which merely makes it harder to see them or anything else clearly. The horrendous lighting screwed up the look of this video as you can see. (Another amusing thing you will notice in this video is a bathroom sign placed behind the band. Yes, there is a bathroom back there and periodically you will see people walk past the band to relieve themselves. Classy.)

After a sleepy 40 minutes Acoustic Jammage announced that they were going to have their friends play a set. I figured they were just going to sit in but a completely different band began to set up. Thankfully they used the same drum set but it still took a good 20 minutes for this band to get organized. It became apparent fairly quickly that we were privileged to watch The Tar Benders have a rehearsal and by the looks of it, one of their first. I did record this song which has some competent blues noodling by the lead guitarist but I made a run for it shortly after this while the rainfall was still relatively mild. All in all a depressing example of the state of live music in this area.