POSTPONED BECAUSE OF COVID 19, IT IS RESCHEDULED FOR THURSDAY, MAY 26, 5-9 AT VISIBLE VOICE. SHOULD BE A GREAT TIME!
It is time to take a trip back to the fabulous 80’s. I first encountered the NOOZ guys when they attended the Opening Day Baseball Parties we threw in the Donald Gray Gardens by the old stadium. Those parties you can file away under ‘you could never do that nowadays.’ They had started their own magazine/newspaper and they would pass out copies of it at the party. The first issue I saw was filled with the coolest stuff, poetry, sports, music, anything and everything about what was hip at the time in Northern Ohio. They would go on and do thirty issues before things like finances (or lack thereof), careers (or lack thereof), relationships, and other adult activities would cause them to go out of the NOOZ business.
Each issue looked exactly like it was, something made on the kitchen table cut and pasted from all sorts of sources. This was before computers and desktop publishing entered the world for most of us.
Over the last twenty years or so Dave Hostetler and I have published a variety of projects, from novels written by friends; memoirs of local legends; a book of poetry written by homeless men; to a cookbook featuring recipes from the place I worked at in college. Almost every project we have done has been unique and fun to do. Over the years, on and off, I have told Dave about the NOOZ guys, and one thing led to another and it has all led to The NOOZ Chronicles. We have taken all thirty copies of the NOOZ, stretching from 1987-1991; scanned each page and cleaned them up; and have published them in one volume.
Looking at these issues again from a distance of over thirty years brought a big smile to my face. Some of the contents are pretty good, some of it is pretty bad, some of it is pretty original, some of it is pretty weird. I got to write a column for about half the issues, it was my first regular writing gig. I wrote about the Browns, McGuffey Lane, Jimmy Buffett, Opening Day, things I was doing at school. It was all too cool at the time.
Each issue listed the subscribers on the back cover. Starting out with just a handful, it progressed to the point where there was hundreds of “NOOZaholics.”
Before Covid hit we held some sort of holiday party at Visible Voice Books or at Sokolowski’s in Tremont. Sadly Sokolowski’s is no more, but Visible Voice is going strong. We will celebrate the publishing of The NOOZ Chronicles, as well as getting through another year, On Wednesday, December 22, from 6:00 to 10:00, at the Visible Voice. Live music by Cats on Holiday, beer and wine specials, and hopefully, a lot of good people. You are definitely invited. Come meet the guys behind the NOOZ, and take home a copy of The NOOZ Chronicles for your library. No home should be without one.
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