Thirteen, Boston Compilation, 1995

The Wicked Smile of Mister Jinx Welcomes The Listener to "Thirteen". I drew The Devil on a napkin originally. I wanted the CD jacket to look like the label on a bottle of hot sauce.

I just signed on to a gig playing lead guitar for The Dave Sammarco Band, a hard-working country rock outfit. I'm not the main guy, by any means. Nope. Dave has a "roster" of players at every position, and I'm the second or third string Telecaster Twanger. His main guy is the incredible Jimmy Scoppa, Boston's Master of the Telecaster, and I'm not worthy of shining his shoes as a country guitar player. The "DSB" plays all the time, all over New England. Between now and the end of the year, I'm playing four gigs, including The Church of Boston on November 29th. The Kilmarnock Street club and restaurant in The Fenway was once The Linwood Grill, a place I knew well. Played there, hung out there, and many a night got shitfaced there. In the mid '90's The Linwood was a happening joint, which brings me to this new blog.... I remember it like it was yesterday...(Sounds of harps and screen gets all swirly)...

It's 1995, and we're having the two night record release party for "Thirteen: Boston Compilation". I had produced the alternative rock tome at Newbury Sound, bringing in one group after the next in sort of a cattle-call style. We left all the mics up and the drum-kit and the bands would come in and I’d press the big red button. The band line-up included Digger, Ten Star General, Serum, Delta Clutch, Cobalt 60, The Derangers and others. We had high hopes for the CD, released by Rick Schettino's Young American Records. Rick was the publisher and founder of New England Performer, now known as Northeast Performer, or maybe it's simply Performer now. At the time, I thought the CD sounded ahead of its time, and I was right. Even now, when I listen to the album, and I have been listening to it lately for the first time in years, it still sounds pretty fresh, if not a bit "grungy". It got good reviews, but the bands were a little new and outside the main core of the Boston alternative scene. The only group still in existence is Delta Clutch, now called The Blizzard of '78. Cobalt 60, who changed their name to C60 in the late '90s continued on Jeff Marshall's Monolyth Records through the mid 2Ks, touring and recording. I was once a Monolyth recording artist myself, back in '86 through '88, but that's a different story.

So we had the CD release party at The Linwood, a two-night Friday and Saturday affair. The Linwood was just getting started as a rock venue. It had been a blues and pizza joint earlier, known more for drawing a baseball crowd due to its proximity to Fenway Park, but now, it was a full-blown black leather-jacket Boston rock club. The Linwood was capturing the spill-off from The Rat, and by '95, the writing was on the greasy, graffitti'd wall of the old Rathskeller. Barry Hite, Landsdowne Street stage-manager and sound guru, had created a new rock outpost on the Fens side of the Ball Park, in the old Linwood Irish pub. He and a few fellow Kenmore ex-patriots (Bob Daley, I think?) were behind making the Linwood the hot new venue.

The first night of the release, the place was packed. It was insane. The crowd was a who's-who of '95 and a big "where-are-they-now?" of 2008. There was Ken Kanavos from Newbury Sound, Deb Catalano, Schettino, of course, Kevin of The Linwood, Jeff Marshall, Radio people like Bill Abbate and Laurie Gale and Janet Egan (Juanita) were there, along with all the band members and their people. I was high on adrenaline (and some other stuff) and to this day I still remember it as being one of the best times, one of the absolute best nights I've ever had in this Boston Music Scene. It was magical and full of energy. The room was electric, with high-voltage performances by the bands, who rocked with total abandon. Even my own surf instrumental trio the Derangers put on a blazing set. It was all black leather, hair and attitudes, and you couldn't fall down in there.
The second night was very mellow by comparison; modestly attended but a good night just the same. It was as if everybody got their groove on the night before and were all nursing giant rock and roll hangovers 24 hours later.
Some bands I know what happened to, others I don’t. Almost all that were part of “13” I’m long out of touch with. I know Delta Clutch is still slugging away as The Blizzard of ’78, and I still talk to Chris Cugini, a producer now in his own right, regularly. Tristram Lozaw, famous Boston Rock Journalist and then member of Serum is still writing about the music. Siobhan McAuley, also ex Serum, is creating beautiful atmospheric music under the name Embrionic with her long-time partner and fellow musician James Bryan McCaffrey. “Jay” as I call him, was in the band Resinsect on “13”. I have been in touch with him over the years, though not lately. Barry Edwards of Ten Star General just moved back to the Buffalo area after decades of being a great guitarist in the Boston Scene, most recently with Cash Monies & The Jetsetter, as well as The Dave Sammarco Band. The only guys I’ve been in-touch with consistently over the years are the Brothers Frazier, Daryl and Mark, both long out of Boston, who were my buddies and bandmates in Digger. But where’s Bow Thayer (of Still Home)? What happened to the guys from Underball or Jehova Starbelly or Scratch? I think Doug MacDonald of Tidal Wave might still be drinking and strumming somewhere. Cobalt 60, or “C60” seems to be done, as far as I can Google.


Hawking "Thirteen" at SXSW Music Convention in Austin, St. Patrick's Day 1995

“Thirteen” was not an enormously successful CD. It was overshadowed by a lot of what was happening in Boston around that time. A year later, I myself produced and released the “Tube” Surf compilation on the CherryDisc label, which made a much bigger splash. But as I listen to “13” I hear good stuff. My recording and production quality was excellent, if I say so myself (and if I don’t, who will?). I hear a lot of analog depth and musicality in the tracks. The CD sounds amazingly fresh today in 2008. Not bad for a CD called “Thirteen” that actually IS 13 years old now. I guess I was right back in ’95 when I proclaimed that “Thirteen: Boston Compilation” was ahead of its time.

