Cleveland's Screaming: The Movie

CLEVELAND PREMIER TOMORROW (Oct. 6, 2007)!

2007-10-05T16:16:00.000-07:00

Here's an article about Cleveland's Screaming's Cleveland premier from Scene magazine in Cleveland. The Cleveland premier will take place tomorrow night (Oct. 6th) at 9:15 PM at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. Y'all be there!

I just returned from Japan and I'm jet-lagged to post more right now. Please show up for the movie!

TOMORROW!

2007-07-24T09:58:00.000-07:00

Don't forget, tomorrow is the day! Get your ass out to the Egyptian Theatre for the premier of Cleveland's Screaming! at 7:30 PM. Info on address, how to get tix, promo stuff and what-not is all over this blog. So all's I'm saying this time is BE THERE!

GET YER TICKETS NOW!!!

2007-07-22T11:23:00.001-07:00

Tickets for this Wednesday's world premier of Cleveland's Screaming are available on-line from Fandango. Just CLICK HERE. Some people have told me they couldn't or didn't want to get tix on line and asked if the show would be sold out. The Egyptian is a very big theater, so you're safe getting your tix at the door.

And I'll give you a parking hint. If you can't find street parking nearby, just go to the Hollywood and Highland shopping center. Buy anything there & you'll get a validation that entitles you to 4 hours parking for $2. That's better than any other lot nearby. I usually get a delicious Oatmeal Scotchie cookie from the cookie shop in the courtyard.

Anyway, here's an out-take from the movie. I liked this story. But it didn't fit the overall flow of the film, so I ended up dropping it. Go Blue Go Die!

NEW CLIP: GOING HARDCORE

2007-07-06T10:11:00.000-07:00

Here's a new clip from the movie. This one's about some of what made the Akron/Cleveland hardcore scene unique and ends with a medly of tunes from some of the scene's best bands.

Here's the press release:

In the early 1980’s Cleveland, Ohio was screaming.

Screaming at the senile B-movie actor who’d somehow been elected president. Screaming at the Bible-thumping lunkheads who wanted to curtail all forms of free speech. Screaming at the mind-numbing complacency of a generation of vacant-eyed mall rats — our so-called “peers” — who didn’t seem to notice that we were being cheerfully led straight down the path towards global Armageddon. Northeast Ohio’s homegrown hardcore bands thrashed so hard they put the fear of God into nationally known punk bands who made it to our forgotten little watering hole.

Don Letts’ PUNK: ATTITUDE examined punk as a worldwide phenomenon. Paul Rachman’s AMERICAN HARDCORE looked at the hardcore scene in the USA. But the real American hardcore scene was a truly local phenomenon. 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.

Produced and directed by Brad Warner, author of the best-selling books HARDCORE ZEN and SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP.

CLEVELAND’S SCREAMING will have its world premier Wednesday July 25, 2007 at 7:30 PM at the Egyptian Theater 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA 90028.

POSTER? DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HER!

2007-06-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for I have not posted in a very long time. But as the premier of Cleveland's Screaming draws near, I'll be posting lots more.

So here it is! Hot off my hard drive, the poster for Cleveland's Screaming! Wee-hoo! If you click on it you should be able to see a bigger version. Download it. Send it to your enemies!

The movie will have its world premier on Wednesday July 25th at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Be there or be reborn as a snail for 50,000 lifetimes, suckers!!

Tickets are available now from Fandango. Just click here to order yours!

DVD THIS SUMMER!!!!

2007-02-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

Yay! I just made a deal with Scat Records to release Cleveland's Screaming on DVD this Summer. It will be a DeLuxe supersized 2 disc set with all kinds of extras. I'll let you know more when I know more.

And I just realized, I don't have the YouTube version of the promo for the movie on this blog yet. A terrible oversight. Here it is:

Finally, I think most of you may know this by now. But I'm doing a weekly column for the Suicide Girls website. It appears on Saturdays at noon Pacific time. You don't have to be a member to read it. Just go to suicidegirls.com and click on "News."

