Anyone who knew Mike Hudson, founder and frontman for Cleveland’s late ’70s/ ’80s punk rockers the Pagans, knew him as irascible, hard-living and totally committed to music, writing and dogs.
The Pagans’ drunken, chaotic music earned them an international reputation among fans of obscure punk rock. They took a handful of good songs, released mostly on 7” singles — most notably their 1978 “Street Where Nobody Lives”/”What’s This Shit Called Love?” — and Hudson’s overdeveloped sense of paranoia and under-appreciation and parlayed them into a fitful career with many starts and stops, and member changes.
Hudson went on to be a highly productive and prolific journalist/writer. He moved to Niagara Falls in 2000 where he edited the Niagara Falls Reporter for many years, and continued to write for it after a subsequent move to Los Angeles. He penned an angry, bitter 2008 autobiography/memoir Diary of a Punk: Life and Death in the Pagans, in which he slagged many individuals in the Cleveland music scene, including me. Years later, he messaged me one night, profusely apologizing, revealing the two sides of who he was.
One of those sides — the endlessly disgruntled punk rocker — was revealed in his recent hostile exchanges with fellow Cleveland punk rocker Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys on Facebook. The other was shown in his passionate love for dogs, and the many that he rescued and cared for. He was as tireless an advocate for his canine friends as for his music and never passed up an opportunity to make life better for a dog.
Hudson died in Los Angeles on the evening of Friday October 27 after developing sudden abdominal pain the night before, from a perforated bowel caused by undiagnosed advanced colon cancer. He chose not to be operated on and died the next day from resulting sepsis.
niagarafallsreporter.com/mike-hudson-founder-niagara-falls-reporter-died/
One Response to “Cleveland Punk Rocker/Writer/Dog Lover Mike Hudson Dies in Los Angeles”
Jeff frieri
RIP Mike a brilliant guy