Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: Jack's

Jack’s was right on Mass Ave in Cambridge just before you hit Harvard Square and where it once stood has been occupied by a large office building ever since.

The place was basically a retail store-front that was turned into a music club with the thick high glass windows still in place but blacked out. It was a good sized club for the Boston area but it would be a stretch to say it was big. It was larger than downstairs at the Rat and about the size of TT the Bear's but with a high ceiling that gave you the impression that it was bigger than it was. Not a rough crowd like at the Rat or what would sometimes show up at the Channel. Cambridge was what we called the "Soda & Lime" crowd in reference to Cambridge's reputation for an unusually low level of beer consumption. I don't know how bars even survived in Cambridge but somebody was out drinking because there are a lot of bars in that town.

As a music venue Jack's was laid out pretty well. They had a stage that had room enough for a five-piece band but not much more. Nobody was going to Duck-Walk it at any rate and it was set rather high and located to the right as you walked in the door and the bar was against the opposite wall. A major plus was that Jack's had a decent sounding pa system. Can’t recall if the monitors worked and most likely they did not since although we played there twice and I don’t remember a fucking thing about the shows, I'm going to rely on the premise that if a monitor on a Boston stage outside of the Channel Nightclub had ever worked, it would be such a standout memory in my mind.

Cambridge sported a number of music venues in those days and Jack's had plenty of competition. Johnathan Swifts, TT the Bears, Bunratty’s and the Plough & Stars were all in that neck of the woods and showcasing similar entertainment. Of these clubs, Johnathan Swifts was the better place to see a band. I was only in there once to see Til Tuesday and there was no place to hide on that stage, it was right out into the audience and you could see and hear the performers from anywhere in the room. There was also the Western Front but that was a different animal since they stuck to touring Reggae acts. Neither I nor my friends ever actually went in there because the cover was $20.00 in 1980s money which was $15 to $17 more than any place else we went to in town and hell, I didn't pay half that much to see Jimmy Cliff at the Channel so I'm gonna shell out that kind of money to see who, nobody I ever heard of at the Western Front? Fuck that. I was paying rent on my apt in West Roxbury and rent on our rehearsal spot at the Pixy Theater, I wasn't made of money! I was only insuring my car half the year as it was and I would cringe every time I broke a string on my bass since it was going to cost me $5.00 for a replacement. Makes you wonder why you put yourself through such things. But what, and give up Show Business!

We got into playing Jack’s during its last year or so of existence but it had a reputation of being one of the “in” places to play in Boston since, much like the Rathskeller, had a famed “History” that had come and gone. We ended up playing two of the three shows, all Wednesdays, booked there and would have played the third except that the place suddenly had a fire the Saturday prior to our scheduled show later in that same week.

It is now part of Boston musical history that the band Treat Her Right had all their equipment burned up in that fire since it broke out just after they setup and then did a Telethon on WBCN to raise money to replace it. WBCN was the top radio station in Boston at the time and they played the bands music ALL DAY and had the band members live on the air, winning new fans and getting them signed to a major record label as a result. We were all saying what “Good Luck” they had! But the bottom line was that Treat Her Right WAS a good band and getting all their stuff burned up wouldn't have done them much good if they weren't.

Jack’s was the hardest time we ever had booking a Boston venue in our seven "odd" years stay on the city music scene. It was the twenty question routine we always got with a new place but more intense: "So why should we book YOU GUYS?" “How many people can you bring?” “Are you POSITIVE you can ABSOLUTELY bring that many?”  "Where else do you play?" “You’re not playing anywhere else this month are you?” And this is for a spot on a Wednesday lineup. It took a lot of time for them to decide to book us at all. One particular back and forth with management lead to what later became an oft quoted declarative out-of-the-blue statement that James made at the time: “No, we are NOT going to give you any Cocaine!” 

Not to play a Wednesday at 11:00PM in Cambridge at any rate. It’s not like we were actually expecting to get PAID for this gig in the middle of the week so far out from our regular and gainfully employed fan-base or any other absurd Pie-in-the-Sky notion. Just what on Earth were the other bands being shaken down for?

Jack’s was the home stage for a popular Boston band named New Man that put out a not-so-well engineered album of pop rock at the time. Although they were a bit slick for my liking in those days of my musical infancy and punk mentality, they certainly sounded better than that live and their shows had more energy than the record had captured. I’d seen the band a couple of times; once at Jack’s and another at Scotch & Sounds (where nobody sounded bad) and heard cuts on the radio where it did a slow fade. From what I saw of them they drew a good crowd and played a lively set. Then the bass player cut out to join the Jon Butcher Axis and I think that was it for them.  

