Boston's Finest Sons: The Neighborhoods, including new CD, Last Known Address (w/ special guest, JCE)

This blog originally appeared - in a slightly different form - on pencilstorm.com.


In the age of the internet, it’s possible to have a friend you have never actually met. Ricki C. and JCE are fast friends after years of correspondence, and one of the things they have always agreed upon is the greatness of Boston’s best band, THE NEIGHBORHOODS. After literally years of anticipating a new record, it’s finally here. Titled “Last Known Address,” the new ‘Hoods record is worth talking about, so Ricki C. hatched a plan to do just that. Below, he and JCE discuss the new record and The Neighborhoods in general, through a back and forth conversation. Here you go…

How did you first learn about the Neighborhoods anyway?

JCE: I went to school in Charlottesville, VA, and I lived there afterwards - pretty much all of the 1980’s. One day, probably in 1985, this guy named Maynard was tacking up flyers around town that said “Fire Is Coming” (the band’s then-current indie release). Maynard played in local bands, managed a band and booked shows for bands he wanted to bring to town. Anyway, I had never heard of The Neighborhoods until that day.

RICKI C.: My high school best friend & bandmate Dave Blackburn (who taught me more about music and rock & roll than anybody else in my existence) moved to Boston in 1972 after intentionally flunking out of Ohio State University. My visits to Dave in Boston over the next couple of years is what launched my love of Boston rock & roll. That love affair started with The Modern Lovers, who Dave saw play at a high school – with a young up & coming band called Aerosmith OPENING the show – pretty soon after he got to Boston. Said love affair continued through the 1970’s with Willie Alexander, The Real Kids, The Nervous Eaters and about twenty more. (see appendix A below)

In mid-1980, on one of those visits, I happened on a new magazine called Boston Rock that featured The Neighborhoods on the cover of its debut issue and it was literally love at first sight. I sent away for their debut single on the Ace Of Hearts label – “Prettiest Girl” b/w “No Place Like Home” – when I got back to Columbus and the rest is history.

The Neighborhoods 1980: David Minehan, guitar; John Hartcorn, bass; Michael Quaglia, drums

What’s been your experience seeing them play—how many times have you seen them?

JCE: I saw that show in Charlottesville when I first heard of them, at a place called the C&O, I believe. After that I was hooked. I’ve seen them in their hometown of Boston at Bunratty’s, I’ve seen them in Richmond, VA Beach, at least twice in D.C. and probably at least three other times in Charlottesville. One time I even saw them at a frat party at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. My wife (fiancé at the time) and I lived in Charlotte, NC, for a year. On our last night there, before we moved back home to VA, we saw The ‘Hoods play a club called The Pterodactyl. All the boys in the band were wearing matching black t-shirts that said “Fuck You, We’re From Boston” on the back. I’m forgetting some, so I would say I’ve seen them about 12 or 13 times. They are so spectacular live that me and my friends in Charlottesville would never miss them if we were within a couple of hours. My friends’ band 98 Colours opened for them sometimes and they slept on the couches and floors of people I knew on multiple occasions.

RICKI C.: Oh man, this live category has GOT to be the one where I’m most jealous of my long-distance compatriot, JCE. Virginia & Washington being on the East Coast means he got ‘Hoods live opportunities WAY more often than this Midwest/Ohio boy. I had to FLY to Boston to see The Neighborhoods in the early years. (see: Flying to Boston To See The Rock & Roll)  Luckily, from 1980 to 1984 I was working in the stockroom of Ross Laboratories here in Columbus, and it was simultaneously the HIGHEST-PAYING and EASIEST job I ever had, affording me the cash to indulge myself in live ‘Hoods.

I never got to see the John-Hartcorn-on-bass era band but I know I saw the Tim-Green-on-bass Neighborhoods twice. I was still drinking heavily AND smoking pot in those early-80’s days, though, so those shows are kinda hazy. I don’t even recall what clubs they were at, but one seemed to be in a strip-shopping-center with a carry-out and maybe a laundromat or tanning place in it. For sure it wasn’t The Rat, which I had been to a few times earlier in the 1970’s.

By far my favorite place to see The Neighborhoods in Boston was The Channel, a 1700-person capacity bar near Boston Garden, right on a subway line, really easy to get to from my Commonwealth Motel Boston home base. As much as I’ve come to enjoy seeing bands in small (50-200 capacity) clubs, I dearly LOVE seeing rock & roll bands kick out the jams in big-ass bars, auditoriums & theaters like the shows I grew up on in the 1960’s: Veteran’s Memorial (capacity 3172) and later the Columbus Agora (still in operation, now called The Newport, capacity 1500 or so).

The Neighborhoods @ The Channel, 1982: Minehan & Quaglia; Lee Harrington on bass

The Neighborhoods only played my home town of Columbus, Ohio, once, in May of 1986. This is a review I did of that show for The Noise, a Boston fanzine I dearly loved back in the day. (Along with Boston Groupie News and the short-lived Frenzy.) All tolled I probably saw the guys maybe 7 times, i.e. not nearly enough.

Tell me about the best show you ever saw them play…..

JCE: That’s impossible. The show I saw in Richmond had my friends as the opener and The Neighborhoods had a guest guitarist that night. It was this guy from a Richmond band called The Good Guys. He was great and Dave Minehan loved him. He invited the guy, right there on stage, to officially join the Neighborhoods as a second guitarist, but the offer was declined. I honestly believe it was a serious offer though. Another good one was at a club in D.C. called 15 Minutes. They announced that they were calling it quits and it would be their last show. They played with a vengeance that night (the Dave, Lee and Mike lineup). Afterwards I got a CD signed by them and Dave wrote “Neighborhoods, R.I.P.” under his name. It was heartbreaking. All the shows in Charlottesville were good, because all my friends were always there and they knew us. They would take the stage and my friend Tracy would start yelling for them to play her favorite song, “Shake” before they even played the first note.

