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boston unscene
texted for raygun by gabriella marks
They shoot Generation X movies and farm grunge in Seattle. They press all the major labels, magazines and video stations into New York and LA. Austin, Texas' annual South by Southwest is a recruiter's arena for shopping the Next Big Thing. The Washington sisters, Olympia and DC, hubs for the cross-country riot grrrl network, have K Records' International Pop Underground and Simple Machines working holidays, respectively, and then they make excellent compilations to document their excess. And there's Boston."When I think about it, it's amazing how many bands have come out of here," contemplates Peter Prescott, a long player in Boston, from Mission of Burma to the Volcano Suns to his latest distraction, Kustomized. "I'm not talking about Aerosmith, I mean to the left side. I mean Pixies, Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr, Julianna Hatfield. All that stuff is very popular, and it came from Massachusetts pretty much. I get the impression that people are always looking here to see what's going on."
Considering the success of these bands, in addition to the Throwing Muses, Sebadoh, Belly, Buffalo Tom and Morphine, Boston is clearly a rich source for indie pop and rock. Beyond the success of these bands is a burgeoning underground just below the surface of national recognition, generating a buzz that is broadcast daily over college radio. There is a cacophonous plurality of subcultures that isn't easily mass marketed according to gender, politics or threads. In contrast to the prescribed sound found in a "discovered" town like Seattle, Boston contains an incredible diversity, a variety pack of tune snacks. The band per baseball capita ratio likely equals those of New York and LA. The guitar rock reputation of the town and the reams of academic institutions create a tremendous magnetic field that attracts rockers from all rocks of life, and enthusiastic audiences with the appetites and funds to support a multiplicity of scenes. Can you call it a scene when it has no stereotypes?
If local music is the last vestige of integrity and cool according to the lore of the underground, then a local scene seems a coveted entity, peculiar and pure. Styles and trends evade easy catalog; ambiguity and unpredictability protect local waves from quick co-optation. Consider this an account of the unscene, or the invisible scene, fully and deliciously audible but camouflaged from the media floodlights that strip it of its underground status. What follows is a preview into the underground and atmosphere of the densely popululated Boston, a look at how the indie rock topographical map unfolds, with the evolution of punk rock through the riff laden grunge licks and minimal lo-fi tricks, recording techniques and venue critiques.
Certifiably a city by most standards, the Boston-Cambridge urban landscape actually sports a small town sensibility. Frequent visits to the indie zones in town reveal a cast of familiar faces, a kind of indie rock overlay district, the freed tweed, superimposed above the button-down tweed and baseball fans of greater Boston.
The layout of the land is determined by a decidedly anti-geometrical system of circles, lines and squares. Boston squares‹not a spoof on a Seventies game show‹but bustling shopping and eating hubs, brick-bottom islands nestled in a frenetic flow of one way streets and unyielding traffic circles. The shortest distance between two squares is arguably the T line, Boston's subway. Above ground, Mass Ave. is the central artery, linking the separate zones of indie rock intensity. The squares are characterized by their neighboring compliment of schools, clubs and record shops. In Cambridge, the largest crowds congregate around Harvard Square, a record mecca with at least seven stores in a few blocks of each other, and Central Square, nightly playground for bands at TT the Bear's and the Middle East. Supporting full bills on stages upstairs and down, as well as a restaurant cafe, a bar and a third small stage in the "bakery," the Middle East is the hearth of local rock and host to out-of-towner bands.
Branching out into Boston improper, Kenmore Square is home of the Rat, the flashback club for Boston's punk rock and hardcore days. Record stores also abound, and just across the expressway is the fabulous Fenway baseball park, where the night game glare mingles with the neon glow from Axis and Avalon just across the street. Intersecting with Mass Ave. just across the Charles River on the Boston side, Commonwealth Ave. brings you down by truck or train on the green line, past the Paradise, towards Allston. There, in the unofficial rock city of Boston, Local 186 carries on the late night tradition of Bunratty's . Sown among the sites are the smaller stages of lesser known hang-outs and bars, like Charlie's, Green Street Grill, and the Plough and Stars. Mark Sandman of Morphine describes these haunts as a kind of refuge from the hyped events, where they can "just play and be a band in a corner bar."
