Northeast Ohio Punk

You're asking about two scenes that share a highway. Cleveland was damaged art-rock made by people who read Creem and worked day jobs — Velvets, Stooges and Beefheart filtered through a city that was broke and on fire.

Akron thirty miles south was tyre factories, Kent State, and bands who treated the industrial collapse as a joke with a beat.

Cleveland, 1974-75: Rocket From The Tombs plays the Viking Saloon and the Agora with half the room hating it. The band existed about a year, straddling 1974 and 1975, playing a handful of shows mostly in Cleveland.

It splits in August 1975 — David Thomas and Peter Laughner to Pere Ubu, Stiv Bators and Cheetah Chrome to the Dead Boys. Ubu presses its own 7"s on Hearthan from 1975.

Laughner dies in June 1977, aged 24. Meanwhile in Akron, Devo — formed at Kent State after the May 1970 shootings — self-releases on Booji Boy, and the Bizarros and Rubber City Rebels split the From Akron LP on Clone Records in 1977.

London notices. Stiff puts out The Akron Compilation in June 1978, a month before Devo's debut album, and briefly sells Akron as the next Liverpool.

Who: David Thomas, Peter Laughner, Allen Ravenstine, John Morton's electric eels, Mirrors, the Pagans in Cleveland; Mothersbaugh and Casale, Tin Huey, the Bizarros, Chi-Pig in Akron.

Venues: the Viking Saloon, Pirate's Cove, the Agora, JB's in Kent, the Drome shop as clearing house. What: guitars played wrong on purpose, EML synth hiss, lyrics about industry and deformity, almost no London-style sloganeering.

How: you pressed it yourself. Hearpen, Booji Boy, Clone, Terminal — small runs, local sleeves.

Smog Veil and Soul Jazz later dug out what the majors never touched.