Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: The Rat

We were supposed to care more about Boston’s legendary rock club The Rathskeller aka “The Rat” than we actually did.  

It just wasn't important to us as a band since our business interests lay elsewhere. We, meaning our band Cool McCool, were a rock & roll band, not punk and not even approaching what would later become “alternative” or underground and nothing in the vein of the past bands that came out of The Rat that went on to Boston greatness like Mission of Burma, Human Sexual Response, Iggy Pop, The Neighborhoods or The Lemonheads.

Yeah yeah I know, U2 and the Police and other national and international acts played The Rat in the 1970s blah, blah, blah but I’m sure they played other hole-in-the-wall dungeons too. They didn't need The Rat, they just happened to have played The Rat and the odds are very good that all those big bad Boston bands that are breathlessly associated with the club DID NOT get their first gigs there either. By the mid 1980s they would have had to go to Chet’s or TT the Bears first.

All that legendary stuff about the place was primarily in the past by the time we walked in the door for the first time in 1985.

If The Rat was Underground, we didn't see it as such. At the time Boston was bursting with original music clubs. To us The Rat was just another place in Boston with a PA and a bar to play when we weren't hanging at The Channel, Chet’s Last Call or Green Street Station in JP, all rooms that fit our style and that of the people who came to hear us play. And when you look at the place from that perspective, without the word "legendary" attached to its name, The Rat wasn't all that great.

It wasn't like they treated bands any better than any other of the Boston rock clubs at the time. You drew a crowd, they liked you. Not much not to understand about the mechanics of the situation. 

Since there are only so many hours in a week, bands wishing to make “the scene” had to work the music rooms they wanted to play the most.  This does not change with the times.  Actually living in the city gives a band a huge advantage in the “schmoozing” department since they can bar hop more places while seeing the bands, talking up the waitstaff, the management and being seen. When management sees you there regularly and you keep asking, you’re going to get a booking.

Also daytime access was an especially important aspect of booking The Rat since the booking agent always seemed to roll in around 3pm, an impossible time for a 9 to 5er working in the 'burbs. It seemed to us that The Rat took a whole lot more hanging out to get noticed in the “Ok, I’ll give you a gig” department. There were a lot of bands that really wanted to get in at The Rat.

So Just what was The Rat all about anyway? 

For one thing, it had the best location of any rock club in the city, right smack in the middle of it all since Kenmore Square was the crossroads of the city’s nightlife throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Your night began and ended in Kenmore Square. You had Narcissus and Celebrations, the two biggest discotheques in town, right across the square and located just up Brookline Ave a little ways and around the corner was Landsdowne Street with its row of nightclubs operating in the shadow of Fenway Park's Green Monster that varied in entertainment value from the ritzy Metro, the dark and cool Spit discotheque and the not so great “five dollar dungeon” that was 9 Landsdowne St where you paid a $5.00 cover to basically listen to records and where they would occasionally lower a high school grade movie screen from the ceiling in the middle of the room without warning to show some music videos. 

If you kept going past Landsdowne there was Copperfield’s featuring quality cover bands, cheap beer and good sound. Then on the other side of the square just up Commonwealth Ave was the lounge at the old Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge which featured professional cover acts, mostly oldies. Continuing up Comm Ave there was, and still is, The Paradise rock club. Beyond that lay the many bars of Brighton and Cambridge. Kenmore Square at the time was just crowds of people hanging out, passing through, meeting friends before they headed off or just outside waiting for their band to go on. 

The sound system at The Rat was easily overwhelmed by the amplification that many of the bands who played there brought with them. As a person who likes to hear the words, I was often frustrated by this. Only the better bands paid enough attention to sound good there and there were plenty of those too but as a spectator I would never characterize the sound night in and night out at The Rat as good.  As a performer, forget it, you never heard yourself on the stage at any of the original music rooms in town except The Channel.  Any place else the monitors were merely just music-related stage decorations.

