In the late ’60s, singer-guitarist Nils Lofgren would bring his band Grin to town at least twice a year. Lofgren, who currently plays in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, talked about those days when we spoke to him via phone earlier this year, prior to Springsteen’s appearance at the Q.
“There were always fabulous audiences and great FM stations that would have you on the radio and support your music,” he says. “It’s a great town. I’m still coming there on my own and with E Street. It still is one of the great rock cities.”
The history to which Lofgren alludes is indeed a rich one. Disc jockey Alan Freed staged the Moondog Coronation Ball, arguably the first rock concert, at the Cleveland Arena in 1952, cementing the city’s reputation as a rock ‘n’ roll town. Elvis Presley would play some of his first concerts north of the Mason-Dixon line in Cleveland. The Beatles played Public Hall in 1964 and then returned to perform at Municipal Stadium in 1966. That same year, Mike and Jules Belkin formed Belkin Productions, a regional promotion company that would bring major acts to town, and Henry LoConti launched the Agora, a string of regional clubs that would host national and local acts.
Cleveland had become the country’s rock ‘n’ roll capital.
Major artists even used Cleveland as a launching pad. David Bowie played his first-ever U.S. show in Cleveland. Rush received early radio support in Cleveland, helping propel the band to worldwide success.
But is Cleveland still “one of the great rock cities,” as Lofgren put it?
“It does have a good rep as a rock ‘n’ roll town and has a strong local advocate in [Live Nation’s] Michael Belkin,” says Gary Bongiovanni, the editor and CEO of the concert tour industry trade publication Pollstar, when asked if Cleveland remains an attractive tour stop. “The only thing I can say is that the big tours that play a relatively small number of markets ultimately go where they think they can make the most money. Everybody plays New York, L.A. and Chicago. After that there are lots of markets competing for dates.”
Bongiovanni says that artists don’t use hard data to determine tour routing. Rather, they rely upon “anecdotal experiences at all levels” to determine whether shows “generally sell better, worse, or as expected,” compared to other markets.
You’ve gotta wonder if Cleveland’s slipped in that respect, since many of the major tours featuring some of pop and rock’s biggest names have gone to Columbus and Pittsburgh recently but not Cleveland.
“There’s only one reason shows are going to other cities,” says Ali Hedrick, a Seattle-based booking agent for the Billions Corporation, which represents more than 100 national acts, including Death Cab for Cutie, Neko Case and St. Vincent. “Those shows do better in places like Columbus and Pittsburgh. Maybe the Cleveland economy isn’t as strong. I don’t know why. Now, I can even get strong offers out of Grand Rapids. There are other places to go. There are more cities and venues popping up, but I still favor Cleveland because I love the Beachland Ballroom so much. Cleveland is an amazing city, but I just think there might be a bigger group of people going out to shows in those other cities.”
While most of last year’s top-grossing tours included stops in Cleveland, the ones that didn’t were significant. Former Beatle Paul McCartney, U2, the Rolling Stones, the Who and Foo Fighters all skipped town. Motorhead’s 40th anniversary tour, which took place last year, didn’t include a Cleveland stop — a true tragedy now that frontman Lemmy Kilmister has died.
And looking forward, the list of acts on the road in 2016 that aren’t coming to Cleveland seems to keep growing. Black Sabbath’s farewell tour isn’t scheduled to come here, and Iron Maiden ain’t coming to Cleveland either. Pearl Jam and the Cure will tour extensively this summer, but neither act will come to Cleveland. Radiohead is on the road but doesn’t have a Cleveland date. And legacy acts such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson and Steely Dan have all announced tours that don’t include Cleveland dates. The recently reunited Guns N Roses announced the 21 cities it will hit on a summer tour. Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Detroit made the list, but not Cleveland.
These are acts that used to include Cleveland on their tour itineraries. And many of them are Rock Hall inductees. But their most recent tours have bypassed us. Why?
Representatives from AEG declined our requests for interviews, but plenty of other local pundits weighed in.
“It was a different world then,” says former WMMS program director John Gorman, when asked about why Cleveland drew such big concerts throughout the ’70s and ’80s. “Cleveland was a well-oiled machine. There were so many ways to break an artist out of Cleveland. At WMMS, we were right at the center. We had showcase nights at the Agora. Up and Coming Night would play there first. We used to do the Coffee Break Concert in the studio. As years went on, we took it to the streets. You could have a rock concert at 1 p.m. that was another showcase for mostly up and coming bands. Jules Belkin was running Belkin Productions, and he would talk to the station, as would Hank LoConti and Buddy Maver at the Agora. There was an awful lot of communication. Cleveland has a higher musical IQ than most markets, and in those days we could exercise it.”
