Welcome to THE NEIGHBORHOODS [1986]

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1986

Introduction © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2016

Images by Rocco Cippilone

This interview was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #14, dated 1986.

Dave Minehan is a powerhouse and a Boston legend. While the Neighborhoods unfortunately never broke through the barrier into the A-list, they still managed to make it into the Boston Music Awards Hall of Fame in 2005. Considering the sheer number of bands from that city, and the volume of sales that they all generate, this is pretty astounding. But also, it is rightfully so.

I had quite a nice conversation with Dave when I first met him at a Salem 66 gig in Boston (Cambridge, actually, if I remember correctly) in the -mid 1980s. Of course, we talked music in the form of bands we liked. One band we both obviously liked was Salem 66. Honestly, I had forgotten about this conversation (more about my age and distance in time than the content or Dave, himself) until I retyped this interview.

When I look back at the article now, I realize I spelled Dave’s last name wrong, and for that I am sorry. Putting the story in the ‘zine, though, was certainly the right thing to do. Nowadays, Dave is the “owner, producer, engineer, session musician, songwriter, arranger” (as it states on his LinkedIn page) of Woolly Mammoth Sound/Productions, in Arlington, MA. He is also the touring guitarist for the Replacements since 1993. Lee Harrington went on to be both a music producer and a powerhouse lawyer with the firm Nixon Peabody. Oh, and yes, Dave he and Lee still tour as the Neighborhoods, currently with Johnny “Rock” Lynch on drums.

Check out the documentary which discusses their career (among others), Boys From Nowhere: The Story of Boston’s Garage Punk Uprising (2016), reviewed by me HERE: – RBF, 2016 http://ffanzeen.blogspot.ca/2016/05/documentary-review-boys-from-nowhere.html

  

The Neighborhoods. A good rock’n’roll trio from Boston. They have a bunch of records out on Ace of Hearts Records.

Springtime at the now-defunct Peppermint Lounge, I had a chance to talk to two of the three. Plain, simple, and to the point, like their hard-driving music. Check it out. Check them out. ‘Nuff said.

FFanzeen: The Neighborhoods usta play with Willie Alexander, didn’t they?

Dave Minehan (vox/guitar): Yeah.

FFanzeen: Was that when the Neighborhoods was formed?

Dave: Very shortly prior to. We pretty much jumped in after Willie’s band, probably after six months of playing.

FFanzeen: After the Boom Boom Band, right?

Dave: Yeah, after those guys just dissolved. They still had a lot of gigs to do, as far as I was led to believe, and that’s what first actually brought us down here to New York. And our long-time friendship with Jim Fouratt [who founded Danceteria – RBF, 2016] started then. It’s been going ever since. That’s why we’re here tonight, once again.

FFanzeen: When you played with Willie, it was at Hurrahs, right?

Dave: Uh-hunh. At Hurrahs, and that was about ’79, or something. Or ’78.

FFanzeen: It was when the [Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band] album came out in ’78.

Dave: The second one [Meanwhile…Back in the States – RBF, 1986]

FFanzeen: Do you ever still team with him?

Dave: Last time has been a while.

Lee Harrington (bass): My sister has a band, and every once in a while he’ll come down and sing with them. For a while I was playing bass.

FFanzeen: What band?

Lee: It’s called Barry Marshall and the Rockin’ Robins. It’s like a big soul review, kinda. But Willie just comes down and sings once in a while, so I’ve played with him a few times. He’s doin’ all right. He’s playin’ again. He’s writing a lot still, too. I saw his set the last time he was on stage. We were playing the night after he played.

FFanzeen: The type of music you play doesn’t seem to be played too much. It’s just sort of a straight ahead rock’n’roll.

Dave: Yeah. Well, at this point of the game, I don’t care or worry too much about anything because I finally see good rock’n’roll finally getting listened to, in terms of independent bands doing okay. So, as long as we keep behaving ourselves, keep writing, keep working hard, keep meeting people and doing all the things we’re supposed to do, our day should come. Hopefully. I mean, we’ve stuck it out this long, and we’ve been stuck it out during periods when the direction wasn’t as solid as it’s been in the last couple of years. So with all that working for us now, I hope it’s just a matter of time.

