"That's the best kind of show, sometimes"

September 13, 2006. An ordinary Wednesday. I got up in the morning, had breakfast, realized I was exhausted, went back to bed, and finally managed to drag myself back out of bed at about 1:15 so I could go to my 2:00 class.

(I know that this is what happened on that particular day 14 years ago because I told it to Cara in a message I sent her that day.)

I was a second year graduate student, living alone in a little apartment on the fourth floor of an apartment building near Case Western Reserve University's North Residential Village. I was also recovering from a broken arm suffered at the beginning of August, and had just very recently gotten my cast removed but was still wearing a wrist brace for support (that figures into this story later). I had a penchant for staying up very, very late playing computer games and chatting with a certain girl who lived in Columbus. Hence the dragging myself out of bed so I could go to a 2:00 pm class.

It was an ordinary day. Little did I know at the time that it was a day that would turn out to be at least a little bit life-changing.

"I'm heading to a concert pretty soon," I messaged Cara at 9:52 pm.

"Tonight?" she asked.

"Yeah," I replied, and explained that it was two local bands, playing a free show at my school. (This was one of the weekly Spot Night shows, a topic I've written about before.)

"Ah," said Cara. "That's the best kind of show, sometimes."

My response? A blunt, "I disagree."

That's hilarious to me now. Both the bluntness (something I still do, but did to a far, far greater extent back then) and the fact that back then I just had no idea how amazing little, local concerts could be! Every really great show I'd been to had been a nationally known band. I'd seen a few decent performances by local bands, but I genuinely didn't consider the idea that a little known Cleveland band might become one of my favorites.

That night totally changed how I viewed local music.

"I just got back," I messaged Cara at 12:26 am. "The concert was really good. It was an interesting mix of genres, the first band was alt-country and the second was post-rock. I bought CDs from both... I liked both of them more than any other obscure Northeast Ohio bands I've seen."

The CDs

That was an enthusiastic endorsement from 23-year old Jeff. (I've realized I tend to express myself much more passionately now than I did back then.) That show really did far exceed any previous performance by local bands that I'd experienced. And in doing so, it pretty much opened up a whole new world of music to me, right in my backyard, as in the ensuing years I went to more and more shows by local artists and discovered more and more to love in the music of "obscure Northeast Ohio bands."

The two bands who played at the Spot that night were called Goodmorning Valentine (the alt-country band) and To Be a High Powered Executive (the post-rock band, and if you know anything about the genre I'm sure you could have guessed which band was which). It was the recent release after a very long hiatus of a new To Be a High Powered Executive album that inspired me to write this post! More on that in a bit.

After seeing their excellent performances and buying and listening to their CDs, I would become big fans of both bands that played that night. One thing that really made an impression on me, in addition to their music, was how friendly and down-to-Earth the musicians were. And that's another thing that seems funny to me now, because why wouldn't they be? But back then, I didn't know that.

I told Cara about how when I bought a CD from Goodmorning Valentine, the lead singer asked what had happened to my (brace-enclosed) wrist and that he "seemed genuinely concerned." I really appreciated that genuine concern. I also said that during their set, he had said, "Do you always get this many people here? We should play here more often."

Despite the crowd of "60 to 70 people," which to me was quite small, I noted that this had definitely been said with sincerity.

"I love that," Cara said.

"Both of the bands seemed really nice and appreciative of the crowd," I replied.

"A show isn't anything without the people," Cara added.

Ain't that the truth. (Thanks, COVID...)

That's one of the great things about being a fan of local musicians, or not just local musicians, but also many other musicians who regularly play to modest crowds. You often get the chance to connect with them on a person-to-person level, and when you tell them how much you appreciate their music, that will really mean something to them. I've said it before, when someone creates something that has an impact on your life, and you get the opportunity to tell them, you should take that opportunity.

