REBELS AND UNDERDOGS REBELS AND UNDERDOGS THE STORY OF OHIO ROCK AND ROLL REBELS AND UNDERDOGS THE STORY OF OHIO ROCK AND ROLL GARIN PIRNIA This book is a publication of Red Lightning Books 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA redlightningbooks.com © 2018 by Garin Pirnia All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992. Manufactured in the United States of America ISBN 978-1-68435-011-7 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-68435-012-4 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-68435-015-5 (ebook) 1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18 TO THE ROCK AND ROLL WEIRDOS: KEEP KEEPING IT WEIRD. Contents Introduction ix Acknowledgments xiii 1 AKRON/KENT 2 2 CINCINNATI 30 3 CLEVELAND 78 4 COLUMBUS 106 5 DAYTON 130 Notes 155 Selected Bibliography 157 Introduction OHIO IS A WEIRD STATE. IT’S AN EVEN WEIRDER PLACE TO grow up. With Lake Erie to the north and the Ohio River to the south, Ohio is otherwise landlocked. Winters are harsh, and sum- mers are uncomfortably hot and humid. The seasons make it rife for Ohioans to spend a lot of time indoors, in basements and garages, drubbing on instruments and creating art. The idea for this book germinated from my realizing just how many amazing musicians have formed bands or were born in the Buckeye State. When we think of music scenes, we think of New York City, Los Angeles, Chi- cago, Seattle, Nashville, and Austin—but an entire state dedicated to one great band after the next? And they each sound different and have their own individualities? How is that possible? So I dug deep and interviewed more than thirty folks associated with the rock and roll scene in their Ohio hometowns (and a few who didn’t grow up in Ohio). The one question I asked everybody was,What was it about Ohio that bred these bands? Was there something specific to Ohio? The consensus seemed to be that a lot of bands formed out of boredom or to combat their working-class environs. Ohioans had both an underdog and rebellious attitude in that they were going ix x INTRODUCTION to carve their own paths, no matter what. “I think there’s humility and a certain understanding of sadness in Ohio, especially among creative people,” Jerry Casale, the cofounder of Devo, says. “They’re not competing with each other and hating each other like in big cities. Frankly, nobody was paying attention to any of us, so it isn’t like you’re sucking up to the local press or thinking someone from a TV station is coming down with somebody from a record company and you got to blow this other band away, and all those things that happen in the big city. In Ohio, nobody gave a shit.” I also asked everyone what the rock scene was like in their cities and how it changed over the years. I wasn’t interested in writing a book that regurgitated history you could read in another book or on Wikipedia. I was interested in the socioeconomic factors that comprised those scenes. I was fascinated by how some bands meta- morphosed from “local band” to “global sensation” while other out- fits slaved away and went nowhere. The 1990s and the 2000s were transformative eras for bands, divided into pre- and post-internet. With the advent of online streaming services and Napster, the music industry almost imploded. People don’t buy albums like they did twenty years ago. In some ways it’s harder to start a band today than decades ago—yet bands still succeed. My musical journey also began out of boredom. I grew up in Cen- terville, a suburb of Dayton. In the nineties I listened to the radio and watched MTV to discover new music. I was aware of the Dayton band the Breeders, but I don’t think I was cognizant that they manu- factured their craft in my hometown. I attended Ohio University in Athens for three years and then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a film career. In 2002 Amoeba Records opened in Hollywood, and I went there at least twice a week to listen to and buy CDs. I got into music more, and I realized I had a voice in writing. At the end of 2003 I moved back to Dayton and worked mundane jobs. The office drudgery had one silver lining: I was able to stream radio stations and listen to CDs. WOXY (known as 97X) was a radio station once based in Oxford, Ohio. Listening to modern rock propelled me to INTRODUCTION xi start my career as a music journalist. In January 2004 I published my first-ever album review, on a Canadian-based website calledCoke Machine Glow. A few months later I moved to Chicago and began writing (for free) for Chicago Innerview magazine, a local zine that featured interviews with bands coming to town. From there I spent the next seven years bolstering my resume by interviewing hundreds of bands (mostly national and international groups) and attending scores of concerts and music fests (such as Lollapalooza and the Pitchfork Festival), and I eventually got paid for my work. I met like- minded people who were audiophiles and liked to spend evenings at rock clubs. There were occasions when I attended two shows in one night. There were times when I went to four nights of shows in a row. I couldn’t keep up that kind of pace today. In 2011 I said good- bye to Chicago’s fecund rock scene and moved closer to home, to Covington, Kentucky, near Cincinnati. I continued to write about local music, but this time I got to meet some of my hometown he- roes: Robert “Bob” Pollard, Matt Berninger, and Kelley Deal. They, along with three of the four members of the boy band 98 Degrees, were accessible. They were Ohio nice. In writing this book I had the opportunity to befriend some rock stars I grew up listening to on the radio, such as Happy Chichester of Howlin’ Maggie and Richard Patrick of Filter. With that said, Rebels and Underdogs isn’t the definitive history of Ohio music—that would work better as a tome. Even though one of the foundations for Ohio rock and roll music was funk, and many of the people I interviewed said the music and the artists influenced them, I decided to exclude both funk and R&B, as I think those genres are so big in Ohio that they deserve their own stand-alone books. (This is by no means me trying to bury a mostly black form of music; funk artists get some due in the book.) I reached out to more people than those included in the book, but some of them either declined to participate or ignored my requests. This is a book about my musical history, but, more importantly, it’s a book about my home state and the rock and roll stories that xii INTRODUCTION came from it—and keep coming. It’s a tapestry of stories told from troubadours who not only were on the scene but also made the scene. It’s weighted in life and death. Several of these bands changed the face of rock and roll, both in Ohio and throughout the world. Where would our culture be without Devo? Bob Pollard’s poetic lyrics? Or the industrial sound of Nine Inch Nails? What if punk hadn’t existed in Cleveland as it did? Rebels and Underdogs is the stuff rock and roll dreams are made of—and most of these dreams came true. Acknowledgments TO ADAM, FOR ATTENDING COUNTLESS CONCERTS AND MUSIC festivals with me, and for willingly spending time in Northeast Ohio with me. To Diablo, for being my alarm clock (whether I liked it or not), and for stealing my desk chair and letting me know it was time to stop working for the day (so he could sleep). To my family, who grew up in Ohio—my mom and her family in Akron, Dawn near Cleveland, my brothers and other cousins in Dayton, Blake in Columbus—they’re true Ohioans. To the rock stars from Ohio who didn’t live long enough—we will remember you. To Chuck Berry, for laying down the foundation for rock and roll. To Chicago Innerview magazine, for giving me my first big jour- nalism gig. To Cleveland’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Library and Archives, for allowing me to spend a day perusing their Jane Scott and North- east Ohio Sound collections. To all of the editors who let me write about music. xiii xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the bands’ and artists’ publicists and managers, for facilitating interviews. To everybody I talked to for the book—thank you for being gen- erous with your time, and thank you for sharing your life stories with me. To Ashley Runyon of Indiana University Press, for taking a chance on me twice, and for letting me write this book. And to everybody else who worked on the book with me.