CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In the 1970s, Cleveland lost 23.6 percent of its population, a staggering amount, even considering national trends.

In that same decade, it became the first major American city since the Great Depression to default on its loans. Playhouse Square had a date with the wrecking ball and was slated to become a parking lot. Mob violence earned Cleveland the nickname, "Bomb City USA."

Environmental studies warned that the Cuyahoga River was dead and Lake Erie was dying. The steel factories and manufacturing hubs of the city began their descent.

Yet, the decade was also a great one for music.

Like New York City in the 1970s, music bloomed from out of the ruins.

The decade spawned a scene that has achieved legend throughout the world - bands such as Rocket from the Tombs, the Dead Boys, Pere Ubu, Devo, the Cramps, Peter Laughner, Electric Eels, Pagans.

"In Cleveland like New York, there was a group of artists on the margins that were dealing with what seemed like a slow-moving apocalypse going on in America," says Charlotte Pressler, who came up in the '70s Cleveland music and arts scene. "You had the cities crumbling, the civil rights movement falling apart, Kent State, Watergate and just basically a kind of deep numbness and despair that settled over people - and you had music and art, which was the response."

A number of Cleveland musicians became quasi-fixtures in the rising New York punk scene centered around clubs such as CBGB. Bands such as Pere Ubu played New York regularly. The Dead Boys and the Cramps ended up moving there outright.

"You could say that there was a special relationship between Cleveland and New York, though I'm not so sure that New York saw it the same way," says Pressler, via phone from Florida, where she is a professor at South Florida State College. "But there was a connection between the two cities, going back to when the Velvet Underground would play Cleveland all the time."

The Velvets, led by Lou Reed, were a mainstay at La Cave, a legendary Euclid Avenue club that played host to the band often, in 1967 and '68.

"Cleveland was traditionally a great rock 'n' roll town," says Pressler, who ended up moving to New York in 1979, before moving back to Cleveland five years later. "That was something people in the area continued to draw on."

In some ways, the population loss and urban decline meant the keys to the city were handed over to the music scene.

"In the 1970s, if you were a rock 'n' roller, you had the city to yourself," says Nora Jones Daycak, the former manager of the Lakefront.

The West Ninth Street punk-rock joint created a lot of noise until it closed in 1984 - back when the Warehouse District was a ghost town. She cut her teeth in the '70s, hanging out in legendary downtown clubs such as the Viking Saloon, the Piccadilly Inn, Pirate's Cove, Traxx, Twiggy's and the Cleveland Agora.

"Downtown was deserted and, on the surface, Cleveland was dead back then," adds Jones Daycak. "But I would go out every night, to a bunch of different clubs to see live music

The decade in which the city was dying played host to a lively racket. There was a sweaty bounce and beat at Traxx, a West Ninth Street gay disco.

The 1970s also marked the heyday of the Cleveland Agora, which played host to countless legendary shows.

"Some people are nostalgic for that period of time - and some see it as the worst of times," says Pressler. "As always, it's somewhere in between."

Pressler used to write about those times in "CLE," an underground magazine that captured the zeitgeist of the scene.

But those were different times, as Pressler once wrote.

"These days, 'CLE' has become a marketing brand for the city," she says. "Back then, everyone was too punk to do branding."