I've discovered more and more wonderful local bands in the years since. To Be a High Powered Executive, though... there was just something about that band. In the period from 2006-2008, I'm pretty sure they became the band I'd seen live the most times. And they were just so good. I was pretty heavily into the post-rock genre (mainly instrumental music, usually guitar-driven but sometimes with orchestral elements, featuring complex arrangements and melodies and often quite lengthy songs as well as often lengthy song titles [e.g. "The King Has Bled, We Have Slept, and Now We Must Wake"] and/or band names [e.g. To Be a High Powered... well, you get the point]) at the time, including a strong fandom of big names in the genre like Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I did feel that in a lot of the lesser acts in the genre, and even sometimes with the bigger names, there was a tendency for the music to be a bit formulaic. Like how many different ways can you write a swelling guitar crescendo?

To Be a High Powered Executive, they never failed to keep things interesting in a way that few post-rock bands could match. Their music kept you on your toes because there was so much variety from song to song and also even within songs; halfway through a song it would go in a totally different direction, but at the same time it all flowed together so well. Another strength was their strong rhythm section; the intricate bass melodies were a marvel to see live, and between that and the drumming the music just had this great groove to it, it was danceable as hell and that was part of why they were so fun live. Add two guitars trading off parts that ranged from delicate to face-melting (oh, plus an occasional fifth member adding some nice percussion and xylophone flourishes), and they were just a machine. One of the best post-rock bands I've ever seen, my favorite local Northeast Ohio band I've ever seen, and a band who deserved far more fame and recognition than they received, but who did have a small but devoted following.

Cara became a big fan of the band too, although she, still living in Columbus at the time, didn't get to see them live nearly as many times as I did. I remember buying a CD for her at one of their shows that I went to solo, their 2007 album We Don't Want It Safe, We Want It Secret. It's an excellent album that I highly recommend.

(Here are a few pictures from a fantastic show at the Grog Shop with TBaHPE opening for Le Loup and also joining the latter band on stage during one of the headliners' songs. I think this was the show where I bought the CD for Cara.)

One of my favorite memories related to the band is something that Cara liked to say. In a great live version of their song "To Morla" that was made available online, at one point one of the guitars inadvertently hits a note a half-step too high before adjusting downward to the correct note, and it doesn't sound bad, just different, but it was very noticeable to people like Cara and me who had listened to the original version of the song so many times. So Cara liked to call that note "the accidental accidental." That combination of music nerdiness and wordplay is an excellent example of why I loved her so much.

On November 25, 2008, two days before Thanksgiving, I sent an email to Cara with a very short subject line:

:(

And in the email I quoted what I believe was a MySpace message from the band:

THIS IS IT..... OUR FINAL PERFORMANCE

WEDNESDAY at the BEACHLAND, $3 DREADFUL YAWNS HOT RAILS TO BE A HIGH POWERED EXECUTIVE Hello friends. With sadness and joy, we announce after many confusing months our final show.....ever. We are playing first, so come early. It will sort of be like a Thanksgiving present from all of us. But, there will be a set full of oldies, goodies, and even some new ones that you'll have this show only to hear. It is also the last night in Cleveland for our dear Michael Lassins..... if nothing else, come to see him before he is on his way. <3 tbahpe

"Well, now I want to go to this concert," I added, and also mentioned that I didn't know whether my dad had gotten tickets for "the hockey game" yet. Apparently on Wednesday, the night before Thanksgiving and the night of the concert, there was a Columbus Blue Jackets game and we had been invited to go to the game with my parents and were trying to decide whether we wanted to go. (Cara had moved to Cleveland in September and we would be heading down to Columbus for Thanksgiving.) The sudden and unexpected announcement that my favorite local band would be playing their last show ever made it a very clear decision to me - going to the concert was a much higher priority than going to a hockey game.

So that's what Cara and I did. I remember being in the tiny Beachland Tavern, near the front of the crowd, rocking out to those familiar tunes, feeling exhilarated but also saddened that this was the last time.

That happens a lot with local bands. They come and go. A band member might move to another town and then that's just the end. Or the members might just move on to other things in their lives. It's nice when you at least get a chance for a sendoff, like in this case. I remember Cara and I also happened to be at the final show of another local band we really liked, Unsparing Sea - that time we didn't know in advance that it was the last one. Other local bands I've loved, like Machine Go Boom and Afternoon Naps, have faded out of existence without a farewell show, at least not to my recollection. The band Likenesses released an amazing debut album in 2015 and shortly after dropped off the face of the Earth and I never found out why.