In 2001, Belkin Productions sold to SFX (and then Clear Channel/Live Nation), but the company continues to have a local office in Northeast Ohio and promotes shows at Blossom, the Q and Hard Rock Live. House of Blues is also a Live Nation venue, and the promoter often brings acts to other venues in town, ranging from Playhouse Square to the Akron Civic Theatre and Lakewood Civic Auditorium.
“Mounting a national tour is a complex jigsaw puzzle with many issues that come into play: artist desire to play the market, venue availability, routing from city to city/mileage, ability to sell tickets for the attraction, local airplay/product sales/streaming, other competitive traffic in the marketplace and no question, the amount of income the artist can make compared to another market,” says Live Nation’s Barry Gabel, who denies that Columbus and Pittsburgh have become more enviable destinations for touring acts. “This is true for theater dates and arena dates, as it is for stadium dates. The answer is never just a., b. or c., but ‘all of the above.’ Northeast Ohio continues to be a vibrant concert market. At the end of the day, artist management usually has a specific game plan to maximize artist earnings, career path and an overall direction on tour promotion.”
LoConti passed away in 2014, but promoter Chris Zitterbart now books acts at the Agora and brings a wide range of bands to town, including metal, rock, pop and hip-hop.
“It’s a mixed bag,” says Zitterbart when asked about Cleveland’s status as a desirable tour stop. “I think there are a lot of tours out there. A lot of good ones come to Cleveland, and a lot of good ones miss Cleveland. It comes down to simple economics. I can assure you that if every show was sold out, bands would not skip Cleveland. A big part of it is that if fans want the shows to come, they have to go out and support the shows that are booked. I see Pittsburgh and Columbus getting some of the shows we should get on some level. If you’re routing the tour, you don’t want to play two cities that are too close to each other, so sometimes agents feel it’s easier to do Columbus and Pittsburgh; but then again, there’s no reason bands couldn’t play Cleveland and Cincinnati too.”
Denny Young, who works with the Elevation Group, the team that books rock and pop acts at the Trinity Cathedral and will also bring concerts to the new Goodyear Theater and Hall in Akron, admits that it’s become tougher to get bands to come to town.
“The reality is that shows are definitely bypassing Cleveland,” says Young, who also worked at Belkin Productions from 1988 to 1992. “Because it’s a business, people are looking at the expense to do a show and the revenue that you’ll bring in on a show. They take those shows to the place where the expenses will be the least and the revenues will be the most. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. The kicker is that when I worked at Belkin Productions, Jules and Mike Belkin owned Belkin. They lived in Cleveland. Cleveland was critically important to their business.”
Young says that now that Live Nation, a publically traded corporation, owns Belkin, control of the company has shifted to corporate headquarters in Los Angeles.
“If Peter Gabriel and Sting are doing a deal with Live Nation and Live Nation has bought 20 dates, Live Nation says it will take the shows to the 20 markets that will yield the best return,” says Young. “Jules Belkin back in 1989 would have said, ‘There’s no way Sting and Peter Gabriel are going to bypass Cleveland.’ The agent would have told them how much it costs and how little profit he might make. Jules would have said, ‘That will be my problem.’ Today, Peter Gabriel and Sting are not coming to Cleveland. Peter Gabriel and Sting are going to Columbus.”
Young says that Cleveland lacks any sort of artist development.
“What Cindy [Barber] is doing at the Beachland and what Kathy [Blackman] is doing at the Grog Shop is awesome, but it levels off after that,” he says. “We have great bands coming in and then something happens. People like to blame radio. We don’t have an alternative radio station. But big deal. People are listening to music online. Once you get out of the clubs here, the artist development is lacking. That’s what we want to focus on at Goodyear Theater and Hall. We want to develop more artists.”
Annie Zaleski, a locally based freelance writer who contributes to Alternative Press magazine, Scene and the Plain Dealer, among other publications, says, “An artist needs a show on a certain day, and if there isn’t an open venue at the size they need, it doesn’t happen.”
She says Clevelanders shouldn’t take it personally when an artist doesn’t come to town.
