Woodward Theater Presents:
Event: THE RAISINS
Dates: Friday, December 5 | Saturday, December 6
Times: 7 doors, 8 showALL AGES
Venue: The Woodward Theater | 1404 Main St., Cincinnati, OH 45202 | (513) 345-7981 | news@woodwardtheater.com
Info / Tickets:
https://www.woodwardtheater.
https://www.woodwardtheater.
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The LEGENDARY Raisins return to The Woodward Theater for their annual holiday reunion show(s) on Friday 12/5 and Saturday 12/6!
About THE RAISINS:
The Raisins’ self-titled 1983 debut album might have been the quartet’s only official release, but that 11-song, 43-minute effort was just the most obvious touchstone in a legacy that continues to reverberate in the Queen City. The Raisins’ prime-era '80s lineup — guitarist/vocalist Rob Fetters, keyboardist/vocalist Ricky Nye, bassist/vocalist Bob Nyswonger and drummer/vocalist Bam Powell — will be reuniting once again at The Woodward Theater this December.
All four have played consistently in one Cincinnati-based project or another since The Raisins disbanded in 1985: Nye as a widely admired blues and boogie-woogie piano player; Powell in various bands, including the ongoing Bucket with Nyswonger; and Fetters in a pair of beloved power-pop outfits that also included Nyswonger (The Bears and Psychodots), followed by five stellar solo albums, the most recent being 2023’s Mother.
As you would expect of a band with four different songwriters and personalities, The Raisins’ songs were all over the map, from straight-up rockers and new-wave ditties to R&B-flavored numbers and prog-leaning oddities. The band’s best-known song, the Fetters-penned “Fear Is Never Boring,” was a regional hit, earning heavy rotation on WEBN, whose far-reaching airwaves delivered the song’s provocative opening lyrical salvo to anyone with a radio dial: “Mama’s little baby likes fear and torture — ouch/Mama’s little darling likes violent sex.”
If The Raisins’ dreams of fame and fortune never quite came true — the fact of which no doubt informed the quartet’s unexpected disintegration in 1985 — that lone album did yield a positive review from the Village Voice’s “Dean of American Rock Critics,” Robert Christgau: “These four Adrian Belew-produced Ohioans do their passion proud, with Rob Fetters’ funny but not parodic (or slavish) Springsteen impression on ‘Miserable World’ a typical high point. The songs stick, too, though the lyrics are matter-of-fact enough about bent sex to make me wonder what the really kinky people in Cincinnati are like. Then again, in Cincinnati, a purist mainstream rock band may well define kinky.”
Kinky or not, The Raisins’ biggest asset was their rousing live shows, which drew a rabid following to bars and clubs across the city, long-gone places like Alexander’s, Shipley’s, Crossroads and Cooter’s. Evidence of the band’s stylistic breadth and live acumen is evident on Everything and More, a hard-to-find, self-released compilation of 56 songs they performed between 1980 and 1985. It’s a head-spinning, loose-limbed showcase, a recorded monument to why so many jumped at the chance to witness the band’s recent reunion shows.
CHECK OUT this official music video for "Fear Is Never Boring": https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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MORE ABOUT:
THE RAISINS: https://www.facebook.com/