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 28th 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.
