Thurs. Nov. 10

Billy Ruane died a year ago today. He long had done a birthday bash show/benefit around this time of year and last year's turned into an Irish wake for Billy. This year, his pals have a memorial show Thurs. Nov. 10 at the new Somerville club Radio. Billy was, among other things, the effusive, hyperactive champion of the Boston music scene. So, in 2011 friends like Thalia Zedek, Mary Lou Lord, Reid Paley, Hilken Mancini, MG Lederman and Michael Tarbox and more are putting together this show in his honor. 

We asked Mary Lou Lord about year's show: "One of Billy's favorite things to do was make mix tapes and give them out as gifts to friends or people he thought would appreciate them . He put his heart and soul into the making of these tapes. ANother sort of extension of the tapes were putting great bills together -he had booked the middle east cafe and green st for years. when he stopped booking in '99 or 2000, he looked forward to holding an annual 'birthday bash' which he delighted in putting together. last year he had been working on putting the bill together and it was nearly complete just before he died. I knew how much that bill meant to him, so in his honor, i picked up where he left off with it, and added about 20 more acts -knowing many would want to be part of his memorial show last year. There were about 27 acts in all, but other than a million e-mails and the usual stresses about a bill that huge, it was effortless when it came to who actually "would" play. everyone loved Billy. Everyone wanted to do what they could ...it was a beautiful night. I think Billy would have wanted it exactly the way it was.

I didn't know if anything was happening this year, as I hadn't heard, and people were asking if there would be any kind of memorial. Since the 10th is actually his birthday, I thought it would be nice to ask some friends as well as the Boston music community if anyone might want to get together and play in honor of Billy and his birthday. Lots of people did...so, we are having a get together,

There was no one like Billy Ruane. He was my friend, and if you are a musician and from Boston, Billy was most likely your friend too. There is something beautiful about watching someone 'listen' to music. When Billy listened, it was like seeing someone mainline God. It was not of this world. Billy took flight, and it was one of the most powerful and awesome things you could ever hope to witness. He was my favorite listener. Not so much a listener of my music, I just mean, he was my favorite person to "watch" listen. He lit up like a Christmas tree...He is so greatly missed, by so many."

Michael Tarbox added: "Billy was a guiding spirit.  His boundless enthusiasm, perfect taste, personal eccentricity and deep love of music and musicians inspired - without exaggeration - thousands. He cared, a lot, and anyone around him could see that.  Because of this his shows became events, helping to create a scene you wanted to be part of. He burned brightly, way more than most, probably more than anybody.  Knowing he liked your music meant a lot, and inspired you to want to do more. 

I'm doing the show to honor and in some way thank Billy for what he did.  The bill at Radio features bands and performers who knew and loved Billy.  It sounds like the night will be a mix of solo performers (Mary Lou Lord, Hilken Mancini and me) and bands (Mel Lederman, Reid Paley, Thalia).  I did a show with Thalia back in March and thought her band sounded really great.  I'll kick things off at 8 PM."

This is an expanded version of an obituary I wrote a year ago for the Boston Herald.

