By Anastasia Pantsios, Jeff Niesel and Ron Kretsch
BONE THUGS N HARMONY
While Bone Thugs didn’t make Cleveland into a hip-hop mecca or even open the door for other rap acts to get signed to major labels, there’s no denying the group’s significance. Bone merged harmony singing with hardcore rapping in a way that continues to be exploited. And even though there’s some dispute over who did it first, multiplatinum sales and Grammy awards attest to Bone’s well-deserved place in the hip-hop annals. The fact that the group made a comeback of sorts this year with Strength & Loyalty, which spawned the hit “I Tried,” only adds to its legacy. And by coming back to film the song’s video in its old neighborhood off E. 99th and St. Clair (on the coldest day of the decade, no less) shows just how true to Cleveland the group remains. - JN
CRAW
By 1990, most of the great Cleveland bands of the mid-’80s had either broken up or cut way back on gigging, and nothing emerged to fill the gap except a handful of merely competent pop-punkers, mildly eccentric gimmick bands and watered-down industrial wannabes. But the five young men of Craw, drawn together in 1989 from Akron, Indiana, Boston, Minnesota and Buffalo, were toying with a denser sound with deep roots in art punk, doom metal and 20th century classical music, anticipating the bludgeon-rock boom that was just around the corner and galvanizing an explosive new post-hardcore Cleveland music scene, along with Derek Hess and the vitally important Euclid Tavern. Cementing Craw’s status as Cleveland’s quintessential ‘90s band was guitarist Rockie Brockway’s record label, Cambodia Recordings, which served as home to much of Cleveland’s heavy-rock crop (disclosure: this writer played in a band that released a record on that label), including crucial early releases from Keelhaul and Disengage. If you weren’t hip to this tsunami, every song Craw ever recorded is available in MP3 format for free at craw.com. - RK
DESTRUCTOR
With his Auburn Records just kicking into high gear in 1985, Bill Peters happened to catch a raw young thrash band called Destructor. Though it hadn’t developed as far as his big guns Shok Paris and Breaker, it was clear to him - and quickly became apparent to most of Cleveland’s metal community - it had a once-in-a-generation magic, energy and commitment. Destructor virtually never did a show that wasn’t memorable, and most observers saw limitless potential, as it galvanized the local metal scene and its music became sharper and sharper. Signed to Island Records and preparing its major label debut, the band came unglued when bassist Dave Iannicca was murdered on New Year’s Day 1988. Many still think Destructor could have been as big as Metallica. The band staggered on into the early ‘90s and then, like Auburn Records itself, reformed in the late ‘90s, driven by a sheer passion for heavy metal. It persists to this day as one of Cleveland’s best heavy bands. - AP
DEVO
Arguably Northeast Ohio’s single greatest contribution to the world ever, DEVO were the little joke band that could. Their combination of forward-thinking music with a cheekily backward-looking philosophy made them not just actual rock stars, but almost synonymous with new wave music itself, in a triumph of and for geekdom. Their careful image management and canny exploitation of visuals, for better or worse, has gone from being the indulgent art prank of a freak band to being the way everything has been done in the music industry since their heyday. That they managed to parlay an obscure and deeply complex cultural punchline into an enduring legacy of long-term appeal would earn them props even if their music sucked. DEVO’s genius was palpable and luminous, and the tunes are still ahead of their time. - RK
GERALD LEVERT
Second generation R&B star Gerald Levert took the lessons of his father, Eddie Levert of the O’Jays, seriously. When the Shaker Heights High teenager seemed determined to follow in his father’s steps, his dad warned him that performers often get cast aside and he should secure his legacy by being a producer and songwriter as well. So Levert was a triple threat, both with the trio he formed with his brother Sean and friend Marc Cooper in the mid-’80s and in his own solo career launched in 1991. He was also a mentor to other artists such as the Rude Boyz and Men at Large and the hub of a local recording scene. His resume included production, songwriting and duets with top R&B stars such as the O’Jays, Patti LaBelle, Yolanda Adams, Keith Sweat, Johnny Gill, Barry White, Teddy Pendergrass and Stephanie Mills. Despite his premature death last year at 40, his impact has reverberated far beyond his own honeyed voice and well-crafted songs. - AP
ROBERT LOCKWOOD JR.
