Rendering punk in business terms doesn’t sound quite right. For the last thirty years, though, a significant portion of the public has found itself enamored, in one way or another, with some segment of punk culture. It might only be studded belts and pretend mohawks for most, but there’s a vibrant scene struggling to persist through music industry’s lean times.
As a part of that, a slew of record labels have sprung up that focus solely on the dissemination of older, lesser known bands. Smog Veil Records is the creation of a Clevelander in diaspora. Over the last nineteen years, Frank Mauceri has taken his label from the Ohio to Reno, NV and finally to Chicago. His roaming was first predicated on a desire to pursue a career in law, which he quickly realized wasn’t as fulfilling as digging up forgotten bands and packaging the music as a sort of historical relic capable of maintaining cultural value over time.
Issuing albums mostly focusing on the late ‘70s Cleveland scene, Mauceri has recently expanded the scope of his imprint to include other bands hailing from the Midwest. In endeavoring to research punk’s history the label honcho has come into contact with a litany of important figures from the genre’s past. Mike Hudson, lead singer and main songwriter for Cleveland’s the Pagans, is one of the folks that Maurceri has worked with in order to present a band’s catalog to a new generation of music fans.
Of course, no one’s making a boat load of money, but it seems that all involved want a forgotten music to be appreciated, a previous time to be re-examined and not discarded as a low point in a city’s history. There’s value inherent in the music that sprung from Cleveland’s crumbling infostructure. It’s significance, though, is presented alongside current concerns regarding the media and business practices.
Why’s there still an interest in music that was record thirty years ago? Does the scene’s diversity play a role in that?
Mike Hudson: The funny thing about the ‘70s scene was that on any given night, you could have Pere Ubu, the Pagans, the Dead Boys, Devo and the Nerves from Los Angeles on a bill. None of the bands were like each other. Until ’79 it hadn’t really been codified into, ‘You gotta wear this,’ and leather jackets. So, everybody was just doing their own thing. As long as it was original stuff and you weren’t a cover band, nobody really thought anything of it.
There were only fifty people that came to shows. It was the same fifty people all the time. They were mostly friends of one of the bands. It was a very, very small scene. Devo hit first. One night we were supposed to play with them and they didn’t show up. Next thing they were on Saturday Night Live. I remember seeing Stiv’s [Bators, the Dead Boys’ singer] picture in Time magazine. And Pere Ubu left too. They didn’t get as big, but they did well.