Various Cleveland Rocks

Product Description

Vinyl format includes a digital download card. CLEVELAND ROCKS and it never rocked harder than it did in the mid 70 s, when a record industry survey showed that more records were sold per capita in Cleveland than any place else in the country. Former Clevelander, Steve Popovich who was heading the A&R department at Epic Records at the time, was ready to leave corporate life and return to Cleveland, a city he loved and often defended. In mid 1976, Popovich returned home to Cleveland to set up the label s main office in a house he bought there as well as a label office in New York. Spector s cover of Billy Joel s Say Goodbye To Hollywood , was the label s initial release, featured back-up by Bruce Springsteen s E Street Band. The production, by E Street guitarist, Miami Steve Van Zandt, was in the classic Phil Spector wall of sound style, spotlighting the debt that Springsteen owed to Spector. At the same time, wheels were turning for what would become CI s first album release, first smash, and one of the best selling records of all time. A completed full-length album by an obscure artist had been turned down by several labels by the time the tape landed in Popovich s hands. The more he listened, the more he became convinced it had staying power. How much power Meat Loaf s BAT OUT OF HELL would have they could not have begun to guess. Steve first had to convince a skeptical Epic to pick up the album. Then following its fall, 1977 release, he had to convince an equally skeptical radio that blustery, oversized artist with the operatic voice singing the long melodramatic Jim Steinman compositions, would work on their stations. It wasn t an easy sell. But the C/I staff wouldn t give up. They defied the typical record company procedure of the time, which was to release a batch of records and work them for a month or two and then move on to the next thing. Cleveland International concentrated all its efforts on one project for as long as it took to make it catch on. With BAT OUT OF HELL passing platinum in the summer of 1978, C/I moved on to its second major project, TOO WILD TO TAME, an album by a no-frills hard rock band from Illinois called The Boyzz. Other releases followed in the next few years, including a solo effort from Meat Loaf songwriter Jim Steinman and three albums by Ellen Foley, who had served as Meat Loaf s female foil on the opus Paradise By the Dashboard Light (both Steinman and Foley went platinum in a number of countries). From Pittsburgh, a gritty, blue-collar town with a vibe similar to Cleveland s, came Joe Grushecky and the Iron City Houserockers, whose C/I album HAVE A GOOD TIME BUT GET OUT ALIVE, reflected an authentically scrappy working class attitude. Cleveland International also served as a marketing and management consultant for a number of acts, including Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, whom Popovich had signed at Epic and who had a major fan base in Cleveland, former Mott the Hoople vocalist, Ian Hunter whose anthem, Cleveland Rocks became part of a weekly Friday evening ritual on local radio. In 1994, Steve Popovich again returned to Cleveland from Nashville. He reactivated Cleveland International to begin a whole new chapter in this saga of independent entrepreneurship in the music industry. This compilation is both a summing up of the first chapter and a launching pad for the next chapter. These artists are a mixed bag, but what they have in common is that each of them like Popovich did what he or she loved, each in their own way. -Anastasia Pantsios

Review

One of the great record men of the glory days of the music business, the late Steve Popovich rose through the major record company ranks before founding his own indie label, Cleveland International Records in 1976 and releasing Meat Loaf s massive hit album Bat Out of Hell the following year. Popovich s son Steve Popovich Jr., himself a veteran satellite radio and music industry exec who began working at the label while in high school during its second incarnation (1995-2003), is now reviving it for its third go-round with the April 5 CD/LP re-release of its 1995 label roster compilation Cleveland Rocks. Available for the first time in vinyl, the set has new artwork to go with the original s repertoire of 13 key artist tracks including Bat Out of Hell s classic Paradise by the Dashboard Light, Ronnie Spector & the E Street Band s Say Goodbye to Hollywood, Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes I Don t Wanna Go Home and the Ian Hunter titletrack Cleveland Rocks. The remaining tracks are Just Us Girls Time Warp, Iron City Houserockers Have a Good Time But Get Out Alive, Euclid Beach Band s There s No Surf in Cleveland, The Boyzz Too Wild to Tame, Essence s Sweet Fools, Mike Berry s I Am a Rocker, The Rovers Wasn t That a Party, and Bat Out of Hell songwriter Jim Steinman s Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through and its backup singer Ellen Foley s We Belong to the Night. Cleveland Rocks is now available for pre-order at Amazon. In the works are the first-ever digital reissues of as many as 15 of its back-catalog albums on digital platforms for the first time, likely to include titles from David Allan Coe, polka king Frank Yankovic, Iron City Houserockers and Brave Combo. --Centerline - Jim Bessman

You would be hard-pressed to find a better LP worth acquiring this April than you will in Cleveland Rocks, and that statement goes beyond my opinions as a professional music critic. Cleveland International Records set the standard for a lot of indie labels that came after it, and in these thirteen songs, we re given a full-scale, Hollywood-quality document of who and what propelled their moniker into the limelight to begin with. This record is as good as it gets, and anyone who doesn t have a copy already situated in their vinyl collection would be a fool to miss out on this much-buzzed reissue. --Skope Magazine

Cleveland International Records is giving us a bridge to the past in the thirteen songs making up this enduring compilation of classics, and while it s content is far from toned down or streamlined for casual fans, to call it anything other than a masterpiece of both its time and our own would be as criminal an offense as a music enthusiast could make. It must be said that Steve Popovich, Sr. s legacy will live on forever through this eternally accessible LP, and more prominently, in this music that he helped introduce all of us to. --Vents Magazine