The Rat’s exalted status did not disguise for us or our mostly suburban, over college age following the fact that it was an ugly little fire hazard/death trap of a room with its narrow stairway, black painted walls, dirty floors, wobbly tables, black leather jacketed clientele, fickle sound and just as legendary and notorious as some of the bands that played there if not more so, its noxiously obnoxious toilets.  In fact, the most consistent recollections of past Rat patrons, and anyone who had been there will tell you, had to be the river of “water” that ran from the toilets out onto the floor in the back of the downstairs club. It was an experience we all shared.

This really shouldn't be a surprise since The Rat was arguably the oldest rock club in the country’s oldest city with the historically oldest sewer system on the North American continent dating back to the founding of the city in 1630. Every now and then the city STILL pulls up a few hollowed out logs jammed together that were functioning as water piping from sometime back in the 1700s.

We played The Rat, we guess, maybe about a dozen times here and there, never in any kind of a rotation, from 1985 to 1989 and drew really well just once. We only ever did get one good night, our last, late in 1989, a Friday opening for The Lemonheads who were out for less than a year at the time but had the number one record in town with "Hate Your Friends".  We would't have played The Rat again after our first date except for the extraordinary efforts of our drummer, Tony, who would stop in almost weekly to try to get another gig. If not for that we would have been out of the loop real quick. As for James and I, we didn't care either way and felt our gig efforts would have been put to better use elsewhere. 

Most of the bands I saw at The Rat I had seen somewhere else first and I was less impressed with their Rat shows. The Bent Men played The Rat but they put on a better show at Chet’s. Ditto Throwing Muses, The Prime Movers, Scruffy the Cat and The Dogmatics.

Of the bands I had only ever seen play The Rat, I liked Johnny Angel’s band City Thrills which sort of had a Missing Persons meets Robin Lane thing going on. Also enjoyed the Condo Pigmies who were cool then and remain cool since I saw them play at Bill’s Bar on Landsdowne St in 2008 where they were the best band on the bill. I also caught the Sex Execs one night for the only time ever and they played their local hit "Princess Cheyanne" a song about a local "Exotic Dancer" who used to work Boston's red light district The Combat Zone. They were a band that, for me, represented what a good Boston band was. Tight, professional, uptempo and with quirky but catchy tunes.

One of the more enjoyable shows I saw at The Rat was another of Johnny Angel’s bands, the Swinging Erudites  which did song parodies of popular hits at the time like changing the Go Go’s hit song “Walk Like an Egyptian” to “Walk With An Erection” and a takeoff of Bon Jovi  with “Living on my Hair”. I don’t know, it was funny at the time and the record got lots of airplay on local FM stations WBCN and WCOZ. I still sing “Oh, Oh, I’m a millionaire, Wah-ah, Living on my Hair” to myself when I see something about Bon Jovi in the news. The Erudites were the biggest hit of Johnny Angel’s Boston musical career which he must have found ironic after all those years of sawing away in Boston bands like The Turbines who were really good but just didn't quite get there, then to hit with a parody group must have been bemusing. 

I was also at The Rat for a total riot that took place one night and closed The Rat for three days when some punk band I never got the name of and their aggressive fans took the place apart in 2 minutes flat. The band came on, and they weren't just playing punk rock, they were living it and their large following, who were hanging in the back unseen came forward and from the first power chord the room burst into full motion as these guys just started throwing tables, chairs, full pitchers of beer and anything else not nailed down and some things that were all over the place without regard to where they were going and what would happen once they got there. There was furious slamming going on at the same time, and I’ve seen slam dancing before or I thought I had, with stage diving, whirling fists and bloody faces. People who had no idea what was going were being knocked to the floor and a few of the regulars just dove right in. I remember this one guy, very clean cut in a red polo shirt and jeans just laughing and pogoing away while this chaos whirled around him in the fashion of Robert Duval's character, Lt Col Bill Kilgore in Apocalyse Now. But then there were the bouncers off to the side  and they were hammering some of these guys as they formed a sort of bucket brigade where one bouncer would grab a punk, slug him but good and then throw him to another bouncer who slugged him again and so on until they threw them out the back stage door into the parking lot where they staggered in bloody and disheveled protest at their shoddy treatment. Then they threw all their shit out after them.  Now THAT was a legendary show!