Every fall the migratory return of college population inspires a surge in both supply and demand on the local music community. "It's always been a college town," reminds Peter Prescott, "so there's a huge influx of kids that have money and want to do something." With such fertile ground for playing around, Boston bands abound. According to local expert Curtis Casela, whose Taang! records is known for its hardcore releases, as well as being the first label to sign the Lemonheads, "Boston has more bands than any place in the country. If you walk down the street, you're either gonna get handed a tape or you're gonna see someone with a shirt. I've been all over the country, and I've never seen as many bands in one city as Boston. And I think everybody wants to be in their own scene."
With so many bands vying for attention and vainly craving their own creative cul-de-sac, competitive friction seems inevitable. "Of all the cities I've been in, Boston is more competitive than any other city," says Adam Lasus of Studio Red, who engineers and produces some of Boston's best output, including Julianna Hatfield's first record Hey Babe and the Gigolo Aunts; he is currently working on Helium's first full-length album. He feels interband strife "is good and bad. Bands at the top are great because they have to be."
Although band overpopulation may breed tension, it's never actively "exercised against someone in a bad way," believes Mary Timoney of Helium. And the competition is more likely to occur "between bands that don't know each other." Heavy metal, hardcore, ska and indie pop rarely merge their talents on the same stage. But among their own tribes, bands are supportive of each other. Fuzzy, whose album was recently released on Seed Records, adopted a rehearsal space at the urging of their drummer, who was touring with his other band, the Lemonheads. Hilken of Fuzzy returns that favor in kind to her friends: "We want to make people do it. Everyone's afraid, and everyone thinks they can't, and that's how we felt. Whenever I know someone's trying to start a band, I want them to get it together, and make them play with us."
The abundance of multiple subcultures coexisting under one city roof is a recent and localized phenomenon. Abroad, the image of a town fuses together. While touring in Europe, Chris Brokaw of Come remembers, "People would ask, 'Do you know J Mascis? Do you know Buffalo Tom?' And we actually do know those people, but it was funny that they expect that, because it is a disparate scene."
This disparate quality is distinctive in its deviation from perceptions of the past, when there was greater overlap between bands. Roger Miller of Mission of Burma (among other endeavors) remembers a cohesive Boston: "This gig, it was like early '79, the Contortions, from New York, and Le Peste, the Girls and Ground Zero, all of which were pretty innovative Boston bands, played in a loft two nights in a row, and everybody that was on the music scene was there, all pulled together by this bizarre idea which was punk."
Following the peak of punk, from the late Seventies to early Eighties, hardcore hit Boston. "My most exciting time in Boston was definitely hardcore," Curtis of Taang! recalls. "People were more excited about it. Boston was the most unified city for music." That excitement generated greater continuity across genres. The shows Bob Fay of Sebadoh saw featured eclectic bills: "You had hardcore, so you'd get a bill and it would be like the Neats, Mission of Burma, dys and Jerry's Kids ‹ they really sort of thought about it. It may have been just a conscious capitalist thing to get a cross section of people." Things have changed: "Now," says Curtis, "you'd never see a hardcore band play with an alternative band."
With the coinage of "alternative," local music and national money began holding hands behind the curtain, irrevocably altering the intent of some bands. "During the Volcano Suns time," Prescott claims, "the nature of this kind of music was changing because all of the sudden there was commercial potential. And when there is something you could aim for, people started aiming a little too consciously. When people are so conscious of who they can get signed to and how fast they can get popular, it effects the quality of the music." Bands don't stay afloat in isolation tanks, and the temptation of being paid to play music has become a factor in the high-decibel equation. Comparing the experience of her Washington, DC, band Autoclave and her current Boston-based Helium, Mary Timoney observes that in DC, "Their lifestyle is being in a band. Boston bands are more career-oriented."
The potential for a veritable label lottery jackpot looms large over Boston's unscene today, skewing perspectives out of proportion. "On a really small scale," reasons Bob Fay, "it's about presenting music that you love, that you wanna see out there. But for the most part, it's just appeasing a certain age group that will buy anything."
