He laid down his bass and walked off, ending Cleveland’s first punk band, before the music was even named. By the gig’s end, bassist Craig Bell was the only Rocket left standing onstage. He stormed off, a row erupted in front of the audience and Laughner followed suit. Guitarist Gene “Cheetah Chrome” O’Connor invited his friend Steve Bator onstage to sing, incensing Thomas. The band they helmed straddled the chasm between the carnivorous assault of the Stooges and the more cerebral approach of German art rock a la Can and Neu! In eight months, they managed a raw demo tape broadcast over WMMS, a handful of bloodthirsty gigs (including a July 1975 opening slot for Patti Smith and Television at the Piccadilly Club) and some potent original material that got picked over when the band divorced one month later.Ī farewell night at the Viking Saloon that August became an all-out onstage brawl. Volatile singer David “Crocus Behemoth” Thomas also reviewed bands and gained bookings for the upcoming groups at the Viking Saloon, where he worked as a doorman. Guitarist/songwriter Peter Laughner -a brilliant, self-destructive rock ‘n’ roll poete maudit with a deadly Lou Reed/Velvets fixation-spread the local gospel nationally via his music criticism in Creem. But its twin leaders did as much as anyone in establishing, nurturing and proselytizing for a new Cle-town rock underground. This band being so radioactive that it subdivided into two of punk’s most glorious outfits- Dead Boys and Pere Ubu-alone make them legendary. Meet Cleveland punk’s Big Bang, Rocket From The Tombs. Please listen to our playlist, “The Street Where Nobody Lives”: Cleveland Punk, 1970-1980, as you read. In the process, they helped invent new, harsher musical and lifestyle modes. The local media didn’t write about them-there was no label interest at all, until 1978.” They played dive bars in The Flats -rough joints called Eagle Street Saloon and Pirate’s Cove, which catered to sailors and bikers-because nowhere else would book them. They formed bands and did original songs, but they never got support in Cleveland. You always had a small group of people who loved that kind of music. At the same time, because of the strength of the local radio stations, we got the best British bands of the time: T. Weldon noted “the New York Dolls and Television played there before they had a record out. The Gibson Melody Maker Carmen played on the record was eventually sold to Joan Jett, who used it on “I Love Rock ‘N Roll” and every one of her records. 5 breakout hit “Go All The Way” wed the Who ’s bombastic Hiwatt power with the Beatles ’ jangly 1964 charms. Their infectious 1972 Billboard Hot 100 No. Then there was the Raspberries, a proto- power-pop act that married members of local ‘60s garage act the Choir with rock genius Eric Carmen. Simultaneously, WMMS became an FM radio powerhouse well into the ‘70s, with an “underground” rock format that helped break David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen nationally. Read more: Here's how to get free tickets to Anti-Flag's 2021 North American tour From all reports, future Rocket From The Tombs / Pere Ubu sparkplug Peter Laughner attended all but one of those gigs. At a time when Boston was the only other market to fully embrace them, Lou Reed and crew played Cleveland 14 or 24 times (depending on who you talk to) across 19. “But for some reason, it’s a major music media city.” The Velvet Underground found an eager audience there 15 years after Freed’s rock ‘n’ roll revues at the Cleveland Arena provoked riots and forever linked the music with juvenile delinquency in the public mind. “Cleveland is a working-class town with very unsophisticated tastes,” Mirrors drummer Mike Weldon told Savage. He collaborated with local DJ Alan Freed in propagandizing this hot new sound over WJW, sponsoring Freed’s radio show, “The Moondog Rock ‘N’ Roll House Party.” But how could Cleveland-a torched-and-trashed post-industrial landscape by the ‘70s, famed for the Cuyahoga River being so polluted that it burned - not be a punk incubator? It’s certainly a rock ‘n’ roll capital, since Record Rendezvous owner Leo Mintz rechristened rhythm and blues records in the early ‘50s by that ancient blues slang term for sexual congress, selling them to local white teens. music journalist Jon Savage, in his crucial ‘70s punk history England’s Dreaming, acknowledge this. Alternative Press’ native home of Cleveland, Ohio, stands alongside New York City and London as one of punk ’s birthplaces.
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