RICKI C. I’ve gotta say one of The Channel shows in either 1982 (when I went to Boston to spend my 30th birthday alone, when I was first sobering up), or 1985 were the most rocking shows I ever saw from David, Lee Harrington & Mike Quaglia. But that Columbus show in Stache’s - capacity 85 people (though the club owner once sold 300 tickets to a Dream Syndicate show there) - was the BEST show. When you pack the sheer excitement of a band like The Neighborhoods - who regularly played 1700 capacity venues in their hometown - into a tiny rock club roughly the size of some rich guy’s frickin’ LIVING ROOM, the magic was just OVERWHELMING.

Plus that show was the only time I ever got to talk to & hang out with The Neighborhoods.  It was a real bonding experience for me, and I treasure that rock & roll memory TO THIS DAY, 33 years later.

Rank their records from best to worst.

JCE: Reptile Men, The High Hard One, Last Known Address, Hoodwinked, The Neighborhoods, Fire is Coming, The Last Rat.

Hoodwinked and The Neighborhoods have mostly the same songs. Hoodwinked has that amazing cover of “Southern Girls” by Cheap Trick. Also, I am one person who happens to absolutely love the version of “Prettiest Girl” that is on the self-titled Atlantic release. A lot of people would disagree.

RICKI C.: Wow, their recorded output is a place we really diverge on The ‘Hoods. My best to worst: The High Hard One, Fire Is Coming, The Last Rat, and Reptile Men are the great ones. I haven’t absorbed Last Known Address enough yet to drop it into the canon, but I gotta think it’s gonna slot between Fire Is Coming and The Last Rat. Further, I find Hoodwinked and the self-titled Atlantic CD almost unlistenable. (Indeed, that Brad Whitford-produced record is why I couldn’t ever get people to take The Neighborhoods seriously when I pronounced them my “favorite Boston band ever” and “better than The Replacements” in blogs like this one, The Neighborhoods “Cultured Pearls.”)

Then again, in the first decade of this 21st century I was lucky enough to be supplied – courtesy of Eric Law of Boston and Vic Gagnon of Ann Arbor, MI. (among others) – with a couple dozen live sets of The Neighborhoods from all over America stretching from 1979 to well into the late 1980’s, and any number of those live sets just MIGHT be better than any of the ‘Hoods official releases.

Let’s (finally) get to the new record. Review it in 1,000 words or less.

JCE: Well, I obviously love it, since I have it ranked right after The High Hard One. First off, there are no clunkers on it whatsoever. It starts strong with “Half Life” and if every song was about that good, I would be happy. But it gets even better. I really get fired up starting with track two. “ByGone Era” is a killer, probably my favorite or second favorite on the record. I love the sort-of play on words, and the sentiment: is it ‘good bygone era’ or is it ‘goodbye gone era’? The answer is both.

Tracks 2-5 are my favorite, I think. Track 3, “I Go Dark” is strong. For track 4, we get “Billy the Kid” which is maybe my third favorite on the record. I like the slow, melancholy start and then the way it kicks into gear. Tracks 5, “Don’t Look Down,” is excellent and probably my second favorite. Track 6, “In Case of Creeps” is great. Unfortunately, it has this section that is just talking/noodling that goes on way too long and ruins the song. I cured that by using iTunes to clip the song at the 1:45 mark. That way it’s short, but it’s perfect.  Tracks 7-10 are very good, maybe not great. Track 8 is called “the Stowaway” and it is my least favorite. Track 10, “The Parasites” is a song most ‘Hoods fans already know. It’s never been a favorite of mine but it’s still damn good.

Track 11 jumps up a notch. It’s called “The Tiled Room” and it has a Replacements vibe to me.
The record winds down with track 12, “We Are All Alone.” It’s a really cool slower song. I really like this one a lot, but I think because it is so repetitive that it would have been better if it were four minutes long instead of 5:26.

Overall, it’s just so good. After all these years I feared the possibility of disappointment, but to the contrary, this exceeded all my expectations. I will say that the CD packaging is really weak, but hey, it’s about the music, right? Still, after all these years some liner notes or lyrics would have been nice.

RICKI C.: I concur about the CD packaging. Artists & labels these days just seem NOT TO CARE at all about CD’s as a physical product, everything is just about downloads: Spotify and Rhapsody rule. I really miss jewel-case CD’s with cool covers and inside booklets with credits and lyrics, like JCE said. (I suspect that’s all just about economics in the indie world, and I FAILED Econ 101 in school all those decades ago.)

Musically the record is BEYOND solid: crunching guitars, cool bass, kick-ass drums, great vocals; what else and what more is a rocker gonna ask for these days? Plus, lyrically the songs are actually ABOUT something, and how many places do you get that in 2019, where every band I hear writes maybe two verses and then just bores us with a chorus until the (sometimes merciful) conclusion of the tune? “Half Life,” “Bygone Era” and “Billy The Kid” are my early standout favorites. (And are you gonna find lyrics as sharp, heartbreaking AND insightful as “Standin’ here as sad as birthday candles blown out so long ago / If you could only tell us not to worry, ‘cuz everything is beautiful / We’d let it go” from “Billy The Kid”about a departed compadre on a rock record this year? I kinda doubt it.)

So the entire disc is kinda like a supercharged Cheap Trick rumbling with The Jam in a dark alley in Boston sometime in 1979, only with WAY better lyrics and I’m gonna leave it at that.  David Minehan is absolutely one of my top 10 rock & roll songwriters of all time and bassist Lee Harrington comes up with a couple of solid tunes & lead vocals on this disc.  Buy it, or download it, NOW!

