Various - Cleveland Confidential LP

Limited edition translucent orange vinyl. "When I say 1980 was a kind of dead zone in the Cleveland music scene, I can hear a collective, 'Isn't every year a dead zone in Cleveland?' Go ahead, take your Johnny Carson-era jokes and see what they buy you. Puff your chest about NYC in '75 or London in '76 or L.A. in '77 to some 27-something today. Allow me to save you face and remind you to add in late '70s Cleveland. Because when you revisit this comp of struggling, straggling, oil-stank Cuyahoga River rats, it might sound like the most intriguing current day, underground punk. "Here was compiler Mike Hudson (Pagans) and pals/enemies circa 1978-82 (when these rackets were recorded), glancing out bar windows to see 'hoods of crumbling warehouses and factories that, unlike in England, couldn't be blamed on the Nazis. Musically, they were inspired by the fifteen (give or take) forefathers of that early '70s Cleveland legend (Rocket from the Tombs, Pere Ubu, Dead Boys, Peter Laughner, Mirro