A minute with Mike Hudson and Frank Mauceri, 2/4
Frank Mauceri: Persistence has a lot to do with it, because there was no defined sound in Cleveland. You couldn’t really say that all the bands sound alike. It’s not like Seattle during the grunge years. There was that sound that people just expected. Cleveland didn’t have that, so there has to be something driving it.
I agree about those bands not sounding the same. Do you think that there were commonalities, though? Maybe Pere Ubu’s the exception.
FM: I don’t think Ubu is an exception, because even if there’s not a common sound, there’s a common attitude. There’s a common interest. The attitude is a cynical, smart ass outlook that’s unique to Cleveland. To build a music scene on a common attitude is a lot different than other scenes, which generally just built on a common sound. It also gets mixed up with a sort of beatnik, literary thing.
