Boston Unscene
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.