Across the universe, Crack The Sky might be “the best progressive rock band you’ve never heard of,” as Rolling Stone once declared in chronicling the band’s long survival. But not so in Baltimore. This city embraced Crack The Sky like no other back in the 1970s, and CTS fans around here sti ll go wild when the band performs in the area.Friday night, at The Collective Encore in Columbia, front man John Palumbo announced that the show was being recorded for a live album. The lineup for the evening, he said, would be all the songs from the band’s original album, the one Rolling Stone declared the “debut album of the year” in 1975. A new album of CTS gold was big news for the band’s Baltimore-area fans. So the crowd of seniors roared its happiness. The roar doubled in decibels when the band hit the first chords of “Hold On,” and the crowd sang along at the catchy hook, “You’d better hold on! … Hold on! … Hold on!”Palumbo said the band would perform the songs in the order they appeared on that first album 50 years ago, the one that received critical acclaim and extensive airplay in Baltimore and virtually nowhere else. (It’s a long story; I’ll explain in a minute.)A guy sitting at the table next to mine, obviously a forever fan, challenged his friend. “What comes next?” he asked. “Do you know it? What’s the next song?”Before his bud could answer, lead guitarist Rick Witkowski, a joyous smile on his face, blasted the opening to “Surf City,” the second song from 1975’s eponymous album, Crack The Sky. That LP received a nod in Rolling Stone’s list of the 50 greatest progressive rock albums of all time.Prog rock, a subgenre of rock, had many virtues, foremost the desire by its practitioners (Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, Genesis) to be more musically innovative and conceptually ambitious with their albums. Music journalist Ryan Reed, reporting for Rolling Stone in 2018, described Crack The Sky’s debut LP as “a miniature masterpiece that weaves together power-pop hooks, hard-rock guitar riffs, harmonized guitar solos, funk interludes and quirky lyrics.”In that story for the magazine, Reed also notes this: “Building their fan base was difficult, but for reasons that remain slightly puzzling, Crack the Sky made an instant — and seemingly permanent — impression on Baltimore.”Apologies for repeating a story I told in The Sun before leaving my longtime gig there in January, but this tale is precious and worth an encore. Here’s why, when I landed in Baltimore in 1976, everyone under the age of 30 was buzzing about Crack The Sky and thinking of it as a local band. Here’s why, to this day, people who follow progressive rock think of CTS as having Baltimore roots when its original members were from West Virginia.The explanation appears in “All Things Crack,” an official biography of the band by longtime fan Tyson Koska and published by Baltimore-based BrickHouse Books.The company behind Crack The Sky’s first album was inexperienced at distribution and could not deliver records to record stores. DJs loved the sound. Airplay on radio stations was good, but it did not turn into sales — except in Baltimore. For some reason, the record stores here carried CTS in its racks and two radio stations, WKTK-FM (105.7) and WAYE (860 AM), gave that first album plenty of play. The band caught fire in the Baltimore region.Palumbo, Witkowski and their band mates had no knowledge of that as they played clubs on the East Coast.But on March 18, 1976, they were shocked to discover that Crack The Sky was uniquely big in Baltimore. When they stepped on stage to play a set at the bygone Four Corners Inn, in Jacksonville, Baltimore County, they got a standing ovation.“It was unbelievable,” Palumbo says. “People knew our names. People knew the songs, and we ended up staying there for a week. It was sold out night after night. So that was a kick.” The rest is rock history, and a lasting legend around Baltimore.“Maryland audiences put the fan in fanatic,” says Koska, who follows the band closely on its senior tour and sells copies of his book at gigs. “Not only are they enthusiastic [about] the music, they are active participants. They know every word and every move. Many of them follow the band around and come to multiple shows during the year, sometimes multiple nights in the same weekend. “Outside of Maryland, the people that come tend to remember CTS as something from their long-ago past. I don’t want to say they’re less enthusiastic, but it’s more nostalgia and echo than it is a lived memory. So yeah, definitely more intense [in the Baltimore area].”Over the weekend, the band had three shows at Encore Collective, with Witkowski, Palumbo and Bobby Hird on guitar, Bill Hubauer on keyboard, Joey D’Amico on drums and Joe Macre on bass.Fifty years after CTS recorded the first of his many songs, Palumbo says he never tires of performing the ones audiences are eager to hear — “She’s A Dancer,” “Hot Razors In My Heart,” “Skin Deep,” to name just three. “I still have to think when I’m playing them,” he says. “A lot of [rockers] just do it automatically, but I still have to think and make sure I remember everything, how it goes and all that. And we’re entertainers. My focus is on the audience. They paid to see a show. They paid to be entertained.”At 74, Palumbo still writes songs. In fact, he’s compiled 15 that he considers ready for the studio and a new album. Combined with the live recording of their original songs, that would make 25 albums for Crack the Sky, “the best progressive rock band you’ve never heard of,” outside Baltimore.Crack The Sky, on its 50th anniversary tour, is scheduled to play two shows at the Elkton Music Hall in Cecil County on Saturday, June 7. ...read more read less