Bob's Musical Bio: Part Two
Late 1980: In the fall of 1980 certain events transpired that made it necessary that I leave Johnson. No, I wasn't involved in anything scandalous--just the same old story of a relationship gone bad and the subsequent need for a change of scene. Dennis richards and I had been talking for a while about relocating to Boston. We had some half-baked (or completely baked?) notion that we would thrive in a bigger city. Sometime around December NRG played its last gig. The last days of 1980 were a very dark time for me.
Early 1981: Things continued darkly until...
April 2, 1981: With only the possesions I could fit into the back seat of a friend's Camaro, I left Johnson for Boston. By that afternoon I was settled into my room in Kenmore Square, which was at the time the heart of Boston's nightclub/music scene. I had no idea of any of this when I moved there--I simply found a room for rent in the paper that I could afford and that's where I moved to. By a most amazing bit of syncronicity I suddenly found myself living in the very midst of everything I had moved to Boston to experience.
The next few weeks were a time of unbelievable sensory stimulus. I had never lived in a large city and the sights, sounds, smells, all were coming at me in huge doses. I vividly remember looking back on my first three weeks in the city and being amazed that it had only been such a short time--it felt more like three months to me. My theory on this is that we get used to a certain amount of sensory input in a given period of time. If the amount of input suddenly sees an exponential increase during the same amount of time it "tricks" us into thinking that more time has passed than actually has.
Anyway, I was drinking big gulps from the cup of life. I was going to clubs, exploring every corner of the city that I could get to (including a few I might have been well advised to stay out of), meeting all sorts of strange and wonderful people from all over the world. In short, I was in Wonderland. I knew right away that I had made the right choice in relocating to Boston.
May, 1981: Dennis came to Boston one day. He came to my room, hung around for about an hour, saying very little, looking nervous and scared. Suddenly he announced that he didn't like it in Boston and he was going back to Vermont. Within minutes he and his brother were back in their car and headed north. I was alone.
That very evening I was sitting in a coffe shop reflecting on the day's events and pondering what i would do next. Two men and a woman came in and sat next to me at the counter. One of the men had a guitar case. "In a band?" I inquired. He was. we got to talking about music, the local scene and such. After a while the three of them got ready to leave. Suddenly, the woman, who had said very little , informed me that she was s singer and would like to form a band. She gave me her number, and I called the next day.
Her name was Bonnie Gossett. We began getting together on a regular basis, working out some songs that I had written and trying to flesh out some ideas that she had. we got along well. In fact there was a brief sort of relationship, but we very quickly realized that we were not compatible in that context and if we were going to play in a band together it would be best to avoid situations that could cause strife somewhere down the road.
June, 1981: Bonnie and I had worked up a reperoire of about ten songs. We decided it was time to begin recruiting band members. We ran an ad in the local entertainment paper (The Phoenix) and began auditioning bass players and drummers. We very quickly settled on Jim Vaca (bass) and Skip Bailey (drums). We chose these two for four reasons. First, we just plain liked them--they were nice guys with good senses of humor. Secondly, they had been playing together in other bands for several years and had developed an uncanny ability to intuit each other's next move. Third, Jim had a staion wagon (neither Bonnie nor myself had a vehicle). Forth, Jim had a small PA system that was ideal for practice.
We rented a practice room in Kenmore Square, ironically enough in the same building that I had lived in when I first came to Boston. We dubbed ourselves Romance Language and began practicing.
With respect to music, the early '80s were exciting years to be in Boston. There were hundreds of bands, many with unique and original sounds. This was great for those who went out to see bands, but it presented problems for new and struggling bands. there were only six or seven clubs to play in and the club owners exploited this. If your band wasn't willing to play for next to nothing (or just plain nothing) they knew that they could find others who were.
It was a "who you know" kind of scene. I you were befriended by one of the big-draw bands, such as Mission Of Burma, Human Sexual Response, or The Dark, you could get an opening slot for one of their shows and actually have an audience to play for. For the most part the big-name bands never befriended us, with one exception. One of the first friends i had made in Boston was Doug Vargas, who played guitar in a band called Young Snakes (featuring a very young and snooty Aimee Mann on bass and vocals). they were a pretty popular band (every art boy in Boston wanted to be Aimee's boyfriend) and we got to play a few shows with them. But it wasn't enough to keep us going.
