"Man of Music: A Tribute to Michael W. Riley" (6 p.m. start)  

November 14, 2009

Saturday 6:00pm

Detail:

Dichotomy was the watchword in Michael Riley’s life. He was an imposing mountain of a man who was relatively soft spoken and gentle hearted, he was generous unless you were among the unfortunate number he had written off for personally held reasons, and he was a lovable curmudgeon, equally quick with a laugh or growled dismissal. He was devoted to his mother, five sisters and brother, but kept his family life private and rarely talked about the father who abandoned them, making Michael the de facto head of the clan.

Riley’s résumé was equally diverse; he studied African-American culture at the University of Cincinnati before a curriculum existed, he was the long-tenured counter guy at Mole’s Records and Buzz Coffee Shop’s music store, he worked the door/ticket window at Bogart’s and helped book New Wave and Punk acts there in the ’70s and ’80s, his long running WAIF radio show, Danceable Solution, and his Dancin-N-Dancin DJ gigs (with longtime professional and personal companion Tebbe Farrell) exposed his listeners to a wide spectrum of new music and he was crucial in the career resurrection of Jump Blues piano master H-Bomb Ferguson.

When Riley died this past June from a massive stroke, it was clear his passing would leave a gaping hole in the Cincinnati scene and his life and talents were worthy of significant tribute. Friend Tebbe Farrell has been planning that tribute for months and it comes to fruition this Saturday at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center when Farrell presents “Man of Music: A Tribute to Michael W. Riley.”

Here’s where dichotomy gives way to irony; the DJ blasting out the set at Man of Music will be intimately aware of Riley’s most passionate musical loves, because the DJ will be Riley himself.

“It’s a multimedia montage,” says Farrell. “It’s his playlists, artwork, poetry and music notes, and playing will be his radio shows and music mixes, with his voice and all kinds of IDs, from Ronnie Spector to Gang of Four.”