THE PLAIN DEALER | Friday, December 21, 2001

Were Cleveland's

Electric Eels

first to swim in Punk Sea in '72?

The Electric Eels - from left, guitarist Brian McMahon, singer Davy McManus, guitarist John Morton and drummer Nick Knox - were alternately hated and ignored when they practiced their brand of "art-terrorism" in the mid 1970s. Now they're considered by many to be the first punk rock band.

John Petkovic Plain Dealer Reporter OK, so who started punk rock any-way?    Granted, this may not,be a burning question to most. But it's been smolderin throughout the music world since 1977s "summer of hate when punk whacked rock 'n' roll over the head.    Usually, the debate centers around the Ramones or the Sex Pistols.Sometimes even Richard Hell, the New York musician who donned sdety pins and ripped T-shirts.    But there's a growing number of sleuths who point to Cleveland 1972 - when a band of "art-terrorists" named the Electric Eels made one deranged ball of noise.    The case has just been made stronger with the release of "The Eyeball of Hell." The disc compiles 24 raucous tracks recorded during the Eel's short-lived "career."    "We only played out five times," says guitarist John Morton. "We were more an art concept than a band."    Morton, 49, now resides in Brooklyn, N.Y., and works as an artist and Web designer. He will return to Cleveland Sunday to emcee the "Pie & Ears" concert at the Beachland Ballroom.    But he isn't expecting a sentimental homecoming.

"We were a band of nihilists who thought the world is a bunch of (expletive)," he says. "And, we were on a mission." John Morton Guitarist    "Everybody in Cleveland hated us. And I always hated Cleveland,' he says.    It's that mutual hate that made the Eels' unique, though, adds Morton.    "We were a band of nihilists who thought the world is a bunch of (expletive)," he says. "And, we were on a mission."    Sometimes the Eels - which included singer Davy McManus, guitarists Brian McMahon and Paul Marotta and drummer Nick Knox- pursued overt tactics: wearing swastikas, operating a lawmnower on stage, making obnoxious noise with power tools.

Sometimes they were covert, like when they would go to working-man bars and slow-dance withone another until a fight broke out.    "We wanted to attack everything we could," says Morton. "It was part of our campaign of 'art-terrorism.'"    But it was a conspiracy, er, I mean, band, that ended as it began: in secrecy.    "They had big concepts," says Jim Ellis, who edited Cleveland based punk magazine "Cle" and played with Morton in a follow-up band, Ex Blank Ex. "But no one knew who they were, except for a few friends."    By 1975, with only five shows and no albums to their credit, the Electric Eels broke up.    Nobody even cared - until 1977, when British label Rough Trade released a 7-inch single, "Agitated" b/w "Cyclotron." Coming at the height of the punk explosion, the 45 sent sleuths on a

trail in search of the first chord.    The trail ends with the Electric Eels, says New York-based music critic Mike Rubin.    "That Electric Eels 45 is the Rosetta Stone," he explains. "Anybody could do what they did in 2001. But in 1972?"    "They display the pure form a cathartic distillation of angst, noise, insolence and attitude," he adds.    They also exhibit a wealth of musical limitations, a key to the band's sound, says Kevin McMahon, brother of Brian McMahon.    "I was playing in a band called My Stars," says Kevin McMahon, who also played in Lucky Pierre and Prick. "They would come to our practices and try to rip off our songs."    "But when they tried to play them, they sounded totally different," he says. "They lacked expertise, but had a lot of energy."    So much so that the band continues to attract punks just looking for a rush.    "Most of the people coming around to the Electric Eels don't care about the lawnmowers or swastikas," says guitarist Marotta. "They just want to sing along to a song that goes 'I'm so agitated.'    "Anyway, what else needs to be said?"