Massive Peter Laughner 5 LP box due from Smog Veil in August

The 56-song Peter Laughner retrospective is available for pre-order as a 5 LP or 5 CD box set with a 100-page book. Check the details below.  

Here's the scoop from Smog Veil Records...
UPDATE MAY 22, 2019:  Smog Veil Records have been working for the last 10 years to create the definitive Peter Laughner retrospective. The five LP box set is in the final stages of production. Test pressings have been approved; all art and layouts have been completed by the team of Johnny Dromette and Ron Kretsch.  All art and book proofs have been approved.

Peter Laughner was a singer songwriter from Cleveland like no other.  Before his untimely death in 1977, he played in numerous bands, most notably Rocket From The Tombs and Pere Ubu, and also as a solo performer.  He wrote for a variety of weekly newspapers and Creem, where he was a contemporary of Lester Bangs.  He famously told Jane Scott of the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he wanted to do for Cleveland what “...Brian Wilson did for California and Lou Reed did for New York.” In many ways, Peter did in fact put the Cleveland underground on the map.

In cooperation with Peter's estate and his many collaborators, the box set will contain the definitive statement of Peter's musical talents and additionally showcase his writings and the many works he created with a variety of talented friends.  Smog Veil's research team has looked in every basement, attic, and corner to uncover numerous gems and we are pleased to be able to place Peter's work on display.

Many of the 56 songs contained in the release are seeing the light of day for the very first time.  All songs have been carefully mastered and sonically upgraded from the best possible sources by the Grammy-nominated team of Jeff Lipton and Maria Rice at Peerless Mastering.  The box set also contains a 100 page hardbound book of photos and writings.  Two box set formats will be available: 5 LPs or 5 CDs, and both formats contain an identical box, book, and track listing.

Pre-order a copy of the 5 LP or 5 CD set here. Note: Pre-sale ends June 16. In stores August 2.





Peter Laughner (Smog Veil SVLP150)

Record One: 1972 (Fat City Jive)
Side One:
01. Hesitation Blues (Billy Smythe)
02. The Sidewalks of New York (Blake/Lawler arr: Laughner)
03. Willin' (Lowell George)
04. Solomon’s Mines (Peter Laughner)
05. Please Mrs. Henry (Bob Dylan)
06. Mean Ol’ Frisco (Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup)
07. Drunkard’s Lament (Terry Hartman)
08. T For Texas (Jimmie Rodgers)
Side Two:
09. Good Time Music (John Sebastian)
10. Love Minus Zero (No Limit) (Bob Dylan)
11. I’m Waiting For The Man (Lou Reed)
12. Eyes Eyes (Michael Hurley)
13. The Eyes of A New York Woman (Ogden/Pynchon)
14. It’s Saturday Night (Dance The Night Away) (Peter Laughner)
15. These Days (Jackson Brown)
16. Fat City Jive (Terry Hartman)
17. That’s The Story of My Life (Lou Reed)
From:
1 – 8, 16: The Original Wolverines (Peter Laughner, Mike Sands, Pete Sinks), WMMS “Coffeebreak Concert”, Cleveland, September 20, 1972 Host: Shauna Zurbrugg
9 – 15, 17: Peter Laughner and Mike Sands, WMMS “Coffeebreak Concert”, Cleveland, November 15, 1972 Host: Kid Leo

Record Two: 1973 – 1974 (One of The Boys)
Side One:
01. Rock & Roll (Lou Reed)
02. One of The Boys (Hunter/Ralphs)
03. All Along The Watchtower (Bob Dylan)
Side Two: 
04. Heroin (Lou Reed)
05. I’m So Fucked Up (Peter Laughner)
06. White Light White Heat (Lou Reed) / Call The Ambulances (Cynthia Black)
From:
1, 3, 4, 6: Cinderella Backstreet, The Cellar, Sandusky, June 24, 1973
2: Cinderella Backstreet, JB’s, Kent, March 23, 1973
5: Cinderella’s Revenge, Viking Saloon, Cleveland, May 11, 1974
Cinderella Backstreet: Cynthia Black, Albert Dennis, Rick Kalister, Scott Krauss, Peter Laughner.
Cinderella’s Revenge: Peter Laughner, Lachlan McIntosh, Eric Ritz, Susan Schmidt, Deborah Smith.