After the melee ended, the lights brought up and the bums thrown out and in the silence that followed the thing that stood out to me was Mitch, the owner of The Rat and he was no kid, getting down and picking up broken pieces of the plastic pitchers with his expensive three piece suit, ringed fingers and real alligator shoes. He didn't tell others to do it, he just did it. I found that impressive. I never really met the guy but he was always there and it had to be tough running a place like The Rat like few could experience.

Later in the 1990s, The Rat opened the upstairs to bands that played cover material so there were actually then three floors with something going on. There was the basement for original bands, the first floor bar and the upstairs.  I knew a couple of the bands that played "Upstairs at The Rat" like The Gypsys and The Visigoths. The bands that played upstairs got $50.00 a night…FOR THE BAND! Still, with my new group working regular I figured I’d go in and get a gig. I left the usual promo with the new booking agent and when I talked to him later he told me that, by listening to my tape, “that The World Renowned Rythmmen! were not ready to play The Rat Upstairs.”  He got that right.

That was my last experience with the room while it remained open since I was too busy with everything else to go there or any of the other original rooms left in town for that matter since I was working a different club circuit. Many of the original rooms had closed by then and none had taken their place. Then The Rat closed in 1997 and three years later became a cornerstone for a luxury hotel, The Hotel Commonwealth. 

The lasting legacy of The Rat can still be found every year when Boston’s Rock & Roll Rumble takes place at various venues around town. The Rumble started at The Rat crowning The Neighborhoods as the best band in Boston for the first time in 1976.

Seems like yesterday.

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.

Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: Chet's Last Call

There were two clubs we really called “home” during Cool McCool’s stay on the Boston original music circuit roughly from 1983 to 1989. First was Green St. Station in Jamaica Plain and the other was the first place to give us a show: Chet’s Last Call. Chet’s was located on Lancaster Street in the North End of Boston right across the street from the old Boston Garden and which sat right above the Penalty Box bar.

Legend told of how, sometime around 1982, Chet, a short and somewhat heavyset but not overly so guy who always wore a sweater and a beret,  leased this former Discotheque that had been shut down since the mid-1970s, with its tacky shiny orangey colored contact paper, it’s elevated dance floor with iron railings, mirrored walls and a big ol' mirror ball hanging from the drop ceiling and decided NOT TO CHANGE A THING. He just trucked in a sound system and mixing board and called it a rock club! Chet's booked 3 bands a night,Wednesday through Sunday.

Although many bands playing Boston in those days played Chets like Throwing Muses, The Bags, Treat Her Right etc. there were also bands I never saw anywhere else play there. Strange and intriguing bands like Sleep Chamber with their b&w flyers always featuring women in leather bondage gear, The Flys, The Pajama Slave Dancers, The Bent Men, The Bosstones (before they were “Mighty Mighty”) and one of my favorite bands in town, The Wandells with their Punkabilly sound and songs like “Basket-Case Boogie” and “Who Cares Anyway?” There was a real underground atmosphere at Chet's.

Don’t know what the “Vomit Bunny” stickers were all about but they were discretely placed and featuring a cute little white rabbit spewing a copious amount of red liquid. Who thinks of this stuff and why did they make a sticker out of it? I didn't even know if they were a band.

Cool McCool actually made money at Chet’s meaning over $125.00 as a band on weekends. It was a popular joint and there were nights it was just elbow to elbow. The first time we headlined a weekend night I remember turning around during set up and being totally surprised to see a room full of people looking back! It wasn’t something I was used to seeing that much at the time, ha, but it’s one of those feelings that you never want to let go of.

We also lived every band’s nightmare at Chet’s when the band I’ll Never Name as Long as I Live managed to clear the room of everybody but the people who worked there when they opened for us one night for the first and last time.

Since the trains stopped running at midnight in those days (early for a modern city, right?) the soundman at Chet’s would set up the board for the last act and then literally run out the door for the train.

