Talk:Cleveland Rocks

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Songs, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to songs on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.

[edit] Cheap Trick?

Isn't this song by Cheap Trick? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrhighscore (talkcontribs) 02:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


No. The original was by Ian Hunter, and the well known 1997 version used for The Drew Carey Show was by the band Presidents of the United States of America, best known for the single "Lump" a year earlier, and it appears on their compilation "Pure Frosting".

There seems to be some confusion about this, in part because the Drew Carey version sounds a bit like Cheap Trick, and in part because Cheap Trick's cover of "In The Street" was used as the theme for "That 70's Show". Because of the confusion, you can find guitar-tabs for "Cleveland Rocks by Cheap Trick", but you won't find any recordings by them -- although you may occasionally find the Presidents of the USA version mis-labeled as Cheap Trick. The song is not listed on Cheap Trick discographies and never appeared on any of their albums or compilations.

[edit] Regional parodies, promos, other trivia

It's inevitable that since this song is called "____ Rocks", there will be dozens if not thousands of parody versions created for other cities, sports teams, TV and radio stations, and every other type of entity. Nearly all of these will have only minor regional reach and only for a short period of time. Their individual impact on the world and significance in the history of the song is trivial, less than trivial in fact, so it's not really necessary for individual instances to be included in this article. The same goes for other parodies, such as "Cleveland Sucks", which would have only regional reach and trivial significance over a very short span of time.

Along the same lines, it is inevitable that the song will be used to promote thousands of events and entities in the Cleveland area and in coverage of any Cleveland sports team competing in a playoff or championship game. Here again, the individual instances of that are not interesting or relevant to the history of the song. The article already mentions prominently that the song is often used in this way.