FFanzeen: How did Rick Harte of Ace of Hearts Records get in touch with you?

Dave: Rick was just starting and we did a single for him [“No Place Like Home” b/w “Prettiest Girl” – RBF, 1986]. It was his second single ever and it helped put us on the map, and it helped put Rick on the map, also. It was quite the New England hit. It probably carried us. [I show them my copy of the single – RBF, 1986]. And you know what’s great, now the place on the cover, Paragon Park, was just torn down this winter. So this is a really classic item. This was Revere Beach.

FFanzeen: When it came out, you were being, like, touted as the rock’n’roll band in Boston. There’s a lot of press that said that.

Dave: Oh, yeah, and there’s the Battle of the Bands that we won [1979 WBCN Rock’n’Roll Rumble – RBF, 2016], and that single did take off without too much hype behind it at all, in New England and the surrounding areas, as an AOR hit. So, a lot of people had a lot of reasons to be saying such things, but press can come and go. And it did.

Lee: Plus there was so much press at one point that I think people just got sick of hearing about it.

Dave: Yeah, and they were considered Neighborhoods fans.

Lee: The people were so quick to say the band was gonna break, that when it didn’t break immediately, people thought that the band must be washed up.

FFanzeen: Also, it was a long time between that record and when the next one came out.

Dave: That’s partly the band’s fault, partly managerial fault. ‘Cause everything was so animated at that point in time, and we had every kind of lip service available speaking at all sides. The band just really sat in things for a long time and let a lot of good things pass. We had a chance to do something else with Rick Harte, but we felt the execution of the songs at that point was not very developed, and not as rocking as we’d hoped, so we were reluctant to move on that, and time passed. And before you know it, two years-three-years-four years down the line, you’re kinda starting over.

FFanzeen: Do you see any major signings upcoming?

Dave and Lee: No.

Dave: We’re recording now on our own. We’re in the studio in the middle of doing something. We’ll shop around. We shopped the last record around and got some fairly positive response, but not positive enough to give us any money. So, we’ll do it again and see what happens.

FFanzeen: I’m must afraid that what’ll happen to you is what happened to the Stompers. They were a decent pop band, but then I heard their album and said, “I paid for this?!”[The Stompers’ “Coast to Coast” indie single is amazing; the LP version not so much – RBF, 2016]

Dave: That’s rough. I feel bad for those guys.

FFanzeen: And DMZ. Sire really screwed them over with their album.

Dave: Yeah, but both those bands you’re talking about didn’t really have any real idea of what they wanted to do, or at least one strong enough to grasp the situation and take control. They both just let someone tell them what to do and they made bad records.

Lee: And also, still, it was the first wax from both bands, and DMZ didn’t know what the –

Dave: Yeah, that’s definitely part of it, too.

Lee: We had our sniff of that stuff. We’ve dealt with major companies in the past, in the time period we were just talking about, that were paying for studio time and these were all fairly major labels and stuff. We’ve seen the inner workings of that whole scene. We’re very comfortable working on the independent level right now. Hopefully this next album will do something to get us released to another step up there, touring more. The record we released a year ago is now allowing us across the country. So hopefully this next one will be on an even broader scale.

Dave: Plus we’re never gonna make a record we don’t want to make, anymore. There’s no way it’ll happen.

FFanzeen: What record did you make that you didn’t want to make.

Dave: We haven’t yet. That’s what I’m saying. We’re not gonna put ourselves in that position where we make somebody else’s record.

Lee: The Ace of Hearts thing was our fault; that we just didn’t know what we wanted.

Dave: The second one.

Lee: Right. We just didn’t want it out, really.

FFanzeen: What’s the name of that one, ‘cause I don’t have it.

Lee: No one has that.

Dave: It’s never been released.

FFanzeen: Well, what would it have been the name of it?

Dave: It’s just The Neighborhoods. It’s a four-song EP on Ace of Hearts. It didn’t even get to the drawing board in terms of names. It was just, like, no one was groovin’ to it.