The Neighborhoods, 2010: Minehan & Harrington; John Lynch on drums

Final words or stories?

JCE: I would just say that this has been a long time coming. I discovered a website called Hoods Online years and years ago. At one time, they would post a live show once in a while. I started getting emails from an email list I signed up for, and at one point, they were promising not only a new record, but the release of an apparently finished record called “Last of the Mohicans.” Neither ever came out, that was like eight years ago, or more. Then this one started being teased and there were even little clips of the songs on that website for a couple of years. Guitarist & main songwriter David Minehan is obviously a busy man, but it was so worth the wait. I hope I can see them play live again. I saw Dave play with the Replacements a couple of years ago and he is still just the best to watch.

Oh yeah, and thanks to you, Ricki C, for asking me to do this. You are a real friend, a great writer, and you have pretty decent taste in music. And thanks for the GIANT pile of live Neighborhoods CD’s that you gave me!

RICKI C: I can’t think of a better Christmas present for the rockers on everybody’s list than Last Known Address. It’s on Spotify & all that, or you can order from my favorite Boston-related merch outlet QRST’s Store, linked here…….Neighborhoods & Boston rockers merch.

Appendix A: track listing of Ricki C.’s homemade-from-vinyl Best of Boston Rock & Roll

(note: The Modern Lovers, The Sidewinders, The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, Reddy Teddy, The Cars, The Neighborhoods, Mission of Burma and 'til tuesday all have individual "best of" CD's in my collection. These are all the other Boston bands that I love.)

CD-1 / Boston Rocks / 1975 – 1977 

1) Kerouac

2) Mass. Ave. – Willie Alexander, indie single, ’75

3) Holiday Fire – Marc Thor

4) Boystown Boize – The Boize, split indie single, ’75

5) Prized Possession – Fox Pass, indie single, ‘76 

6) Loretta – The Nervous Eaters, indie single, ’76

7) All Kindsa Girls

8) Common At Noon – The Real Kids, indie single, ’77

9) Lift Up Your Hood – DMZ, indie ep track, ’77

10) You Looked So Pretty When – Willie Alexander, indie single ’76

11) Boys & Girls

12) Romance – Reddy Teddy, album tracks, ’76

13) Hot For Teacher – Thundertrain, indie single, ’76

14) Pup Tune – Willie Alexander & The Boom Boom Band

15) Boy From Nowhere 

16) Ball Me Out – DMZ 

17) Better Be Good

18) Who Needs Ya – The Real Kids

19) I’ve Got To Rock – Thundertrain 

tracks 14 – 19 from Live At The Rat album, 1976

CD-2 / Boston Rocks / 1978 – 1986

1) Baby Boom – DMZ, album track, ’78

2) Psycho Blonde – Pastiche, compilation track, ’80

3) Better Off Dead – La Peste, indie single, ’78

4) When You’re Young

5) Teenage Flu

6) Big City Rock – The Atlantics, album tracks, ’79

7) Everybody Wants To Survive – The Infliktors, indie single, ’79

8) I’m Talking To You – The Maps, indie single, ’79

9) When Things Go Wrong – Robin Lane & The Chartbusters, ’79

10) Stuck On The Same Refrain – The Peter Dayton Band, ’81

11) Ina’s Song – Limbo Race, indie single, ’83

12) Tiger, Tiger – Scruffy The Cat, indie ep track, ’86

13) The Room Starts Spinning – Classic Ruins, album track, ’86

14) I Want To Help You Ann

15) High On Yourself

16) What A Girl Can’t Do – The Lyres, indie ep tracks, ’83

17) Generic New York City Woman

18) Junk Train

19) Motherfuckers – The Blackjacks, album tracks, ’86

20) I Couldn’t Say No – Robert Ellis Orrall w/ Carlene Carter, ‘83

(c) 2019 Ricki C. & JCE

The Neighborhoods "Cultured Pearls" (Bonus Video Friday)

It's been awhile since I've regaled readers & fans of Growing Old With Rock & Roll with tales of my devotion to Boston's finest sons, The Neighborhoods (see blog entry The Neighborhoods - Bonus Video Friday, January 13th, 2012, among others), so let's commence.  But first, a few word about computers and the internet.....

I'm not a computer guy.  At all.  In the least.  In fact, it's a minor miracle I've managed to keep this blog going for as long as I have considering my lack of computer skills and/or knowledge.  Without the assistance and support of my lovely wife Debbie - my I.T. department, my editor, often my inspiration - Growing Old With Rock & Roll would not still be a viable entity.  (Also, special thanks to Will Kenworthy for setting all of this up for me, so all I have to do is type.)

I blame computers for a lot of things - for the marked lack of human interaction that has taken place since people pour more & more of their energy into staring at their Smartphones than they do into their lover's eyes; for the fact that children spend a lot more of their time indoors being lulled and/or over-energized by video games than they do outside playing in sunlight; for the decline in audience at rock & roll gigs as increasing numbers of people (young & old alike) prefer their music delivered by I-Tunes or YouTube more than they do by living, breathing musicians at a gig - because I'm old, so desperately old, so hopelessly old, and that's the way I'm wired.

At the same time, I must admit there are times in my existence that the internet has come in pretty handy.  So let me tell you about The Best Present I Ever Got From A Computer; access to The Neighborhoods Universe.  One warm Saturday night in 2006, Debbie and my good friend & fellow music aficionado Kyle Garabadian went to see Kenny Loggins appear with our local Columbus Symphony at the Orchestra's annual summer Picnic With The Pops series.  (You might have something like it in your town.)

