BOSTONSOUND

Something Called the BOSTON SOUND ®
by
Alan Lorber,
(Creator of the Boston Sound)
Goldmine magazine, April 1992

When I was asked to contribute this sidebar, I couldn't help but smile in satisfaction
that the Boston Sound is truly living history. After 22 years it is still written about in
lengthy articles, annotated in rock encyclopedias, historic retrospectives and
academic studies, and is now the subject of a soon-to-be-released CD set of its
recordings on Polydor, with a book by this author on the story of the movement and
the time, from which this article is excerpted. After 22 years, I feel that I can finally
put to rest the unanswered questions and the unresolved answers to this
controversial slice of Rock 'n' Roll history.

Boston Sound! What was it, this "Boston Sound?" What did it mean? What did it
say? Was it even a sound? Why was it so controversial? And why, in the year 1968,
did so seemingly simple a marketing plan suddenly ignite virtually every major
journalist in the country in both the "underground" and "overground" press to
write something, somewhere, about it for more than a year?

"BOSTON SOUND!!!" A marketing plan gone amuck. A symbol of "underground"
outrage. A symbol of an "establishment's reading of a trend vs. a counter-culture's
rejection of it. "Boss-town Sound: The Sound Heard Round The World" - A Billboard
(magazine - ed.) ad slogan, with Revolutionary Minutemen in columns, rifles poised,
ready to fire. "Where the new definition of love is helping to write the words and
music of 1968!" A headline in Newsweek. In the Wall Street Journal: "The Selling Of
A New Sound." A page in Vogue: "Boston Rock Scholars!" In Rolling Stone: "Boston
Shucks" - "Boston Sound Kerplop!" Time, Village Voice, Cosmo, Christian Science
Monitor, UP, AP, House and Garden, Richard Goldstein, Al Cuniff, Nat Hentoff,
Stanley Penn, Ben Fong-Torres, Betty Canary. Even Women's Wear Daily was
suddenly finding fashion in Boston! Was it the music? Was it the concept? Was it the
time?

As its creator and primary producer, I will try to unravel the beginning, the middle
and end of the Boston Sound, and provide you, the reader, the record collector, the
student of popular music history, with a dissection of the causes and effects. Why in
a year that changed a generation, in the year that man orbited the Moon, there was
even enough column space left for the Boston Sound.

* * *

It was 1968 — the turning point of a maturing society; the year of Nixon; the year of
Vietnam's escalation; the year Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were
killed; the year "Rage", "Biafra", "Seizures of Youth", "Defiance", "Prague",
"New Order", "Two Dead", "Chicago", "Vietnam" were the words and music of
the time.

The words "Boss-town Sound" (after Motown) were first used in a Newsweek
magazine article (January, '68) to describe a grouping of new East Coast artists from
Boston, but it could have been any city, really. Three months before the Newsweek
story I had announced my plan to make Boston the target city for the development of
new artists (in Billboard, Cashbox, Variety, and Record World). At the time I was a
successful producer of records and commercials, a composer scoring motion pictures
and television specials, and had been the leading arranger in the country credited
with many of the top hits of the time, responsible for over $50 million dollars in
sales. My plan for a Boston talent center was based purely on ordinary record
business marketing. I would put out product, announce it, advertise it, put the artists
on the road, have product in the pipeline to support personal appearances, and do
week-to-week press to help spread national sales. It was a marketing program no
different from any other used in the industry at the time, except that the artists were
from one geographical base. But, almost immediately, I ran into trouble. MGM
Records, which had released my product, immediately became the object of "anti-
establishment" outrage, with the underground impeaching them as the label of
"hype".

I had chosen MGM not because they were any more prone to "hype" or
"commercialism", a dirty-word to the "underground press" of the time. MGM was
like all the other labels, no more or less commercial. I could have chosen Columbia
or RCA. I chose MGM for convenience. I had already signed several other artists to
the label before the Boston Sound, and it was easy for me to piggy-back the new
artists to those existing production deals. It was customary practice then, as it is now,
that artists were signed to a production company like mine, and released on a label
by way of a production deal. I never worked for MGM. Nor had the other producers,
such as Wes Farrell (the Beacon Street Union). Tom Wilson did, but also produced
independently.

I chose Boston because I needed a convenient location to musically prepare the
artists I had signed. Boston was easily reached by shuttle from New York, which at
the time was the hub of the record industry. It was also convenient for the artists to
come to New York to record, since New York had superior state-of-the art facilities.
Understand, though, that at the time "stereo" was still in its infancy. "Monaural"
recording was still almost the standard. And "multi-tracks" beyond 8 and 16 were
still in development (note: the first Orpheus album was recorded with 4 track
equipment - ed.). More importantly, Boston was accessible to the label support staff,
personnel, press, promotion, managers and agents.