Other acts that played Jack’s on a regular basis were the Greg Greenway Band and Asa Brebner. Greg Greenway has had a long professional music career since then and put out a number of records under just his own name as a “solo” act although I guess he always was a solo act and Asa of course was previously with Robin Lane and was always on the scene playing with different names of bands that came after his own name like Asa Brebner and "Idle Hands" and such. What these three groups had in common was more of a well rehearsed and polished guitar based pop sound as compared to a more, let's just use the term "less-refined", energetic and straight ahead rock & roll which was where our band, Cool McCool, fell into as a genre.

James reminded me that Jack's was the place that George Thorogood was a popular performer and also where he was playing when Rounder Records discovered him and he then put them on the American musical map.

But that was in the past and the New Man\Greenway\Brebner model was what Jack’s was looking for and if you didn't fit that genre and still wanted to play there, I guess you had to pay. Once again we found ourselves as a bit of a square peg in the Boston music scene but you can't be all things to all people, nobody else was either. Only the most popular acts could draw well anywhere in town. We all had our home markets, ours was Green Street Station, Chet's and The Channel but the tough part for any band was breaking out and getting a foothold in a new area. The drinking age had gone from 18 to 21 years earlier and the pressure that caused rolled downhill to the bands. So many bands, so few original venues. But ultimately Jack's just gave us the Wednesdays without tribute. 

Our “Sister” band, the group we shared our rehearsal space at the Pixie Theater in Hyde Park with, Those Damned Kids: Scott Harris, Dave Yanolis and John Brelia had gotten into Jack’s first and so we went to their show and knew ahead of time about what management was looking for and what you got in return.

We knew we were never going to move up the ladder at the place but had the chance to book one more show there and took it because word was already out that Jack’s was on its last legs and what the hell, a gig’s a gig, right? The owner of the building, as the story was told, had a new tenant with deep pockets just waiting to get in there and who was willing to pay much more to lease the property than Jack’s could possibly come up with and so, since the lease was going to be up later that summer, Jack’s was doomed, doomed, DOOMED. No, we weren't broken up by this prospect. 

Well it never got that far. The place had an “accidental fire” a month or so before the lease was to expire and the result became Treat Her Right’s well timed and well deserved destiny.

We all joked afterwards that if only Jack’s had burned up four days later that perhaps we would have had a Cool McCool Telethon on WBCN and have signed a recording contract.

I guess we’ll never know. 

Boston Rock of the 1980s: Boston Band Names

How important is having a good band name? It is most important! Most bands agonize over the name and they should too. For a band it’s about something bigger than the sum of its parts, it’s the name you hang out front, it’s what people will remember…or not. A good band name is a sign of imagination, an indication of your collective creativity and…it’s a king-size pain in the ass!

It’s so tough to get band members to agree on a stupid band name. “Jeez, just call it anything.” Oh, but it can’t be just ANYTHING! It’s got to mean SOMETHING, right?

Our first band, Cool McCool, was a trio and yet it took us three months to agree on a name. Tony thought “Second Sight” was a really cool name which James and I thought rightly, of course, was just plain stupid. At one point in our machinations I cracked and blurted out; “We don’t want anything sullen and gloomy like “Nuclear Winter” or anything like that do we?!”  At this James and Tony looked at each other and said “Now THAT would be a good name.”

I don’t know who it was but someone said that, with his dark hair and mustache, James looked just like that cartoon character Cool McCool that was on Saturday morning TV right after George of the Jungle. Whether it was fatigue, the fact we didn’t dismiss it out of hand or that we may actually have liked it, we agreed on it at any rate and were able to move on with our lives, our imaginations and collective creativity exhausted.

Anyway, I didn’t get to see all of these bands but here are some of the Boston Bands whose names I thought were really cool back in the day:

 

Arms Akimbo: Never saw them but they played the Rat a lot as well as other places in town. I remember reading that Amie Mann said she liked them back when she was fronting Til Tuesday. If you don’t know already it’s the term for falling backwards with your arms outstretched. Pretty clever in mho.

 

Band 19: Not to be confused with Forever 19 that had a rehearsal room next to ours at the Pixie Theater in Hyde Park. The story goes that this was the bandleader’s 19^th band that he had put together. That’s enough personnel changes to last a lifetime.