Not being the world's biggest "Footloose" fan, I stayed home, downed a couple of Bailey's Irish Creams and bleerily played on the computer.  Debbie had just recently showed me how to use search engines and check out websites.  (Yeah, this was happening in 2006, people, I TOLD you how computer-backward I am).  While I was playing around I happened onto the fan-launched Neighborhoods site www.thehoodsonline.com, which still exists, but I don't think has been updated in quite some time.  (It's still really cool, though, a bunch of REALLY great Neighborhoods back-in-the-day pics, circa 1979-2005.)

Anyway, that site led me to a host of other finds: YouTube videos of The 'Hoods from 1979, 1982 and onwards; tape traders who had literally dozens of live 'Hoods sets from 1979 right up through their "Last Rat" show in 1992 (which wouldn't see official release until 2010).  Two of those traders - Vic from Michigan and Mike from Tennessee - I consider friends to this day for the CD's they've provided to me over the years.  Thank you, gentlemen, from the bottom of my rock & roll heart.

See, here's the deal, it just WAS NOT EASY to come up with Neighborhoods-related material in Ohio in the 21st century.  The 'Hoods were not exactly a household name out here in the hinterlands of the Great Midwest.  I had the Ace Of Hearts "Prettiest Girl" b/w "No Place Like Home" single and the Fire Is Coming, "...the high hard one..." and Reptile Men triptych of LP's that I bought on rock & roll vacations in the 1980's (see blog entry Fighting With Ric Ocasek, February 2012) but that was about it.  (Okay, I also had that Brad Whitford-produced CD from the 90's, but I think we may all agree the less said about that the better.)

By 2006 it had been 19 YEARS since I had heard a new (old) Neighborhoods song.  And a lot of what 'Hoods chronicler Eric Van (easily my favorite Boston rock writer of the 1980's, see below) detailed as David Minehan's finest songwriting moments - "Mr. Reeves," "The Patriot," "Innocence Lost," "Electricity," "Fools," "I Am The Witness," "Cultured Pearls" -  I had never heard AT ALL.  So when the live tapes began rolling into my mailbox with all of those tunes and many, many more ("Monday Morning," "Flavors," "One Day Older," "You Can't Go Home," "We Don't Do The Limbo") I was in Seventh Rock & Roll Heaven, my friends.

Later, while I was a roadie for Hamell On Trial, I was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of Mr. Eric Law - Boston rock & roll bon vivant, raconteur and personal friend of David Minehan - who further filled in some Neighborhoods gaps for me.  (Eric, I love ya.)  (By the way, readers, I've still never been able to track down a live set from the short-lived 1982 Tim Green bass-playing period of The 'Hoods.  Hint, Hint.)  

So is this the point in the blog where I'm going to start making extravagant claims regarding The Neighborhoods?  Claims like - 1) The Neighborhoods are the Best Band Ever Out of Boston (keeping in mind the likes of The Remains, Willie Alexander & the Boom Boom Band, The Real Kids, The Cars and 'Til Tuesday).  Yes, I am.  2) The Neighborhoods were the Best Band of the 1980's (keeping in mind The Replacements, REM, and Prince & The Revolution).  Maybe, but Prince might have just edged them.  (And I think we need to keep in mind, no less a rock & roll genius than Paul Westerberg had the good sense to hire David Minehan as his lead guitarist & onstage foil in his first post-Replacements touring band. See blog entry The Paul Westerberg Band, April 2012.)  (Am I stating in print that The Neighborhoods were a better live band than The Replacements?  I saw both bands more than five times each.  Yes, I am saying The Neighborhoods were better live, but that Westerberg MAYBE had better songs, if he just could have kept his band somewhat sober enough to do justice to them onstage.)

I owe all of this to you, my cybernetic internet friends, most of whom I will never meet face to face.  (Excepting Vic from Ann Arbor, with whom I got to have lunch once during a Hamell tour stop years ago.)  To all of you; my sincerest, humblest and most heartfelt rock & roll thanks.

inspirational verse; "It's obvious / Your intelligence / Has been insulted far too long."

-  from "Cultured Pearls," David Minehan, 1981

(Two things I fully realize today in December 2018: 1) This video does not contain The Neighborhoods song "Cultured Pearls."  2) When I first penned this blog entry back in 2013, there WAS a video of "Cultured Pearls" attached that apparently has since been deleted from YouTube.  I looked through a lot of 'Hoods videos and decided THIS ONE was the best replacement. - Ricki C. / December 19th, 2018.  p.s. "Cultured Pearls" IS in this video: 'Hoods / Live @ the Blue Wall, 1982.)  

© 2013 Ricki C.



appendix; some great rock & roll writing about The Neighborhoods by Eric Van

(employ your zoom feature, readers)



Three Easy Pieces: Black Leather Touch, The Neighborhoods, Lloyd Cole & Michael Penn (Bonus Video Tuesday)

My career in rock & roll journalism was protracted, but not particularly productive.  It started in the mid-1970’s when - inspired by rocker-turned-critic Patti Smith and critics-turned-rockers Lester Bangs, Charles Shaar Murray and Mick Farren - I decided to try to get into print to hype whatever band I had going at the moment.   My first endeavor was in 1976, a punk fanzine called Teenage Rampage (after the song by The Sweet, the guys who did “Blockbuster,” "Ballroom Blitz," “The 6-Teens,” and "Fox On The Run," all KILLER power-pop songs).  Teenage Rampage  was produced in the warehouse of my day-job at the time, Service Merchandise, when we discovered how to turn the counter on the store copier back one entire digit; I’d run off roughly 300 copies of the ‘zine, then turn the counter back to 30.  (Our store manager at the time would constantly inquire/complain, “Why are we always out of copy paper, but we never make that many copies?”  My co-conspirator Rob, whom I’m friends with to this day, and I would just shrug our shoulders and mumble.  I never did figure out why they put the copier in the warehouse rather than the store's front office.)