"RADIO NAIROBI" by Bongo's Jungle Party

2007-01-23T11:03:00.000-08:00

Bongo's Jungle Party was formed after the break up of Zero Defects with ex-Zero Defects drummer Mickey X-Nelson Hurray! on bass, his brother Paul "Bongo" Hurray! on drums and Dave McLean on guitar and vocals. This is their hit single "Radio Nairobi." The Fender Music Master bass that Mickey is playing thru most of the video is the one I played in Zero Defects. It belonged to Jimi Imij our lead singer. Mickey also plays the role of DJ Apeman Curtis. I love this song...

MORE MUNCHKINS

2006-11-27T20:07:00.000-08:00

Here's another special secret preview from the movie Cleveland's Screaming! The true story of The Munchkins:

As I mentioned before the Munchkins were a big part of the Cleveland/Akron punk rock scene even though they were never in any bands. They were always there, supporting what we were doing and that really meant a lot. Here's their story.

NEW VIDEOS!!

2006-10-02T14:45:00.000-07:00

I've put up two more videos on You Tube. You can also see them by scrolling all the way down to the bottom of this page.

One is "Nazi Submarine" by The Plague, one of my favorite songs from the Celeveland/Akron hardcore scene. The other is "By The Day" by Zero Defects. This version is different from the one I had up before, so take a look. I've incorporated a lot of the old video I got from Vicki Sprague. The video by The Plague also has some old stuff in it. I got that from Bob Richey of the Pagans and Pink Holes. Dig the Pritzi's Honor T-shirt on Plage guitarist Bob Sablak!

I'm working on editing the movie. It needs a bit of a trim before I send it out on the festival circuit. But I'll be sending it very soon.

NEW PROMO!

2006-09-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

I just put a new promo for the film up on YouTube. Click the title of this article to go there, or just scroll down to the bottom of this page and click on the video to the right. On my other blog, these videos show up on the right side of the screen. Can't figure out why they come out on the bottom here...

AMERICAN HARDCORE

2006-09-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for my last posting was nearly a month ago. And this one is a reprint of what's on my Hardcore Zen blog.

I've been hard at work on the fim, though. It's just about ready to get seen by people who might want to distribute it. So I'll be sending it out in the next couple weeks. Fingers crossed!

Last night I went out and saw the movie American Hardcore. It's a documentary about — what else? — the American Hardcore punk movement of the early to mid 1980's. I first heard about this film a couple months ago when I was already pretty deeply into making my film Cleveland's Screaming. I was kinda worried the movies would be very similar. And, of course, in some ways they are. But, while American Hardcore is about the big movement and its major players, my film is a lot narrower in scope, focused as it is on just a single small geographic region.

American Hardcore is a terrific film. This is the first documentary movie that has really dealt with what has to be one of the most significant cultural movements of the late 20th century in a comprehensive way. Don Letts' Punk: Attitude really doesn't go much into Hardcore. Docs about specific bands like We Jam Econo about The Minutemen don't really cover the movement itself — though We Jam Econo is also a terrific move as is Punk: Attitude. There are a whole lot of, frankly pretty lazy semi-documentaries out there which, for the most part, just string together a lot of live clips without any real context. American Hardcore really puts it all together in an entertaining and educational way that should open some eyes to what went on in them days.

The bummer to me was that the filmakers completely ignored the Ohio scene. But, then again, they ignored the Kansas scene and the New Mexico scene and the Alaska scene and on & on... They're California kids. What can you expect but a California-centric film? The general consensus seems to be that California was the heart of the Hardcore movement. I have my doubts about that. I think the main reason for that impression is that kids in California had better access to the means by which to get their stuff heard. Even if they weren't directly connected with the entertainment industry, kids out here are so steeped in how that industry works that even when they go DIY they're a hell of a lot more savvy and efficient than we could've been back in Ohio where the people around us were all tire factory employees and steel workers. While it's certainly a fact that the Los Angeles and Orange County scenes were tremendously important, I think that importance has been somewhat exagerated by the fact that most of the folks who wrote the history of the movement come from out here.

Which is not meant as a put down of the film. I still highly recommend it. It's amazing to me no one has done a movie like this before. I mean it's like everyone thinks Nirvana just sprang up from the ground fully formed in 1991 or that Green Day invented punk rock. You kids today! You don't know how your elders suffered for your sake! Hack! Hack! Where's my Metamucil? What did you kids do with my teeth? Rotten brats...

