Space Rock Opens!

Thanks to support from ArtPlace, Northeast Shores was able to provide funding for the creation of a new gallery on Waterloo Road. Please see the following press release regarding the opening of the first show this coming weekend:

Rock and Roll Gallery Space: ROCK Opens on Waterloo April 5
First show: “The Golden Age of Cleveland Rock: 1969-1974”

Space: ROCK, a new gallery devoted to Cleveland music history and photography, officially opens on Friday, April 5. Its first full-scale exhibit, “The Golden Age of Cleveland Rock: 1969-1974,” focuses on a time period when many local bands were getting signed to record labels and attracting national attention. The show runs through the end of May.

Posters, photos, album jackets, clippings, and promotional materials will tell the stories of artists like the James Gang, the Raspberries, Damnation of Adam Blessing, Rastus, Wild Butter, Tiny Alice, Eli Radish, Rainbow Canyon, Michael Stanley, Glass Harp, Blue Ash, and Left End who were making noise outside of their northeast Ohio homebase.

The psychedelic era of the late ’60s brought many more different sounds into rock music and caused record labels to actively seek to diversify their rosters. They began looking for the “next San Francisco,” and Cleveland was on their radar, due to factors like area music fans’ openness to new sounds, the number of former Clevelanders rising in the echelons of the major labels, and the detailed coverage provided in the local media by the Plain Dealer’s Jane Scott, the Cleveland Press’s Bruno Bornino, and the staff of The Scene, then primarily a music magazine.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Beachland Ballroom will be hosting a public oral history taping with Jim Quinn, guitarist for Damnation of Adam Blessing and longtime area band manager. It takes place at 2 p.m. Saturday April 20. Admission is $5, food will be available, and the bar will be open.

Space: ROCK is a project of Cleveland Rocks: Past Present and Future, a new nonprofit formed last year to bring more attention to Cleveland music history and to support the music scene’s growth into the future. Its offices are on the second floor of the Space: ROCK Gallery.

 For more information about Space: ROCK, contact Anastasia Pantsios at aastasjoy@aol.com.