But amidst the despair for the death of true indies and the DIY ethic in Boston, the diversity of scenes and their sounds may well prove to be the key to preserving the zones of the underground. "It's real hard to define a single sound for Boston, I think it's one of the good things," suggests Bill Peregoy, who runs an independent record label in addition to his day job. "It hasn't been beaten on by the press, it's not that somebody picked up and decided this is the Boston sound, and the A & R people converge on the city and everybody tries to sound like that because they think that's what you have to be to be successful."
Barring all media infiltration nightmares, Boston's noisy subcultures thrive. A glance past the open doorway of offices, cafes, lounges and dorms across town each Thursday reveals shoulders hunched over the weekly Phoenix, eager eyes scoping out the latest club listings. A fretless foray into a smoky venue will reveal a crowd of people invested in the moment, foraging for new audio, pushing new ways to be underground from the finite set of possible chords. A local label's motto: "Noisy boys and girls prefer Sonic Bubblegum," successfully conveys one direction. Following seminal noisy steps of punk and hardcore, a loud scene of bands like Spore, Dambuilders, Queer, SK-70, Kudgel, Tulips has emerged.
Many "loud" bands carry a distinctive gender balance, men and women playing together in bands generating a new genre of noise and perpetuating a sexual politic that hasn't been tagged yet. Reviews of these bands describe a dichotomy between female voices trying to "gain control of this bludgeoning machine, " says Mike Hibarger, also a member of the Tulips. "What [these reviews] are saying is, 'Oh, I dunno if I can handle this loud grunge hard rock noise thing with girls singing. I dunno if I can handle that yet. I can handle all girl groups, ooh, aren't they cute.'" If it's not chickcore, riot grrrl or complacent doll pop, then it approaches something dangerously close to bands and women performers actually distinguished not by gender but by the hooks and contours of their songs.
On the other side of the bar, there is a serious lounge revival lurking in well-styled suits and millionaire flair. Members from Eighties' Boston band Christmas go out on a lounge limb to perpetrate their latest incarnation in Combustible Edison. Catering to the nightcap-sipping fabulous corner of punk rock, they cast a lure to the universal inner swinger. Plunging into a lapse of luxury, their collective effervescence holds promise of a brief respite from the indie economy of worn black jeans and cheep beer. Convert Peter Prescott admits, "I'm absolutely fascinated by Sixties easy listening stuff, and they do it with absolute authority. That's cool because that's an underground that hasn't been tapped. And you know there aren't many places to go to check out stuff and styles that haven't been completely beaten into the ground."
The underground clamors on, impervious to the allure of national notoriety and creative compromise of big label budgets. Within the community itself, money is scarce. Profit pertains more to personal fulfillment than payability. Mark Erdody, who runs his own Cinderblock records in addition to playing in Kudgel, reasons that of the bulk of local labels, including Pop Narcotic, Sonic Bubblegum, 100% Breakfast and Reproductive Records, "Maybe one of them has made money on one release." The rest is inspiration, a fervent love of vinyl and giving new bands a groove of their own. "My goal isn't to make a career out of it," explains Mike Hibarger, "I have a job, I have a career. My goal is to make records, enjoy it and feel proud about it. My dreams are to play New York and have Thurston show up just to see, 'cause he heard about the band through the grape vine and wanted to see us. That to me would be cool. Or Albini in Chicago."
The stubborn slacker tag, misconstrued by a condescending older generation, holds no stock on the scenes. As noisemaker Mark Erdody observes, there is little passivity. "Tonight at the Slughog show at the Middle East, probably 80 percent of the audience is involved somehow, either in putting out records or they DJ or they work in a record store." And musicians. "Boston has a huge circle of musicians you can call," notes Morphine's Mark Sandman. And among that player pool "there is a huge range of styles." Few actually limit themselves to just one. Sandman recalls being in 5 bands simultaneously, and he is hardly atypical. Side projects proliferate, from one-time four track sessions to Saturday night headliners. Venues like the Middle East encourage this experimental vein by giving the stage space to vent the sound.
