Sun. Nov. 27
    

Last call! Generally, here at JSInk we're not into re-posting. But as we were starting to think about Buffalo Tom's three-night celebration of 25 years - not exactly consecutive years - in the rock world - at Brighton Music Hall Friday Nov. 25 - Sunday Nov. 27,  we came across Buf Tom singer-guitarist Bill Janovitz's semi-memoir in this week's Phoenix, a mag I've contributed to now and again. So, we reached out to Bill and said, in effect, by all means, re-post ... so that we are doing. So here's Bill on the post-punk Boston band that was and is ...
 
    I recall one night in the late '80s, standing in the crowd at T.T. the Bear's during one of the many Volcano Suns shows I had witnessed over my then-relatively-short club-going career — the commencement of nearly 30 years I'll never get back as a lounge lizard in rock clubs, bars, and pubs.
    Buffalo Tom was on its way up. But back then, the farthest imaginable point "up" for a band like us was to be able to tour the States and Europe, maybe headlining places like the Channel or even, in our wildest dreams, the Orpheum. This was P.N. (pre-Nirvana), after all. We were beginning to see the more modest of these dreams come true, only maybe a year out from being able finally to headline T.T.'s — an honor which was only bestowed upon us after years of calling and begging T.T.'s owner Bonnie Bouley, and after headlining our own tour of similar-sized and larger clubs in Europe. Boston clubs back then were more plentiful, but there was also plenty of talent and the club scene was very competitive.

    Nonetheless, I stood there watching Peter Prescott pummel his drums and sing/shout and thought, "Man, he's an old guy." He was only in his early 30s, of course. The Volcano Suns were a legendary band for those of us who gobbled up whichever records (few of us had exotic CD players at this point) on the Homestead, Taang!, SST, and Touch and Go labels. But they were more legendary than popular. The music was an angular and somewhat dissonant take on post-punk pop. Indeed, one editor here at the Phoenix recalled them fondly as "making a room-clearing racket." I would not go that far, though the less-than-ideal sound at the club back in those days could turn anything into a "racket." The Suns always got my blood stirring, beer spilling, and spittle flying.

There was something tribal about the Boston rock scene in the '80s. It was a relatively small cult, kicking against the pricks. Hair metal and pale Michael Jackson soundalikes populated the mainstream. Phil Collins — now so post-ironically revered by hipster indie-nerd kids nostalgic for their childhood — represented an insidious menace to those of us who actually liked music. This cult of club kids was full of diehards. We would most likely have been at all of those January shows and felt a true tribal spirit as we chanted the words to "Jak" and "White Elephant" over Peter's pounding tom toms.

   Nevertheless I said aloud to whomever I was standing with, "If I am still playing T.T.'s when I am that old, shoot me." "Just a kid acting smart," as Hank Williams sang. Peter Prescott was — and remains — a hero of mine. I felt that Volcano Suns should be giants. Peter and I have only had a few brief words over the years — I don't think he even likes Buffalo Tom, or ever has. But he was and is a rock star to me, and a true artist. He's also one of the most important figures in Boston rock and roll, from the seminal Mission of Burma, to the Suns, to Kustomized, to working the aisles at Mystery Train Records (and, famously, Copy Cop). There he was, living the life, playing music, creating and performing. Ironically enough, the Suns had an LP titled Career in Rock. I remember the thrills of first recording at Fort Apache studio — the first one, in Roxbury — and having producer Tim O'Heir (or was it Sean Slade?) tell one of the other to-be-legendary producers (Gary Smith, Joe Harvard, Paul Kolderie, Lou Giordano?) that the songs we were recording were really good and that "We might have a new Volcano Suns on our hands." That was good enough for me: I was beaming.
    These names are all known to alt-rock fans, but the importance of the Fort Apache founders, as well as what Mike Denneen and Jon Lupfer were doing concurrently at Q Division studios, cannot be overstated. When we finally hit the road, people would always ask us about the Boston "scene," as if it were some salon of artists comparing notes at a café somewhere. In hindsight, it sort of was, but it was hard to see that while we were living through it.

    There was camaraderie, especially among us and other brand new bands like Galaxie 500, the Lemonheads, and the Blake Babies. Throwing Muses, the Pixies, the Suns, Dinosaur Jr., Big Dipper — they all had a record or two and a few tours under their belts before we got going. But mostly, we got to know those bands on the road. The relationships with the Lemonheads and Blakes bring back memories not just of the Rat, Chet's Last Call, the Channel, and the Middle East (thanks to Billy Ruane and Skeggy Kendall, a newly hatched place to play back then), but even more vividly, bars and dressing rooms in Tampa and Hamburg.

