The TDK Tapes

In the early 80s, I discovered a vault of unchartered music via college radio on the side left of the dial.  On Friday nights in Waltham from the perch of my bedroom, I listened to Boston College radio WZBC and The Hardcore Hour with Dave Smalley and Curtis Casella. They played all the latest songs from established and new punk rock bands. I had to keep the music very low because my Dad deplored punk rock and would kick the door open if I ever blasted it. Once I had made the tape, I would crank it up in my headphones or car stereo.

The weekly radio show was my passport to music and discovery of countless bands like The Necros, Husker Du, and all the Boston bands like SSD, DYS, F.U.s, and Jerry's Kids. I recorded each show on a TDK cassette and sent or sometimes hand delivered them to my cousin Johnny D in Newport, RI. Johnny then shared the latest and greatest hardcore stylings with his friends.

Sometimes a crowd would be waiting at the Davis house for me or the tapes to arrive; it was akin to an audio fanzine. An old hardcore icon from the Newport scene, Eric 'Boofish' Barclay told me that my tapes were the pipeline that connected the Boston and Newport scenes and the primary place they discovered new bands and learned what was going on in Boston. The Newport kids always looked up to Boston as the bigger kids so to speak, the scene was bigger and more established.

In a sense, I was a punk rock version of Paul Revere carrying the gift and freedom of music via the Waltham to Newport trail. Back then, I thought it was no big deal and I just wanted to be part of the Newport scene and go to shows with the kids. I loved being part of something, especially being part of a scene. The music of our youth gave us all something to do, something to look forward to, and something to believe in.

I would wait all week as I worked at Waltham Wallpaper on Main Street putting away books and mixing paint with Fat John. Fat John loved some of the same music as me such as The Dead Kennedys and Minor Threat. In fact, John once opened up the Boston Phoenix and turned the pages with his well-fed, paint-stained fingers to the Cellars By Starlight section, which featured Minor Threat, a band who were playing The Channel that coming Sunday with SSD and Jerry’s Kids.

Fat John said “this band is going places.” And if they had not quit after Out Of Step, they may just well have. Talent-wise, I don’t think Nirvana can touch Minor Threat or its quasi-successor, Fugazi. This show was just few days after the epic Dead Kennedys show in Waltham just a stone's throw from Waltham Wallpaper.

That Sunday came and I snuck out of the house and was able to attend the show. Being there made all the difference. This Sunday matinee would be a show I would remember the rest of my life.

I went into Boston and met all the Newport Crew at the Greyhound terminal. They came off that bus, each armed with a skateboard and the anticipation to see the show. The round trip ticket from the terminal near Newport City Hall to downtown Boston was $20 and the bus ride north became a party of sorts for the Newport crew.

In one hour, Minor Threat played its entire discography. SSD from Boston had just released How We Rock and added a second guitarist. It was my first time seeing them and Al Barile had this guitar that was covered in Boston Bruins stickers. They sounded so damn good and everyone went nuts slam dancing and stage diving and nobody got hurt. There were no fights; just kids having fun while they were still young enough to get away with it.

Because I have eight cousins in one large family from Newport and my mom is from there, I spent a lot of time in that city, My cousin Johnny D was hip deep the Newport, RI hardcore scene and sang in a band called Positive Outlook. I spent most summers and as much time as I could in Newport and music was a big reason why. I loved its record shops like Doo Wop Records and the local punk rock shows.

While I had no musical talent whatsoever, I had an affinity for words and penned some of the lyrics for John’s band. I loved being the behind the scenes voice of the band for some of its songs. I did not know it then but I was starting at age 16 an avocation of sorts for me—the ghost writer.

I would take the T into Boston and meet John and Newport kids for shows at The Channel and Paradise and they became my friends. I had a couple of Waltham friends with whom I also attended shows but I was not “officially” part of the Boston scene but I loved its music nonetheless. Waltham was just far enough outside the perimeter of the tight-knit Boston hardcore scene that it did not really penetrate my city.

Neither I nor the Newport Kids (and I cannot speak for the Boston Crew) may have realized it at the time but these $7.00 matinees at the Channel and evening shows at The Paradise and Living Room were more than cheap music and 'more than fashion' as DYS sang. These shows were something truly special. It was music history and we were all in on it when it was small, witnessing something unique and unspoiled in its original form. These were our salad days.

Shows at The Channel and Living Room and The Paradise and Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel were magic. It was not touched by big money or any money for that matter, and the kids were able to have their say.

Flash forward to 2010 in Seattle and I am flipping through stacks of vinyl at Easy Street Records and these kids about 16 and 17 all start talking about Out Of Step. One is holding the album of the white sheep all going the same way and one black sheep running the other way.

“Can you imagine what it would have been like to be alive and have seen Minor Threat live in 83 at CBGB,” one boy #1.

“We were born at the wrong time,” replied boy #2.

I thought to myself and said at the crossroads I can do one of two things—I can walk away with that memory or I could share my own and take a risk that some kids might want to hear from a forty-something from Waltham, Massachusetts.

