1996-2000
FAR FROM SUCKODYNE
by Lexi Kahn

   You remember your first kiss, your first drink, and your first time behind the wheel of your very own car. How about your first issue of The Noise? For me it was 1996. I went to the Middle East to see Betty Goo and casually picked up issue #160. Everyone on the cover (Women of Sodom and Miles Dethmuffen) had tongues and hands exploring everyone else. I was hooked. Industrial experimental sexcapades right alongside pure pop bliss? I would soon learn that the genre-blending cover design was de rigueur for this spunky little fanzine, an unintentional statement; at least two bands, but always at least two people pictured. (The trendbuster came with #191, May 1999 when beefcake Jed Parish of The Gravel Pit graced the cover solo.)

    The second half of the 1990s was interesting, because the decade had rolled in on a wave of new technology and by ’96 well-known bands like Radiohead had demonstrated new ways to use the new toys. Indie labels were everywhere and recording boomed. In Boston, a pop/ punk/ garage town, the trend seemed to usher forth artsy, dark pop. The Noise was still packed with reverential reviews of three-chord demons like The Freeze and Lyres and Gang Green and The Nines, and of course there was no stopping pop powerhouses like Gigolo Aunts and The Pills and Jack Drag. But a certain experimental quirk had blossomed. Bands like Think Tree, Galaxie 500, and Throwing Muses had certainly paved the way, but by ’96 there was an insistent polished wash of synthesized moodiness. Darkwave? Alternawave? The Noise called it all kinds of things (in issue #168, of Flexie, “powergoth” was coined). It was a great time for bands like edgy acts like Turkish Delight, The Moors, Lunar Plexus, Women of Sodom, Opium Den, Neptune, Cordelia’s Dad, Gingerbutkis, Mistle Thrush, Reflecting Skin, Sabot, Curtain Society, Splashdown, January, little a, One of Us, Litterapture and Saint Chimera. On his very computerized “Astounding World of Tomorrow’s Modern Hi-Fi Audio” (reviewed in issue #160) Pete Weiss issued a time-stamp with “I Hate Rock and Roll.” He sings “Axl Rose can suck my Wang Chung and the Beatles can suck my Flipper/Cuz all the songs have already been sung and that goes double for the Big Dipper.” Heh. I like that. And I loved those bands.

     From 1997 to 1999, I averaged five nights a week in the clubs. Five years. Fifty Noises. Hundreds of bands. Though the 1996 Noise poll (#168) threw the most kudos to sludge rockers Quintaine, artsy Turkish Delight and January and prog/space newcomers Count Zero, it was the pop bands mostly winning record deals… and WBCN Rumbles. Oh, those sweet Boston harmonies, infectious hooks and power chords. From ’97 to ’99, delivering the best of the pop rock (and a ton of Noise coverage) were Grooveasaurus, Betty Goo, Lifestyle, Orbit, Sameasyou, Push Stars, Morphine, Sheila Divine, Permafrost, Seventeen, Rocketscience, Boy Wonder, Francine, Angry Salad, Flying Nuns, Pooka Stew, Inhale Mary, SayhitoLisa, The Flux, Douglas Fir, Lockgroove, Mary Lou Lord, Jules Verdone, Ramona Silver, Dirt Merchants, Godboy, Gigolo Aunts, Chin Ho!, Wide Iris, The Pills, Jack Drag, Jumprope, The Irresponsibles, Standing on Earth, The Sterlings, Poundcake, Merrie Amsterburg, The Shods, Star Ghost Dog, Calendar Girl, Mindflow, Tanya Donnelly, Jim’s Big Ego, The Mudhens, Krebstar, Baby Ray, El Camino, Cheerleader, Control Group… man, this list only barely begins to scratch the surface.

    And what about the cats churning out surf/spy? And ska.  Like Rustic Overtones, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Bim Skala Bim, Seks Bomba, Babaloo, Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Skavoovie, Strangemen….

    And the guitar-driven, no-holds-barred face-melters! Random Road Mother, Canine, Sleestack, Chinstrap, Honkyball, Tree, Shiva Speedway, Roadsaw, There, 8-Ball Shifter, El Dopa, Bentmen, PM5K, Scissorfight, Underball, 3 1/2 Girls, Skingame, Neon Jesus, Darkbuster, Cave In, Kicked in the Head, Gangsta Bitch Barbie, Half Cocked…

    And the DIY punk and garage straight-up rock of Toxic Narcotic, The Peasants, Firepig, Luau, Ross Phasor, Rootlock, The Vic Morrows, Real Kids, Amazing Royal Crowns, The Freeze, Lyres, The Nines, Media Connection, Underball…

    And don’t forget the purveyors of roots and rockabilly and blues and funk:  Slide, Speed Devils, Crown Electric Company, Racketeers, Caged Heat…

    Five years. Fifty Noises. Hundreds of bands. Good times. GREAT times. Here are some of my favorite Noise moments from this enormously fertile half-decade.

