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 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 Clubs of the 1980s: Green Street Station

Doug Mellon remains a lot of things to a lot of people to this very day. At one time though, he was the proprietor of one of the most revered clubs in Boston Rock Club History: Green St. Station in Jamaica Plain. But the story is not so much about the rock club as it is about the man. Back then, Doug Mellon was a man of many talents and moods.

After Ed Burke’s closed sometime in the mid 1980s there were just two places to play in Jamaica Plain: The Midway Café right next to Doyle’s or take a real short trip up the street to Green St. Station. At that time The Midway booked blues bands, lots of blues bands…and The Roys. The Roys were THE big fish in JP’s small pond for years featuring the enigmatic front man and founder Dave Roy.  The Roys were blues based but a far cry from the more traditional blues bands that were plying the circuit. They played raw and loud blues rock like the Rolling Stone's "Star Fucker" and The Incredible Casual's "Records Go 'Round" which I believe one of the guitar players "Philly Roy" aka Phil Kaplan actually co-wrote. They were easily the best band nobody outside of J.P. ever heard of.  

The other room in town, Green St., was an “Originals Room” that featured 3 or 4 bands a night that wrote their own songs. Because of it's location on the fringe of the Boston rock scene where most of the rock clubs at the time were located in Cambridge or Kenmore Square, Green Street had a less urban feel and more diverse musical atmosphere. Doug Mellon, whether he had heard of you or never heard of you, was going to give you a gig...at least once the clubs mainstay acts were the groups based in areas just outside of the city and in or close to J.P. such as West Roxbury, Roslindale and Hyde Park. These were mostly rock & roll bands that didn't quite fit in with the Punk or New Wave genre promotional preferences of the downtown Boston clubs. There was even a World Music group that played there but I couldn't tell you the name because nobody ever gave a shit about the stuff. 

Green St Station, previously known as Kilgarrif’s and run by Doug’s father, was housed in a building practically next door to the Green St. T stop on Boston’s Orange Line just before you reach Forest Hills, the end of the line. The building was eventually knocked down during the 2000 housing boom and now a condo building resides on one of Boston rock’s most meaningful corners.

My first band, Cool McCool, started playing Green St. sometime around 1985 and continued right up until Green St. was taken for back taxes somewhere in 1990. It was then quickly purchased from the city by an Irish “concern” and given the puzzling name, "The Bog of Allen" which almost exclusively featured touring Irish folk acts from “Ye Auld Sod”. 

During the day, Green St. served food to the after work blue collar crowd and, being Jamaica Plain, had a variety of different cooks with different styles. Jambalaya seemed always on the menu and the regulars who hung out there saw everybody who was anybody whenever they played Boston.

“Dude! I remember the night you broke three strings on your bass in a 45 minute set!”

"I'm sorry man, you must have me mistaken for someone else."

"No Dude, it was YOU, I remember, you broke three fucking BASS strings!"

Shit, someone remembers me from that fucking gig!

Green St. was a very homey place, cheap beer and some home cooking (when available). And there were bands. Band’s like "Stop Calling Me Frank", "Hell Toupee", “Those Damned Kids”, “The Hendersons”, “Ms. Zanna Don’t”, “The Phil Tawa Band”, “The Infections”, “Uncalled For”, “The Visigoths” , "Girl on Top" and “Nisi Period”. All solid, well rehearsed acts. 

Doug even booked G.G. Allin one time but threw them out, crowd and all, after people started urinating on the dance floor as soon as the band started playing. G.G. Allin and band never got through their first obnoxious song before they were done and out the door. Although you would think that Doug had seen it all at Green Street over the years, he was incredulous. “What a bunch of Assholes!” he was heard to say about the incident.

Cool McCool played many shows there since we all lived just up the street and drawing a consistent crowd at Green St. was a comparative breeze and at one point played at least a year of Wednesday nights there.

Green St. was a good place to go see a band. The stage was to the right as you walked the room lengthwise from the door and there was a clear view of the stage from every point in the room. The the bar was to the left of the door along the wall so as you walked in, the room opened into somewhat of a diamond shape with the stage at first base and the far end of the bar at third. 