So I told these kids about my week of music in the early 80s seeing The Dead Kennedys and then Minor Threat/SSD in the same week in small venues. They all leaned in to listen to this old timer talk and looked at me like I has been beamed down from Planet Cool.

My family, especially my Dad and to a degree my brother both hated hardcore music and punk rock and could not understand why I would listen to "this garbage." They thought there was something wrong with me.

In ninth grade after my cousin John Davis and I discovered metal bands like Judas Priest and Scorpions we started listening to punk rock such as the Sex Pistols and Stiff Little Fingers and then soon discovered Black Flag.

John lived in Newport, RI which was a great hardcore and music city. Waltham, by contrast, was a cultural wasteland. Most kids in Waltham listened to KISS 108 or classic rock exclusively and ridiculed me beyond belief for listening to the likes of Minor Threat. In fact, in Waltham there was zero tolerance for any music that was not played on big station radio in steady rotation.

I remember one day on Moody Street at an old record store called The Jungle where albums were $5.71, which became six bucks after tax, and I bought This Is Boston Not LA and my friend Jack Coughlin bought Loverboy’s Get Lucky. Jack was Waltham and I was wanting to be something different. “What the hell is this shit” is what the clerk said to me when I bought the Boston hardcore sampler.

It was amazing how different the Rhode Island and Boston music kids were. The Boston kids all lifted weights like me and were heavily into sports like me and while I would not say conservative, they were not what one thinks about when they think punk rock.

The Newport kids on the other hand were skaters. Everyone had a skateboard and before shows at The Channel, they would skate the town Newport style. I remember when Jerry's Kids came to The Living Room and the drummer had perfect hair and a polo jacket, pressed jeans, and nice shoes. I am not being judgmental; I just noticed how different the kids in these two scenes were. I remember how perfect his drum kit was and he was an amazing drummer. But what I really remember is that he and the band looked like rock stars. The drummer was making sure the kit was absolutely perfect.

On that evening I believe either Verbal Assault or Vicious Circle from Newport had played just before Jerry’s Kids and the Newport band’s equipment was all beat to hell and covered in stickers whereas the Boston band’s stuff looked all pristine and perfect. When I used to go to shows at The Living Room with my cousin JD and his bandmates, we would all ride in the back of the Uhaul, sometimes all three Newport bands and friends, all packed in like sardines and drink beers and listen to music on the way. What a time to be alive!

A casual onlooker would almost think the Boston bands were rich kids and the Newport kids poor but that was not really the case at all. Both bands and the fans seemed to cut across all economic strata. Most of the bands and the kids were firmly middle class.

One night in 1983 the following bands played at the Waltham IBEW Hall: Dead Kennedys, Proletariat, Jerry's Kids, and The Freeze. I walked to the show with my friends Matt and Bob who lived a short distance away. As we walked from Banks Square to the IBEW Hall, which up until then housed pro wrestling and local rock cover bands likes Mystique but never anything remotely close to a Dead Kennedys concert. And in usual Waltham-style nobody knew or said anything about it.

As we walked down Main Street past Costello’s Pub Matt’s brother Mike Mahoney stuck his head outside and asked us where we were going and pointed to the magic marker etchings of Gang Green on Haynes Beefy T and asked me what the heck it was. Matt and Bob were wearing typical Waltham garb — jeans and a t-shirt.

We stood on the IBEW Hall steps and I prayed my Dad would not be driving by as he was our high school principal and absolutely deplored me listening to that garbage as he called it. To this day, at 73 he still asks if me if I still listen to 'that garbage,' seemingly hoping I will tell him that I have outgrown it. I am pretty sure I will still be listening to this music when I am 73.

A Waltham local street tough named Chris Taranto saw me and Matt on the IBEW Hall steps. He pointed at my homemade Gang Green t-shirt and asked what it meant. He asked what was going on and why all these freaks were in Waltham. I explained we were here to see The Dead Kennedys and he looked befuddled and then left shaking his head.

Only the three of us seemed to be there from Waltham–everyone else was from Boston. Let me add that nobody besides my tiny group listened to hardcore in Waltham. There was no scene there at all. None.

We watched in amazement as busload after busload of punks from Boston and the formidable Boston Crew exited onto Waltham’s Main Street and took over the sidewalk. It was like a scene from The Twilight Zone because that sheer amount of punk rockers never before and never again were in Waltham at the same time.

All the lights went dark in the old union hall, and The Dead Kennedys took center stage in the concentric center of my hometown where local cover bands played most weekends. They began an extended instrumental intro to Saturday Night Holocaust, which was my friend Matt's favorite track by them. It is one of those songs that is slow to build and then it explodes into a frenzy. The linchpin which lit the crowd's fuse was Jello Biafra singing "Tastes a little strange" and then the calm intro launched into hardcore chaos and the whole place started slamming. Kids jumped from the rafters into the pit and the sound was fucking fantastic. It was an incredible time to be alive.

I have lived in Seattle since 1992 and my parents have retired to Newport, Rhode Island but every time I go back I stop by Waltham to have breakfast at Wilson's Diner and walk next to to the now defunct IBEW Hall and let the memories of youth wash over me.