    #173, July 1997, in which Mikey Dee writes the Scissorfight cover story and outs the scary-looking Ironlung as a scholar, a Papas Fritas fan, and then they discuss the weather for a whole quarter page. (From the same issue, does anybody have a copy of The World’s First Van Halen Tribute Compilation advertised on page 32, with Cherry 2K, Elbow, Fuzzy, Sam Black Church and more?)

    #175, Oct 1997, in which Erik Lindgren (Birdsongs of the Mesozic) educates us newbies on the brilliance that is Mission of Burma. (Same issue, The Upper Crust placed a full-page ad of themselves in full wig & make-up surrounded by mostly naked concubines.)

    #180, April 1998, in which Einstein writes a one-line review of the Heretix reunion show. “For the love of God and your fans, don’t leave!” (Same issue, The Syphlloids put the lesbian orgy ad that began to alarm some Noise distro locations.)

#185, Oct 1998, in which Tim Catz (then of Honeyglazed) challenges Superhoney, Honey & the Bees, and HoneyWest to a bowling match to keep the name. T Max suggests Beer Chess instead.

    #186, Nov 1998, in which Kim Morbey writes a comprehensive two-page review of Boston Rock Opera’s Perseveration.

    #187, Dec 1998, in which the letters column contains a rally to remove “so called writer” Joe Coughlin, citing “I knew the real Joe Coughlin. Joe Coughlin was a friend of mine. This guy is no Joe Coughlin.” The letter is signed, “Joe Coughlin.”

    #191, May 1999, in which T Max is officially on a tear about censorship when one of his distro locations objects to a porn star in a band ad. Yes, The Syphlloids again. (Same issue, a letter from Rockets Burst from the Streetlamps starts a letter-war that would wage for many Noise issues to come).

    Oh man, I could list best-of moments all day but I’m running out of space already! What about the one where Corin “always stuck a funny phrase here” Ashley wrote a one-word CD review reading simply: “Suckodyne.”  Or the one in which Mike Baldino did a whole big profile on the rockin’ women behind the scenes!? What about the one where Beverage broke up and wrote us a letter saying that it’s the fault of their fans for not coming out to more shows? And the Dubrow/ Coughlin letter war! And the one with our butts when me and T Max sat on the photocopier!  Wait, T Max, Rita, Lolita, there’s too much in 1996–2000 to fit into just two pages! PLEASE, I need more spa—

2001-2006 
THE Golden Age 
by Steve Gisselbrecht

   I’ve been living in Boston and seeing live music here for almost twenty years now.  The last five years have been a really great time for Boston music, just like the five before them, the five before those, and so on.  One constant through all this has been the wealth of great bands in pretty much any genre or sub-genre you’d care to name.  Another has been the presence of people bitching about how the Boston music scene today is pathetic compared to the way it was in [insert bitching person’s chosen Golden Age here—if I wanted to be cynical about it, I’d say to insert time period corresponding to bitching person’s early 20s here].  And I can easily understand why some people look at the present only to long for the past.  I, too, look back wistfully at bands and venues from, well, the late ’80s to mid-’90s. (When I was in... hmmm... my early 20s.)  I miss the Channel and Bunratty’s.  I miss Throwing Muses and Concussion Ensemble.  And yes, damn it, I miss the Rat.

    But, as a fan of live local music, I don’t miss the space downstairs from TT’s being a bowling alley, and I certainly don’t miss Great Scott-as-scary-BU-pickup-bar.  And as I looked over the covers of The Noise from the last five years, this is what struck me most about the current state of the Boston music scene:  the constant ferment of band breakups and venue closures is the raw material and driving force for people to get together in new configurations and make new things happen.

    Case in point: an issue from 2002 had Neptune, The Halogens, and Bleu on the cover.  Bleu is still making music, but has left Boston for sunnier shores (joining Paula Kelley and Helicopter Helicopter, to name just two recent LA-bound emigrés).  The Halogens are no more, but many of their songs live on.  The Luxury recombines elements of that band with new musical voices, and the result is excellent.  And Neptune has been through a lineup change and a reorganization of their sound and instrumentation, and have come out the other side with the strongest batch of songs they’ve ever written, a fantastic new full-length album, a rabid local fan base, and perhaps even a bit of a “growing buzz,” whatever that is.  Being asked to open for Mission of Burma has to count as buzz.  And no discussion of great new things coming from the ashes of the old in this new millennium would be complete without a mention of Burma, whose reunion could have been a brief, nostalgic lark, and instead turned out to be the beginning of a powerful, vital, and hopefully long-lasting second career.