Record Three: 1973 – 1977 (Pledging My Time)
Side One:
01. Cinderella Backstreet (Peter Laughner)
02. Down At The Bar (Peter Laughner)
03. Baudelaire (Peter Laughner)
04. 32-20 Blues (Robert Johnson)
05. Rain On The City (Peter Laughner)
Side Two
06. “I Must Have Been Out Of My Mind” (Peter Laughner)
07. Pledging My Time (Bob Dylan)
08. (My Sister Sold Her Heart To) The Junk Man (Peter Laughner - Adele Bertei)
09. First Taste of Heartache (Peter Laughner)
10. Sylvia Plath (Peter Laughner)
11. Lullaby (Peter Laughner)
From:
1: Peter Laughner, solo home recording, circa 1975
2: Peter Laughner and Deborah Smith, WMMS "Coffeebreak Concert", Cleveland, October 11, 1974
3, 10, 11: Peter Laughner and Albert Dennis, 4-track recording, East Cleveland, 1976 (circa August/September)
4: Peter Laughner, solo home recording, Cleveland Heights, 1976 (September or October)
5: Peter Laughner and Wally Wefel, home recording, 1973 (circa November/December)
6, 11: Peter Laughner, solo home 4-track recordings, circa 1976
7: Peter Laughner, solo home 4-track recording, Cleveland Heights, December 15, 1976
8, 9: Peter Laughner, from the “New Songs” tape, solo home recording, Cleveland Heights, 1977 (circa January/February)

Record Four: 1974 – 1977 (Rock It Down)
Side One:
01. What Goes On (Lou Reed)
02. Ain’t It Fun (Laughner/O’Connor)
03. Amphetamine (Peter Laughner)
Side Two:
04. Prove It (Tom Verlaine)
05. Dear Richard (Peter Laughner)
06. Hideaway (Peter Laughner)
07. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry (Bob Dylan)
08. Pablo Picasso (Jonathan Richman)
09. Rock It Down (Peter Laughner)
From
1: Fins, block party, Coventry, Cleveland Heights, July 27, 1974
2: Rocket From Tombs, The Agora, Cleveland, February 10, 1975
3: Peter Laughner and Don Harvey, from “The Ann Arbor Tapes”, Ann Arbor, February 1976
4, 8: Friction, rehearsal, Cleveland, October 31, 1976
5 – 7: Friction, The Pirate’s Cove, Cleveland, November 2, 1976
9: Peter Laughner and Adele Bertei, from the “Secret Session” tape, 4-track home recording, Cleveland Heights, 1977 (circa March)
Fins: Robert Bensick, Scott Krauss, Peter Laughner, Lachlan McIntosh, Deborah Smith.
Rocket From The Tombs: David “Crocus Behemoth” Thomas, Peter Laughner, Cheetah Chrome, Craig “Darwin Layne” Bell, Johnny “Madman” Madansky.
Friction: Anton Fier, Peter Laughner, Susan Schmidt, Deborah Smith.

Record Five: 1977 (Nocturnal Digressions)
Side One:
01. See No Evil (Tom Verlaine)
02. Come On In (Whatcha’ Doin’ On Them Stairs?) (Tom Verlaine)
03. Everything I Say Just Goes Right Through Her Heart (Peter Laughner - Adele Bertei)
04. The Next Room Of The Dream (Peter Laughner)
05. Do It (Jesse Winchester)
06. Slim Slow Slider (Van Morrison)
Side Two:
07. Blank Generation (Richard Hell)
08. Wild Horses (Jagger/Richards)
09. Isn’t That So? (Jesse Winchester)
10. Me And The Devil Blues (Robert Johnson)
11. Pale Blue Eyes (Lou Reed)
12. (Going To) China (Peter Laughner)
13. Summertime Blues (Eddie Cochran)
From:
"Nocturnal Digressions", solo home recording, Bay Village, June 21, 1977

Special pre-order bonus EP will be included and will not be sold separately or in stores.