FFanzeen: Your taste in music is a little different at times from the music you play; it’s a lot heavier. You play very straight rock’n’roll, and I know for a fact that you, Dave, like early Slade, Sweet [we had discussed this mutual affliction when we met at a Salem 66 gig at a club in Boston – RBF, 1986].

Dave: We all have our heavy metal backgrounds.

Lee: We all grew up in the same time frame and we all listened to the same radio. It’s suburban America.

FFanzeen: It surprises me, happily, that you didn’t turn out to be just another bar band.

Dave: Well, punk and New Wave, once we were all exposed to it, showed us that whole other angle thing, and I think somewhere in the middle we found a fine medium.

FFanzeen: The scene in Boston is, like, a couple of years ago in ’82-’83, [in New York] you heard most of the bands in Boston and they were real popular, but in the last couple of years or so you don’t really hear about Boston bands too much.

Dave: Couple of years?

Lee: See, I think it’s, like, the other way around. It had slowed down and now it’s kinda like – I don’t know, I have a different perception. Maybe we’re just seeing bands that haven’t broken nationally yet.

Dave: I see a lot of records coming out of town right now.

FFanzeen: I’m talking press-wise. I remember when your first single came out –

Dave: That’s true.

FFanzeen: – There was this influx of Boston bands everywhere.

Dave: Well, now there’s the Lyres, Del Fuegos, Salem 66, Lifeboat, Dumptruck. I mean, they’re all bands from Boston who, like, tour to some degree and, like, I see a lot of press and stuff.

Lee: I guess there’s not a collective scene so much anymore.

Dave: Maybe people just realize that they have to go out to do it. There’s a lot of guitar bands to be had in Boston, and a lot of the press has paid attention to guitar bands from Boston, it seems. I know there’s a very different scene in Boston that hasn’t really let itself be known, but I know it exists ‘cause I see it here and there, and it’s, like, the Cure type of scene where there are lots of synthesizers and dirgey-type music. And these people are very, very sincere about their music, and very serious about it. But because a lot of the press doesn’t pay attention to that sort of music they’re not really collective about it in any kind of scene. Maybe we’ll see some of that in the future, I don’t know. I’d like to see a little of both… Maybe we’re just inbetween scenes again.

FFanzeen: Like the [mid-]’70s.

Dave: It seems like we’re not in Boston so much anymore. We’re on the road a lot more, like down South and stuff, and hopefully on the West Coast before too long. So maybe we’re not playing our part so much over there. Maybe we don’t quite know either, ‘cause we are busy. I go out enough – we all go out enough – we all have our favorite bands we go see and stuff, but to truly be a part of a scene takes a lot of effort. You gotta be out a lot, and because you’re working in a nightclub a lot, the last thing you wanna do is go out to a nightclub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6-Xvu7OS3E

Documentary Review: Boys from Nowhere: The Story of Boston’s Garage Punk Uprising

Text and photos © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2016

Video from the Internet

Boys from Nowhere: The Story of Boston’s Garage Punk Uprising

Directed by Chris Parcellin

BFN Films

77 minutes, 2016

www.facebook.com/bfnfilms  

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.

When it comes to sports, something which I don’t really follow, the New York-Boston rivalry is legendary. But when it comes to the sounds coming out of the clubs in the 1970s and ‘80s, well, yeah, there was a bit of a competition there as well, but both scenes – be it CBGBs or the Rathskellar (aka the Rat, whose denizens I’m sure hated it being called “Boston’s CBGBs,” and rightfully so) had more concurrent and complimentary bands helping charge each other rather than tearing down. While I had my feet firmly planted in NYC, from the late ‘70s to the mid ‘80s I had the opportunity to go to Boston twice a year on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, and immerse myself in that wonderful area. This gave me the opportunity to experience many of the musicians mentioned in this documentary.

After a brief opening with a brief historical video of ex-WBCN radio DJ Oedipus (he is also interviewed in the heart of the film), who was both loved and hated by those on the scene for various reasons, the documentary jumps ahead full volume. It’s a notch that this is more about the bands than anything else, so chronology of whom or what came first isn’t as important. For example, if it were presented that way, the Modern Lovers and Willie “Loco” Alexander would have been right off Yaz’s bat (why do I even know about Carl Yastrzemski? Osmosis, I guess. But I digress…), since there were at the forefront as the period unfolded. However, the Real Kids start off the focus.