 

Berlin Airlift: Rick Berlin’s band, get it? I guess he could have just called the band “Berlin”. Previously Rick had put together a much talked about act named; Orchestra Luna.

 

Del Fuegos: “Of the Fire” in Spanish. Wonder how they came up with that one? These guys endured some hardships along the way when they were touring the country all crammed into a ford van, had all their shit stolen and a local radio station held a radio-thon to raise some money for them and put their album on the air and the band on the map. We shared the stage with them twice ourselves and I still cover “Don’t Run Wild” solo. Frank Zane has recorded a few children’s music projects that can be found in stores. Liked the name, liked the band.

 

Extreme: Not remarkable in itself except the back story was that this band was first called “The Dream” and then the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) was developing a series about a young band trying (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) to climb their way to the top and this TV band and the series was to be called The Dream. So the story goes that NBC paid The Dream handsomely for their name so they could produce their very very short lived series. The Dream became the “Ex-Dream” or “The Extreme”. Coincidence? Perhaps. A fairy tale? I don’t know.

 

Girl on Top: A trio fronted by a chic guitar player. Played a gig with them in the waning days of Green Street Station.  Good attention grabbing name I think. Got my attention at any rate.

Loners Shoot Presidents: This is a great name for a punk band which they were. Tim Catz, the drummer for this group went on to win the 1991 Rock & Roll Rumble with the band Seka, named for an “exotic dancer” in Boston’s red light district known as the Combat Zone. 

Pajama Slave Dancers: I really enjoyed these guys; they were hardcore and funny at the same time. Songs like “Defreeze Walt Disney”, “Farm Rap” and “Homo Truck Driving Man” are classics. I think they put out three albums in all of which I have two. I was told they were originally from Springfield, MA. The name is a wacky as the band's stage show. You see that name, you pretty much know what you're going to get. Cool.

Plate o’ Shrimp: A ska band most likely out of Brighton since it seems all the ska bands in town emanate from there. This came from a monologue by the character Miller in one of my favorite movies of all time, Repo Man. After Miller’s monologue an ad with the term can also be seen on a wall of a fast food place in the movie.

Rash of Stabbings: This name was fine for these guys for years and years and then all of a sudden somebody somewhere realized they found it offensive. Sort of like the character of Uncle Fester on the Adams Family. One day you hear it and say “Hey, do you know what that name really means?” They had to go as RoS afterwards since nobody would book them. I think it’s a cool name reflective of the kind of rock & roll they played. They didn’t invent the term.

Sleep Chamber: As far as I know, this band only ever played at Chet’s Last Call but they had very cool, very erotic hand drawn black & white posters with women in bondage themes. One band I really wish I could have seen live.

Stop Calling Me Frank: Our friends from Hyde Park. Never got a straight answer as to how they came up with the name. The explanation changed with each telling. Dave Forbes on guitar and Lenny was the frontman. Three chord full speed ahead rock & roll band. Their big hit was “Cyclone Ranger” “My baby treat me like a cyclone ranger, she spin me round and round, she pick me up, she put me down, she spin me round and round”. That’s gold!

Valdez the Sinner: Saw these guys at “Chetstock” and never saw their name on a marque ever again. The one set I ever saw them play was a great one, however. How they came up with this name is a mystery. Nobody was named Valdez. Maybe it was someone they knew? 

Perhaps this will be food for thought for fledgling groups banging their heads against a wall trying to come up with a band name.

Good Luck!

 

 

 

Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: TT the Bears Place

TT the Bear's Place had it's final shows on the evening of July 25, 2015. They have now closed their doors forever. Whether it's a testament to their location, their business model, for what it was, or sheer luck that they lasted as long as they did when other clubs went out, I don't know.

Located on 10 Brookline St in Central Square just off the corner with Mass Ave, TT the Bears Place or better known as “TT’s” is one of only a select few rock clubs that was part of the Boston original music scene in the 1980s that is still in business. Johnny Ds is another.

Places like the Plough & Stars were open at the time but decidedly NOT rock clubs. Not many rock and roll bars survived for long in the land of “Soda & Lime” which is how I describe Cambridge, which certainly was not a town with a reputation for beer drinkers. You would be better off to open a Tall Man’s clothing shop in Tokyo than a rock club in Cambridge, MA.  