So I'm really glad Cara and I got to go to that last To Be a High Powered Executive show.

I remember after their set Cara and I wanted to get t-shirts, and we tried to give them money but they didn't let us pay, saying, "We're done. Just take them." I still treasure that shirt.

We didn't even end up sticking around for the other bands. So we delayed our trip to Columbus by a day and skipped out on an NHL game to see one band play for maybe an hour or less. But it was absolutely 100% worth it.

At the time, TBaHPE had been working on another album, but then had to break up due to one of the members moving out of state. The album was never completed, and I was always sad about that.

And thus it was to my absolute delight when the album Tall Shapes appeared practically out of nowhere last month after a nearly 12-year hiatus for the band. It might even be one of my favorite things to have happened in this godforsaken year.

The album is certainly a departure in sound from the old TBaHPE (I was very surprised when I hit play for the first time and early in the first track heard singing, something that was completely absent from the band's previous albums) but after giving it a number of listens I'm a big fan and it's a great addition to the catalog. The songs are shorter, there are new and more diverse instrumentations, a few of the tracks have, yes, vocals - all in all, it's a nice evolution of the band's sound (at times reminding me of a cross between the old TBaHPE and the very little known Trumpets in the Snow project two of the band's members did a number of years ago) that at heart retains most of the essential elements that made the band so good in the first place. What a great surprise and gift to have this new album after so, so many years.

I might be even more thrilled if, some day, the band could play a reunion show, playing their old and new songs. Who knows if that's something that could realistically ever happen, but it's nice to imagine. A show in an intimate setting with a small but enthusiastic audience of friends and devoted fans.

That's the best kind of show, sometimes.

A deeper dive into COVID data: the politics of COVID spread

Most people who live in Ohio are probably aware by now that we're experiencing another new surge of COVID cases. If you hadn't seen yet, or if you don't live in Ohio, now you know: Ohio is experiencing another new surge of COVID cases.

But you might not know in what parts of Ohio most of those new cases are happening.

I live in Cleveland. I'm certainly very concerned and troubled by new spikes in COVID cases anywhere in Ohio or anywhere else for that matter, because I don't want people to get sick and die, but if I want to assess the current level of risk for myself or people around me, I want to know what's happening here in Cuyahoga county. So let's take a look at what's been happening in my county and elsewhere in the state.

I'm going to focus on new hospitalizations. New case counts are important, but are highly dependent on how many tests are being run and on who is being tested. To me, changes in hospitalization numbers are a better indication of how the spread of the disease is changing. (If you're interested, you can see county case data on the state government's COVID dashboard.)

Here's a graph of the hospital admissions in Cuyahoga county by day of the pandemic (all results in this post use the data made publicly available by the Ohio Department of Health):

It's important to note that the numbers from the most recent days are incomplete and will increase somewhat as time goes on. I do see a hint we might be starting to tick up after a long declining period. But there's certainly been no major spike here. In July we were briefly getting around 30 or more new admissions per day. Then the numbers steadily declined to the point where for much of September we only averaged around 2-3 admissions per day. That's quite an improvement!

What happened in July? As far as I can tell, the most important thing that happened in July was a mask mandate went into effect - first county specific mask mandates, but not long after, a statewide mandate. I suspect, though, that adherence to the mandate is not as good in some parts of the state as others.

Ohio has three major cities, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, that are in Cuyahoga, Franklin, and Hamilton counties, respectively. Wherever I go around Cleveland, people seem to be generally good about wearing masks now. I suspect that tends to be more true in large cities in general and less true in other parts of the state. Here's a graph showing changes in the new hospitalization numbers (per capita) for the three largest Ohio counties vs. the rest of the state:

(Note: this uses the extrapolation method I detailed in this post to get more accurate estimates for the recent days that have incomplete data.)

We can see that in the big cities, after the mask mandates went into effect there was a big decline and although there may be a recent uptick, the numbers have remained at a level that is close to the lowest since March. In the rest of the state combined, the recent spike has pushed the numbers to the highest level at any point during the pandemic.

I will say that although I think masks clearly help, they aren't the whole story - there are also many other factors that basically can be summarized as how seriously are people taking the pandemic and how seriously are people taking efforts to slow the spread.

