About Steve Traina

Steve Traina is the longtime host of the music history program Steve’s Folk Radio Show on WRUW-91.1 FM in Cleveland (streaming at wruw.org). He spent many of his formative teenage nights at La Cave, courtesy of an older sister’s intercession. It made a deep impression on him and countless others. A common refrain from fellow cave dwellers is “I grew up there.” In 2009 Steve met Stan Kain and Larry Bruner, former Resident Wizards of La Cave, and, pack rats both, they gifted Steve their incredible collections of La Cave memorabilia in anticipation of this book.
Here it is, Stan and Larry. Thank you!
La Cave and Me: A Fly on the Wall
It was the ‘60s. I was a teenager. That’s a recipe for social dynamite. Plus, I had a secret weapon to unleash on any unsuspecting doorman or bouncer: my very pretty and charming older sister. As a result, I had free reign in almost any club in Cleveland. But it wasn’t “any club” I wanted to go to, it was La Cave - that subterranean test tube that somehow managed to book the greatest singers and bands before any of us had heard of them. The Velvet Underground, Neil Young, Moby Grape, Simon & Garfunkel, and countless others dispensing musical wisdom on an eight-inch-high stage two feet away from the front tables. On many nights it was hard to determine where the band stopped and the audience began. Now, nigh 60 years later, dozens of those bands populate the various musical halls of fame where they rightly belong. They opened our heads and filled them with radical new ways of looking at life. There were casualties along the way. Not everyone made it through. But those who survived changed the world. This story is their story. I got to be the proverbial fly on the wall.
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