Chet was a pretty funny guy and would have some great lineups. One year on the anniversary of Woodstock, Chet had “Chetstock” which the posters displayed a Woodstock parody picture of a buzzard sitting on the neck of a guitar. That night had an unbelievable array of acts from The Condo Pygmies (I don't wanna live in a nuclear apartment!), Scruffy the Cat, The Turbines to The Flys and a rare appearance by Valdez the Sinner and climaxed when the Dogmatics ripped what was left of the ceiling over the stage down. Classic.

So three of the best shows I’ve ever seen at Chet’s were: The Wandells who like I mentioned were a great Punkabilly Trio and I tried not to miss any of their shows. I never knew the lead singers name but he was a "born to be" rock & roller with a brown leather jacket, jeans and dark hair so long in the front that you couldn’t see his eyes EVER. It was just hair with a cigarette sticking out of it and he talked so fast that even though I was born in Boston and lived here all my life I couldn’t understand hardly a word he said. I don’t think they ever recorded an album so their music is lost to the world. Don’t know whatever happened to any of them but they were the BALLS!

 The Bent Men, Bill Desmond’s band, featuring Reeves Gabrels on guitar who I believe went on to tour with David Bowie in Tin Machine in the 1990s had a reputation for putting on a theater of the absurd. They were Pink Floyd-ish in sound but visually and content wise they were astounding and they drew big crowds where ever they played. There was a “mime” seated near the stage and he would visibly tremble every time Des would come near him. The show was dedicated to a certain controversial incident happening in Boston at the time. Des still owns The Sound Museum, a rehearsal and recording facility he opened later in the South End of Boston.

But the best show I ever saw there, or anywhere really, was The Pajama Slave Dancers where the house was packed and people were so fucking loud. They were Punk, they were Surf and they were hysterical. They would apologize after some of their songs and sometime even before. Songs like “Homo Truck Driving Man”, “Defreeze Walt Disney” with the immortal line: “Walt was a great old geezer, will someone please take him out of the freezer.”, the instrumental “Fast Cars, Girls in Bikinis” and my favorite “Farm Rap”. People were physically pushing these guys around while they were playing and at one point one of the guitar players (Steve) runs backwards over the railing and is caught and thrown back onto the stage by people in the crowd. That was a real leap of faith because if they decided to dodge him, he would’ve busted his fool neck. But he didn’t and it was great.

Chet’s, for all the awesome rock, was also a heroin den. Chet and most of his staff were reportedly also addicts. The dead giveaway could have been the excessively sweating patrons spacing out at a table or the bartender leaving the bar and going through the door marked "No Admitance" to get a nose-full or every now and then there would be someone who mistakenly tried to go out the back entrance and was caught between the self-locking door and the locked security gate and would have to beg for someone to go upstairs and tell them they were there so they could let them out. They were always three sheets to the wind. I had heard that Chet got clean quite awhile ago now and I hope he’s doing well.

Chet's was always a hard sell to our crowd. "Call me when you play someplace nice." was a familiar refrain. But the area Chet's was located had a certain air of uncertainty about it after nightfall and there were a couple of times after a show when the patrons had gone where I felt more than a twinge of concern being out on the street on my own but that's showbusiness.

And then there was a murder on Lancaster St. (Chet's was on the corner of Lancaster and Causway St.)two nights before one of our shows and our people wouldn’t go anymore. Chet started having troubles to the point where the name of the club on the wall outside was painted over. Chet was still booking bands but the place closed shortly thereafter in the late 80s.

Chet’s has passed into Boston Rock Folklore and rightfully so. Some good bands got to see the light of day at Chet’s Last Call. Chet gave bands a chance to play and for this I am forever grateful.

Boston Rock Clubs of the 1980s: The Channel – 1980 to 1991

The Channel used to sit at 25 Necco Street, at the edge of the Fort Point Channel that separates South Boston from the Financial District not far from where the Boston Tea Party happened back in 1773. It was surrounded by old brick factory buildings that seemed to be somewhat inhabited but also seemed to be very dark. The large parking lot was built for the other buildings as well and at night it would stretch out into the darkness beyond The Channel's parking lot lights. I always found it spooky. It was apparently also a great place to burn a car since I can recall burning cars in the parking lot on at least 3 occasions over the years.

