Details

ARC-1101

collection

Ken Blaze Collection

1994-2013, undated

1.41 (Linear feet)

x

Ken Blaze is a musician and photographer who has been part of the local punk scene in Cleveland since the late 1980s. Since 1989, Blaze has fronted the local pop punk act The Unknown, which was very involved with the Cleveland anarchistic DIY community space, Speak In Tongues. In 1995, Blaze graduated from Kent State with a photojournalism degree and began a career as a photographer. In 2011, Blaze and Eric Sandy published the book, Speak in Tongues, which dug into the history and stories of the longstanding venue of the same name that permanently shut its doors in 2001.

The Ken Blaze Flyers, Posters, and Photographs spans the years 1994 to 2013, including some undated materials, and documents the Cleveland underground music scene. Venue Speak in Tongues, alongside other Cleveland-area venues the Agora, Beachland, Blind Lemon, Echo Base, Foundry, Hi-Fi Concert Club, Jigsaw Saloon and Stage, Odeon, Phantasy Nightclub / Symposium, and Pieta are featured. Several of the venues featured in the collection no longer exist. Speak in Tongues was an underground music venue located on Lorain Road and West 44th Street in Cleveland, Ohio, from 1994-2001. The space functioned as an anarchic community space, sustained on a donation-only basis, that would host anything from avant garde jazz to chaotic thrash metal with fireworks. Pieta was located upstairs from Speak in Tongues in the same building. The Phantasy Entertainment Complex, located on Detroit Avenue on the Cleveland / Lakewood border, consisted of the Phantasy Nite Club, the Chamber, Symposium, and Phantasy Theater and was a staple of the Cleveland music scene in the 1980s, helping to launch a number of national punk, new wave, and industrial bands. Blind Lemon was located a block away from the Phantasy Complex and eventually became the Hi-Fi Concert Club, then the Breakfast Club, and finally the Foundry in the 2000s, when it started primarily catering to hard-rock and heavy metal bands. The Foundry moved in 2025 to Old Brooklyn, Ohio. The Jigsaw Saloon and Stage, formerly the Parma Tavern, existed from 2005-2009. The Odeon, Cleveland's signature rock club throughout the 1990s, opened in 1993 and closed in 2006. It is currently undergoing renovation and may reopen in 2025. Artists of note featured in the collection include Anti-Flag, Bouncing Souls, Descendents, Pagans, and Modest Mouse, who played at Speak in Tongues several times early in their career, earning the the title of "unofficial house band." Modest Mouse is heavily featured in the collection, alongside 9 Shocks Terror, Arab on Radar, Bald Repuntzel, Beckett and Friends, Blue Max, Franklin, Hepburn, Puncture Wound, Rod, Sarge, Sidecar, Slobs, Unknown, and Zeek Sheck. The collection also includes photographs of the Lottery League, a Northeast Ohio institution, whereby musicans are randomly paired together for two months and then perform together in The Big Show. The rules are simple: you have to be an active musician who has never played, dated, or collaborated with anyone in your new band. On Draft Night, names are chosen on ping-pong balls and, if a band member is incompatible, they are thrown into one of the groups already formed that night. Some groups turn into actual bands. The collection as a whole documents Cleveland's vibrant underground music scene, the bands that played in it, and the DIY aesthetic of the scene's promotion of itself.

: The Ken Blaze Collection was received by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a gift from Ken Blaze on January 9, 2019.

: [Identification of Item], Ken Blaze Collection, Library and Archives, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

: Materials are in English.

: Processed by Sunny Moore, Intern. Completed July 31, 2025. Descriptive sources and standards used to create this inventory: DACS and local processing manual

Collection is open for research. Patrons must sign the Acknowledgment of Legal Responsibilities and Privacy Rights statement on the Researcher Registration Form before using this collection. Consult the Library and Archives in advance of your visit to ensure access to these materials is available.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, Inc. has a limited copyright license to the materials within this collection. This limited license does not cover the works of other individuals and organizations contained in the gift. For more information, please consult the staff of the Library and Archives.