Veteran local punk rocker Tom Dark has just issued Cleveland’s Screaming, an independent documentary film about the Northeast Ohio hardcore punk scene from 1981 to 1984. The two-DVD set includes interviews and archival footage of bands performing DIY shows in what look to be basements and dive bars.

The discs include footage from acts such as ODFx, Offbeats, Fester, Starvation Army, Pink Holes, the Dark and Guns.

“The real American hardcore scene was a truly local phenomenon,” reads the press release about the movie. “All across the USA every city had its own scene with its own unique character and its own tale to tell. Stories about the scenes in L.A., D.C. and New York have been done to death. It’s time we got to know what was happening in the rest of America. Cleveland’s Screaming is the chronicle of one American hardcore scene and the people who made it. It’s about why their involvement in punk rock inalterably changed the course of their lives forever. It’s a close-up look at how the events in a single city reflect the way an entire generation’s attitudes and values were utterly transformed by this grass-roots movement.”

The movie also features footage from the Cleveland’s Screaming reunion shows that local Jim Lanza has organized over the past several years. The documentary movie was an Official Selection at the International IndieGathering Film Festival in 2016. The DVD set can be purchased at redhourrecords.com.

This article appears in Jan 11-17, 2017.

Jeff has been covering the Cleveland music scene for more than 25 years now. On a regular basis, he tries to talk to whatever big acts are coming through town. And if you're in a local band that he needs to hear, email him at jniesel@clevescene.com.

2 replies on “Documentary Film About Cleveland’s Punk Rock Past Arrives on DVD”

  2. When the original punk scene crashed and burned – and it can be argued that the one-off gig by punk super-group Vicious White Kids on August 1978 at the Electric Ballroom in London was the final cut – hardcore emerged from the ashes with an incredible energy that exploded into subgenres heard today. “Let’s get this established joke a shove” – indeed.

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