Track 16 Strikes Again!

Chris "Cujo" Cugini goes airborne during Anastasia Screamed's show at the 1989 WBCN Rumble.

Ok, Moontime session again. We were taking a break from sessioning and this little party started in the lounge next to the control room -- band, girlfriends, drinks. It was early eve. There was even a TV on; this little old set with the manual click click click channel dial. The party sounds were interesting to me, so I threw a blank up, put 16 in record and pulled a mic out in to the lounge.

The mic was close to the TV and I was picking up "Star Trek The Next Generation". There's that ascending horn motif that plays when the show like, comes back from a commercial or goes to a commercial: "Daa da da da Daa, da da da Daaa..." Right? Know what I mean? So that lick plays and somebody turned the channel which gave a burst of white noise, "KSSHHHH". So theres the horn riff and then, "Kssshhhh".

So, again, later we track songs and at mix time I push 16 up to see what's going to happen. The verse riff goes back and forth between D and C and then hits the chorus on an E? I think? Maybe G? So the verse is winding up and going in to the chorus, and from track 16 comes this horn riff in perfect key and timing, leading the song to the chous and on the "4" beat right before the downbeat of the chorus there's the blast of white noise which ends precisely at the "one" beat of the big chorus.

Everybody in the room hit the floor.

We rewound like ten times to hear it over and over. We HAD to keep it! Added some verb to give it stereo space and did a little EQ. Then, I had to painstakingly fly it in to the second chorus. This was an all analog project, no samplers or DAW. This meant I had to record the part off track 16 on to a 2-track and then back on to 16 at the right time. It took quite a while, and was much harder than the one that happened totally by chance. And the nature of the song, being a hard, noisy rocker, you absolutely don't recognise that little blurb as being "Star Trek" at all.

The song is called "Dead in The Grass".

The Track 16 Happy Accident happens at 1:12, and then again at 2:30 (on purpose via fly-in).

Here it is on Amazon: Moontme on MP3 at Amazon (The part we're talkin' about is not contained in the 30-second clip, unfortunately). Warning, track titles are mixed up. The crazy afore-blogged "Blues" with the thunder is mis-labelled "Dead Ants", and if you grab any track at all, get "15 Seconds or 5 Days", which is mis-titled "Fall to Ceiling" "One Deep Breath" is breathtaking, with backing vocals by Tany Donnely (see * below). What the hell, get the whole album!

You can hear full length streamers of a few AS songs, including "Dead in The Grass" on their MySpace page, too: Anastasia MySpace

*Tanya Donnely is also on that LP on a couple of tracks, right when she was leaving Throwing Muses and starting Belly. She liked the Nashville Studio so much, she did the debut Belly album there a few months later. She and I worked together well...she was good at taking direction from a producer and very professional in the studio. She said ideally she'd like to do the Belly LP there in Nashville with ME producing. That would have launched my career. Alas, her label had other ideas. Oh well. can't win 'em all.

But it was a trippy record. So is Anastasia's first LP, "Laughing Down The Limehouse". We did that one here in Boston. All kinds of effed-up cool wierd shit happened during those sessions, too, like the time the speaker turned itself off (a story for another time). Anastsia was never huge in the US and they were way ahead of their time, being pre Nirvana "Never Mind", but they had a loyal following in the UK, Germany, etc. If you want to hear some mind-bending cocophonous ear-candy, get either of their LPs or both. Heck, their London-based label gave us $15K per record budget, which was tiny at the time. Sure wish somebody'd give me $15 grand to do a record NOW! Recording not as big-bottomed as today's stuff, but it sounded right in the early '90s'.

The Mysterious Track 16...

While doing Anastasia Scream's "Moontime" LP at Nashville's at Sound Emporium Studios, we encountered some bizarre happenings. I'm not jivin' you. Some really crazy wierd shit happened. In one anomalous event, we recorded a loud thunderstorm that was happening outside the studio. This was a real boomer. I quickly threw on a blank 2" 24-track reel, popped track 16 in to record, and put a mic in front of an open doorway. This was a $3,000 Neumann U47fet that happened to be handy, and the studio assistant was none too happy later when she saw it placed inches from the torrent outside.

We recorded about six minutes of big rain and thunder. It's not like we had any plans for "the storm track", but thought it might be cool to have. (And besides, we were like, wicked baked, y'know?)


Eventually, we needed that reel to record songs, so we put track 16 in safe and recorded around it. Pretty much forgot about it.

Days later, when we were mixing this finished song called "Blues", I remembered track 16. About two minutes in to the song I eased fader 16 up. At one point right before the song, which is raging full-on, breaks down in to a quiet part, Chick Graning sings, "there's a hole in my head where the rain gets in," and, BOOOOOOMMM! A huge rolling thunderclap follows his phrase right on beat, and rolls and rumbles for about 20 seconds right through the breakdown! (The low-frequency of it vibrated the whole control-room)

Yes, for real.

Of course anybody listening would assume we very carefully placed a thunder sound-effect right there in the song. But no! It was there before the song was even tracked.

The breakdown is followed by this manic sax solo, so we left the magical track 16 in behind there...with the rain and thunder and sax wailing, it sounds like total madness!