Garin Pirnia - Rebels and Underdogs: The Story of Ohio Rock and Roll

REBELS AND UNDERDOGS

REBELS AND UNDERDOGS

THE STORY OF OHIO ROCK AND ROLL

GARIN PIRNIA

This book is a publication of

Red Lightning Books

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Bloomington,

Indiana 47405

USA

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2018 by Garin Pirnia

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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

OHIO IS A WEIRD STATE. ITS 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 summers 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, Chicago, Seattle, Nashville, and Austinbut 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 didnt 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 to carve their own paths, no matter what. I think theres humility and a certain understanding of sadness in Ohio, especially among creative people, Jerry Casale, the cofounder of Devo, says. Theyre not competing with each other and hating each other like in big cities. Frankly, nobody was paying attention to any of us, so it isnt like youre 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 wasnt 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 metamorphosed from local band to global sensation while other outfits 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 dont buy albums like they did twenty years ago. In some ways its harder to start a band today than decades agoyet bands still succeed.

My musical journey also began out of boredom. I grew up in Centerville, 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 dont think I was cognizant that they manufactured 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 start my career as a music journalist. In January 2004 I published my first-ever album review, on a Canadian-based website called Coke 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 likeminded 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 couldnt keep up that kind of pace today. In 2011 I said good-bye to Chicagos 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 heroes: 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 isnt the definitive history of Ohio musicthat 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, its a book about my home state and the rock and roll stories that came from itand keep coming. Its a tapestry of stories told from troubadours who not only were on the scene but also made the scene. Its 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 Pollards poetic lyrics? Or the industrial sound of Nine Inch Nails? What if punk hadnt existed in Cleveland as it did?