At the time, as I can recall, there was anywhere between 14 to16 original rock and roll venues open at any one time in Boston. Some of these were: Jonathan Swifts, TTs, Jack’s, The Rat, Storyville, The Insquare Men’s Bar, The Channel, Green St. Station in J.P., Club III in Somerville, Bunratty’s, The Paradise, Johnny Ds, Harper’s Ferry, Chet’s Last Call, O’Brians and Ed Burke’s in J.P. There seemed to be no lack of places to play and many of the most popular acts like Til Tuesday, Berlin Airlift, Scruffy the Cat, City Thrills, Robin Lane, The Del Fuegos, The Dogmatics, The Stompers and The Neighborhoods we out playing a couple of nights a week. These bands were tight as anything out there since they were working so much.

Our band, Cool McCool, played TT’s maybe about a dozen times in the 6 years we banged around the Boston music scene. We started on a Tuesday of course but never really worked our way into the place past Thursday. You have to draw in this business and although most shows were well attended, we never could pack the place like they always insisted.

We were part of the RosBury Sound (Roslindale/West Roxbury) group of bands of which ourselves, Uncalled For, Stop Calling Me Frank, The Visigoths and The Infections were the better known and it was always a struggle to get people from that area into Cambridge on, say, a Wednesday for an 11 o’clock set. Hell, it wasn’t like they made it easy for you since it was cheaper to get into the Channel, the beer was more expensive there and they didn’t give you a lot of time to play.

A 45 minute set was the most you were ever going to get and many times you didn’t get that. A 30 minute set was always a looming possibility. You just never knew how many bands were going to show up on your night. And if you couldn’t make the 6 o’clock sound check, you were bumped to the last band to step on stage on a work night but none of this was an uncommon practice on the “New Music” or in other words: “ No Money” scene. Not exactly the stuff of legends.

Come to think of it, I really can’t recall anybody of note playing there beyond an occasional Barrance Whitfield and Pajama Slave Dancers double bill. No, TT the Bear’s Place’s stock and trade seemed to come from beating on Boston’s newest bands to bring a drinking draw since they’d give you a gig to start playing somewhere.  Chet’s was at least a square deal but if Chet wouldn’t book you, the next step on the ladder to the bottom that had its own sound system was TT the Bear’s Place.

We could never figure out where all the money TT’s was fleecing the bands out of was going except perhaps up the noses of management. It was six bucks to get in to see your friends play for 30 minutes and the beers, Bud bottles, were like $2.50 and they hardly paid the bands anything in comparison to the draw. I don’t think we ever walked out of there with anything more than $50.00 for the band with 2 free drinks each. If you said anything they’d just tell you to go play someplace else. Needless to say, I was never a fan of that business model.

Musically it wasn’t a bad place to play. The people were cool, the sound was good, people seemed to enjoy our stuff and we managed to get our underage entourage past the doormen (again) with that old standby, “the Roadie Ruse”. But there were a few things that I remember happened there:

At one show James, our guitar player, was having a hard time keeping the guitar in tune. This sort of thing didn’t happen all the time but there are some days you just don’t hear so well and the tuner isn't helping in a room full of chatting rock & roll fans. Anyway the soundman had enough of that after the second song and left his station, took a running leap up onto the front of the stage, takes James’s guitar, tunes it, hands it back to him without a word and goes back to his business as soundman. Then with a quick look to see if everyone was ready we jump straight into the next song on the setlist like nothing happened.

To this day James does not remember the incident. He was probably more concerned with losing the extra minute since we never seemed to have enough of those when we played TT’s.

Another time we were less than a half hour from the first band going on when a woman at the bar right across from me just straight up, mid-sentence, eyes rolling into the head, over backwards, passes out cold (warning: if you’re going to take “downers” don’t chase them with a shot!). So they call an ambulance but two show up coming from opposite ends of the street (Brookline St. is a one-way), causing a totally messed up traffic jam with the drivers out of the vehicles arguing which one is going to take the lady and delaying anything musical from happening for over an hour. I think we all got 20 minutes that night even though the right amount of bands had shown up. It figures.

After 1990, when I got out of the Boston “Originals” rooms and into the GB circuit, I never set foot in TT’s ever again. To quote James recently about the place: “They weren’t that great but they never totally pissed us off and for the Boston music scene in those days that was good enough.”

As for me, Chet’s, Green Street, The Channel, I miss being at and playing those places. TT’s, I miss not at all.