ANYWAY, the neatest part of the movie for me was an interview with Dave Dictor of MDC Stains (authors of "John Wayne Was a Nazi" and "Corporate Deathburger") is talking about MDC's transition from a more punk rock sound to Hardcore. He says something like, "What we had in common with bands like The Bad Brains, Minor Threat and Zero Defects was..."

I didn't hear the rest cuz I was too busy scraping my jaw off the floor. Thanks Dave!! At least someone from the NE Ohio scene got a shout out.

Another kind of interesting moment for me was a brief interview with a guy who was like a roadie for Black Flag or something — wish I could remember. Anyhow, the guy is now the minister of a Universalist Unitarian church. In his interview he says something like, "Sometimes you see ministers who were formerly rock and rollers who say that that was when they were a sinner and now they're different. But for me it wasn't like that. Being a minister is a progression from what I did as a punk rocker." Actually I can't remember what he said, so I'm totally misquoting him. But it was pretty much that sentiment. Which is how I feel about my role as a Zen monk. I never felt like I abandoned punk for Zen. To me, it's more been the next logical step down the same path.

American Hardcore is set to open in select theaters throught the US next week, I think. But most likely it won't get a huge PR push. Even in LA I had to dig to find out about it. I missed the actual premier because I didn't know it was going on and I check the papers pretty thoroughly for that kinda stuff since it's part of my job. So you may have to look for this one. But I highly recommend you do because it's really worth seeing.

NEARING THE FINISH

2006-08-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Forgive me, for it has been nearly a month since my last posting. I have just finished piecing together the latest rough cut of Cleveland's Screaming. And, by Gosh! It looks like a movie now!

The process of creating any artistic product (product? item? thingy....?) is always interesting. The answers to your various problems are always incredibly obvious. Yet it can take ages before you finally notice them. In the case of the movie one of my biggest hang-ups is that, as a musician and songwriter, I hate to cut anyone's songs! Yet, for reasons I cannot really fathom, you really can't get away with more than about a minute of continuous music in a movie. There are exceptions, of course. Musicals do it all the time. But that's a different form. Some movies carry it off well and it works. My friend Norman England's movie THE iDOL (see link) has a long musical interlude that works. But in documentaries, you really can't get away with it. Finally I broke down and cut all the musical interludes to 60 seconds or less.

It's lucky that many of the songs I've used are under a minute long anyway. Of the four Zero Defects (ODFx) songs I put in, I only had to cut one of them. The other bands were not so fortunate. But I promise I'll make sure the movie gets issued as a 2 disc set on DVD. The second disc will have all the complete performances. Plus I want to put on a big chunk of the video shot by Vicki Sprague back in the early 80's.

Now that I've got a rough cut I'm happy with, I'm gonna start shopping the film around. There are still 2 more interviews I want to do, which I'm hoping to do next weekend. So it's not 100% complete. But it's 90% complete and the main structure of the movie is all there.

Now I better go & do some real work....

MORE EDITING......

2006-07-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

I'm in the process of putting the stuff I shot in Cleveland earlier this month into the movie. Once I do that, it'll be ready to start sending out to distributors. I can't wait to start collecting those rejection notices! In the meantime, if anyone is interested in booking it, please write to me at doubtboy@mac.com. I'm ready to take this out on the road.

Here's a photo I snapped at the interview I did with all three of the Munchkins, the three girls who used to come to every Zero Defects gig and scream for every song. Me with all three of 'em at once. Yum-yum!

RECOVERING FROM THE WORLD PREMIER

2006-07-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

Belated thanks to everyone who showed up at the Jigsaw Saloon (not Tavern, sorry) for the showing of the rough cut of the movie! I got a lot of cool interviews while I was out in Cleveland including Mr. Fraser Suicyde and all three Munchkins at once (a lingering wet-dream of mine for the past 23 years).

Once I get some of the new stuff edited together, I'll be putting more bits up here & more of the film up on YouTube. I heard from some potential distributors already which is very cool. We'll see what pans out....

