It’s time for one of my all-time favorite parties! The Cincinnati Entertainment Awards! Sooo, let’s talk about the party! Last year, I was stunned to win the CEA. I really felt like I didn’t deserve it when I looked at the list of other nominees in my category. But later that night, when I won, The Fairmount Girl’s Trashie for Best Hair, that, I knew I deserved! I LOVE the Trashies! Melissa Fairmount and Dana Hamblen, members of Cincinnati’s first rockin’ girl band, The Fairmount Girls, created the awards after being let down by how “dressed down” musicians were when they attended the CEAs.
The first handmade Trashie Doll was a tribute to soundman, Shawn Norton. It was a “Shawn” doll complete with Jesus Lizard t-shirt. When the gals presented it to Shawn at Old St. George Church (where the CEAS were held for several years), Shawn opened his jacket showing that he was wearing his Jesus Lizard t-shirt that night! Nailed it! The second Trashie Doll was the “McCabe McCloud’ honoring Dan McCabe, a personal hero of the girls.
According to Dana, after this it evolved to be more about the fashion. “We both love hospitality and fashion and award shows. WE created this role for ourselves and luckily City Beat embraces us enough to let it happen. I wear the same fur coat every year; we have a toast at the Omni Hall of Mirrors before.” Melissa added, “One of the main reasons we started it was because we would get so excited every year for the CEAS, we’d be "Grammy style" dressed up, but when we would get to the awards show, everyone was dressed down. The next day we would talk about the fashion, or lack of, and we started the Trashies because we wanted to see people dress up, it’s silly fun, and it churns our awesome little music scene here. And well, keeps us going!”
The Trashies are presented at The After-party, which this year, is at BLDG in Covington. (http://bldgrefuge.com). If you Google “FAIRMOUNT GIRLS FASHION TRASHIES”, the whole page is filled with links to the awards! I’m with the girls! It’s a fun and fabulous addition to the festivities!! I’m going “sparkly gypsy” this year. ;)
If you’ve never gone, I hope you’ll consider it this year! I’ll leave you with some fond memories of CEAs past by a cast of local music characters I reached out to. I’m not gonna lie, the replies were so hilarious and indecipherable, that I decided to end with a stream of consciousness style and anonymously… (To protect the, err…innocent)
“Please stop punching me”
“That was good and messy.”
“Who hired the water thrower?”
“We had a gig; a member of Banderas accepted our award, never to be seen again…”
“MILF…”
“I told the magician that opened for us that our name was The Sunglasses.”
“We were told we didn’t win so we were at Bakersfield eating tacos…”
“I broke my glasses, got knocked out while on stage, continued to sing lying on the ground, slid down that entire staircase, and lost my booty shorts!”
Enough said! Get there!!
