Cheetah Chrome, Sonic Reducer, and the Sound That Cleveland Sent to CBGB
Alejandro De LunaCheetah Chrome died this weekend. He was 71.
I keep coming back to 'Sonic Reducer' when I think about what he actually did. Most people know it as a Dead Boys song, and it is, but it started somewhere rougher: Cleveland, mid 1970s, a band called Rocket From The Tombs that never released a record while it existed and barely played outside basements and half empty clubs. Chrome was in it. So was David Thomas, who would go on to front Pere Ubu. Two very different musical minds pulling at the same raw material.
When Rocket From The Tombs fell apart, Chrome took 'Sonic Reducer' with him into the Dead Boys, and that's where it became something else. Faster. Meaner. Less art school, more switchblade. By the time they brought it to CBGB in 1977, it wasn't a demo anymore, it was a statement. Two minutes and change of amphetamine fuelled adrenaline that still gets covered by bands who weren't born when it came out.
'Sonic Reducer' single and Young, Loud and Snotty, the Dead Boys' debut LP
What I always respected about Chrome, reading his interviews over the years, was that he never dressed any of it up. No mythology, no false modesty either. He talked about Cleveland like it actually mattered, like the city itself produced something specific. New York didn't invent it, just recognized it, and then did what New York always does: turned it into the place to be, the scene the whole story gets told through. Rocket From The Tombs and the Dead Boys were Cleveland's contribution to a movement that, fairly, is remembered through venues like the Mercer Arts Centre, the Mudd Club, Max's Kansas City, and the Bowery. They weren't the only ones. The Cramps came out of Akron, Ohio, before they ever set foot on CBGB's stage.
He kept playing for fifty years. Solo records, reunions, session work, a memoir. Never really stopped. That's rarer than people think in this business, more people flame out or cash in than keep showing up decade after decade with the guitar still plugged in.
'Sonic reducer
Ain't no loser'