Cuyahoga, by the way, has had the most dramatic improvement. From March through July in aggregate, out of 88 counties in Ohio we had the very worst per capita hospitalization rate. August? 53rd out of 88 (first being best). September, 23rd out of 88. And October thus far? 14th out of 88. So I think we should appreciate the efforts we've all made that have saved a lot of people from sickness and death.

Anyway, it occurred to me that this divergence between the big cities and the rest of the state could very well be related to how politicized the pandemic has become. We have a Republican president and we have a right wing media who have pounded into the heads of their followers messages like: COVID is just like the flu, masks don't work and/or might be dangerous and/or are "unmanly," stay-at-home orders were government tyranny, we should just open everything up and let "herd immunity" take over, etc., etc., etc. And it's very clear that as a result of this, Trump supporters are much less likely than the rest of the country to view COVID as continuing to be a serious threat that we have to continue to take serious measures to address, even as the deaths continue to pile up. So I decided to take a look at whether data support the hypothesis that this polarization is affecting COVID spread in Ohio.

Here's a graph of the per capita hospitalization numbers by county from August through today (August being the cutoff point because mask mandates went into effect in July) plotted against the share of the 2016 presidential election vote received by Donald Trump:

Indeed, we see that the more a county voted for Trump in 2016, the more likely it is that that county has had a bad COVID outbreak since the statewide mask mandate went into effect. I was actually surprised at the strength of the apparent effect - the two most pro-Trump counties are the two counties with the worst outbreaks!

Now, certainly, this is suggestive evidence but not proof that Trump support leads to worse COVID outbreaks. There are other potential explanations and I'm open to hearing them.

One alternate explanation that someone raised when I made a similar point recently, and that I don't buy, is that the reason outbreaks are now worse in rural areas is because the worse outbreaks that previously occurred in cities caused a population immunity effect that has subsequently slowed the spread in cities.

This explanation doesn't make sense, because even the hardest hit places in Ohio had nowhere near the fraction of the population become infected as somewhere like New York City. In New York City, nearly 3 out of every 1000 residents has died of COVID, whereas in Cuyahoga county, about 2 out of every 1000 residents has been hospitalized, to give an idea of the magnitude of the difference. Even in New York City it is questionable whether there has been enough population immunity to have a significant effect in slowing disease spread. In Ohio the idea is completely far-fetched.

But let's humor that explanation and address it with data. If cities in Ohio are now doing better because their previous worse outbreaks have caused a protective effect, we would expect that there would be an inverse relationship between how hard hit a county was in the earlier part of the pandemic and how hard hit it has been recently. Is there such a relationship?

No, there is not. There is no relationship whatsoever between hospitalization rate from March through July and hospitalization rate from August through the present. (There is a measure called R-squared of how strong a linear relationship is that goes from 0 (no correlation) to 1 (perfect correlation). The R-squared of this graph is literally 0.00. If you're curious, the R-squared of the previous graph on correlation with Trump support was 0.10, with a p-value of 0.002 - so the claim is not that Trump support guarantees a bad outbreak, but rather significantly increases the chances of one.)

So that takes us back to the explanation that rural counties are now tending to be hit worse because people there aren't taking the pandemic as seriously, which is probably related to Trump support.

This analysis is specific to Ohio, but I know that there exist data showing similar effects at both the county level and state level when looking all around the country.

So I guess the message is: the virus doesn't care whether you believe in it. In fact, the virus (if we are anthropomorphizing the virus) prefers it if you don't believe in it, because that makes it easier for the virus to infect you and people around you. If people don't take the pandemic seriously, these problems will only continue to get worse.

But the other message is, be concerned, but don't panic, about rising COVID numbers in Ohio. We collectively know so much more about how to stay safe than we did in March. If you take that knowledge into account and take measures to stay safe, you're much more likely to stay safe than if you ignore that knowledge. If you and all the people who live around you do that, it is possible to keep the numbers down. So keep wearing masks in public, and keep avoiding dangerous gatherings of people, especially crowded indoor gatherings. We are all in this together and the data suggest that in places where people believe that we are all in this together and act accordingly, the results will be better.