I first learned about the Real Kids via their abbreviated masterpiece single “All Kindsa Girls” / “Common at Noon” (the full version would be released after), and then by their album on Red Star Records, promoted in NYC strongly by then-Red Star employee and huge Real Kids fan, Miriam Linna (not shown here). The album is phenomenal, even though I like the single version of the two songs more, but that may be because I heard it first, who knows. Using recent and archival footage, all the members of the band are heard from, including lead singer John Felice (who I saw at the Rat in his post-RK group, the Primevals), Alan “Alpo” Paulino (d. 2006), and Billy Borgioli (d. 2015; I had the opportunity to hang out with him a couple of times, thanks to my friendship with his long-time girlfriend Nancy Neon, also not interviewed probably due to time constraints).

John Felice and the Primevals

The Real Kids were quite spectacular, with high energy performances both live and on disk, and top notch songwriting, both of which are discussed here, by the likes of Jonathan Richman. This is key, considering Felice was in the Modern Lovers as a scene newbie. I’m happy to say that the film does not shy away from some of the negatives in the band, such as Felice’s contention about the album (apparently he’s the only one from anyone with whom I’ve discussed it), their more-than-recreational use of substances, and the firing of Borgioli, whose guitar was the backbone of the album. In my opinion, they never really recovered from that loss, though an obviously modified version of the band still plays today.

Again, not worrying about order, next up is the introduction of the Rat, the seminal locus of the scene at its start (the Channel and the Paradise, etc., would come later for promoting it), opening in 1973 (or ’74 as I’ve seen both listed, and closing 1997, where a luxury hotel replaced it), presenting the groups that would help change the world, is discussed through it’s originator, Jim Harold. He is an important hub to the Boston locus, and yet as I am not from the area, I know so little about him. I appreciate the info.

Monoman and the Lyres

This leads to DMZ, a band that would be led by Jeff “Monoman” Conolly, who I would later see numerous times in his next band, the more garage-based Lyres (the last time was 2007). I didn’t realize that he was the last to join the group, rather than it forming around him. DMZ was another band that signed to a major label (Sire, directly by the Danny Fields), yet never clicked with the larger audience. They were a band divided by egos; we even knew then that they would not last, but their LP is just so much fun, even though it honestly didn’t really represent the band as they were live. They rest this squarely on the shoulders of their producers, Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan (aka Flo and Eddie, aka the Turtles). Honestly, I never thought about how bad and misrepresenting the cover of their album was before, but they dissect it quite nicely here. It was their final hurrah. Oh, and as a point of interest, Monoman wrote the song whose title was used for this film.

Willie "Loco" Alexander

Next up is Willie Alexander, the godfather of the Boston underground. The section opens with the sludgy guitar of “Hit Her Wid Da Ax” (being “penis” rather than “hatchet” in this case), which was immediately identifiable. I may not agree with Willie’s politics, but as a musician, I’m a fan. With his Boom Boom Band, he actually does my favorite version of “You Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” which he made his own. Saw him play twice in the ‘80s, including once at the Paradise, where I had the opportunity to hang out with him a short while before the show. Both performances were excellent, of course.

Jonathan Richman and Modern Lovers

Folded into this chapter is also Jonathan Richman, who would form the Modern Lovers. Most people today seem to know him as “the Troubadour” from the film There’s Something About Mary (1998), but his work has been consistently off-center, which makes him a perfect person to run concurrently with Willie in this piece. There are other similarities other than off-beat vocal styles. For one, both started solo and had a band join them after, but more importantly, both had a relationship with the Velvet Underground. For Richman, he was a mega-fan (as Morrissey was for the Dolls) and friend of the band, and Willie actually replaced Reed after Lou quit the group, to tour with the VU in Europe. Both are unique and yet led to the beginning of that period of Boston garage punk. I’ve seen Richman a few times, including with a version of the Modern Lovers in 1977 at My Father’s Place on Long Island; I’ve also videographed him being interviewed for cable access show Videowave backstage at Maxwell’s in Hoboken in 1996. It is rightly pointed out here that his version of “Roadrunner” exemplifies Boston, but I would add that it is just as much as Willie’s “At the Rat” is about the particular scene. However, to me, the best version of “Roadrunner” is from the Beserkley Spitballs compilation, rather than the eponymous Modern Lovers first album.