WORLD PREMIER JULY 1, 2006 in PARMA, OHIO

2006-06-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

Cleveland's Screaming will have its world premier on Saturday, July 1st at 8PM at The Jigsaw Tavern, 5324 State Road in Parma, Ohio 44134. That's just 3 blocks South of I-480. For more infor visit the Jigsaw's Myspace page at:

http://www.myspace.com/jigsawsaloon

Or check out this link which gives less info but does include a map:

http://www.pluggedincleveland.com/restaurants/947+jigsaw+saloon.html

Also, the trailer is now up on YouTube. You can see it by clicking on the word "link" below or on the title of this article. Click a buncha times & make it more popular than all those dimwitted people who point their webcams at themselves and complain about things!

After the movie, you'll get to see the first performances by ace area hardcore pioneers The Dark, Numbskull and Spike in Vain in something like two decades. That oughta be majorly cool. I'll also be there. Flying all the way out from El Lay for the thing even though I have to be back in Los Angeles for the showing of Ultraman Max and Mirrorman Reflex at the Egyptian Theater near the corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Highland on July 2nd. Y'all come out to that show, too, ya hear?

Phew!

YET ANOTHER NEW TRAILER AGAIN

2006-06-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

I know you're sick of hearing this. But I have once again revised the movie trailer. This time I've incorporated some of the footage from Vicki Sprague which hasn't been seen in 23 years! Click on the link to your right and enjoy!

THE VICKI TAPES

2006-06-07T00:40:00.000-07:00

My God, they do exist. Video tapes of hardcore shows at The Dale in Akron circa 1983 and the entire Cleveland show to raise money for the New Hope compilation LP. For, lo, I have seen them. And I can say without reservation that not one guitarist at those shows knew how to tune his instrument. And that the Urban Mutants were, as I suspected, truly the best hardcore band Akron ever produced. Starvation Army as a 3-piece with Jim Krane were Gods. Only The Guns could rock the Orkin commercial theme. ODFx were, as Doug Enkler described, "over-the-top ridiculous fuckin' hardcore." Agitated did agitate. Spike in Vain, Idiot Savants, Outerwear, Soylent Green(!)... I need a cigarette (& I don't even smoke!) I'll bring copies with when I come to Cleveland at the end of this month. Be there for the world premier of the film!!!

YET ANOTHER NEW TRAILER!

2006-05-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

I have made another new trailer for the film. This time I think I'm starting to get it right. To view it, click on the title of this post, or on the word "link" below, or on the link to your right. Check it out & feel free to leave a comment about what you think of it.

VICKI FOUND!!

2006-05-22T14:56:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty happy. I finally located the mysterious Vicki. Not only does she still have the video tapes she made of a whole bunch of the Akron/Cleveland hardcore bands back in the day, she has already started burning some to DVD for use in the movie. Hoo-ray!

For those of you who haven't been following the tale (and why should you have been?), a woman named Vicki taped a bunch of the hardcore shows that ODFx, Agitated, Starvation Army and a bunch of other bands played around '82 & '83. But no one I knew had seen her in 20-odd years. The shows she taped were at The Dale, a little neighborhood bar we kinda took over for about 6 months. During that time all kinds of hardcore luminaries from the Meat Puppets, to DRI, The Dicks, MDC and a bazillion more, played shows there. ODFx was more-or-less the house band at the time & opened almost every show.

It's incredible to find this stuff. Like the Holy Grail as far as I'm concerned. I didn't even know it existed. For all these years I had no memory at all of us ever being video-taped, let alone being video-taped numerous times. So this is really mind boggling. I haven't seen the material yet. That's gonna be weird...

The world premier of the film is set for the 1st of July in Cleveland. I'll post more information when I have it!

THE MUNCHKINS

2006-05-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

I just revised one of the sample bits of the movie pretty extensively. It's the link to your right that says "The Munchkins + Why Do You Hang Out by The Offbeats." Instead of just the song, you now can see the story of how the song was created and who it's about.

The song is about these three girls who used to come to every hardcore show, often accompanied by their mother. And not as a chaparone, either. In fact, it was mom who discovered the scene and brought her daughters to the shows to check it out! Maybe today the idea of a woman in her late 30's bringing her kids to see a punk rock show sounds passe. But this was definitley not the norm in 1982.

Check out the video to learn all about it and to find out who Toby was and why he was always biting people.

Click on the title to this blog entry or on the word "link" below.

ANOTHER NEW TRAILER

2006-05-07T23:16:00.000-07:00

I just re-did the trailer again, again. It improves each time. Been talking to Fraser "Suicyde" Sims of Starvation Army about doing an interview with him in July. Should be good.

