Listen: A Northeast Ohio Music Preservation Project: Recent Episodes
Chris Noga
My name is Chris Noga. From 1988 until 1993, I played guitar and wrote songs for the incredibly obscure Cleveland Ohio band, North By Northwest. We released one 7″ single, one five song EP, one cassette single and appeared on one compilation CD. We spent about a hundred hours in the recording studio trying to find our sound (almost did, too) and we played less than a dozen live gigs. We were, however, proud to be an extremely small part of what was arguably the golden age of Cleveland music when a number of immensely talented musicians and bands wrote and performed their own music on their terms. From power pop, straight ahead rock and folk to post punk, electronic, avant-garde, the Cleveland music scene from 1985 to 2000 thrived and while there were varying levels of “success,” what really developed was a very cool sense of community. This work-in-progress is the story of those bands, artists, venues, recording studios and supporters of that moment in a rich history of Cleveland music.
This month we feature an interview with Mark Addison of the legendary Generators and a block of music covering the Akron Sound.
It’s May 2019. Spring is finally here on the Northcoast and it’s time for another podcast from the Listen Project.
I love power pop. There's nothing like a mix of crunchy and jangling electric guitars with a layer of acoustic guitars driving underneath and topped off with tight two or three part vocal harmonies. With roots in the Beatles, Beach Boys and the Byrds, the genre has been hard to define for over a half century but fun to listen to. This month's Listen podcast focuses in on the power pop in my NE Ohio music collection ranging from the mid 1970's to mid 1990's. I know I missed some bands that could/should have been included, but I also know that I can count on you to fill in some blanks by posting in the comments. I hope you enjoy the podcast - play it loud enough to make sure the Spring that has (finally) arrived here on the Northcoast sticks around. You can find most of the music from the playlist at my YouTube channel.
There are two parts to the Listen project. The first is preservation of all the great music that came out of NE Ohio from the late 70s to 2000. The second part, which, to me, is equally, if not more important than the first, is to recirculate this music to both the generations that heard it the first time around, but to a new generation as well. I have hundreds of hours of music posted on my YouTube channel, but sometimes we need a little more context and that is why I have decided to do a monthly podcast featuring music and talk. Now, I am not a DJ - never have been, either, but I can't seem to convince THE local artist DJ (ahem, Jim Benson) to come out of retirement (YET) so I put together this prototype 60 minute podcast. I admittedly stumble through some of the narration but I didn't have the time (or desire) to re-record it and I'm still learning how to tweak levels and such so this is purely a test to see if, A. I could actually do it and B. if anyone really wants to hear something like this. Take a "listen" (see what I did there) and leave me a comment, positive, negative or in-between.