Bonus 45: 1973 – 1976 (Easily Excited)
Side A:
01. Drugstore Cowboy/I’m So Bored (Bangs/Laughner)
02. Venus De Milo (Tom Verlaine)
Side B:
03. Heart (Section 2) (Michael Hronek)
04. Who’s Been Here? (Bo Carter)
05. Instrumental (fragment) (Peter Laughner)
From: 
01:  Peter Laughner and Lester Bangs, from “Critic’s Choice”, Creem offices, Walled Lake, MI 1975 (circa February/March)
02: Peter Laughner and Don Harvey, from “The Ann Arbor Tapes”, Ann Arbor, MI, February 1976
03: Michael Hronek, Peter Laughner, Robert Bensick, Albert Dennis, and Scott Krauss, from “Fall 1974” tape, Cleveland 1974 (circa October) (NB: Laughner’s guitar work here is the origin of “Ain’t It Fun”)
04: Peter Laughner, David Krauss, Alan Echtler, Spa John, and Carl Woideck, Hillel House, CWRU, Cleveland February 10, 1973. Soundperson unknown.
05: Peter Laughner, solo home recording (mystery 4-track session), circa 1976

Robert Bensick's lost 70s Cleveland underground epic out June 24 on Smog Veil

Years before Berlin West, Cleveland's Robert Bensick was bringing together local luminaries for his magnum opus.  

In the Summer of 1975, Cleveland multi-instrumentalist, sculptor, and artist Robert Bensick – who had previously been the drummer of Ohio teen garage crew The Munx – brought together the best of the Cleveland underground and recorded an album at Agency Recording, a studio favored by such recording stars as Todd Rundgren.

The studio band Bensick assembled for the record included such luminaries as Tom Herman (Pere Ubu), Scott Krauss (Pere Ubu/ Cinderella Backstreet/Home & Garden), Cynthia Black (Cinderella Backstreet/Peter & The Wolves), Albert Dennis (Cinderella Backstreet/Wolves), and Michael Hronek (a collaborator of Cleveland proto-punk legend Peter Laughner). Bensick’s magnum opus sought to bring music and art together into a brand new experience. The end result – French Pictures In London - was so far ahead of its time that it remained unreleased for forty years, languishing in the vault of a noted Hollywood soundtrack composer and sound designer...until now.

French Pictures In London is a story of real people and the infamous Plaza Apartments as filtered through art, poetry, pop, krautrock, and 1970’s Cleveland. It is an album that the late Peter Laughner had a dominant effect upon (despite not participating in the sessions). The album’s sound and mood is also a precursor to the New Romantic movement of groups such as Visage and Spandau Ballet as well as the direction Roxy Music would take on albums such as Manifesto (1979). French Pictures In London similarly touches upon the darker corners of rock and pop such as those found on Scott Walker’s subversive Climate of Hunter (1984), Oxbow’s brutal and troubling The Narcotic Story (2007), and the delicate yet unsettling undercurrents that transpire on L’Amour by Lewis (1983).

French Pictures In London was recorded with the promise of a record contract with A&M (not as strange as it may seem since A&M also signed John Cale, Magma, Yellow Magic Orchestra, and the Sex Pistols at various times) and the hope for a national tour to follow. Eventually, the album ended up in the hands of Alan Howarth (later an Academy Award-winning sound effects creator, sound designer, and soundtrack composer) where thankfully it remained in his archives, turning out to be one of the two surviving copies of something Bensick thought he had lost forever.

The missing musical piece of Cleveland that falls in between the four long players by Raspberries and the first three albums by Pere Ubu. From the Nick Drake-meets-Nick Cave melodrama of “Sweet Pricilla”, the Roxy Music-isms of “Lilly White”, the heavily Herbie Hancock- influenced desperation of “Night Life”, to the Broadway letdown of “Cinquain Attempted” and the completely unhinged “Doll”, French Pictures In London is an album that will surely turn on any listener who approaches it.

A few years after the French Pictures In London project, Bensick formed the synth duo Berlin West with Kathleen Bensick which resulted in a 1981 darkwave single Snakepit b/w Babylon that unfortunately isn't included as part of Smog Veil's reissue package. However, because Bensick had the record manufactured at Cleveland's famed pressing plant Boddie Recording Company,  Numero Group decided to add the song Snakepit to their Boddie retrospective Local Customs: Pressed At Boddie from 2011, which turned out to be one of the most interesting recordings on the somewhat random 17-track sampling of the company's extensive output.

Bensick eventually moved to New York and by the mid-1980s had stopped performing in public but never stopped creating and continues to do so to this very day. The release of French Pictures In London represents long overdue credit and recognition, and a landmark recording in the long history of Cleveland rock and roll.

Extensive liner notes by Nick Blakey and never before published photos are also included in Smog Veil's release of French Pictures In London available for pre-order from the label right here. Listen to The Robert Bensick Band's Lily White and Berlin West's Snakepit below followed by a brief interview with Bensick from 2014.