But, primarily, I chose Boston because it had always been a center of talent from its
folk days, and because there was a built-in buying market of 250,000 college
students living there. It was a natural marketplace. The Boston Sound concept was
basic marketing at its best.

* * *

Almost immediately after the launching of the first "Boston Sound" product
(Orpheus, Ultimate Spinach, Beacon Street Union) the torpedoing began. The
"Sound" was deemed exploitive because the artists were "bunched" together,
denying their individual integrity. In reality, though, only two or three artists had
initially appeared together at special performances, and afterwards were promoted
as individual acts. It was never my intention, or MGM's, to join all the artists together
in one tour under a "Boston Sound" banner as was charged. Moreover, MGM
wasn't the only label signing "Boston Sound" artists. Yet MGM and the "Boston
Sound" were linked, and together became the "poster boy" of the 1968 counter-
culture.

The ad "THE BOSTON SOUND-- The Sound Heard Round The World", which MGM
had taken out and which appeared in Billboard and other trade magazines, was
immediately criticized as a purveyor of bad-taste art direction. It had simply played
off the Newsweek "Bosstown Sound" article and used historic Revolutionary themes
natural to Boston. Realities of marketing strategies assume connected themes such as
these, designed to interface with product development, publicity, etc. Today, Artist
Tour Units function similarly as marketing focal points to insure success. In truth, the
ad was no more provocative than any other music ad of the time, no different from
any other label or location, including those used, for example, for "psychedelic"
San Francisco.

In the same week, and by sheer coincidence, a financial cover-story ran in the Wall
Street Journal, "The Selling Of A New Sound", which reported on the pitfalls and
gains of the then modern music business — using MGM's new "Boston Sound"
campaign as a model of what was entailed in the launching of new artists. The story
was picked up as front page news by every other Wall Street Journal-syndicated
publication across the country. Adding to this, the financial editor of the United Press
(UP) carried a follow-up piece, asking "Why, then, not a 'Nashville Sound,' as a
profit center?"

These articles and others were enough to overboil the outraged "underground
press" which finally exploded, branding the "Boston Sound" as "pure
establishment hype," charging collusion with the "establishment press", and
vowing to "get" the Boston Sound. Led by Rolling Stone magazine, a new but
already powerful publication out of San Francisco, the "underground" condemned
the original Newsweek story as "insidious artless trash" and blatantly discredited
anything smacking of "commercialism" and "establishment hype" as the enemy,
especially the "Boston Sound." But why did they do this?

A view expressed by Boston's Fusion magazine is that there was talk that the West
Coast was becoming "musically barren", and that the "East Coast was picking up
the baton (from San Francisco) and was about to take over commercial supremacy."
This explanation seems too simplistic to me.

Fusion also indicated that it wasn't just Newsweek that had had something to say
about the "Boston Sound." So had Jazz & Pop, House & Garden, and all the other
"overground" dailies across the spectrum of American publishing, including
Playboy — all of which played some part in the underground's condemnation,
rallying 'round the band-wagon as the press, in its greed, often does. Ever watch the
6 o'clock news? Any channel will do. Or, as the syndicated columnists found, it was
simply more fun to just play the "What's In A Name" game: "I'll take Moby Grape!"
"Make mine Ultimate Spinach!" "One Electric Prune to go, please!", not wanting to
be left out. But even this is too simplistic an explanation.

I believe the central solution to the enigma of why the "Boston Sound" came under
such vicious attack was that "Boston Sound" was an expedient political scapegoat in
the middle of a battle between the "anti-establishment" and "establishment" in a
battle for dollars, a battle to legitimize the "underground", to give it credibility as
evidenced today by its own subsequent success in becoming powerful members of
today's commercial "establishment press".

I believe that the "Boston Sound" was just a media victim caught in the crossfire.
During the same time, Schaeffer Beer was hawking a talent hunt "We'd Like To
Make You A Star", the Blues Magoos released a 2nd LP Electric Comic Book,
Herman's Hermits were on a 90-day tour with the Who, and Ravi Shankar played
Monterey and was now out promoting his 1st LP, Live At Monterey, which was
working its way up the Record World charts, all this commercialism going on without
"underground" backdraft. Later, when the second Orpheus album, Ascending, was
voted #10 as the best vocal album of the year in the Playboy's 1969 "Jazz and Pop
Poll" alongside Simon and Garfunkel, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
Cream and Big Brother and The Holding Company, it was never recognized by the
underground. Nor was the classic I Can't Find The Time To Tell You, (which was -
ed.) a regional single hit, Top 10 in most regional markets, and the subject of one of
the first music videos ever.

The underground unleashed a year-long outpouring of controversial print which
overshadowed the music and, eventually destroyed whatever chances the new
Boston artists might have had.