Boston Rock: Boston Bands from 1979 to 1989

Played the Boston scene from 1983 to 1994 in two acts: Bass with "Cool McCool" 1983-1989 and Guitar with "The World Renowned Rythmmen!" 1990-1994. Managed to do close to 450 shows in that time and shared the stages of The Rat, Green St. Station, Chet’s last Call, The Channel, TT the Bear’s, Club III, Storyville, Jacks's and Bunratty’s with some of the best bands ever to bang their heads against the big green wall that was the Boston Music Scene. And despite all the time we spent playing in the bars ourselves, I still consider myself more of a consumer than participant in Boston music of that time period. Whenever we played, we didn't pack up after our set but stayed to see the other bands even if it killed us the next morning going to work.

There were some great Boston bands that were the best you never heard of and some that you have. Til Tuesday comes to mind as a band you've certainly heard. I still have Aimee Mann’s first EP, Bark Along with the Young Snakes, featuring a 19 year old Aimee with two anonymous band mates on the cover. Must have seen the band more than 20 times at places like Jonathan Swift’s in Cambridge, The Channel downtown and Scotch & Sounds in Brockton, MA of all places, where anybody who was anybody played including David Johansen (After the NY Dolls and before he became Buster Poindexter), The Ramones, Robin Lane & The Chartbusters, The Stompers, Face to Face and Jon Butcher Axis.

I was amazed that one night when the opening act had cancelled, Til Tuesday was asked to do two sets and came out and did the same set twice. They only had one set of material! How could this be? The hottest band in Boston! But what a set it was. A shame that “One Minute More” never made it to vinyl (that means “record” to those under 35).

Before Til Tuesday signed with Epic records, they recorded a number of their best songs like "Love in a Vacuum" with Elliot Easton of The Cars at the studio the band had set up to record themselves and other bands. One of my menial musician's jobs at the time was driving a van for some evil corporate overlords and while driving my rounds I would listen to WNTN, a radio station out of Newton, MA that only had a license to broadcast in the daytime. They programmed mostly funk and R&B, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, The Sugarhill Gang and these recordings of Til Tuesday. Why? No clue but there they were and this was before I ever saw or even heard of the band. The Epic recordings, quite frankly, did not stack up to the production or sound of the Easton sessions. I wonder where THOSE tracks went.

Berlin Airlift, with their unheard of mix of strong vocal harmonies over absolute killer Rock & Roll was a big favorite. They weren’t just a band, they were a SHOW! This may be why they didn’t hit the big time since they were too rock for pop. This was the first band I ever saw that the guitar player (Joe Perry) had six guitars locked and loaded and was physically handed a different guitar for different songs. I was amazed! Who gets their guitars handed to them but Gods? Rick Berlin was/is the picture of what a frontman should be. I've lost count of how many times I saw them live.

Jon Butcher had a good thing going with his stellar first album in 1983 that produced the hits "Ocean in Motion", "Life Takes a Life" and "It's Only Words" and he played a great live set but things started to go south for him when his rock-solid bass player, Chris Martin, left the band and was 'replaced' by the bass player from another local Boston band who seemed more interested in how his hair looked and keeping his shirt open to the waste than actually laying a solid groove. After a short time with this lineup, management problems then caused Mr. Butcher drop the group and move to LA.

Face to Face with singer Laurie Sargent managed to produce three studio albums and a couple of solid hits like "Ten, Nine, Eight" and "Under the Gun" and I got my first glimpse into what it's about in the music business when one of the guitar players told me that they really didn't make any money on any of the albums once the recording advance was paid back. 

The song "American Fun" was a huge hit for The Stompers and it was a great single but I have to admit I wasn't a big fan of the band during their first run even though I saw them multiple times at various venues. As I have since grown into a songwriter myself, I have grown to appreciate the artistry of Sal's songwriting and their music to the point where I have sought out their albums. I was lucky enough to play a live broadcast on a Salem, MA radio show around 2004 on which Sal Baglio also appeared. He was promoting a new album of songs but was coaxed into playing one of his old songs by the radio host, Doug Mascot. So Sal plays "Rockin' From Coast to Coast" on the acoustic guitar and everybody in the crowded waiting room from the 20 somethings on up stopped what they were doing, started bobbing their heads and taping their feet. In deference to Sal's new stuff, this was a great musical moment.

