Shit-Fi.com - Back to Ohio Blues Reissue Review

At Shit-Fi.com, there is nice in-depth review of the Back to Ohio Blues album by Raven, here is a sample of that:

This record, from 1975, could be considered a progenitor to the unique admixture of forward-looking sound and retrograde, gutter lyrical subject-matter associated with rocknroll from Ohio. Raven doesn’t approach the cerebral proto-punk of a band like Pere Ubu in any way; rather, the darkness, nihilism, and desperation of Electric Eels or even H-100s, as well as the fuck-you-I’m-gonna-do-it-my-way independence of Vertical Slit or Mike Rep, are apparent here. (Mike Rep wrote the liner notes to this reissue; although they’re enthusiastic, writing basement guitar riffs is clearly his forte.) The context of Mike Rep’s “Rocket to Nowhere” and “Mama Was a Schitzo,” both cream-of-the-crop skeletal early punk songs recorded circa 1975, comes into focus listening to Raven. This record doesn’t diminish the shit-fi achievement of Raven’s Columbus compatriot, but rather, when listening to them side-by-side, affinities emerge that make punk rock’s musical rupture less stark than we often consider it to be. Ohio from 1975 to 1978, when “Rocket To Nowhere” was released, was a long way from Kings Road or even The Bowery, but knowing that the Velvets played in Ohio often and Iggy & co. began only three and a half hours away, I would like to think that Johnny Ramone or Johnny Rotten would have heard a sound in both Raven and Mike Rep and the Quotas that made sense to them and their respective interpretations of what would be named punk rock.