In April, 1968, Rolling Stone wrote, "The side of Boston that is reaching the national
audience with the first three albums (Orpheus, Ultimate Spinach, Beacon Street
Union), is inextricably bound to an extremely heavy promotion by MGM, and the
question should really be whether or not there is anything lying beneath the hype."
A positive thought which should have been explored. Unfortunately, the angry
prejudiced word-images describing the artists as "pretentious," "derivative," and
"boring" had a more lasting effect on the reader than the music might have, given
the chance. The snowball became an avalanche. It was now more trendy to talk
"Boston Sound" than to hear it. In retrospect, it was hard to believe that something
which had received so much media coverage could fail to become a commercial
success.

20 years later, in 1988, the same Rolling Stone, in its encyclopedia of rock, "Rock Of
Ages", finally conceded: "With an anti-Boston critical backlash, it was easier to put
down Ultimate Spinach and the other Boston groups then it had been to like them."

* * *

To add to the growing difficulties, the Boston "city fathers" held back their support,
standing in the way of Pilgrims' Progress, hiding behind a "Drug" and
"Psychedelic" rationale. The initial marketing had pushed the Boston club scene into
high gear, the local economy was flourishing, so were the record outlets. radio
revenue increased, music papers' circulation doubled, students lined up for product
— Ultimate Spinach sold 110,000 LPs in New York and Boston its first week out.
Multi sell-out performances by "Boston Sound" bands were normal at the Tea Party.
But the puritanical City Council didn't endorse it. Their fear was ironic, really,
because all lyric references to drugs in the songs by the Boston Sound artists were
"anti-drug" (i:e Speed Kills! by Beacon Street Union), and any "psychedelic"
references, lyrics, and art work were consistent with the poetry of the time, having its
base again in the San Francisco flower-world. And the psychedelic instrumentation
and sensibilities found in Orpheus, Ultimate Spinach and Chamaeleon Church
(sounds known as "New Age" today) were derived from Bach and Scarlatti, with
some of the most extraordinary sitar work performed by the late and extremely
gifted Colin Walcott, later of Oregon fame, and my orchestrations played by the
strings of the New York Philharmonic.

As an aside, in 1991, Ultimate Spinach's Funny Freak Parade became the
soundtrack music for a PBS 6-part television series Making Sense Of The Sixties,
which accompanied "flower-children" newsreel footage from San Francisco.

Finally, and perhaps most bizarre, were the actions of the newly-appointed
president of MGM Records — the so-called "flagship" label of the movement. Mike
Curb, the young 25-year-old executive with an early Beatle haircut, called his own
Boston Sound "Boston shucks" in Rolling Stone, putting down his own artists as "just
a bunch of junk." "Dump the dopers!" was his war cry in his zeal for corporate
reorganization, using the "Boston Sound" as the Judas Goat. (editor's note from Eric
Gulliksen: I've read that Mr. Curb cited Orpheus' I've Never Seen Love Like This as
being drug-oriented. Bruce Arnold and I wrote the song - tell me where it says
anything about drugs! - ed.) The amalgam of East-West rivalry, "anti-establishment
hype" and drug proliferation was a ready and handy wizardry to turn his label
chameleon-like. His betrayal was a bitter price for his own professional producers,
and for the artists who were daring and innovative, taking the heritage of folk to a
new sophistication and style, trying to bring another dimension to rock 'n' roll.

As a humorous "sidebar" to this "sidebar Mike Curb, who eventually became Lt.
Governor of California before returning to the present-day music business, asked me
a week after crucifying the "Boston Sound" in Rolling Stone to renew my options for
more Orpheus and Ultimate Spinach product. This time I was outraged. And it was
too late, the damage had been done. These causes and effects led to the destruction
of the artists of the Boston Sound — those hybrid Beatles, early Little Feat, the new
balladeers, who had been given too instant an opportunity, and were perhaps too
fragile and too young to survive such a premature flash-point. Orpheus, Ultimate
Spinach, Puff, Phulph, Beacon Street Union, Chamaeleon Church, Eden's Children
and the others became caught up in their own counter-culture and, like in a Goya
painting, self-destructed, swallowing themselves alive, disbanding, perhaps in fear,
perhaps in pain or embarrassment, but killing the baby none the less. (Some great
diverse talent did survive — Chevy Chase, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter).

It is ironic that Orpheus, the last surviving member of the "Boston Sound," chose a
performance in the Sculpture Garden of New York's Museum of Modern Art to
announce it's "farewell." It was almost like sealing its fate in stone. The New York
Times Sunday Theater Section carried an impressive six-column picture of them:
"Everything In The Garden — Love Songs and Rodin." I asked them to change their
minds but, for Orpheus like for the others, it was over. In their song Love Over Here
they say, "Now that idea that seemed so clear had reached its finale..." No longer
did sweet tones of an enchanted Lyre drift past Congress Alley windows. Orpheus,
the "Music-Bringer", singers mostly of love songs, the four who had laughed with
Pan, vanished forever.