“Sometimes bands aren’t coming to town in a given year because they’ve been there the previous year,” she says. “And sometimes other factors come into play. For example, Paul McCartney hasn’t played Cleveland since 2002 — but in his current rounds of touring in recent years, he’s making a concerted effort to play cities and markets he’s never played, ever.”
She says that many indie rock bands go to Columbus because the state capital has “a huge amount of younger concert-goers there thanks to the presence of the Ohio State University.”
“Plus, Columbus is a big city — the 15th-largest city in the U.S., population-wise, according to statistics through 2014, and booming,” she says. “Cleveland, meanwhile, is the 48th-largest city, and has steadily lost population since 1990. The Cleveland market simply isn’t as populous as it used to be, which means there are fewer potential concert-goers.”
She cites the fact that PromoWest books a variety of different-sized Columbus venues, including A&R Bar, the Basement, Newport Music Hall and Express Live!, which means “there’s a clear pipeline bands can follow in the market as they grow.” PromoWest also owns Stage AE in Pittsburgh, and can book bands in both cities.
“You frequently see bands playing both [Express Live! And Stage AE] on a tour, since it’s the same promoter handling these venues,” Zaleski says.
And then, you have the “radius” agreements.
Now in its fifth year, the annual Rock on the Range festival that takes place in Columbus each summer poses a logistical problem since many of the bands that play the festival sign “radius” agreements ensuring they won’t play within the immediate area of the festival. A radius clause prohibits bands from playing in the region for a certain time period before and after the festival. Bands that play at Lollapalooza, for example, are barred from performing within 300 miles of Chicago—including cities as far as Detroit, Indianapolis, and Milwaukee—for as long as six months prior to and three months after the festival.
“[Rock on the Range] is a great event, and I enjoy going every year, but many of the bands sign radius clauses, and they’re often bands that I book,” says Zitterbart. “So instead of having them come through in the summer, I have to wait for the fall. It’s something I learned to adjust to and deal with it.”
Zitterbart says he’s been surprised that acts such as Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Motorhead have recently skipped Cleveland, a city with a thriving local metal scene and where hard-rock acts have historically drawn well.
“It is disappointing that those big metal shows haven’t come to town,” he says. “I think the admission tax being at eight percent doesn’t help the cause. I’m not saying that’s the only issue, but it doesn’t help the cause. Ozzy and Sabbath have missed Cleveland a number of times, but you expect Maiden to play here. In the past, you maybe don’t notice that Slayer is playing Columbus and not Cleveland; but with social media, everyone now knows where they’re playing.”
Live Nation’s Gabel says the admissions tax can be a deterrent but it’s “simply one element on the booking decision.”
Gorman maintains that once Clear Channel bought Cleveland radio stations and then absorbed Belkin under the guise of Live Nation, the synergy that existed between local promoters and local radio went by the wayside.
“The tours are all booked nationally and Cleveland is one line on the ledger,” says Gorman, who adds that despite population loss Cleveland is still one of the top 20 media markets in the country. “With the exception of [the Internet radio station] OWOW and college stations, who plays anything local? We don’t have that flavor. I’m not sure why so many acts are skipping Cleveland. It could simply be that the decisions aren’t being made in Cleveland.”
Zaleski agrees that radio — or the lack thereof — is a major factor.
Detroit is the No. 12 radio market in the country, which means if/when an artist is coming to town, chances are they’ll have a station promoting the concert and playing new music by the band. Cleveland comes in at No. 31, which doesn’t give the city as much clout in that area. Columbus has several solid new music stations (CD 102.5, 105.7X), that promote the indie- and rock-leaning shows there, which, again, also helps. While Cleveland’s college radio stations are among the best in the county, the lack of a strong mainstream alternative-leaning new music station hurts. And the WMMS offshoot 99X, a HD station on a secondary signal, doesn’t pack much of a punch since its signal is so weak.
“With all that being said, even if tours go to Columbus and Pittsburgh first, chances are a subsequent leg will include Cleveland — and I even see some tours that do feature all three of the cities,” says Zaleski. “It’s not as though we’re shut out 100 percent of the time for all tours, big or small. And when it comes down to it, Cleveland has a rather full slate of shows. Country and pop do well here, for example, and the vast majority of classic rock acts play the market. Plus, acts that have solid history with the city reward the fans with special engagements or stops”
She cites the fact that Joe Walsh and Dropkick Murphys opened their respective recent tours in the area with two shows apiece. Hanson played two nights in Cleveland in October, one of just 10 cities in which the band did this; and acts such as Dave Matthews Band, Barenaked Ladies and Rick Springfield consistently stop in Cleveland on tours.