The sound system was better than most by Boston rock standards and in the hands of someone who understood the room's dynamics, a pleasing sound experience could be had by all including the musicians. Since the monitors never seemed to be loud enough, a band derived most of its aural feedback from their sound bouncing off the back wall opposite the stage. This worked pretty well most of the time and it was hard to sound bad there. Bill O'Malley, guitarist for the band Seka, ran the board for a number of Rythmmen shows at Green St.  I wasn't aware he was even in the band until I saw Seka win in the Rock & Roll Rumble finals. Up until then I only knew him as Bill the "Good Sound Guy."

It was irrefutable that Doug was a tough guy. He was known to hold a black belt in karate and was a force to be reckoned with if things got out of hand but subsequently I can count the number of fights I've ever witnessed at Green St. to half a hand while Dough had the place. 

There was always a crowd at Green St. in those days. As a local “watering hole”, people just went there. I still call J.P. the biggest little town in the world. People there just love to go out and support their local establishments and bands like you seldom see anywhere else. Dave Balerna, owner of The Midway Café with his brother Jay, once said “Give me 5 people from J.P. and we’ll drain this bar dry!” upon witnessing the “Soda & Lime” crowd while visiting a music establishment in Cambridge. There was little doubt he’d be correct.

Doug Mellon also had a band. I don’t recall what the name of it was but the legendary Joe Coughlin, long-time Boston musician and bedrock of the local rock scene’s remaining rock magazine, The Noise, was in the band. There were many anonymous bass players and drummers and Doug…sang.

No, they weren't that good. I don't think they rehearsed much and I don’t know, there was always something funny about the sound when they played. Something beyond their timing was off somehow. But every so often the band would appear on stage and well, there they were.

But I can still vividly recall the night when Doug’s band sounded…well they sounded pretty good. Everybody in the place knew immediately that this was a night to remember. One by one people swiveled around on their stools at the bar to pay attention. Suddenly Joe’s guitar sounded full and loud, surprisingly the drummer, what’s his name, seemed to actually hold a beat through an entire song and eerily the bass player, what’s his face, found his groove. The songs were oddly palatable. Doug was…singing! People were applauding and then it was rounds, rounds for the house! Doug was buying. It was truly a special evening.

Then there was the time Doug ran afoul of the Budweiser Beer Union, which, throughout the 1980s, had an iron-like grip on what beer came into the state. No Coors being served in Massachusetts and very little from the Genese brewery in New York State either.  We never heard of Yuengling back then. If you wanted a beer you got a Budweiser, a Michelob, a Miller High Life or a fucking Rolling Rock.

So fucking Rolling Rock it was for the foreseeable future after Budweiser stopped delivering beer. It was the only group that would still deliver. The only redeeming feature was that RR was a whole lot cheaper than a Bud. I don’t remember Bud ever coming back.

But life was pretty good for a while until Doug fell behind financially for many reasons. Green St. was taken by the City of Boston and The Bog of Allen was born just in time for my next band, The World Renowned Rhythmmen! to be ready to play an entire evenings worth of tunes. We had done a handful of opening sets just before Green St. was padlocked and Doug had stiffed us at the door each time so at that point I was not too broken up about the situation and as it turned out the new owners took a liking to us, in part, because the "Irish acts only" business model wasn't paying the bills and so The Bog started booking local bands again. But beyond business, the Bog management and staff treated us so very well to the point we thought we were dreaming. 

The Rhythmmen! played The Bog on a monthly basis as well as Christmas and New Year’s. We also played every Sunday for 4 months during this time all while playing through a bitchen’ $12,000.00 brand new JBL stereo sound system that these guys put in. In fact, these guys totally redid the place. No more Jambalaya and the legendary stink and soggy floor of the men’s bathroom was relegated to the dung heap of history.

But Doug Mellon wasn’t about to go away quietly.

One evening while we were on stage playing a set on a crowded Saturday night, I see Doug come through the door, walk straight across the floor in front of the stage right over to the new manager an "off the boat" Irish guy named Collum-something and just straight on punch the guy right in the nose. No hesitation and no warning “blamo!”. The best part was that Cullum actually saw Doug coming and was leaning, one arm against a doorway and looking pretty smug just before Doug knocked that look off his face but good. 