    But those two studios were headquarters, clubhouses, launching pads. It wasn't so much a salon atmosphere as an ongoing party, broken up by actual planned parties around the holidays. One great moment: J Mascis sitting in with Kim Deal and David Lovering of the Pixies, playing "Gigantic" at a Fort Christmas shindig. A not-so-great moment: having to delay a session of recording our third album, Let Me Come Over, because on the previous night the Bags had celebrated the final mixes of their own record by getting a non-drinking engineer so thoroughly drunk that he puked all over and into the expensive vintage mixing console. When we arrived at the crack of noon, interns were still cleaning the knobs, pots, and patch bay. "Career in rock," indeed.

    This lack of respect for recording equipment was a hallmark of what endeared us to Fort Apache. When we first made demos at some glorified suburban home studio, we were continually chastised for our sloppy playing and over-reliance on volume. Mascis, no stranger to volume, hipped us to the dudes at Fort Apache. They're musicians themselves, he told us. Not like jazz-fusion or Tom Scholz musicians, but real punk-rock musicians. What we found were not little Japanese amps or six-string basses but banks of moldy old Marshalls, torn speaker grills, Gibsons and Fenders in cases covered with bumper stickers. And instead of framed gold records or LP covers of acts that had stopped there for a remix and a cup of coffee, there was a taped-up wrinkled poster, as if torn off a teenager's wall, of Iggy Pop smashing 45s with a hammer.

    The Fort's modus operandi: "Play as loud as you want to get the sound you want." On a later project, under the influence of some alchemic combination of substances, we were recording a version of the Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties" for a compilation, and we came to a lyric about a creaking door. This inspired Sean Slade to mic up the hinge to the door to the control room. There was hardly an audible creak to it, so he had to turn the mic up really hot. At the end of the song, in a burst of inspiration, he slammed the door, blowing out not only everyone's ears, but also the studio monitors, which each popped and emitted twin plumes of smoke.J was a friend from UMass Amherst, and his introduction to the world of Fort Apache was enough to earn him a production credit on Buffalo Tom. We had attracted the attention of a Benelux label, Megadisc, on the basis of some demos from the early Fort sessions. They started chipping in for more recordings and we hired Mascis. J was not just another set of ears. Dinosaur's (pre-"Junior" prefix ) You're Living All Over Me was a formative record, and we were unabashed fans (and continued to be, wiseass "Dinosaur Jr. Jr." ribbings notwithstanding). We had known the band since their first record release. We were just starting out, but here was a local band making a big sound that combined classic-rock and punk-rock influences, making big waves internationally. We were just three guitar players — Tom Maginnis's first drum kit was on loan from J.

   So it was only natural to ask J to produce our first record. We had been some of only a few dozen people who would go see Dinosaur in the two or three available venues out in Northampton and Amherst. We had seen J reduce soundmen to tears as they struggled with the band's massive volume. We heard about a soundman throwing a bottle at J. We watched as Dinosaur vibrated the wall-sized mirrors off the walls of a long-forgotten shithole called L'Oasis, shards of glass shattering on the stage. After we played our own first gig at this same club, the owner, a beret-clad Quebeçois jazz fan named Michele, proclaimed, "Beefalo Tum. You. Weel. Neveah. Play. Heah. Again. Neveah, Beefalo Tum!" The catchphrase has survived 25 years of bad soundchecks.

    J was punk rock in a passive-aggressive way. He just didn't care about soundmen, engineers, or club owners. He had vision. And he helped us achieve a furry sound as well, showing us how to get the right tones from amps and drums and not caring about vocals for even a second. It also turned out that he was great at scheduling sub and donut runs, and putting on inspirational cassettes from Public Enemy to Montrose at just the right moments to get us fired up.

Having J aboard brought the attention of SST Records. This was the home of Black Flag, Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur, the Minutemen, Screaming Trees, Soundgarden, the Bad Brains, and Roger Miller. It was like we were hitting our biggest goal right out of the gate. We were giddy. We could not even envision more beyond that. It was like getting blessed by the Pope — if the Pope was a punk rocker from suburban LA who didn't pay bands for years, if at all, and signed acts like Always August and Tom Trocoli's Dog. We brought J back, along with Sean, to record the entire second album, Birdbrain.

    We would ride the record/tour/record/tour merry-go-round for a decade and experience many of the same ups and downs as our peers and heroes, the same major-label woes and music-industry insanity. That we've stuck together so long might have to do with our particular personal chemistry: Chris Colbourn and I, the ice and fire to Tom's self-described (via Spinal Tap) "lukewarm water." We took breaks to raise families and, yeah, even find other ways to make enough money to support them. We even played T.T.'s — in our 40s! And, mercifully, despite my less-than-prudent earlier request, no one shot me. But all that was yet to come. It was 1989. Our first album was on SST, and we were ready to hit the studio again. We were on our way.

Tickets: $22.

First night support: J Mascis, Ted Leo, Eugene Mirman, more. Second night: Mean Creek, Hilken Mancini, Bob Weston (Burma, Shellac). Third night: Tanya Donelly, Thalia Zedek Band, tba.

158 Brighton Ave., Allston, 617-779-0140 www.brightonmusichall.com