    Count Zero also appears on a recent cover (T Max really seems to love this band, for some reason).  This is another band in flux, weathering a whole series of lineup changes and continuing to produce interesting new music for their devoted fans.  For that matter, this is another demonstration of our losses setting the stage for our gains:  without the breakup of Think Tree, painful though that was, we wouldn’t have had Bongo Fury or Count Zero.  The phenomenon repeats itself over and over:  All the Queen’s Men are gone, but Ziaf appears.  Officer May gets a new sound and becomes Dirty Holiday.  Cancer to the Stars gives way to a profusion of Ryan Lee projects.  And if we hadn’t lost Green Magnet School and Kudgel, we might never have heard the grim beauty of Black Helicopter.  These guys have a gorgeous new record; you don’t have to take my word for it, but I hope you’ll trust Thurston Moore, who signed them to Ecstatic Peace just before it became part of Universal.  So now Black Helicopter is on a major label, sort of, and no one is more surprised than they are (except perhaps the bean counters at Universal, if any of them have heard any Black Helicopter).

    And speaking of major labels, let’s talk about The Dresden Dolls, who’ve appeared on THREE Noise covers in the last five years. (The middle one was for winning the Rumble in 2003.)  I have loved this band since they were playing house parties and the Lizard Lounge, so it has been a joy to watch them blow up, becoming known outside of Boston and getting signed to Roadrunner Records. (Kind of an odd fit, really, and I’m betting they haven’t hung out with a lot of their labelmates.)  This band’s detractors are almost as passionate as their fans, to the point that Amanda Palmer bitterly namechecks the Noise Board in the song “Backstabber.”  But selling out 2000-seaters in Salt Lake City, touring Europe and Australia, opening for Nine Inch Nails, and meeting David Bowie probably take a lot of the sting out of those barbed comments.  Boston is sort of famous for sending its talent out to fly and fall on the big stage, but I wish for better things for the Dolls.

    One of these rags-to-riches-to-rags stories is compellingly told in Everything I’m Cracked Up to Be, the product of another transformation and reinvention.  Jen Trynin tried being a solo act, fronting a band, playing in someone else’s band, and now she’s come back as an author.  For several of the last five years she played in Loveless, but it was as a frontwoman that she experienced the rock ’n’ roll rollercoaster, being wooed and then spurned by all manner of big shots.  This is the story she relates in her book, and while it’s a sad story, it’s both edifying and engaging.  It should be required reading for any musician who dreams of “making it.”

        I don’t want to give the impression that everything good in Boston music is recycled, because of course there are wonderful new people and projects coming along all the time.  Humanwine is a great example; their core members moved to Boston and started the band fresh, and have captured a whole lot of (well-deserved) attention in a very short time.  Amoroso is a very young, very new band that I like a lot.  The members of Harris, Faces on Film, Paper Thin Stages, and my beloved Tristan da Cunha (to name just a few) are all playing in their first Boston bands.  Plus some reinventions are so complete as to constitute new beginnings: who could have imagined, seeing the Abbey Lounge five years ago, the clean, airy, great-sounding room it has become? (I think the graffito in the renovated men’s room says it best:  “This is like the Taj Fuckin’ Mahal!”)  And I have to mention Great Scott again, which is a welcome and terrific-sounding addition to Boston’s live music venues.

    Nor do I want to be Pollyanna here; Boston has lost some wonderful people, places, and things.  It was a sad day for Boston music when Lilli Dennison moved away, and the property at 608 Somerville Ave. that she tried so hard to make work for so long is no longer a rock club of any form.  Nor can I really consider the Wonder Bar a fitting successor to the institutions that used to occupy that space. (Let’s just not even talk about Kenmore Square, shall we?)  And while I don’t want to start listing the real, irremediable losses we’ve suffered (because I wouldn’t want to leave anyone out), the death of Mikey Dee in 2003 was a horrible blow.

    I’ve been in this sad, valedictory mood lately, because it seems like suddenly a whole slew of great local bands are breaking up, moving away, or both: Wildlife moving to San Francisco, Spheres and Exultation of Larks calling it quits, Big Bear losing John McWilliams and giving up their old material.  And (most painful for me) Night Rally breaking up and Luke Kirkland moving away. But, once again, this is part of a constant cycle of change, the ecology of a music scene, and that’s the thing to focus on.  Now I’ll get to see what these amazing musicians come up with in their NEXT bands.