Teenage Rampage ran roughly 10 issues until I signed on with Focus, Columbus’ local rock weekly in 1978.  It’s hard to explain to youngsters nowadays that Columbus, Ohio, could have supported a weekly paper roughly the same size as today’s Other Paper that was ENTIRELY devoted to rock & roll, but that’s just the way it was.  Music mattered.  (By the way, I was roundly castigated by the Columbus "punk community" - which numbered maybe 35 people at the time - for "selling out" when I moved from the fanzine to a real magazine.  The way I saw it, I could reach thousands more people with Focus than with Teenage Rampage.  I wanted to be a rock star, not a punk loser/legend.) 

When Focus went under in 1979 (see blog entry AC/DC - My Lunch With Angus, March 2012) I think I did one or two articles for its Columbus successor, The Monthly Planet.  My tenure there came to an abrupt halt one evening when the editor insisted I sit down with him while he edited my latest piece, the cover story of the next issue.  I had to sit there and watch as he went through the article, red-penciling all of my best lines, re-arranging the prose into the most boring formulation possible, and essentially rendering my Lester Bangs-fueled rock & roll screed into pap prose even Rolling Stone would have been embarrassed to run.  (Kathy Reed, my first and best editor at Focus, had largely let me run roughshod over many, if not all, of that paper’s oh-so-boring copy rules.)  Finally, after one too many edits by hippie-bespectacled Monthly Planet editor-guy, I scrunched up my article,  ripped it in half, jammed the halves in the pockets of my leather jacket, said, “I’ve BEEN to high-school, pal,” and exited the newsroom, leaving the paper with no cover story for that week.  “You’ll never work in journalism in Columbus again,” he yelled after me as the newsroom staff stifled giggles.  Truer words were never spoken.  A lamer threat has seldom been hurled.

Following are three articles I wrote for various publications over the years; one each from the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s.  They’re not necessarily the best three, just three random examples I’m somewhat proud of, or which crystallize a particular era for me.  (I was sorely tempted to update the entries, sharpen the prose, do some creative editing, but decided to leave each piece as it was originally written, warts and all.  It only seems fair.)

(I)

Steppenwolf and Black Leather Touch / Café Rock & Roll, Columbus, Ohio / April 19, 1978

reprinted from Focus magazine, May 1-15, 1978

New Wave, Old Wave, Permanent Wave, the Perfect Wave, who cares?

Black Leather Touch are not a New Wave band.  They are a rock & roll band.  A biker-band.  A bar-band.  A classic rock & roll band.  Anybody who can walk out on a stage in 1978 and rule that stage by sheer force of personality, music & guts is a classic.  These guys ain’t pretty, definitely.  They ain’t no suburban-educated street-punk-by-association posers.

They’re playin’ songs about sex, drugs and rock & roll to an audience that pretty much look like they’re getting enough of all three.  (And two out of three ain’t bad in a pinch.)  They’ve got this really ugly singer/guitarist who toward the end of the set is shakin’ his hair and beard around and the sweat is flyin’ off his head into the beers of the people in the front row, and you know they can’t be happy about that.  But who cares, this is rock & roll.

“It’s Only Rock & Roll (But I Like It),” “Wild In The Streets,” “Go Away,” a coupla Lynyrd Skynyrd, Uriah Heep’s “Stealin’,” “Cat Scratch Fever” all get played, the hits just keep on comin’.  This ain’t no copy band though, friends, this is command.  Black Leather Touch takes those songs and makes ‘em kick, punch, bite, shout, and work it all out.  When’s the last time you’ve heard and seen rock & roll this close up?  You didn’t see it with The Godz at the Fairgrounds Coliseum.  You don’t hear it on the radio in Columbus.

Toward the end of the set they start pullin’ out every bar-band trick in the book; playing lying down on the floor, playing behind their backs, behind their heads, playing each other’s guitars from behind, you name it.  This ain’t entertainment, this is fun.  This ain’t laid-back diddley-bop space-rock squat, this is rock & roll.

Right before the band closes with Mr. Charles Berry of St. Louis, Missouri’s “Bye Bye Johnny,” they treat us to the Mickey Mouse Club theme song crossed with their own “Disco Sucks,” (which includes some frenzied hillbilly get-down disco-dancing from the bass player).  Everybody in the place is clued in on the joke except possibly two disco honeys on the dance floor in full Bombay Yacht Club regalia, sparkly knee-length Saturday Night Fever dresses and all.

My friend John leans over to me at one point and yells over the music, “I forgot bands like this existed.”  So had I. I felt like I was in Detroit back in 1969.  (And I was never in Detroit in 1969.)  I felt like Mick Farren from the New Musical Express.  I felt as good as you can feel on a Wednesday night in Columbus, Ohio and not get arrested or become unconscious.  I kept thinking, “How could I have considered staying home and watching Starsky & Hutch when I could be doing this.”

This is rock & roll.

As for Steppenwolf, as far as I could tell only one original member of the band was present, and that was the organ player, and what did he ever do for us anyway?  I at least expected John Kay.  So the order of the night was to trot out all the old big hits, turn ‘em into long boring guitar jams and then collect a paycheck, Jack.  “Sookie Sookie,” “Magic Carpet Ride,” “The Pusher,” “Born To Be Wild,” etc. all got played, but during the whole show I got the nagging feeling I was in the nightclub scene from an old 60’s movie.  Or in an episode of The Mod Squad where someone doses Julie with a hit of acid at the teen club and she has a bad trip and Pete & Linc gotta come in and rescue her while the strobe lights beam.