Oh yeah, and the movie will have its official premier in Cleveland on July 1st. More details when I get 'em!

NEW TRAILER & NIRVANA

2006-04-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

I just re-did the trailer and posted the new version. It's still not right (as the song says, "I'm Not Right" by The Guns). But it's better than before. It gives a better feel for what the movie's actually like, I think.

Today I was looking for old stuff to sell back to Amoeba Records and I pulled out the Nirvana box set. Yeah. I bought the thing. But I bought it used. I figure Coutney Love can stand the loss. Anyhow, I put the DVD in just now, to see how they handled the video portions.

I remember what it was like seeing those kinds of scenes on TV in the early 90's. Total deja vu. It looked exactly like a bigger version of the scenes when ODFx and the rest had played at The Dale in Akron or the Lakefront in Cleveland. It never bummed me out kids were still doing that stuff and I had to admit Nirvana was a damn good band. What bugged me was how the media reacted as if this was all brand new & completely without precedent. It also bothered me how the whole thing was being promoted as some kind of amazing grass roots movement, absolutely spontaneous. In actual fact, the same kind of publicity machine was pushing Nirvana the way they'd been pushing the New Kids on the Block. A friend of mine was a radio programmer at a small Akron radio station back then & he told me how the folks at Geffen were doing everything in their power to get him to play Teen Spirit. If they were spending that much time, effort and energy on a station in Akron that you couldn't even pick up 10 miles away, just imagine what was happening in the rest of the country.

In terms of intensity, Nirvana in 1991 couldn't hold a candle to ODFx in '81, or Starvation Army or Agitated. The difference was that what we were doing actually was wholly without precedent. Punk rock back then wasn't just pretending to be dangerous, it actually was dangerous. Take a gander at the "Dover Story" segment of the documentary (over there to your right). I'm amazed no one was killed at that gig.

I have to admit, though, that songs like In Bloom or Teen Spirit are quite simply better songs than most of what our bands came up with. In their own way Nirvana were originals just because what they did came from their own real experience. And that is important. I think what actually killed Kurt was the media. He knew what really went on ten years earlier. He knew it was all hype. He was a genuine person. His songs deserve to live on. It's too bad he couldn't find a way to live with it because he was an amazing artist.

CLEVELAND'S SCREAMING: THE BANDS

2006-04-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

I oughta give some background on the project before I go into any details. OK. Sometime last summer a guy named Jim Lanza wanted to put together an exhibit of his photographs from the old Cleveland/Akron hardcore scene. In order to publicize the exhibit, he wanted to find a bands from those days who'd be willing to reunite for a one-off show at the gallery. So he posted on the clepunk.com "Bathroom Wall" forum. To everyone's amazement, not just one, but several of the bands from the old days were into playing together again. Within a short time, the original idea became much bigger. It soon turned into a multiple band reunion show at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland and a date was set for December 10th, 2005.

Here's the final line-up with my own subjective views on each band. You can find more info on these groups at the Clepunk website (www.clepunk.com) under "Bands."

OFFBEATS
My two favorite bands on the scene were ODFx (which I joined) and Offbeats. Offbeats had a strong pop sensibility. Their songs had hooks, melodies, all that good stuff which most hardcore bands lacked. I'm not even sure they qualify as hardcore except for the fact that they played all the hardcore shows. Their style was more like the Ramones or the Dickies. They put out an LP on Relativity in the mid 80's. Unfortunately, that album really didn't represent them very well. Recently they've issued a CD on Smog Veil Records which finally gets it right.

THE GUNS
The Guns started out as a teenage thrash duo. These kids were a phenomenon to behold. I think Scott Eakin was 14 and Dave Araca was 15, or maybe the other way around. But when they played it was just pure power. Their song "I'm Not Right" is a hardcore hit that should have been. Every bit as intense yet catchy as "Institionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies or Black Flag's "Rise Above." It's the soundtrack to the trailer of the movie. The band expanded and started playing a more metal sound which won them a lot of fans. Dave Araca passed away and that looked like the end for The Guns. But Scott reformed the group for the December show and put on a smokin' performance.