An atmosphere amenable to experiments in audio attracted Reeves Gabrels back to Boston after working abroad and with David Bowie in Tin Machine, among other pursuits. As a member of Modern Farmer, Gabrels plays out around Boston, where he feels, "there's an audience for exploring experimental things." Although easily accessible by any transportation or technology, Boston is sufficiently distant fro m the epicenters of the music business to hear value in and to remain actively receptive to uncommercial quests. "In Boston, there's enough of an environment where if you want to pursue something you actually can, and get there with it, try it out, and if it doesn't work, you can take it back to the shop and work on it more, and put it out for public view again. It's a great workshop town. That's why I came back after London and LA; you can have a purely creative pursuit here because it's not an industry town."
Pop and rock props adorn the scene. Behind every band that releases a vinyl single on a local label, for instance, there was an engineer who recorded the band, the label who pressed and distributed the record, a fanzine or two to review the release, college radio DJ to play the promo copy, a record store buyer to accept the single on consignment, a booking agent to do the seven-inch record release party at a club, an artist to design a cover and a bevy of fans to fill in the gaps. Of these outlets, Boston broadcasts are fundamental to the process. Sandman stresses the importance of airing local music, noting that Boston "has a long tradition of supporting bands through radio." A direct by-product of the mass of local academic institutions, the college radio exceeds your wildest non-commercial potential dreams. With a regimen of MBR (MIT, 88.1) in the morning, ZBC (Boston College, 90.3) in the afternoon and HRB (Harvard, 95.3) at night, your daily musical requirements are satiated. DJ Mark Hamilton of ZBC cites a new rating book that "actually rates non-commercial and college radio. They give WZBC a 0.1, which I suppose, according to them, means that throughout the course of a week, 40,000 people will have at some point turned to ZBC." Hovering around the same frequencies are Tufts WMFO and Emerson's WERS. Between average daily play, local shows like Pipeline, Record hospital and station sponsored club shows, the presence of those heard but not seen, proves vital to the delivery of pop rocks and noise. Being heard in Boston just isn't that hard.
Noisemaker Mark Erdody depicts a scenario in which the abundance of resources are available to anyone. Bob Fay concurs: "It's all a matter of who's around, who wants to play, how far you wanna go. Do you wanna do shows? Do you want it to just be a home recording project? Who can we dupe to put it out?" Despite the modest means, the resources are somehow sufficient to sustain a makeshift crisis relief fund. Local bands came to the rescue of T. Maxx, editor of local fanzine The Noise, to help with hospital bills and car repairs after an accident. Following the flood at Studio Red, local bands who had recorded with Red rallied to perform at a benefit, raising money for renovations. Although Lasus began recording in Boston and has established a reputation in the city limits, his studio is in Philadelphia. The unscene leaks past borders, has a tendency to determine its own regions. Bill Peregoy of Pop Narcotic reflects, "I just really don't believe in the whole concept of a scene, of the local scene. I think it's mostly contrived by the press. There's more of a regional coast thing, where bands that think the same way similar musically will hook up in different cities and help each other that way. To me, that seems so much more effective, so bands help each other get gigs in each other's towns and find places to stay. When you try to make the scene so closed, make it a Boston thing, it kind of limits what you can do outside of Boston." Peregoy's contribution to the regional coast thing, a double ten-inch compilation called Why do you think they call it pop, features noise and pop bands from Boston to Chapel Hill. Scaling down the miles to centimeters in vinyl grooves, the essence of the unscene slides out of its jacket.
With everyone waxing and waning poetic about this infobahn, the infinite and intimate neighborhood that exists beyond the dimension of distance and time, in the immediate electronic digital zone, I'm tempted to digress from my localized cause. I have my own fantasy about how the country is put together. My map of the US looks like a long distance carrier phone company commercial. Lots of shimmering fiber optic lights crisscrossing over a matte black field. Instead of discrete states and road sign borders, I envision the country and the world over as a vertically striated system of overlaps and overlay districts, meshed and interconnected, each sustained along zones of intensities. The magnetic fields surface in the underground music community which has no boundaries, only reference points and regions of difference and distinction. In my image of this national well-strung network, the community is one on-switch, sparking a circuit of interstate routes linking indie rock enclaves through cross-country tours. Boston's unscene is a stellar sonic view from the double-decker indie truck tour of rock.texter samples | text_only