My Band Sucks

And other things I learned reading Your Band Sucks by Jon Fine

Billy Ruane, the Mayor of Central Square - I miss him so much!

I’m really enjoying the deep catalogue of books on music in Spotify’s audiobook offering. Standouts have been Geezer Butler’s “Into the Void” and Geddy Lee’s “My Effin’ Life.”¹ Another I’m on the fence about is Jon Fine’s “Your Band Sucks.” Fine, of the second-tier 80s post-hardcore band Bitch Magnet, is a very good writer. His storytelling is sharp and detailed, and often quite funny. He’s self-deprecating and brutally honest. Remarkably, however, he seems to hold most of the same opinions about music he did in his twenties. He’s an unapologetic music snob of the first order.

In my travels I’ve noted that every genre of music has its snobs. Bluegrass and oldtime snobs might be the worst, with multiple warring factions and political undertones. Classical and trad jazz snobs actually have a point, but they’re still insufferable. Rockabilly, trad punk, and Outlaw Country snobs are actually dangerous, disagree with them at your peril. But the 80s underground had so many micro-genres, each with its snobs. Primitive pop snobs, pop-punk snobs, goth snobs, twee snobs, brutal noise snobs, speed metal snobs, and - in the case of Jon Fine - smart college radio nerds reinventing rock to root out all the tired cliches like 4/4 time, verse/chorus structure, and melodic singing, you’re welcome snobs.

I was never much of a music snob as a lover of pop music in all forms, but I’ve still had to unlearn some attitudes I picked up along the way. Anyone who came into music with U.S. hardcore had some music snob baggage; it came with the territory. To understand underground music in the 80s (“pre-Nevermind”), you have to understand that music culture was essentially binary: mainstream or mainstream-aspiring and underground. If you started an underground band in the 80s, you had iron-clad credibility because we didn’t have real precedent for the underground rock music that evolved from hardcore punk going mainstream. Our bands aspired to a level of success that would leave us struggling to afford a middle-class life. Dreaming of being a “rock star” felt about as attainable as being an astronaut. You’d think everyone in the underground would lock arms and support each other regardless of genre faction, but no. Fine, a guy who got kicked out of a band he started for being an asshole, leans into his snobbery without regret or apology as a guy in his fifties. He hated my band, for example - I know this because it’s in the book! In a way it’s a compliment - we were actually important enough to be part of the problem.

I knew I’d seen Bitch Magnet² at some point but I couldn’t remember when or where. Then the book reminded me - BM played on a bill with some of my friends at the Middle East Cafe in Central Square, a show booked by my friend, the legendary Billy Ruane, in 1988. No surprise, I was there - I was always there! All my friends were there too. Fine covers the show extensively in the book, because it’s a big memory for the band: the band’s first real show outside their home base of Oberlin College. I remember being underwhelmed. True to form, I probably listened to a couple songs then escaped to the restaurant with my pals for hummus and Rolling Rocks. (Why did everyone drink Rolling Rock in Central Square when we all drank Bud in Boston?) In describing Boston’s shockingly well-resourced underground music scene, Fine trashed my band and practically every one of my friends’ bands as coddled underachievers. Although he expressed deep gratitude and affection for Billy, he seemed annoyed by the very community that hosted his band’s first gig.

It’s such a weird thing to read about something you lived, from someone else’s perspective. The Middle East Cafe (which became the Middle East) was absolutely home base for the scene I inhabited in 1988, just before everybody got a lot more famous and spent less time hanging around Cambridge. I’ve told this story before but briefly: Blake Babies were the second rock band to ever play the Middle East. I had a Lebanese buddy who worked in a cafe near Berklee who invited me to put on a show at his relative’s restaurant in Central Square where they had a stage and simple PA for belly dancing. I took him up on it and booked a party for our friends with a band called The Norberts³ opening in early 1987. Billy, already a massive Blakes fan, came to the show and decided to host his 30th birthday party at the Middle East and TT the Bear’s on the same block. Soon after the party, Billy began regularly booking shows at The Middle East.

Fine’s description of Billy is on point - drunk, preppy, disheveled, bipolar, loveable. It isn’t surprising that Billy reached out to book an obscure Oberlin College act he probably heard on one of the half-dozen college radio stations in the area. He liked what he liked. If he liked it, he went completely fucking nuts and told everybody who would listen - that’s what he was known for. Billy is one of the finest humans I’ve ever known, and I’m glad he’s so actively and fondly remembered in Boston these days.