Next up is the Nervous Eaters, probably the band I know the least about on this documentary, even though I do have their album with the Elektra “chewed” cover. Again, a fun band with a non-representative release that did not help their career, even with one of the Paley Brothers, Jonathan, as a member (I used to go see the band Mong at CBGBs, with the other Paley bro, Andy). Their sound was more metalish than the other bands mentioned above, sort of like a dirty cross between the MC5, the joyful sloppiness and attitude of the New York Dolls, and that Willie A. way of going up and down the vocal scale on songs in a modified hiccupping way. But like so many of the bands before and after them, and even many on this documentary, they had one shot to record an album, and it never reached its potential either in sound or sales.

Then there is the amazing power trio, the Neighborhoods (reprint of a 1986 interview by me HERE), who I interviewed in the mid-1980s when they played in New York. The lead singer/guitarist, Dave Minehan, was a powerhouse onstage and off, and has become an important studio producer over the years. I first came familiar with them through their amazing singles on Ace of Hearts Records (whose founder, Rick Harte, was prominent in the scene, and also in this film, as is Minehan), such as “Prettiest Girl.” Though they sold over 10,000 records on a relatively small indie label, the Neighborhoods are probably the least known of all the bands here, which is criminal.

After a brief rundown of what some of the musicians are up to now (mostly recording with Rick Harte, it seems), there is a clip of Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band sharing the stage with Willie Alexander and the Boom Boom Band singing Willie’s classic “Mass Ave” at Willie’s 70th birthday celebration in Somerville (of course). This makes sense since there is a phenomenal amount of music that runs throughout, including rare live clips and recordings.

There are lots of interviews with band members, but also of front-line scenesters, such as Lyn Cardinal (aka Ms. Lyn), the publisher of the most important local fanzine, The Boston Groupie News (met her once in passing), Paul Lovell (aka Blowfish; I also had the good fortune to meet), who put out some topically hysterically funny EPs in the day, scene regular and comedian Dennis Leary, and Johnny Angel of City Thrills (he also had a comic side gig doing wedding band versions of punk songs that I saw him do at the Rat; picture Sinatra doing “Anarchy in the UK,” for example).

By using black and white footage for present day interviews, the historical still pictures and live footage meld together well, making the whole zeitgeist a timeless document that works collectively, rather than putting them into segregated, isolating moments, even with individual chapters for each band. This concept doesn’t always work elsewhere, but Parcellin nails it from the first to last frame. Plus there are some beautifully shot photos that are presented throughout; I was looking to see if my pal, the Barb Kitson-obsessed Rocco Cippilone’s name was there in the credits, but unfortunately not, but that doesn’t take away from the period piece ones shown, many from Robert Post.

My biggest (and probably only) problem with this film is that I wanted it to include all the musicians and bands I liked from there, without losing any of the details that’s already included, which would have made this probably at least three times as long, which is of course totally unrealistic. Just off the top of my head and in no particular order there’s Kenne Highland, the Thrills (who would lengthen their name to City Thrills, whose later version I saw at CBGBs)/Blackjacks/Swinging Erudites, the Count (caught them a few times at the Rat and the Paradise), Salem 66 (saw them in Boston, New Jersey, and NYC), Boys Life (seen at CBGBs and the Rat), Mission of Burma (who blew away Gang of Four when Burma opened for them at Irving Plaza in November 1980, to the point where people started leaving en masse about halfway through the headliners because it was so anti-climactic), Unnatural Axe (also saw them at CBGBs) and Fox Pass, to name just a few. That’s not even bringing up some of the great bands past this period, like the Bristols, the Outlets and the Dogmatics. You can see some of my pix below.

For future documentaries? In alphabetical order...

Boys Life

The Bristols

The Count

The Dogmatics

Mission of Burma

Salem 66