Wednesday April 19^th, 1978, the night belonged to Black Leather Touch.  Check ‘em out at your earliest opportunity.  West Side Rock rules OK.

(author’s note, 2012 – The bass player of Black Leather Touch mentioned in paragraph six, whose name I didn’t know at the time, was Jerry Blinn.  His daughter, Erica Blinn, today performs a truly kick-ass form of rock & roll she dubs “Whiskey Rock From The Rust Belt”  roughly everywhere east and south of the Midwest.  Check out the video here, Erica Blinn / "Choices", and tell me I’m wrong.  It's a sobering thought, but I am now watching the daughters of my rock & roll contemporaries command stages.  Growing Old With Rock & Roll indeed.)

(II)

The Neighborhoods / Stache’s, Columbus, Ohio / May 24, 1986

reprinted from The Noise fanzine, July, 1986

On Friday night I went to see the Columbus Clippers play baseball.

On Sunday afternoon I stood in the Hands Across America line.

In between I saw The Neighborhoods.

I felt so American.

David, Lee and Michael came into Columbus on an on-again/off-again, no publicity, is this show gonna come off or what? basis, took the stage in front of an audience totally unfamiliar with their music and proceeded to generally kick ass, kill, maim and destroy.

Kicking off with “Fire Is Coming,” The ‘Hoods powered through “Arrogance,” “WUSA,” and “Think It Over” from The High Hard One, detoured over to the first L.P. for “Heatwave” and “It All Makes Sense” and dropped in a brace of new songs before veering off to left field with covers of The Nervous Eaters’ “Just Head” (lead sung by Lee Harrington) and a killer song about Johnny Rotten I didn’t catch the name of.  (author’s note 2012 – I now realize this tune was “Tommy” from the then-unreleased Reptile Men album, and is NOT about Johnny Rotten.)

Prime extra-musical moments included Michael Quaglia singing out of one side of his mouth while smoking a cigarette out of the other and bassist Lee Harrington’s selection of P. Townshend scissor-kicks.  And who couldn’t love a guitarist who matches the color of his socks to his guitar?  (Both red, incidentally.)

I never usually bother in reviews to mention how the sound is at the shows because I figure that’s for the guys with $3000 stereos whose mothers were scared by a transistor radio when they were pregnant with them, but I gotta hand it to The Hoods’ soundman.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better drum sound in a small club and Harrington’s bass cut great jagged slashes through the expected Minehan guitar onslaught.

So the band runs through some audience requests (“Shake”) and ends with a song I don’t know.  First encore features an unidentified roadie singing lead after an intro of David playing The Carpenters’ “Close To You” and telling the audience about getting kids to quit drugs while answering phones at the suicide prevention center.  (I’m quite serious.  I guess you had to be there.)  Second encore is “Prettiest Girl,” which they dedicated to my girlfriend Mary Jo, and which we thought they never play anymore under any circumstances, so that just made it especially sweet.   

The show concluded with David diving into the audience for a final solo and dumping his red Strat onto a patron’s table for the last crash chord.  And it’s history.

It’s in the archives.

It’s The Neighborhoods.

It’s rock & roll.

(author’s note 2012 – This review ran in The Noise, a killer Boston fanzine I subscribed to all through the 80’s, and occasionally contributed live reviews to when Boston acts played Columbus.  The editor, T. Max, was truly a rocker of the first order.)

(III)

Michael Penn and Lloyd Cole / Phantasy Theatre, Cleveland, Ohio / June 30, 1990

The Phantasy Theater is a run-down former movie house on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio.  Michael Penn and Lloyd Cole are songwriters of some wit, style and intelligence currently on tour together.  So how does each deal with a sweaty rock & roll club on a Saturday night in Cleveland?

Lloyd Cole and band pull out all the stops, turn the amps up to ten, drop (most of) the ballads and let the feedback rain down.  If you don’t already know that Cole writes great lyrics you’re not going to discover it here, you can’t understand a word.  Ordinarily this would bother me but the three-guitar strong Cole group sound great.  They pummel the mid-level songs into submission and when they hit an all-out rocker like “I Hate To See You, Baby, Doing That Stuff” they pound like fever.  

I keep asking myself, “Why hire a mathematical guitar genius like Robert Quine just to bury his leads in this over-amped wall-of-guitars mix?”  And I keep telling myself to walk back in the theatre to check if the sound is better balanced farther back (proper pro rock critic procedure) except I can’t get myself to leave my sweat-soaked, ear-blasted stagefront position for even three minutes because this music is taking my breath away.

Some critics I’ve read compare Lloyd Cole to Lou Reed.  I’ve never been able to hear it myself, Cole is far too lyrical and romantic for that comparison to fly, but comparisons to The Velvet Underground on this night are unavoidable.  Flat-out sonic attack supporting lyrics like “She looks like Eve-Marie Sainte in On The Waterfront.”  Really, what more could you ask for?

And how is Michael Penn going to follow this?  He does it with a semi-lengthy set-change, allowing the Cole-energy to diffuse and then proceeds to pull off a perfectly-paced and played set of modern alternative pop.  Where Lloyd Cole & company opted for straight-up power, Penn chooses understatement and intelligent charm for his live presentation.  Which is not to say the Penn group doesn’t rock, especially with drummer D.J. Bonebrake (formerly of X) providing the missing link of pop drummers between Ringo Starr and Keith Moon.