Down goes Cullum! Down goes Cullum! right down to the floor but he was back up on his feet again as Doug was walking out the door, his hands still curled into fists. 

That was the first shot.

Then there were a couple of times we would come out of The Bog after a show and there was a dump truck sized pile of broken asphalt dumped in the parking lot entrance. We had to slowly drive off the high curbs to get out. This happened one other time when we were playing there along with the occasional burning automobile which was almost a cliché at every club you went to in those days.

But eventually something good broke for Doug. The owner of Bunnratty’s, a prominent, notorious and sometimes dangerous Boston nightclub formerly located at 186 Harvard Street in Cambridge, was going to retire or something like that and it was said he had asked Doug if he could run the place on an "option to buy" arrangement. But things went downhill fast for Doug as he was off to the worst start in Boston Rock Club history when he announced that he was going to re-name the venue, first built in 1920, “The Coconut Grove”!

Yes, it’s true. Doug apparently had no idea that it was actually against the law in Boston ever to name another establishment “Coconut Grove”, ever since the worst fire in the city’s history occurred there on November 28^th 1942 killing 491 people in a sudden flash of flame and smoke and is listed as one of America’s Great Disasters right in the same pages as the Johnstown Flood, the Dust Bowl and the fucking Hindenburg! 

This Doug did not know. So not everybody can be a historian, right?

Anyway, Doug’s idea makes front page news on both Boston newspapers and after being personally denounced by the Mayor of Boston, Doug relents and decides to call the place “The Melody Lounge” which was bad enough since the original Coconut Grove sign also listed the “Melody Lounge” after its name. But it all didn't last that long after that.

The “retired” owner of Bunratty’s decides he’s going to un-retire and he took the club back and tossed Doug and the nefarious crew he had as an entourage at the time back into the depths.
During this time The Bog wasn't doing too well either. The day after our New Year’s Eve gig, the City Licensing Board walked in and shut the place down. The story was that The Bog hadn't filed their liquor license renewal in time for the new year. Either that or it was just a naked shakedown by the city. Either way the city closed the place for a month until the proper “paperwork” was filed. But The Bog never recovered that one month lost revenue. It was too big a hill to climb over. They hung on for a while but closed before the end of the next year.

The place lay empty but then became a day care center for a spell before being razed.

Doug Mellon moved out of Massachusetts and was running a club up in Nashua, NH for a few years. Last I heard he had moved again, this time to Rhode Island to try to get another rock club going. That is where the trail ends.

Epilogue:

We had some great times at Green Street Station both as performers and spectators but I would like to mention that my most cherished musical memory happened while we were playing all those Sundays at The Bog of Allen as The World Renowned Rhythmmen! One Sunday evening the aforementioned local celeb Dave Roy himself walks in and asked to sing a few songs with the band. Make no mistake, this was a high honor! So we ran through a list of tunes we all knew like Elvis’ “Little Sister”, Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love”, Wilbert Harrison’s “Kansas City” etc. until we get to “Secret Agent Man”. Dave  says to me “Yeah, I know the song, what’s the first line again?” So I says “You know, There’s a Man who lives a life of danger…?” “Oh yeah” Dave says, “I got it.” So we jump into the song and Dave sings that same line over and over through the entire song ending with the chorus “Life of Danger Man! Life of Danger Man! He lives a life of danger; he’s life of danger man!” Perfectly in time with the music and people were rolling, it was so funny. It was a great moment. Who would've known that Dave Roy didn't know the words to “Secret Agent”?

At the end of a most memorable evening Dave suggested that since The Bog only had a one o’clock liquor license, that we should go down the street and “take over” The Midway Café which closes an hour later. We still had to load out so Dave went on ahead of us and when we got to The Midway a little while later, no Dave Roy. So I ask Dave Balerna if he had seen Dave Roy and he tells me; “You wouldn't believe it, Dave Roy takes four steps into the place and passes out cold!”

And that, boys and girls, is Rock & Roll.