AGITATED
Agitated started off being a metal band. At least that's what they told everybody at the time. But they always sounded like thrash to me. Tommy Hawk of Offbeats was the guitarist and main song writer, so they sometimes sounded like a thrashier version of Offbeats. Lead singer Mike Mohawk had one of the first mohawk's NE Ohio had ever witnessed. Their original bassist, Johnny Phlegm, wanted no part in the show, so I was drafted as a replacement. One of the most fun shows I've ever played.

ODFX
I've put up a whole page about ODFx (aka Zero Defex) at http://homepage.mac.com/doubtboy/ODFx.html. So go there and check it out.

PLAGUE
The Plague were another amazing group. In some ways they remind me of Agitated. The fact that they shared the same lead vocalist kinda ads to that effect. Their EP "Nazi Submarine" is one of the most sought after punk rarities ever, and with good reason. A hot, hot tune. When the band played Germany they were afraid to play it, thinking they might start a riot. Instead the fans screamed for it at every show.

Two other new bands also shared the stage that night. CHROME KICKERS are basically The Plague reunited, an amazing band who kick chrome for sure. DRIVEN HIGH features Scott from The Guns on drums along with two hot chicks on bass and guitar. Another band not to be missed.

PUNK ETHICS

2006-04-13T07:04:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite parts of the documentary is when Dave Giffels who was in a band called the Difficult, and has since written a very good book about Devo, talks about how playing at hardcore shows exposed him to what he now thinks were a very good set of ethics. Just by playing at punk shows, he said, he got exposed to something positive at a very young age which a lot of people he's met since then never got exposed to at all.

Of course, I agree with this & I've said it lots of times before. But this may have been one of the more unique facets of the hardcore scene in NE Ohio. Certainly it wasn't completely unique. The Washington D.C. scene had a strong set of ethics, too -- which influenced us in Akron to a great degree. But I'm not so sure that's what punk rock was everywhere else.

I didn't really understand this until I started writing about Zen. One of the first things I put up on my first Zen website long before my book Hardcore Zen was published, said, "punk is Zen, Zen is punk." This was a play on a famous Zen saying, "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." I said it because I thought that a lot of the ideas I gleaned from punk rock, particularly about ethics, were the also fundamental to Zen. Zen, for me, was the carrying through of what I started learning in punk rock.

But when I put that up I got a lot of flak, particularly from British people who read it. To them, punk rock was a lot of noise and clatter that lead to drugs, suicide and all kinds of other nasty stuff. Granted, these people were not part of the scene in the UK, so their view was formed by what they heard about punk in the mass media. Still, there is some truth to that view. Even in Cleveland, there was a small group who got into smack and at least one of our crowd died as a result. Still, the overall movement was anti-drug and tried to stick to certain ethical principles.

Which begs the question, why didn't it work? Why did it fly apart so fast? Why couldn't we keep that together if it was so good? I don't really know. I'd like to think some of us did. But, on the other hand, I got very disillusioned with punk rock by about 1983 -- which was only 2 years after I had come to believe it could save the world. It took another two decades before I could appreciate what it had been...

WELCOME!!

2006-04-12T22:25:00.000-07:00

Hiya! I've opened up this blog to let folks know about my movie "Cleveland's Screaming!" It's a documentary about the hardcore punk scene in Akron & Cleveland, Ohio in the early 1980's. There are plenty of punk rock docs these days. But they all focus on the nationally and internationally known bands. But punk rock was never about big, famous bands signed to major labels -- or even major independents. So, as good as some of those docs are, in a very real sense they are missing the point.

Punk was a grass roots movement that took place in a large number of places simultaneously. And though there was an overall unity to the movement, each local scene had its own unique flavor. In those pre-internet days, communication was not nearly as swift or as thorough as it is today. So one city's interpretation of what it meeant to be punk was often vastly different from another's.

A few punk superstars emerged from the Akron and Cleveland scenes -- Devo, the Dead Boys, Chrissie Hynde, Pere Ubu. But by the time hardcore emerged in the early 80's, the media spotlight was no longer focused on Northeast Ohio. The scene that developed there was totally unique. And yet it was very much like other hardcore scenes across the country and around the world.

In the documentary "Cleveland's Screaming," you'll get an intimate look at the NE Ohio scene.

I'll be using this blog to post progress reports on the making of the film. Enjoy!