And Penn had great one-liner song intros: “This next song is not about Italian fashion designers or cats in the funny papers,” to clarify the Romeo in black jeans and Heathcliff references in “No Myth.”  Or “There was a big fire last week in Santa Barbara.  The police say it was arson.  I just thought I’d mention it,” to introduce a song containing the line “I’ll be burning canyons for you.”  Subtly and perfectly delivered.  I think the 1966 John Lennon would have been proud.

   coda:

Stacy lives in Cleveland Heights.  She’s a nanny.  (On the west side of Columbus, where I hail from, we call that a babysitter.)  Her father took her to see The Beatles when she was five years old.  He bounced her on his shoulders while they played, so she could see over the crowd of screaming girls.

She’s never even heard of Lloyd Cole and the only song she knows by Michael Penn is “No Myth.”  She has brown eyes and red hair, which is perfectly done, as is her make-up.

She’s dressed really nicely, although at least five years behind what currently passes for rock & roll fashion.  The blonde suburban teenage mall-rat fashion victims seated behind her make fun of her, but I don’t think Stacy noticed.

I have no idea what she’s doing here alone on a Saturday night at a rock & roll show.

And then Michael Penn comes on.  Stacy’s up and bopping around and when the band plays “No Myth,” Stacy actually screamed.  As Penn sings, "Maybe she’s just looking for someone to dance with,” Stacy’s dancing all alone, oblivious, off in another, very likely better, world.  Maybe she’s back seeing The Beatles when she was five, bouncing on her father’s shoulders.  Wherever she is pop music’s promise gets kept there.

I’m thinking about rock & roll, I’m thinking about the past tense, I’m thinking about rock & roll when it had some innocence.

I’m watching Stacy dance.

(author’s note 2012 – I would think I submitted this piece to the Cleveland Scene entertainment weekly.  I doubt that it ever ran, but I still like it.)

Was this entire exercise just an elaborate set-up to insert a Lloyd Cole & The Commotions video into this blog?  No, it wasn't, but I couldn't resist including one of my five favorite songs from the 1980's  - Perfect Skin - into the proceedings.  inspirational verse; "At the age of 10 she looked like Brigitte Bardo, Sophia Loren and also Marilyn Monroe, very big stuff....." - Lloyd Cole 1985.  Wasn't Lloyd pretty?  Weren't The Commotions a great band?  Don't you wish the cameraman could have found lead guitarist Neil Clark at some point?  And wasn't 1984's Rattlesnakes very nearly a perfect folk-rock album right in the midst of bad English Frankie Goes To Hollywood/Depeche Mode/A Flock Of Seagulls and others of their ilk synth-pop?

   

© 2012 Ricki C.

The Paul Westerberg Band, 1993 (Bonus Video Friday)

Okay folks, something we haven't dealt with earlier in Growing Old With Rock & Roll, the fact that I am actually chronologically OLDER than rock & roll.  While rock historians might argue endlessly over what was the first "rock & roll record" (from Ike Turner's early-50's "Rocket 88" to Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" in 1955) nobody places many records much earlier than 1952, my birth year.  (And let's face facts: Does anything really matter much rock & roll-wise before Elvis in '56?)  As such I have lived and listened through six complete decades of rock & roll - the 1950's, '60's, 70's, 80's, 90's, and 2000's.  By far the worst decade of those was the 1980's.  Easily the worst, hands down, no contest.  In fact I might make the argument that the only good things about the 80's were Prince, The Replacements (both from Minneapolis, Mn., incidentally, what was up with that?), The Neighborhoods, The Del Lords and Del Fuegos, The Pogues, maybe The Bangles (perhaps because I had such a huge crush on Susanna Hoffs) and precious few others.  (REM started out strong, but soon transmuted into the whimpering pussies we initially suspected they were all along.)
　
As such, when Paul Westerberg drafted 'Hoods frontman David Minehan into his first post-Replacements touring band for the 14 Songs tour in 1993, it was pretty much a match made in heaven for this little Ohio boy.  I saw the band in this video play at Peabody's Down Under in Cleveland, Ohio, on that tour and it was pretty much a top-20 all-time live show experience.  Westerberg & Minehan were blazing, trading guitar leads back & forth like it was their first band in the garage when they were 14 years old and rhythm section Darren Hill & Jim Reilly rolled right underneath 'em like a fine Persian rug.  Were they a better live band than The Replacements?  Damn straight they were.  (blog note: I mis-identified Jim Reilly as the drummer of this band, see Comments section at the end of the blog.  It was actually Josh Freese.)  
　
Folks, you can believe who you wanna believe, but I saw The Replacements live in their prime and they were always astride a line between brilliant and embarassing ALL THE FUCKING TIME!  The first time The 'Mats (as I never called them) played Columbus, Ohio, I was standing next to local musician, raconteur & tastemaker (and ex-member of 80's indie favorite Great Plains) Ron House at a club called Stache's.  The first 20 or 30 minutes of the show the band was a drunken, shambolic mess; nobody seemed capable of finding and/or keeping the beat, despite the herculean efforts of drummer Chris Mars to keep 'em on track, guitars were woefully out-of-tune, lyrics were forgotten or mumbled unintelligibly, or both, and some tunes didn't end as much as subside.  I remember very clearly Ron asking the musical question, "These guys are the best live band in America?" (as we had been led to believe by fanzines and Spin magazine, which constituted the "alternative" rock press of the day). 

And then, amazingly, almost miraculously, The Replacements slammed into "Take Me Down To The Hospital," and it was one of the most incredible pieces of rock & roll I have ever seen in my life.  For that threee minutes the band was The Who, The New York Dolls and The Sex Pistols all rolled into one.  And they followed that with the most unbelievably spill-your-guts-on-the-stage version of "Unsatisfied" you would ever have been privileged to hear.  It was mind boggling.  Ron and I literally stood there with our mouths hanging open.  It was like an entirely different band had taken over the stage, like those four Midwestern boys had been possessed by the ghost of Keith Moon, by the very Spirit Of Rock & Roll.  They were fantastic.  And then, just as quickly after those two songs, they went right back to the chaotic mess they had been just three songs earlier.  

