Best known for being Cleveland proto-punk trailblazers...
Driving north into downtown Cleveland you’ll notice to the east a number of large factories, some belching fire from the furnace smokestacks. To the west is the city’s gritty shipping transportation hub known as The Flats. Both of these places represent the birthplace of The Dead Boys...
There was a moment in 1978 when time stood still in Cleveland. The “moment” was defined by the Pagans, a band that was so in the moment it became their end...
Cleveland musician, writer, poet, catalyst, and proto-punk cult figure Peter Laughner...
Right after, just a few years after, no more than 5 years after Julius Caesar conquered the Gauls, seeing is that he had an affinity for splitting things up, he set his military might upon the Western Reserve...
The first time I was made aware of David Thomas he was introduced to me as Crocus Behemoth. We witnessed PERE UBU as they played a short set at the Pirates Cove...
"You were sorta like Cleveland's Warhol or McLaren" I mentioned to Johhny Dromette recently...
Yes, I formed a band a few years back called Bernie and the Invisibles. It all happened when this slush started seeping into the holes in my shoes as I waddled down the Avenues of the East Village...
A long line of squares crowded the East 24th street sidewalk , waiting to enter the vaunted Cleveland Agora. I walked up and cut left towards the door. Yeah, I'm talking about the other door. The lonely heavy metal rusted out one that took ya down and into the Pop Shop.
No city's formative punk years were complete without its own zine. In the truly underground happenings of the mid to late 70s, a local scene needed the kid who was into it enough to take and gather some photos...
The realest, coolest, most high-class cat of them all...
was born in the Brooklyn of Clevo on March 26, 1953...
The Clocks struck first in late 1979 following the breakup of three bands that were part of Cleveland's "second wave" of underground rockers.
The Dark! These guys (youths) were unbelievable. Ages from 13 to 15 years old, but man how they could play...
Whew, Fitzpatrick's "Rainbow", what a place for memories. Somehow the Backdoor Men convinced Fitz to start booking punk shows there, 78 or 79, I guess. The place might have been the biggest dump in the flats, back when every joint in the flats was a dump...
We had been working Fitzpatrick's Rainbow every Sunday night for a couple months and getting really tired of trying to do three sets in front of 10 people by ourselves. We read about the Lepers and somehow contacted them.
Les Raving Sounds was a studio side project initiated by then Clocks guitarist Mike Metoff (a.k.a. Les Raving) and Mike Hudson. The name came from a French rockabilly record called "The Ravin' Sound".
ODFX AKA Zero Defex, aka Zero Defects was a hardcore punk act from Akron. Guitarist Tommy Strange (Tom Seiler) was the former guitarist for the Bursting Brains, singer Jimi Imij had been in various groups the most notable of which was the V-Nervz...
The Defnics started out as No Dogs. It was Jim, Brandon and I with the addition of a new friend Bill DeGidio (R. Conn). We met Bill through Mark...
We're all older and wiser and fuzzy memories make for great stories!
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