William J. Ruane Jr.,known as Billy Ruane, was a voluble and volatile presence on the Boston rock scene for three decades. An irrepressible scenester, an ardent supporter of local music and a tireless promoter, Ruane, 52, died Tuesday at home in front of his computer, after suffering an apparent heart attack.
   He was the Cambridge-based son of the late investment manager- philanthropist William J. Ruane. Ruane Jr. suffered from bipolarity. He was manic, brilliant, obsessive and possessed of terrific musical taste from soul to jazz to art-rock to punk. His latest fave band was Lady Lamb the Beekeeper.
    The Harvard graduate was an ebullient, unshaven, gray-haired man with a ready smile, a suit jacket and untucked white shirt, who had a hug and a wet kiss for all. He was usually drinking and buying drinks. He was the man that came to Joseph and Nabil Sater at the Middle East Restaurant in Cambridge in 1987 and convinced them to put in live music, opening up a new chapter in Boston rock.
       “Boston just lost a legend and a giant-hearted friend,” said Buffalo Tom guitarist Bill Janovitz. “Billy gave Buffalo Tom one of, if not our very, first gigs in Boston. He will be missed and his death marks the end of an era.”
    “No one can truly understand my profound loss right now. It has no measure,” said Mary Lou Lord, a Salem musician Ruane had long championed.
   “I am out of my mind with grief,” said Chris Brokaw, a guitarist and longtime pal.
   “He was a real philanthropist of the arts,” said Lilli Dennison, former Boston band manager, club owner and collaborator with Ruane.
   Ruane had friends everywhere. Late in life, he befriended A.R.T. senior actor Jeremy Geidt. “Billy was a man of great kindness, great generosity and great thought,” Geidt said.
     Patrick McGrath,cq musician and owner of Looney Tunes, was Ruane’s right-hand man, his support system for eight years, hired by Ruane’s trust to look after him. It was not an easy job, as there were numerous arguments and confrontations.
   “He’d been really abusive over the past month,” McGrath said. “He had been given big prescriptions for methamphetamine and guanfacine. All week I’d been trying to get him papered and locked up, probably at Mass. General which is affiliated with McLean. [Ruane had been institutionalized at McLeans once before.] He was looking at time that he was going to hate. He was going to be confined.”
    “He went through many extremes,” Dennison said, “to get a new kind of kick.”
    Ruane was hospitalized Oct. 18 for heart trouble, but checked himself out the same day against medical advice.
    “This past Monday night was a really bad night,” McGrath said. “An ambulance was called, but he refused to go. He signed off against medical advice. I knew he was gonna ride this off a cliff and he did.”
   “He could be brutal with his criticisms,” said longtime friend photographer-artist Wayne Viens.cq “But once you get over the pain there was some truth. He had a great intellect. He pushed me and he did that for a lot of people.”
    “Billy was culturally omni-pervasive and would blow in to even my most esoteric jazz shows, unbidden as if out of some whirlwind with gifts of cash, food and booze for the musicians,” said Rob Chalfen, cqwho runs the performance space Outpost 186. “He’d then disappear, but not before hyping me on his latest enthusiasm. He even put up several out of town musicians on occasion.”
     Said guitarist Shaun Wolf Wortis, “Billy could represent the musical culture here: irreverent, smart, quirky, unpredictable, sometimes infantile, occasionally self-destructive. He was un-missable. I'm proud to have had Billy feign his death at a show of mine once. I’m sad to hear this death was real.”
    Bob Fay, former Sebadoh drummer, recalled his first encounter with Ruane, at a hardcore punk show by Flipper at the Channel in 1983. “When your first sighting of someone involves them ‘dancing’ into a big, bruising forearm of a punk rocker only to do a complete 360 degree flip, land and do that 'sprout' jump move that was uniquely Billy's, you know that greatness has just graced your world.”
     Gerard Cosloy,  former Bostonian and co-owner of Matador Records, praised “Billy’s ridiculous generosity” and said, “even at his most exasperating, he was the funniest person in the room. There was no bigger believer in the power of art to transform and inspire, and no one in my lifetime gave as much of himself to make a rather chaotic scene feel like family. His boundless enthusiasm for [music]-you-needed-to-hear would’ve been inspiring enough if he was just a nutty character that turned up at every gig.”
     Back in 1988, Ruane talked about his habit of slamming into people and being knocked about. “I got my nose broken at a Slits show while dancing,” he said. “People kept saying they couldn’t understand why I wasn’t dead yet. I always said one reason was I tended not to hurt people, because I have a degree of control even when I’m drunk.”
      “Billy loved music with such reckless abandon,” said “Rock of Ages” co-producer Janet Billig Rich.  “More reckless than may have been wise at times. In many ways Billy’s greatest gift to me was that he saw rock through the eyes of an adoring child and that simple yet pure love of music is something we shared.”
    Ruane is survived by a brother Thomas Ruanec and two sisters, Elizabeth Ruane and Paige Ruane. A memorial service is being planned.

(My wife Roza snapped this photo at one of Billy's elaborate dinner parties at Henrietta's Table.)

The gig should get underway around 8.

379 Somerville Ave., Somerville