They peaked at least twice more that night, pulling it all together into rock & roll masterpiece territory and then running right back off the rails into first-rehearsal noise.  It was one of the strangest rock shows I have ever attended.  And it was pretty much like that the rest of the times I saw them live while Bob Stinson was in the band.  When Slim Dunlap came in they became less schizophrenic but never played with any real fire again.  And a more professional, tamed, merely servicable Replacements was not really what we were looking for, was it?

So say what you will 'Mats fans, I'll take Westerberg, Minehan, Hill and Reilly live over that band anyday.

inspirational verse;  "A dream too tired to come true / Just a rebel without a clue /  Searching for something to do"  - Paul Westerberg, 1989 (years before Tom Petty ripped off the line  "rebel without a clue" after The Replacements opened a Heartbreakers tour).

© Ricki C. 2012

Flying to Boston to See the Rock & Roll - The Neighborhoods (Bonus Video Friday)

I have this matchbook.

It’s from the Terrace Motel, 1650 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, Massachusetts.  I used to stay at that motel on weekends all through the early 1980’s when I worked at Ross Laboratories in Columbus, Ohio. Ross Laboratories was simultaneously the highest-paying AND easiest job I ever had. It was so high-paying I used to fly to Boston on weekends just to see bands. I’d leave my stockroom job on Friday afternoon, go directly to Port Columbus, fly into Logan Airport in Boston, grab the Red Line subway, transfer to the Green Line, and settle in at the Terrace Motel, my home away from home. (In retrospect I find that extravagance and sense of motivation amazing. Nowadays I often find it INCREDIBLY difficult to get myself off the couch to see bands at clubs as close as four miles away. Sometimes I hate growing old with rock & roll.)

But I digress, let me repeat; I USED TO FLY TO BOSTON ON WEEKENDS JUST TO SEE BANDS!

Fortunately, during that time an airline called People’s Express had one-way fares to Boston for $38. YOU COULD FLY ROUND-TRIP TO BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, FOR $76. ON THE WEEKEND! Life was good. Admittedly it wasn’t exactly luxury travel, more like Greyhound if buses could fly. One Friday night, and I swear to God I am not joking or making this up, a gentleman of middle-eastern persuasion tried to bring a live chicken on the plane. After much animated discussion he was dissuaded. He left the waiting area, went out to the parking garage for about two minutes, returned sans chicken and boarded the flight. I don’t know to this day what happened to that animal and I don’t want to know.

Wait, wait, I digress again. Once more; I USED TO FLY TO BOSTON ON WEEKENDS JUST TO SEE BANDS!  

Most of those weekends involved a band called The Neighborhoods. How did I love The(e) Neighborhoods? Let me count the ways: I loved them musically, I loved them sartorially, I loved their attitude, I loved that they wanted to be rock & roll stars, I loved that they went out and toured in shitty vans where people didn’t know them. (As hometown Columbus favorites The Toll found out when The ‘Hoods blew them off the stage at Stache’s one night in 1986. The Toll were given the choice that night of opening for the out-of-town rockers or keeping their top-billed slot. They learned a little too late that you DO NOT want to follow The Neighborhoods on a rock & roll stage. Brad & the boys got taken to rock & roll school that night.)

I must have first read about The ‘Hoods (as they were affectionately known to their fans) sometime in ’79 in Doug Simmons’ New York Rocker column about the Boston rock & roll scene. Then when Boston Rock started publishing in 1980 and put The ‘Hoods on the cover of their first issue I sent away to Newbury Comics for the "Prettiest Girl / No Place Like Home" single and a rock & roll love affair began. The Neighborhoods spoke to me in a way that other bands didn’t. I loved The Clash when they sang about English youth’s lack of job prospects in "Career Opportunities," but in 1980 I was 28 years old and had already been working at one job or another since my Dairy Queen stint at age 12. I was dying for some unemployment. And yeah, The Ramones were great but lyrics about chicken vindaloo and pinheads only take a rocker who reads too many books so far, ya know? But when David Minehan hit the bridge of "No Place Like Home" and sang – "First grade, straight A’s, I was a good boy / Grade six, grade’s slipped, I was losing interest / Fun time, grade nine, fools for friends & cheap highs / Grade twelve, expelled, never learned my lesson." – I knew I had found my new favorite band.

I never saw the original Neighborhoods with John Hartcorn on bass, but did see a couple of shows in 1982 when Tim Green was in the band. That was the band’s "noise" period when it really seemed they were going out of their way to alienate the old fans. They almost lost me, but once bassist Lee Harrington came into the fold it seemed like they found the perfect balance of punk, pop, aggression and melody. For some rockers in the early-80’s it was The Replacements articulating the stories of their lives. For me it was The Neighborhoods.

After the band broke up in 1992, David Minehan went on to play lead guitar in Paul Westerberg’s first post-Replacements touring band in 1993 and you’d best believe that was that a dream matchup for this Ohio rocker.  I saw that band in Cleveland that same year and have a great bootleg of them playing at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, New Jersey. You should hear it sometime.

The ‘Hoods reformed in 2004 and rock to this day. God bless The Neighborhoods, and all that they stand for.

The Neighborhoods on Boston cable TV in 1979, I believe neatly beating their most obvious influence (The Jam, at that point) at their own game. Inspirational verse in song two, No Place Like Home – "First grade, straight A’s / I was a good boy / Grade 6, grades slipped / I was losing interest / Fun time, grade 9 / Fools for friends and cheap highs / Grade 12, expelled / Never learned my lesson." – David Minehan, 1979. Easily the story of my life.

© 2012 Ricki C.