Well……….here I am, in quaint Beachwood, Ohio, blogging from the Homestead Extended Stay hotel, which actually has a Whole Foods & Starbucks across the street, which immediately colors us impressed. Also, they sell hard liquor at the gas station, another plus for Beachwood, Ohio.

After our ridiculous 3 1/2 hour crawl (100 miles) in a huge traffic jam from Toronto to Buffalo, we finally got to Customs and would have gone thru in a pinch, had Patrick not handed in his checkbook to the customs officer by mistake (as opposed to his passport). This prompted the nice guy to search the back of our bus and also comment on my hair.

He finally waved us through and we then rolled on for another 3 hours until we hit Erie, Pennsylvania and the Cracker Barrel. I had a few sweet conversations with my wife (whom I miss terribly), who’s in London tonight but flies back home tomorrow. We reached our Beachwood crib around 8pm, checked in to our rooms, cracked open an ice cold one and checked out the Cleveland Browns NFL game versus the Green Bay Packers.

It was a good game to watch but while we were watching it, we got word to go to www.washingtonpost.com

See, since the beginning of the tour the WP has taken an interest in our plight on this tour…as the last men standing…the band that wouldn’t walk way from the fans. In a world where people don’t keep their word and quit whenever the slightest inconvenience occurs, the Washington Post was applauding us for our efforts and wanted to know what kind of people would do such a thing. Or at least that’s what they sold us on. What we read tonight had us in tears…laughing.

Love is about music and the people that love music. We obviously can’t control anything outside that and so after reading the article we couldn’t help but laugh. Writers are good at writing and they obviously got a great story in Patrick, who’s a nice guy and didn’t quite understand how journalists would chop everything up to create a nice greek tragedy.

See, I came to rock and that’s what I do. I haven’t complained and have remained positive. After Sky Saxon passed so suddenly, we made a decision to carry on because people we wanted to fulfill our obligation and found it reasonable to assume ticket sales would pick up. But that’s the business and the recession is still quite hard-hitting in many areas; I actually bought some fans tickets outside a few venues because they couldn’t afford to come in and see the show. The WP doesn’t print stories like that because that’s not funny even though a fan that I bought a ticket for was standing right next to the WP guy filming the interview in Chicago Telling The Camera Guy and Another fan That we bought Him a Ticket! That fan, in turn, reached into his pocket and bought a CD. Again, no humor in that, folks.

It’s also worth mentioning the time we played a gig with Arthur Lee early on (1993) in Semi-Valley, CA, where only 1 or 2 people were in attendance. The WP prints,”Mike Randle once played for 1 person”. HA HA HA! Knew slapping funny stuff, that, because you wouldn’t want to write what I actually SAID, now would you?

But the joke is really on them, as they show video clips from our Chicago show and that’s basically free advertisement and you get to HEAR part of the show for free! (plus the WP bought Patrick, Johnny and I breakfast two weeks ago). You read the article and you wouldn’t even know we’d played with Arthur Lee as LOVE for 13 years. And they didn’t use any of Johnny Echols interviews (in person and on film) and forgot to mention him by name altogether. I guess the pen was running out of ink. Johnny and I knew the game and only gave the writer, Josh, sound bites.

Blunt and honest to a fault, Patrick shared a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, which, coupled with a very creative imagination, the writer was able to come up with some funny comparisons to Spinal Tap. Its unfortunate all the wonderful info Johnny Echols shared with Josh (over 2 hours worth!) was completely edited out. I mean, what do they need the original guitarist and founding member of Love (and only LIVING original member) for when they have a perfectly good ‘rock fantasy’ angle to run with? Which might explain why Johnny was completely edited out of the entire story! You want comedy? THAT’S COMEDY.

Well, if you’d like to comment on your love for the LOVE, please do go to www.washingtonpost.com

We play Cleveland tonight (with Cleveland’s own Amazing ALARM CLOCKS) and are really excited to see the great folks that come out to hear the music at the Beachland Ballroom. Tuesday we’ll be in DC for the last show of the tour. If you or anyone you know is in the area, we’d love to see you.

Maybe, in true Spinal Tap fashion, we’ll go #1 in Japan just before the curtains go up!

Mike Randle