The Miracle Vitamins / February 12 / Smiling Skull

Saturday night was one of those nights that I had to piece together with my friends afterward, just to make sure everything was as preposterous as I remembered.

It was.

One is always bound to run into some characters at the Smiling Skull and, perhaps because the weather is getting nicer, Saturday night seemed to bring out more characters than usual. Townies were getting in touch with their argumentative sides. A group of shufflers-- who probably would have felt more at home at Crystal or even Dave Rave-- were clamoring for “birthday shots” for their “girl’s 21st.” Two dogs-- referring to the animal, not the two old men hitting on miss birthday shots-- were getting their mingle on. You would think that two dogs roaming freely about a tavern would be odd. It wasn’t. Those dogs were the most normal, chilled out, occupants of the Skull Saturday Night. But I digress. I’m here to talk about the music.

We stayed for one band. It was all we could bear.

They were called The Miracle Vitamins, and they hailed from Toledo. I’ve been instructed by a friend who is much more tolerant than I am to state that some people were enjoying it. I, however, would like to clarify that “some people,” refers to an enthusiastic potential cousin or groupie of Miracle Vitamins and what was presumably his less enthusiastic sidekick, who proceeded to dully nod his head in the affective manner characteristic not of the ironic-though-appreciative hipster kid, but rather of a normal human being who is extremely bored.

Miracle Vitamins was a folk group. They had a drum machine. They had a leapfrogesque-piano-keyboard-toy. I cannot make this stuff up.

Every song in their set inexplicably referenced New Hampshire. That prompted my friend, an Arctic Monkeys fan, and myself to write a parody of "Fake Tales of San Francisco" on the spot: “He talks of the east coast but he’s from Toledo/ I don’t quite know the distance/ But I’m sure it’s far/ Yea I’m sure it’s pretty far/ And yea I’d love to tell you of my problem/ You’re not from New Hampshire you’re from Ohio/ So get off the stage/ and put down the fake piano thing.” Not very creative, I’ll give you, but hey, maybe if we get Weird Al to record it we’ll have ourselves a hit. Regardless, we ditched the Skull soon after and headed for the Union Street Diner.

The waitress asked our orders and two of my friends ordered the same thing. In reality, his response was “I’ll have what he’s having.” In a perfect world it would have been, “I’ll have what he’s having, as long as it doesn’t include any Miracle Vitamins.”

*Contributions were made to this in the form of collective-remembering from Corey Sheely [non-staff writer], who offered a non-future-music-critic’s perspective; Chris Dobstaff [staff writer], who diligently took notes on his iphone and offered invaluable help in the act of penning uncreative song parodies; and Jacob Bowman [staff writer] who failed to make what could have been the night’s most memorable quote an actual quote.

--Amanda Norris, Staff Writer