There's a famous truism about the Velvet Underground that states only about 1,000 people heard them when they existed, but every one of those people went on to form a band of their own. I've seen variations on the number of people, but the message is the same: the Velvet Underground didn't make much of a splash in their own time, but the seeds they planted lived on, and they ultimately became one of the most influential bands of the rock era.
Falling in line with that nugget of wisdom, almost every piece I've ever read on the Mirrors touts the fact that weirdness sprang up wherever the Velvet Underground touched down, and Mirrors' founder Jamie Klimek claims to have seen Mr. Lou Reed and company every one of the 14 times times they played Cleveland. Still, while it would be hard to refute the connection, the fact remains that the Velvet Underground played dozens of towns across the country, but in very few did a durable scene actually pop up in their wake. Cleveland, however, was an exception.
Cleveland, in the early-to-mid 70's, was a universe unto itself. The biggest names to eventually crawl out of its grip were Pere Ubu, the Dead Boys, and, from Akron just to the south, Devo. At that time, though, those bands, or any bands they evolved from, were operating in near-to-total isolation. Cleveland wasn't a cultural center, its ideas weren't being beamed across the country like those in L.A. or New York, and this was long before the Internet or YouTube. Anything these groups accomplished was pretty much for its own sake.
And the scene was plenty weird. Like the industrial landscape around it, the sound of Cleveland's underground was raw and heavy. Some bands, like the Electric Eels, sported an early industrial sound that was as intensely iconoclastic as anything you can imagine, not unlike like a precursor to New York’s No-Wave movement, which came much later. Yet, along with this harshness, Cleveland's music had a strong element of experimentalism and bohemianism, too, displaying what Pere Ubu’s Dave Thomas called "Avant Garage." Several of these bands fed off of each other, sharing songs, members, and the satisfaction that they were creating something new out of the old, even if there wasn’t an audience around to appreciate it. The sounds they created later became part of the punk and new wave lexicon.
But I digress. The Mirrors, who were one of the first out of the starting gate of this scene, actually had a bit of veneer, and some of the music they played was indeed heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground. Just a quick listen to the first song on Hands in My Pockets will tell you that. That primitive beat, frenzied sound, and mad, mad use of feedback are all smudged with Lou Reed's fingerprints, so much so that you almost expect the man to step out from behind a curtain and break into "Sister Ray." But the Mirrors were much more than a VU clone. "Shirley," a song that later turned up as the A-side of the Mirrors' lone 45, starts off in a Velvets' mode, but later breaks into a trippy, cosmic ending that would do Syd Barrett proud. In fact, trippy fringes of the 60's weave in and around this music, as the Mirrors try to take these forms, at the time not that old, to their next logical stage. The garage stomp of the Troggs, psychedelic freakouts a la early Pink Floyd, and the pulse of the Doors are laced throughout, mixing nicely with the newer, more anarchic sounds, and creating something reminiscent yet strange. The Mirrors remind me a lot of Simply Saucer, a band operating out of Ontario at roughly the same time, even though it's doubtful the two bands knew of each other. Maybe it was something in Lake Erie's water.
Later songs on Hands in My Pockets are more revealing of the Styrenes, the band the Mirrors morphed into, than of the Mirrors themselves. Some of the songs, like "Everything Near Me," not only turned up in the Styrene’s repertoire, but the trippy, muscular tones of the Mirrors' early work had all but disappeared, replaced by something more quirky and jazz-influenced. However, it was still just as avant and weird.
Cleveland's proto-punk scene is often forgotten and buried beneath the much larger happenings of CBGB in New York and The Roxy in London, but it was no less essential - spanning 60's garage and psychedelic with 70's new wave - and was without a doubt just as colorful. What set Cleveland apart from the myriad of other places the Velvets planted seeds will probably be a mystery for the ages, but it's certainly a mystery worth investigating.
Check out the Mirrors, Pere Ubu, or another of Cleveland's early flowerings here at the library today.