“The city might not always be a must-stop for certain tours — or certain-sized tours — but there’s a lot of positives about the market, and a lot of great shows that do come here,” she says.
WRUW promotions director and DJ Roger Ganley doesn’t share Zaleski’s optimism. He’s been particularly critical of the city’s status as a rock ‘n’ roll town and says the city’s music scene has slipped into a state of decline.
“Commercial radio here doesn’t play new music,” he says. “That affects a lot of different things. Years ago, when the Odeon was thriving, we had a great relationship there and would do band meet-and-greets. None of that happens anymore. In the old days, Live Nation would book tours into Cleveland, Columbus and Pittsburgh, but now they just take the shows to Pittsburgh. It’s less work for them. Last summer, the Slayer tour with King Diamond skipped Cleveland and went to Pittsburgh. It didn’t draw well there, but half the people there were from Cleveland. They also played Columbus the night before. Things like that make no sense. Some of the people booking shows in Cleveland don’t get the music. I’m so tired of driving to other cities to see concerts that should be taking place in Cleveland. “
Another local music fan who wished to remain anonymous agrees with Ganley and summarizes the situation as a problem that can be traced back to the corporatization of the touring industry and isn’t specific to the Live Nation office in Cleveland.
“The concert business has changed dramatically from what many of us used to know and love,” says the anonymous fan. “In the old days, the Live Nation/Belkin’s Cleveland office essentially only booked shows for Cleveland. That changed when Live Nation downsized and combined other markets into their Cleveland office’s responsibility. Today, we have Live Nation Cleveland booking shows in multiple markets like Columbus, Pittsburgh and Detroit in addition to Cleveland. Tours often offer limited dates in a region, so Live Nation Cleveland is forced to pick and choose which of their markets to put the tour in. If they choose Detroit and Columbus, for example, then Cleveland and Pittsburgh are left out. Vice versa if Cleveland and Pittsburgh are chosen. They analyze what markets make the most financial sense to do the shows in. The reasons tours are bypassing Cleveland are much more complex then just fingering blame on the promoters. It’s a whole different ballgame out there today. I liked the old days better, when Cleveland got everything.”
This article appears in Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2016.
What good is Cleveland’s resurgence if we can’t get a decent fucking show. I find hard business facts and numbers way more telling to the truth than smoke blowing Cleveland politicians.
Cleveland needs to be weary of the self manufactured hype and realize we are still a long way off of a true come back until outsiders see an upside in investing in us.
I’m sure lack of sales has nothing to do with the exorbitant price of concert tickets for major stadium acts like Paul McCartney and U2. Maybe if going to concerts was affordable for the average person tickets would actually sell in middle markets pike Cleveland .
One of the major problems that I see is that our primary theater-sized venue (the House of Blues) sucks. It’s horribly put together with low ceilings, poor sight lines, and terrible security. Bands that need a venue of that size realize that Cleveland doesn’t have a great option. The Agora is primarily booking metal shows. The Odeon and the Beachland Ballroom are too small for shows that size. The Masonic Auditorium is getting some recognition, but it’s still an unknown quantity for many fans. So they’re left with the House of Blues, which is a terrible venue for fans to see a show at. So fewer fans get out to see shows there.
Why exactly isn’t the Behemoth aka Factory of Sadness, utilized as a venue for Hall of Fame level tours??? Is it because the RnR HOF is a big fat joke???
Rock on the Range was nothing a few years ago… But somehow it is a draw, to see 452 acts in 3 days, play for 20 minute sets… ( gag )… Why can’t all the promoters get it together in Cleveland with it’s own world class event / festival ( We do get the TRUMP CIRCUS this year)…
The music scene IS thriving here in CLE… but a definite lack of ANY radio outside of the college stations is apparent… NO, not everyone listens to radio on the net… YES I am sick of radio stations with a 20 song playlist… The giant former ‘MMS is a joke and ‘NCX only plays like 3 songs from Zeppelin.
It doesn’t help that competing venues are often drawing fans off of each other with similar genre bands playing the same night.