The Channel was the 2^nd largest viable music venue in Boston at the time with a “suggested” legal capacity of 1700 people. The Boston Garden was the biggest venue in town but if you couldn't move 13,000 tickets, forgetaboutit! The Orpheum Theater, which is still in business, with its 2,700 seat capacity has no dancing and these little wooden seats built back during their last renovation in 1916 (no fooling). No matter who was playing, you just sat there and watched them and none too comfortably either. If you were even remotely tall, your legs were jammed up like a plane passenger in 4th class seating. The next closest place in size, The Paradise nightclub up on Commonwealth Ave, only officially held 185 patrons in the main room.

No, The Channel was IT as the city's #1 concert club with its large open floor in front of the stage, multiple bars, massive sound system with giant speaker stacks on both sides of the stage, laid back rules and low cover charge. It was all about selling the drinks and you can’t buy a drink if you can’t get in. Especially since the drinking age was going up in Massachusetts. It went from 18 to 20 in 1979 and from 20 to 21 in 1984 spelling the death knell for many of Boston’s original music clubs of which only two from that era survives today: TT the Bear’s Place and Johnny D's in Cambridge.

Some of the more memorable touring acts I saw were Tommy James, who blew me away with a great set of new, old and Christian music. Jimmy Cliff was unbelievable, singing “Many Rivers to Cross” two and ½ hours into his show clear as a bell amid the plooms of marijuana smoke wafting up from the audience. Must’ve seen Greg Allman play The Channel at least 4 times. Not because I was much of a fan but because my roommate, Jeanie, was. Still he put on a good show each time.  One time Jeanie managed to walk right up to him and punched Greg in the shoulder saying “Great Show, Greg!” She actually didn't think she could get that close to him so when she did, she couldn’t think of anything else to say. Smooth. What is it that they say when you actually meet your hero? You can never think of a thing to say. But one thing you can say about Greg, he’s a good sport. He did tell her “Thanks”.

I was playing in my own band, Cool McCool, in Boston during most of the 80s and  so it seemed I was always working when my favorite bands played there. Missed The Cramps every single time and also Social Distortion but I caught a lot of local acts. Probably saw Til Tuesday 15 or 16 times between Jonathan Swifts, Scotch & Sounds and the Channel. I thought Gang Green was the greatest band on earth when I caught their last 3 songs at The Paradise and so I made sure I caught the whole set the next week at the Channel and then thought that they were close to, if not the worst. They were so full of shit!

Also remember a standout set by Casey Lindstrom's post New Models band "Shake the Faith" They dropped out of site afterwards but they really worked that big stage for a trio. It is a struggle when the band you achieve success with breaks up, and "Say What" was a big hit in 1983, and then you have to pick up the pieces and claw your way back up the ladder again.

The Fools and Ball & Pivot were other favorite local acts but my favorite Boston band was Berlin Airlift bar none and their lone eponymous album remains in my personal Top 10.

Playing The Channel was a unique experience since they were the biggest club in town and booked a lot of local acts. Every band in and out of Boston clambered to play there and it seems they gave almost everybody a shot. Mostly this came off as 3 to 4 bands in an evening but later on these “New Music” nights became, as our guitarist James put it, “Cattle Calls” pitting anywhere from 5 to 6 bands a night. James recalls nights where there were more but I can’t remember a night with more than 6 bands. These were nerve wracking affairs since once you were done with your set, and lord help you if you went over your time, you had to get your stuff off the stage and out of the building. Nothing set aside, get it out! You had plenty of help though since the next band would start massing at the side of the stage to help you get your stuff off as your set clock wound down.

New bands started on Tuesday. If you could draw enough people on a Tuesday you got a Wednesday. If not, you got another Tuesday. It took us about 3 years to get to a Saturday night opening slot. We could draw but being from the suburbs, it was hard to be consistent on a weeknight.