Active until his death last year at 91, Robert Lockwood Jr. was arguably one of the city’s most under-appreciated musical stars. It was easy to take him for granted, as he regularly played every Wednesday at Fat Fish Blue with his All Star Band. But the guy was internationally recognized as a blues icon and played blues festivals across the globe. Famous for having blues great Robert Johnson teach him to play guitar, the Arkansas singer-guitarist moved to Cleveland in 1961 after a successful stint in Chicago, where he played on some of the great albums put out by the storied blues label Chess Records. In Cleveland, he continued to release albums and played both the rock and blues clubs around town, sometimes with his All Star Band and sometimes in a stripped-down duo format with bassist Gene Schwartz. - JN
MY DAD IS DEAD
The mid-’80s was a fertile time for Cleveland’s post-punk rock underground, and there’s more than a handful of bands from that era that deserve representation in a list of the best ever. But for far-reaching influence, musical durability and perfectly embodying this city in musical form, My Dad Is Dead, nom de rock of one Mark Edwards, easily runs away with the honor. Like a lot of musicians of that time, Edwards rode a Cure/Joy Division depresso vibe, but his approach wasn’t like that of more homage-y protogoths like Shadow of Fear or Terrible Parade. His affable, intelligent, lanky-guy demeanor and catchy-as-the-flu arrangements made him an everyman figure, which imbued his melancholia with more of a winking Cleveland fatalism than overwrought drag-wave dramatics. And as the honcho behind Portion Control Distribution, he brought a lot of hard-to-find underground records to town. He’s still making excellent music at his more recent home in North Carolina, and while we wish homecoming gigs weren’t so few and far between, we can comfort ourselves with his first five albums, available for free download at mydadisdead.com/music. - RK
NINE INCH NAILS
Once industrial music went dance, an axis of the most inventive artists in the genre developed between Chicago and Belgium, making it all but inevitable that if the form had a commercial breakthrough it would happen out of the American Midwest. But nobody foresaw it coming from Cleveland, via a totally unknown act’s debut, on a record label that was originally founded for the sole purpose of releasing nostalgic compendia of television theme songs. But Trent Reznor’s Pretty Hate Machine, derivative though it was, was the 1989 breakthrough that allowed his influences to finally sell some records in malls. Released in 1994, The Downward Spiral was his real work of art; it’s a harrowing and visionary album that cemented his star status. It appeared on his vanity label, Nothing Records, that would transcend vanity to become home to luminaries like Meat Beat Manifesto, Squarepusher, EinstŸrzende Neubauten and, thanks a lot, launched the career of Marilyn Manson. We hear Reznor still makes records occasionally. - RK
THE RASPBERRIES
Much-touted popsters Big Star never played a riff as galvanizing nor shouted a shout as arousing as the Wally Bryson riff and Eric Carmen shout that open “Go All the Way,” a song so visceral that it can instantly transport you back to 1972 when the Raspberries looked like they were going to be the biggest thing ever to explode out of Cleveland. They never did, but they left behind music that’s still cherished by a host of top musicians such as Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. Listening to it now, there’s a rangy freshness and charm to power-pop classics like “Let’s Pretend,” “Ecstasy” and “Overnight Sensation” that stand apart from the jaded sophistication or glum seriousness of much of the era’s music. To many observers, they were successful in capturing, if not the total originality, the camaraderie and youthful innocence of the Beatles even if it was, as with the Beatles themselves, largely an illusion. – AP
ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS/PERE UBU/THE DEAD BOYS/DAVID THOMAS
When Rocket from the Tombs started playing in the Cleveland Flats, the area had yet to undergo any sort of renaissance. That didn’t bother the fearless proto-punk band, which took to the bombed-out industrial setting quite well, one bit. After the group split, its members went in two equally significant directions. Singer David Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner started Pere Ubu and guitarist Cheetah Chrome and drummer Johnny Blitz started Frankenstein and then the Dead Boys. Both the Dead Boys and Ubu took some of Rocket’s best tunes (punk classics like “30 Seconds Over Tokyo,” “Sonic Reducer” and “Final Solution”) along with them. Ubu would have longevity, tapping into the art-punk sound of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s that made acts such as the Talking Heads and Television household names. To this day, Thomas, who now lives in London, keeps Ubu going and sustains a series of side projects, all of which provide outlets for his literate-yet-emotionally damaged psyche. And Rocket continues to tour, too, with Television’s Richard Lloyd serving as a rather able fill-in for the late Laughner. - JN
FRANKIE YANKOVIC
It may be hard to believe now but Frankie Yankovic was once one of the biggest pop music stars in America. Propelled by the post-war boom and Americans’ desire to reconnect with home and roots, the affable accordion player from Collinwood had two million-selling hits in the late ‘40s: “Just Because” and “Blue Skirt Waltz.” He combined a gift for entertaining with a knack for modernizing the sound of traditional Slovenian music so it bridged generations. With the hits under his belt, the former Cleveland bar owner took to the road and essentially stayed there for the rest of his life. Though polka music never again enjoyed the popularity it did in the ‘40s and ‘50s, as families grew away from their Eastern European roots, Yankovic remained a superstar on the polka-festival circuit and eventually won the first Grammy ever awarded in the polka category in 1986. He died in 1998 at 83. - AP
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