$50-$100 for tix, $20 parking, $10 beer, $5 water, $35 Tshirts… venues that treat the paying customer like shit once they walk through the door… (Live Nation, I’m talking to you here)… the list could go on forever…
It seems to be a complex problem, there IS a ton of music coming to CLE…
I see it now living in Tampa Bay, we get a lot of shows that by-pass Cleveland with Cleveland even being a larger metro market. Not sure why.
Let’s not forget that Cleveland Stadium was home to the World Series of Rock from 1974-1975, 1977-1980 and, in the category of major entertainment events, was the venue for the first pro wrestling super-card — the Superbowl of Wrestling in August 1972. But the remembrances of these glory days is like waxing poetic about a Series 1 Jaguar XK-E…..while viewing the rusted shell inside a dilapidated garage that was last opened when Reagan was president.
Clear Channel destroyed the Cleveland radio market, now they are in dire straits financially.
One of the things that wasn’t mentioned is the influence of the unions. It pains me to say this as a union supporter, but I know when the Dead played here in ’81, the stagehands union insisted on setting up their gear, and screwed it up so badly that it delayed the show several hours while the Dead’s crew corrected it. The Dead never returned to Cleveland proper after that, preferring the less-restrictive environments of the Coliseum and Blossom.
But even today, using local union labor drives up the cost of putting on a show, so only those with guaranteed sales (i.e., major pop acts) will come here. The solution is for the unions to loosen their rules somewhat. You shouldn’t have to hire a local teamster to back your truck up to the loading dock (at a minimum 4-hour call), for example.
Just to fill in a couple of historical points. One of the reason that Cleveland became “the home” of rock and roll was that between the years 1955 and 1975, Cleveland was consistently rated as one of the top 3 cities in the world for per capita record sales.
(This comes from a study that SONY did back in the late 1970s, sorry I don’t have the exact reference…….but a note to all music researchers: ALL the major companies did studies on the biz beginning in the mid-60s right up to the present time…..INVALUABLE resources for cuttin’ thru some of the bullshit. For example, the 1978 SONY study proved for the first time that pirate/bootleggers bought FOUR TIMES the amount of music they were “ripping off”. Remains true to this day.)
These big acts didn’t necessarily come here as “big acts” they came as emerging acts which makes CLE a perfect market of financially affordable, attentive audience, and location. Perhaps it is best to embrace what we have while we have it and they go out to make millions. MGK, Bone-Thugs, Michael Stanley ect..
I think it is also important to point out that there are a good number of great venues in and around Cleveland that are not exclusives for LiveNation, Bowery Presents, AEG, etc. : Everything from Now That’s Class, to Mahall’s, Pat’s in the Flats, Grog Shop, Beachland, The Masonic, etc. As a result, we get skipped on megatours a lot of the time and that is really just fine. What we get instead are artists that genuinely want to play here and know they will have an audience that wants to hear their music. Sure, there are exceptions and sometimes a cheap all ages show for a band I like that is on their way up can be worse than stabbing myself in the face with a butter knife, but I moved from NYC to here and I am genuinely (mostly) happy with the array of artists that play here.
“Plus, Columbus is a big city — the 15th-largest city in the U.S., population-wise, according to statistics through 2014, and booming,” she says. “Cleveland, meanwhile, is the 48th-largest city, and has steadily lost population since 1990. The Cleveland market simply isn’t as populous as it used to be, which means there are fewer potential concert-goers.”
That pretty much sums up the ignorance of the corporate music broker these days. Columbus proper’s population inclusion spans to parts of 5 counties and 225 square miles. Cleveland proper is about 1/6 of a single county at 78 square miles. Cleveland is 1/3 the size in land area, but it nearly doubles Columbus in population density. Cuyahoga County has nearly double the residents of Columbus and tops Franklin county by 100,000+. The Cleveland metro area is also much larger, as is the television market. But, when the corporate promotion hacks on the coasts offer comparable bids, they pull their list of population rankings by city proper. “Hey, Columbus is #15 on the list! It has to be the better market. Right?” — and that’s about the extent of it.
It’s so expensive to attend shows that it becomes a choice of who you want to see the most and that sucks. I would go see all the shows if I could afford it. I also cannot stand Blossom Music Center. It’s a pain in the ass to get in and out of and if you don’t have seats in the pavilion the sound is distorted and the view is nearly non existent. It’s really sad and I wish someone could figure out a better solution for the musicians as well as the fans.
Notice that the problem is one thing only: money
Notice who’s “to blame”: Live Nation.
