Cleveland, like its rust belt neighbor to the north, Detroit, has had a rough go of it for the last few decades. In many ways, the cities mirror each other: loss of industry and white flight have left the cities with more infrastructure than they need and well more than they can maintain, resulting in inner-city wastelands of abandoned homes, shuttered shops, and factories, and while a viral YouTube video proclaimed Cleveland’s problems not QUITE the equal of Detroit’s, the two cities’ fates grow more similar yearly.
But despite being the home of the absurd Rock And Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland’s reputation as a source of great bands has never equaled Detroit’s. No Motown, no Stooges, no White Stripes. Even smaller Akron, 40 minutes to the south, lays claim to Devo, Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, and more recently, The Black Keys. Long-running experimental rockers Pere Ubu may be Cleveland’s most critically-beloved musical export this side of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony.
Of course, that can’t be the whole story: a city of its size is bound to produce more than a few diamonds in the rough, and local son Mark Edwards’ My Dad Is Dead was exactly that. From 1985 until 2009, Edwards and a rotating cast of bit players pumped out some 11 full-length albums (depending on how you count), all while remaining almost entirely under the radar. 1989’s The Taller You Are, The Shorter You Get was a coulda-been breakthrough for the band. Released on the Long Island label Homestead Records, which boasted at the time a roster including Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Nick Cave (Sebadoh’s The Freed Man holds the catalog number immediately before The Taller You Are…), it’s remarkable on two counts: how good it is, and how little it’s known.
Edwards plays nearly every sound heard on the album, which covers everything from pretty, jangly guitar instrumentals to Joy Division- and Devo-referencing New Wave numbers. Perhaps it’s Edwards’ nasal, thickly Cleveland-accented singing voice in combination with the depressed, neurotic lyrics of songs like “Seven Years” and “The Only One” that kept the band from a wider audience. Some writers have speculated that the birth of grunge blotted out what audience there would have been for the nervier (some might say wimpier), wiry indie rock of the type Edwards made, but in retrospect, it seems that My Dad Is Dead may have been both after their time and ahead of it.
A few years ago, Edwards finally quit Cleveland and moved to Chapel Hill, and officially ended the MDID project in 2010. Listening to The Taller You Are in 2013, nearly 25 years after it poked its head out between albums by Thurston Moore and Lou Barlow and then quickly vanished, it sounds more immediate and relevant than it has any right to. Score one for Cleveland.
