Like all die-hard music geeks, I live for the moment when I first hear a song so spellbinding it stops me in my tracks. One of the most memorable in my life arrived thanks to The Day the Earth Met the Rocket From the Tombs (Smog Veil), a 2002 collection of demos and live recordings by Cleveland protopunk legends Rocket From the Tombs. RFTT existed for just over a year in the mid-70s and imploded before formally releasing any music, but its members cofounded weirdo art-rock outfit Pere Ubu and the best midwest punk band of the day, the Dead Boys—both of which incorporated a handful of RFTT songs into their sets.
Laughner pulled off a lot in his short time on Earth. He started playing in Cleveland bands when he was 14, and by the time he joined RFTT, he’d already started bringing edgy garage and glammy sounds to the rust belt—though people who were there, including Laughner’s ex-wife, Charlotte Pressler, saw no forward-thinking music scene to speak of in Cleveland. He helped shape rock ‘n’ roll culture through his larger-than-life, sometimes gonzo-style music writing for Creem, Punk, and Zeppelin. He auditioned for Television and almost made it. He wanted to put Cleveland on the musical map, so he encouraged local artists to pursue their dreams: he bought budding no-wave musician and writer Adele Bertei her first guitar, and he inadvertently shaped the Dead Boys by introducing Stiv Bators to Cheetah Chrome. After he passed away, friend and fellow scribe Lester Bangs eulogized him in “Peter Laughner Is Dead,” one of the most heart-baring pieces he ever wrote as well as one of his most eviscerating—he comes down hard on Laughner for his self-destructive excess, and because he saw so much of himself in his friend, he indicts himself too, as well as anyone else who ever bought into the heroic myth of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. In underground rock, all that adds up to a recipe for immortality, and more than four decades after his death, Laughner remains an indelible part of midwest music history, with a cult following around the globe.
Throughout the box set, Laughner shares bits of knowledge about the songs or dedicates them to friends or colleagues, which lends the intimate, unpolished recordings extra warmth and makes them feel familiar and timeless. If you didn’t know that these tracks were decades old, you could picture him as a twentysomething booked to play your hippest neighborhood bar next week—where he’d blow everyone away. By the time you get through the final CD, “Nocturnal Digressions: 1977,” which Laughner taped alone in his bedroom the night before he died, it’s only natural to feel pangs of sadness at the loss of such a talented personality. Though no one can know what Laughner would’ve accomplished had he lived for even a few more years, his genius and passion are abundantly clear—it’s easy to imagine him attaining some of the success he craved, or even rivaling fellow poetic rockers Patti Smith and Richard Hell.