Notice who sold their local booking business to Live Nation for – yes – money. The Belkins, or, as they want us to think of them, Cleveland’s champions. Ha.
The problem is that the Belkins could have still been multimillionaires without selling out to Live Nation, and they could still be booking major concerts here.
Those few extra million that the Belkins got to sell out Cleveland is the reason why we get bypassed.
Period.
Maybe it’s just me but the article doesn’t really seem to answer the question and hypothesis in the headline.
Just a bunch of filler.
Am I the only one who doesn’t care if some of the huge acts who are past their prime don’t stop here? I’ve seen some great, really affordable acts (Fitz and the Tantrums, Elle King) at the Masonic Auditorium, am seriously looking forward to Florence and the Machine and of Monsters and Men at Blossom, and just got tickets for Flogging Molly at Jacobs Pavilion. I’m a lot more interested in these newer, frankly much more interesting bands than some of the oldies whose voices are shot (though I’ll cop to seeing The Moody Blues at EJ Thomas in Akron.) At 54 I’m not exactly young, but I’d much rather see these newer folks than the dinosaurs and they are coming to town.
Thank you Mark for calling out Zaleski- a really ignorant statement. I’ll give you Columbus has an edge with the huge concentrated student population, so can pull those up and comers and bands that play the Newport, but even Columbus knows they don’t have even close to the population of Cleveland within a 30 min drive. I think promoters/bookers know the numbers well enough, but still doesn’t explain why we aren’t getting the legacy acts. Also, did we get more when Tower City Amphitheatre was going? I seem to remember a good mix there, even if the venue left something to be desired: Wilco, Foo’s, Hall&Oates, Carole King, etc.
Cleveland radio is it’s own worst enemy. I didn’t hear of The Black Keys until i stumbled across them on the internet, not here on Cleveland radio. And that was when they were awesome. The were on their 7th album, touring world wide and headlining festivals and yet the largest venue in Cleveland they played until 2008 was The Beachland Ballroom (which is an awesome venue). That’s a direct result of zero local radio support. I can’t even listen to local radio anymore, just the “same old thing”.
Not sure what an “Annie Zaleski” is – and don’t dispute that Columbus has a younger audience (w/OSU) – but she apparently has been drinking the Columbus “we’re the 15th largest city in the US” Kool-Aid that so many do, blindly… Sure, the Columbus heavily annexed “city” may be larger… and Cleveland (within city limits) may be much smaller – but don’t be ignorant….
Within about an hour of downtown Cleveland (Northeast Ohio) – there are 3.5-4.0MM people – A top 20 market . Within an hour drive of downtown Columbus, there are about 2MM people. A top 35 market.. Columbus is both the “largest city” in the state… and, by far, the “3rd largest” metro area in the state… Columbus is half as big as metro CLE/CAK… Sorry, Annie. Get your facts straight. If acts aren’t playing in Cleveland, it may be because we don’t buy tickets. It isn’t because the Columbus market is bigger. It isn’t. Not even close.
1) Well put, Mark. Columbus is not even close to being a larger market than Cleveland. That’s a typical delusion held by people from Columbus.
2) Paul McCartney’s next tour is coming to Cleveland.
3) Clevelanders: Boycott shows in Columbus. Why would you want to go to that cultural void anyway?
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Um… Paul McCartney did two shows at the Q in Cleveland back in August 2016.
I know this article is old but it is more relevent than ever. Are the people booking these tour dates stupid? No I mean really? Just because Columbus annexed their suburns and put their name on them doesnt change the fact that the Northeast Ohio market dwarfs the Columbus market. They cant even support a major professional sports team and dont tell me about the bluejackets because nobody cares
We have 3 major pro teams…..this market kills the Columbus market but apparently these guys look at population numbers of the city ….makes no sense!!!!
This article was a good read! Cleveland definitively has a local music scene ready to explode with a handful of great new bands that need that nudge that seemed to be provided back in the day. Artists like Punch Drunk Tagalongs, Heart & Lung and DOAKS among other bands are truly special and need to be heard! A lot of these great local bands have a hard time getting those coveted opening spots on CLE tour dates because theyre mostly corporate run shows and there is no commercial radio station playing local music so its just a shame! The lack of bands exploding out of CLE is certainly not because nobody is rocking here. Its just that if a band rocks hard in the middle of the woods is the band even rocking at all?! My answer is yes and you need to hear about it first and then get your arse into the woods and see it.