We used to play this place in the North End of Boston called Chet’s Last Call which was across the street from the old Boston Garden where the Celtics and Bruins played. It stands out since we actually made money at Chet’s. It had been a disco in the 1970s and when Chet took it over he just opened the doors and DIDN’T CHANGE A THING. It still had this terrible shiny multicoloured contact paper on the walls and a stupid outdoor railing to cordon off the dance floor. Yet when we started there and began hanging out, I saw the most amazing bands. This is where The Bosstone’s played (long before they became Mighty, Mighty) and this Punkabilly band, The Wandells which tragically never put out a record and their killer tunes: “Basketcase Boogie” and “Who Cares Anyway” are lost to the world. Let this be a lesson: Record your stuff! The litany of bands that played Chet’s was a Who’s Who of the times: Scruffy the Cat, The Neighborhoods, The Flys, Valdez the Sinner, The Bent Men, The Beachmasters, and, well, us, Cool McCool.

There was also the Pajama Slave Dancers who did put out two records and had the most amazing stage show, apologizing after and sometimes before play there hits “Defreeze Walt Disney”, "Homo Truck Driving Man" and  “Farm Rap”, these guys were nuts.

Bands I also admired (meaning I bought their albums) who had big local hits and gained some national success were The Make who recorded “Aimee’s Home Tonight” in 1981 which was their big and only hit. The New Models which had a national hit in 1983 with “Say What You Want Me To Do”.  I later saw New Models founder Casey Lindstrom hit the stage on guitar with an energetic and more conventional power trio called Shake the Faith at The Channel. Then there were Rod’s & Cones which hit with “Your Infatuation Was My Education in Love” in 1985. To listen to this stuff today is to think they just were put out.

I also prize my copy of The Neighborhoods' “Prettiest Girl” which we used to also cover along with “Don’t Run Wild” and “I Still Want You” by the Del Fuegos. A little known fact of the first Rock & Roll Rumble winner was that the song "Prettiest Girl" is the B side of the single. And the band is pictured on the sleeve riding the COMET roller coaster at the long defunct Paragon Park amusement park that was in Hull, MA (1904 to 1984) one of the scariest rides ever build by humankind, completely of wood. Their 1984 LP “Fire is Coming” has a bitchen jumped-up remake of “If I Had A Hammer”. It’s a killer take.

One of the first professional acts I ever saw was Shane Champagne which was put together by Gary Shane and David Champagne way back. I played a show with Gary a couple years back when he did a reunion tour with his later band The Detour and he signed my 7 inch copy of their big hit: “Shadow World”. Both these guys are still out their playing as well as Rick Berlin. To me they are kindred spirits since none of us seem to be able to stop playing. For better or worse, it’s become part of the blood.

Another person who had risen to national prominence was Jonathan Richman who is legend in musical history. Not only did he do 7 encores of “Ice Cream Man” at CBGB’s, the notorious punk haven in New York in the late 70’s (now THAT’S punk!) but was at his most outstanding in an outdoor concert where, Toot’s Hebert of the seminal reggae band, The Maytals being lost somewhere in Western Massachusetts, Jonathan’s band, including the Pailey Brothers and Barrence Whitfield, played for nearly two hours. It was the last time I saw him with a full band. We saw him a couple of times at the old NightStage concert club in Cambridge but he played as a duo with just a percussionist.

There are too many outstanding acts to list from the days where the drinking age was 18 and all you had to do was LOOK around 18 to get beer. At that time there were 16 original music clubs and on any night of the week you could go out and see a well rehearsed professional act like The Joe Perry Project (when Joe split with Aerosmith for a time), Til Tuesday, The Del Fuegos, Robin Lane, Gang Green, The Neighborhoods, Jon Butcher, Berlin Airlift, or head down to the Channel and see, Jimmy Cliff, Tommy James & the Shondell’s, Bachman Turner Overdrive, Paul Revere & The Raiders and more. You had to learn to get along at an earlier age or someone would straighten you out.

A typical weekend evening usually began by hanging out in Kenmore Square right on the steps of the Dunkin Donuts near the Pizza Pad. This gave us the best view of the square and everybody who passed through it. We were right near The Rat and directly across from Narcissis and Celebrations, the two biggest discos in town right across the square where the BU bookstore in Barnes & Noble is today. We'd get a couple of six-packs and literally drink beer in public, watch all the people streaming by, give the bums a couple of bucks for their life stories and try to figure out what club to hit that night or when our favorite band was going on.

The days where "anyone with a weird haircut could call themselves a band" in Boston have passed but there once was a time there there was a great period of creativity that washed over the city. It's still there in pockets but the heyday of working original bands who actually were making money has passed into folklore.

Great bands. Great times.