The Weirdest Gig of my Life

In tribute to the Great Billy Ruane, Patron Saint of Central Square

I started working on something ambitious for Substack this week, but then my friend invited me to a barbecue. My friend is a true genius on the grill, so I had to pivot. That means writing something I can finish in an hour. With that, boy do I have a story for you. It involves the genius mind of one of the greatest humans I’ve ever encountered, my friend, the dearly departed Billy Ruane.

Everyone from the Boston music scene of the 80s and 90s has Billy Ruane stories. As a scenester, he was everywhere; always in the right place at the right time, always loaded on beer and what would be fatal amounts of caffeine for mere mortals - literal fistfuls of Vivarin. Club after club in full suit and tie, he’d pour beer into his mouth at full arm’s length, dance wildly at venues where “dancing” usually meant barely perceptible head moves, screaming his lungs out in ecstatic joy and leaping in the air whenever the band played a song he dug. Billy’s stamp of approval meant everything for a young bands like mine.

Billy was about a decade older than my bands. I remember going to his 30th birthday party - also the first official rock gig at the Middle East Cafe - and being amazed I knew anyone that old.¹ An actual adult - by the technical definition anyway. Billy was Blake Babies’ first true fan outside our friend group, the first stranger who music. He heard Blake Babies song Rain on WHRB, Harvard college radio, and fell instantly in love (like he did for a lot of other songs by a lot of different bands). At our first show at T.T. the Bear’s Place in Cambridge I sensed a commotion, then I saw this guy who looked like an accountant in a suit and tie leaping around, shirt coming untucked and his belly hanging out, pitcher of beer in one hand, mug in the other, spilling all contents on stunned patrons, shouting “YESSSSS!” The first of many times Billy lost his shit when we played Rain.

We became good friends with Billy as his music scene star rose as the full-time booker of The Middle East. He would book our bands to do whatever we wanted to do. One time Evan Dando opened for a touring act billed as “Eagles,” where he played drums and sang lead vocals on a medley of Eagles and Al Stewart songs.² One time 3/4 of the Lemonheads, billed as Hatin’ Spores, did all Black Sabbath covers. I played Bill Ward, and naturally I knew all the parts from the countless hours I spent practicing drums in the basement during middle school. It all felt worth it. Another Hatin’ Spores set consisted of 45 minutes of freely improvised music in the key of D. In the early days of the venue when Billy ran the show, bands in the scene could pretty much do whatever they wanted. It was a golden age for the Boston Music scene, and Billy was the glue that held it together.

Billy had fundraisers from time to time, particularly for a charity that supported incarcerated women. I never really paid attention to his charities he’d drunkenly blather on about into the mic between bands. Nevertheless, I believe his charitable efforts led to a working relationship with a maximum security prison that opened a door to book local bands as entertainment for the inmates. He called The Condo Pad³ phone and asked if The Lemonheads and Blake Babies - at the time I was in both bands - would be interested in putting a show together. I think the paycheck for both bands was $1,000, which even divided in half is much more money than either band had ever made at a show. Of course we’d play. We’d have done it for free, because the 80s were all about chasing down the weirdest experience you could find. This would be weird, alright.

It’s foggy but I think the prison we played is Norfolk, west of Boston. I remember my friend Charles, a co-worker from Newbury Comics, jogged there, so it can’t have been that far. We packed both bands’ great into a U-Haul trailer behind Evan Dando’s mom’s station wagon rolled up and met Billy at the prison gate in the early afternoon. Someone handled our gear as we went through a few intimidating searches and security checkpoints until we were inside of a place with a bunch of small buildings that looked like a college campus. It looked cozy, but it felt cold and ominous. Nobody made eye contact.

We entered a small auditorium, surrounded by guards, and found our gear on a small stage tucked behind some unfamiliar amps and drums. We met some inmates hanging around who had a band called The Lifers, so named because they were all serving life sentences. Their look, Camaro mullet with a mustache, was a few years behind the fashion, even for a metal cover band. They played a diverse selection of metal and hard rock covers surprisingly well. They played solo Ozzy, Judas Priest, Motorhead, and Van Halen covers, and closed with a note-perfect version of the brand new Guns n’ Roses single, Sweet Child O’ Mine. I guess they had MTV in prison. Before doing time, they’d all clearly done time on the bar circuit.

The audience for the Lifers was underwhelming - about 20 inmates milling around, spread around the auditorium. Nobody seemed excited by or even especially interested in the cover band. After the show, a very excited Evan Dando introduced himself to the lifers and asked them to join us on stage for a Black Sabbath medley. They eyed the handsome 21-year-old preppy in a motorcycle jacket with some suspicion, but they said sure, why not.

Blake Babies opened to a suspiciously enthusiastic reception. We were all about 21 at the time, and it’s safe to say not many young women had any business at a maximum security prison. Some jeers, catcalls, maybe even a smattering of actual appreciation for the music, who knows? It felt very awkward up there, and after a half-hour I was happy to get behind the drums for the Lemonheads set that began immediately following our last song.

We powered through our club set, most the songs from Hate Your Friends and some from our soon-to-be-released Creator, played fast and aggressive. We had a very good rock n’ roll band at that point, and it got a little reaction. The audience swelled a bit and started to clap and hoot after each song.

Immediately following the set everyone but Evan vacated their instruments, and The Lifers joined him on our instruments. Evan launched into the opening riff of N.I.B. and everyone fell right in like the record. (It sounded a lot like this radio performance from around the same time - me on drums.) N.I.B. evolved into a version of Paranoid with everyone back on stage grabbing an instrument, bashing cymbals, or screaming in a mic. By the end, the auditorium was half full and everyone was into it. We gave them something after all.

I felt a little uncomfortable all day because nobody told us the standard prison uniform of khakis and blue work shirts. My outfit that day? Khakis and a ratty blue Oxford shirt I’d had since high school that could easily pass for a work shirt. We loaded the gear off the stage and a guard grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a separate room. “Wait here,” he said. He returned with several additional guards who asked me a bunch of questions. I could tell they suspected I was an inmate attempting to escape. They held me until they found Billy, who confirmed I was in the band. I was generally pretty anxious back then; the thought of being held as a prisoner for god knows how long sent me spiraling.

I still think about Billy all the time. He really created some memorable experiences like that, things nobody else would even think of. They named a city block after him in Central Square, Cambridge, the block that connects The Middle East with what used to be T.T. the Bears - the block where I spent most of my nights between 1987 and 1990. It was a magical time, just before a bunch of people got famous and moved on. Or just moved on, like me. I wish I could be back there now, getting waived in the door of the old upstairs Middle East as Billy leapt out of the throng in his rumpled suit, shit untucked, tie hanging loose, grabbed me by the shoulders and planted a wet kiss on my cheek, sweat and beer dripping from his pale, stubbly face. I can feel it, I can smell it. I loved that wild man so much, I’d have followed him anywhere. Because wherever he went, late at night in the streets of Cambridge, that’s where it was happening.

1. That’s another story I’ve told before, Blake Babies was the first act to ever play the Middle East.

2. The headliner for that show was Bitch Magnet. I only know that because Jon Fine wrote about it in his highly enjoyable memoir Your Band Sucks. And yes, he said it sucked.

3. Blake Babies’ shared apartment, 36 Symphony Road, apartment 3B