Fine seems frustrated that certain musicians in the scene had weird musical experiments going that night - that’s what we did in the early days of the Middle East. Kenny Chambers of Moving Targets played Stooges covers, billed as “The Fucking Stooges.” Evan Dando played drums and sang Eagles and Al Stewart covers billed as “The Eagles.”⁴ Our bands played our “official” shows at The Rat or TT’s, that’s where the fans went, that’s where we played the songs people heard on the radio. The bands hung out at the Middle East, and we sought to entertain ourselves and each other. I could call Billy and tell him what I wanted to do, and he’d always enthusiastically add me to the bill. One time I convinced Juliana to sing Carter Family songs with me - I’ve always loved country music. Another time I put a band together with legendary busker Mary Lou Lord and did Richard and Linda Thompson and Neil Young covers. Once the actual Lemonheads got super high and we did a set of Black Sabbath covers that devolved into free improvisation after rotating instruments as The Hatin’ Spores. I wish we recorded that one. One time I showed up to drink and hang out, but the waitress didn’t show so Billy commissioned me to wait tables. Man, that sucked. I knew everybody in the room and I got roasted.

The Middle East became a more conventional venue over the years, as I assume someone more responsible eventually took over from Billy - someone more focused on filling the room - especially when it expanded by taking over the candlepin bowling alley downstairs to became a 600 cap room. I played a couple times after I left Boston, but I lost track of the scene and culture. I assume upstairs continue to book some wild and experimental shit by people in the scene, but I don’t know. I only know it continued to be our clubhouse until I left.

Two shows stand out in my memory from that original upstairs venue, both from 1990. The first one was the very first Teenage Fanclub show on American soil. I didn’t know anything about them except that they were Scottish and signed to Matador Records. I’ve written about how much we obsessed with record labels back then, and in 1990 an endorsement from Matador meant a hell of a lot.⁵ I went to see a West Coast experimental act called Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, which I found tuneless and shouty. Friends convinced me to stick around, and I had the privilege of seeing one of the great pop vocal bands in its shambling infancy.

The other is one of Fine’s big favorites, the incredible Slint. Fine waxes rhapsodic in the book about Slint’s predecessor band Squirrel Bait, also one of my favorite bands that inspired me as a Midwestern hardcore kid. Fine describes them as a collective of nerds and jocks from suburban Louisville; he made friends with the nerds while I am friends to this day with Squirrel Bait’s jock contingent, one of whom briefly became a Lemonhead. My roommate at the time, the recording engineer and Shellac bassist Bob Weston, was friends with Slint and invited them to stay at our place. If anyone reading this can tell me what Slint played at that sparsely-attended Middle East show in 1990, please share. It was one of the most glorious sets of music I’ve ever heard. I assume they played material from the as-yet unreleased Spiderland, which is in permanent rotation for me. And you know what? Slint were super fucking cool. Weird, sure; but not snobs. They expressed gratitude for our filthy pull-out couch in our tiny Somerville flat, and we had a great hang after the show. Maybe they silently judged me about my bands, but I know they dug how much I knew about the Louisville music scene, just two hours’ drive from my hometown.

I don’t mean to rip on Jon Fine, and I’m sure we could have a fun conversation. The funny thing to me is the Venn diagram of our tastes would form a decent oval, and we have everything in common about our 80s and early 90s touring experiences. Did I mention I really enjoyed the book? I relate with so much, and I recommend it to anyone who had these experiences. It just got me to thinking how fucking lame it was that people had so much baggage and self-importance around their musical factions, and it is SO different from my experience to hold on to so much of it into middle age. I’ve had to change my mindset to work with a broad range of artists, and I’ve refined what it is that I love about music - it’s humanity, connection, and ultimately community. That’s what I loved about hardcore punk that set me on my path, and it’s still what I love about it. My hat is off to anyone creating something authentic to their own artistry, though if I’m being honest I’m grateful I don’t have to listen to most of it.

1. I lost interest in My Effin’ Life after Neil Peart’s tragic death, but I highly recommend this book primarily for the account of the author’s parents’ escape from a series of Nazi concentration camps. A difficult read, but deeply moving.

2. I always thought it was an awful name, something that made sense in the cloistered confines of a college campus. But I guess Blake Babies is a shit name too, no shade to Alan Ginsberg. At least ours is misogyny-free.

3. The Norberts - or the “British Norberts,” were a Berklee band of a couple of anglo childhood pals who grew up attending private schools in the United Arab Emirates. John Dragonetti became Jack Drag and still makes music in LA. See, this is why I like to meet musicians - crazy amazing back-stories.

4. I opened some Lemonheads shows last fall, and Evan was back behind the drums playing Eagles covers at a couple shows, in tribute to his own 1988 gig.

5. A little known, rarely discussed fact is that one of the Matador principals, Patrick Amory, co-released the first Lemonheads single “Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners” in 1986 on his short-lived Amory Arms label.