Late spring, 1982: By now we had changed our name to Radio Prison. Little else had changed. We were still playing to mostly empty houses and it was getting frustrating trying to get heard. Also, in spite of the fact that we were all nice people, rfits began to develop among various members of the band. the particulars are not germain to the telling of this story (and they are none of anybody's business, anyway!), but sometime around may we decided to call it quits.
We went our separate ways and to this day I do not know what became of my three former bandmates. Although I was angry and disappointed at the time of the breakup, I got over it pretty quickly and got on with my life. I feel nothing but fondness now as I look back on Bonnie, Jim, and Skip. In spite of the hardships we encountered as a struggling band, we had a lot of good times together and that's what will always be foremost in my memory. And to these three I say: Thanks for being there when you were. I love you all and I hope life has turned out well for you.
Summer, 1982: I was floundering. All my hopes and dreams for Boston had fallen by the wayside. I made a bad decision: I decided to return to Vermont and get NRG going again with the Dennises. It was a disaster. We practiced a bit, but the old spirit just wasn't there. Also, I began to miss Boston. I felt that I had some unfinished business there, although I had no clear idea what that was. After only a few weeks i went back to Boston. The moral to the story: You can't go back, so keep moving forward.
Fall, 1982: I was feeling lost. I had been involved in a couple of musical endeavors, but they were other people's projects and I did not have the satifaction of being in on the creative process to an extent that I found satisfying.
Then one day I got a phone call. It was from my friends, Mark and Lisa Andersen. we had been close in high school and the last few years that i had lived in Florida. We had fallen out of touch and they had finally tracked me down. "Come on out to Montana!" Mark said. And I made one of the stupidest decisions I've ever made in my life: I said, "Okay."
December, 1982: I arrived by bus In Kalispell, Montana (You do not know what misery is until you ride a Greyhound bus from Cordele, Georgia--where i had spent Thanksgiving with my parents--to Kalispell, Montana. The total travelling time was 74 hours--74 hours of babies crying, of lousy, greasy bus stop food (although the food in the Minneapolis station was pretty good), of breathing cigarette smoke (this was in the days when smoking was still permitted on busses--in the last three rows, as if that made a bit of difference to the non-smokers at the front).
The first month I was in Montana I lived with Mark and Lisa. Our firendship was sorely tested. We were snowbound for much of the time. we watched a lot ocf cable TV, drank unhealthy amounts of whiskey. I was not a very good house guest. I was still in a pretty dark phase of life and I was rather unpleasant to be around much of the time. Also, Mark and Lisa did not approve of my current musical tastes. We had been friends at the time that i was listening to all the European progressive music and they were still into that. All my punk rock and atonality annoyed the heck out of them.
I did, however, find a way to use my musical skills to earn a bit of money. I was hired as sound man for a top-40 cover band called US Contraband (I wonder how many bands were called Contraband inn the early '80s). They were nice people and all, but their music was excrutiatingly borin--Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Eric Clapton--not my cup of hemlock. To make matters even worse, they played the exact same songs in the exact same order every single night. When you view music purely in terms of art it is very hard to participate in the business end of it all.
January, 1983: I got my own place and moved out of Mark and Lisa's. My girlfriend, Anne, came out and joined me. I will forever feel some remorse for dragging her into such a dark and dysfunctional period of my life. I think she really loved me, but for reasons I may never fully understand, I went out of my way to be hard to love.
At the end of the month we had enough money to either pay another month of rent or buy bus tickets back to the East Coast. The band had not been playing much since the holidays had ended and Anne had no real job prospects at all. We chose the bus tickets. We left Kalispel together, travelled as far a Chicago, then went separate directions from there--she to her parents' place in Upstate NY, I to my sister's place in Atlanta. We didn't know it (or didn't want to admit it) at the time, but our relationship was dead.
February, 1983: I spent a month with my sister in Atlanta. I thought I might like to settle there, even tried out for a couple of bands. But I missed Boston. Atlanta was too sprawling and just didn't feel like home.
Spring, 1983: I went back to Boston. I'm not sure exactly when it was but I do know that the night before I arrived Mission of Burma, the premier Boston art-punk band (and a band whose influenced is still felt and acknowledged by musicians today) played their last-ever show. I had missed the end of an era by only hours.
To be continued...