We played The Channel almost monthly between 1986 and 1990. Tony, our drummer, got us the shows and it was his idea to concentrate on the biggest venue in town, an idea that worked out well for us in the long run. Sound check was at six o’clock sharp and that first February I made a terrible discovery: They didn’t heat the place when nobody was there. They came in at 5:55 pm and just turned the lights and the heat on. Or maybe just the lights. Well, in February it was something like 10 degrees F in there if that. I don't remember anything about playing the show that evening but I'll never forget playing that sound check. Just brutal.

But what, and give up "SHOW BUSINESS?!!”

There was a memorable show where I thought James had my amp and he thought I had it so subsequently when we showed up, no bass amp. But the bass player from The Beach Masters, Boston’s premier Surf band, was gracious enough to let me use his. And yes, his amp was infinitely better than my low-end 130 watt Peavey Combo. It was a Trace Eliot with the little blue florescent light on it. Cool! It sounded great. No, I didn't upgrade after that.

The reason you played a Peavey Comp amp was that it can fall out of the van on the Express Way, get ping-ponged by a dozen taxi cabs and it will still work. At the end of the world there will be only cockroaches and Peavey amplifiers left to see the lights go out. But if you can somehow manage to blow it up, you could get another one for $80.00 tops. If one has to put up with a bit too much mid-range and questionable low end quality, well, it's a trade off. Plus, James was sporting a solid-state Crate Combo with a pawn-shop 1970s era Electra solid body guitar. Who's going to point fingers?

And speaking of cockroaches. I never actually ate any popcorn from that theater-style popcorn machine they had at the bar but from what I am told by some eye witnesses about what they saw crawling around the inside of that popcorn machine some evenings...well, I guess there were no known casualties. Just glad I never partook.

Our band would get $50.00 a show, a case of canned beer (Busch beer!) and a room to drink it in. Once we got to the weekend shows we got $100.00, a case of beer but no more “get in free” tickets. Those free tickets worked very well when we opened for Bachman Turner Overdrive on our first big Saturday show. The cover was $9.00 so with our ticket it was free.

Friend: “You mean I can see BTO for free?”

James:  “Well, we’ll be playing too.”

Friend: “Yeah, but BTO for free!”

James: “And our band…”

Friend: “BTO, for free?”

James:  “Great, enjoy.”

There were many good things about playing The Channel and we really enjoyed playing there. The sound was great and it could get super loud. We used to cover Peter Gabriel’s “Biko” at the end of which there are some “Oh, oh, ooooohs” and if you were off on the pitch, and we were, the monitor system would MAKE YOU PAY for your lack of precision! I thought my head was going to explode.

The staff was actually pretty nice for an original music club. Many venues around town like Jack’s (Cambridge), TT the Bears (Cambridge) and Bunratty’s (Allston) could be pretty surly to bands wanting to play “their exalted dive bar” but we didn’t get that at The Channel. It didn't seem to matter who you were or wasn't, they were a professional outfit.

The sound guys always made us a tape through the board when we asked and the tapes always sounded good. The stage crew, for having to shuffle a multitude of bands on and off the stage in a hurry and mic 'em up were as good as it got in Boston. We did what they told us to do and we got along well.

That BTO show was big for us. It was the most people we had ever played for which was about 2000 people since people were standing up against the wall in back, the signature sign of overcapacity for this place. We never met the band and I felt a bit sad for them because they were touring to support a new album and NOBODY WANTED TO HEAR IT.  The crowd would cheer at “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” but when they did a new song you could hear crickets chirping out there. They went on the “Oldies” circuit a year later.

One neat thing about playing to a big crowd for the first time and being really, really nervous and feeling the pressure to do a good job, put on a good show and essentially "not fuck up" was that when we played our regular house gig at Green Street Station in Jamaica Plain the very next afternoon, it was so relaxing. Like you could just lay back and play. Many of the people who followed the band marked THAT night as our best show ever.

I left the band in 1990 to pursue other musical interests but Cool McCool continued to play The Channel and open for other great acts like Treat Her Right and The Stompers right up until The Channel passed into Boston Rock History in 1991.

It is greatly missed.

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.