(Editor's note - Alan has taken a bit of poetic license here. The concert in the
Sculpture Garden took place on July 31, 1969. The actual final performance of the
original Orpheus took place at Arlington High School in Massachusetts, in December
of 1969.)

(Read Cash Box magazine's review of the Sculpture Garden concert here).

* * *

For another year, the death knell was documented in various follow-up
retrospectives. But, in the end, all this anti-establishment had just taken on an
establishment of its own.

Other articles have appeared frequently during the last 22 years. In Fusion's Boston
Sound Revisited they simply penciled out pieces of the words "Boston Sound" as the
story progressed to make it disappear. Boston's WBCN's Beat Magazine features it in
its "Boston R & R" sections. Most articles attempted to explain the "Boston Sound"
failing, I think, most not asking or wanting the true story, it seemed. A recent
account appeared in 1987 in the Boston Phoenix, which did a fine extensive piece
called "Bosstown Sound — Scene, Not Heard."

Now, in the Polydor collection and in the "Story of The Boston Sound" you can hear a
retro-echo of a different time — a different tune that will let you finally know those
artists who were once only seen in print, but not heard, and let you finally hear,
perhaps for the first time, something called The Boston Sound.

(Note: the Polydor package referred to above was never released. It was substituted
by the Ace UK Best Of the Boston Sound in 1995. Album notes follow.)

Booklet Notes from
"Boston Sound 1968
The Msic and the Time"
by
Alan Lorber
© Iris Properties, Inc.

This is the first volume in a cross-section sampling of the artists of the Boston Sound ,
a 1968-69 music movement popularly known as Bosstown Sound, which was given
its name not for the sameness of music styles — since here, one finds an
extraordinary diversity of sounds, but for a music industry marketing plan
conceived to develop artists from one geographical area.

I established the concept of the Boston Sound in late 1967 with MGM Records as my
distribution company (a label later absorbed by PolyGram Records), and recorded
Orpheus and Ultimate Spinach as the first of three Boston artists to be initially
released. The third initial Bosstown artist, Beacon Street Union, was recorded by the
well-known producer Wes Farrell, also released on MGM, and then on Janus
Records under the name Eagle.

I chose Boston as the target city since it was a place for new and progressive music
forms from the folk days, and had an exceptionally strong initial sales potential in
the 250,000 college students in residence in Boston's 250 colleges and universities.
Boston also had a large number of performance clubs where artists could develop
before touring nationally. There were many pop music college and commercial radio
stations which could expose the new product on a grass-roots level. Boston was also
easily accessible for record label promotional and creative executives, since it was
within an hour by plane from New York City.

In this unique atmosphere, I sought out dynamic and influential individuals in the
area to support the Boston Sound movement. Bill Spence, the first Boston club owner
to use rock 'n' roll as a standard form of club entertainment, owned the Surf clubs,
three major clubs (Surf Nantasket, Surf Salisbury Beach and Surf Hyannis) located
in very popular New England beach communities such as Cape Cod, which provided
an extended non-college audience for the new product. These clubs, described at the
time as "Contemporary Music Houses," were the biggest and oldest teen clubs in
New England (pre & post Bosstown Sound) and gave birth to several of Boston's
biggest early 60s groups, including the Rockin' Ramrods, 1965-66 predecessor to
Puff, Barry & the Remains, Teddy & the Pandas and the Lost, 1965 predecessor
group whose members went on to form Bosstown Sound artists Chameleon Church,
Ultimate Spinach III, and Bagatelle with Willie Alexander.

Spence also broke the ban on Boston rock concerts. Facing the same ardent political
and religious opposition which existed in 1958 when Alan Freed brought his Big
Beat Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee Lewis rock 'n' roll tour into the Boston Arena, Spence
presented the Rolling Stones in their first American tour, in the same Boston Garden
Arena in 1965. The opening act for the Stones was the Rockin' Ramrods, who were
managed by Spence, who had released them on his Plymouth Records label.

Dick Summer, in 1968 WMEX radio's most popular and perceptive Boston D. J. (then
later at WBZ), was directly responsible for Bosstown's initial radio success. Summer
held live radio performances from local Boston clubs and hosted live free outdoor
concerts on the Boston Common, such as the famous "Spring Sing" of 20 April,
1968, where Orpheus and the other Boston artists played to 14,000 enthusiastic
fans.

Today, Bosstown Sound fans still recall in hundreds of postings on the Internet the
times Dick Summer encouraged them to open a paper clip in the shape of an "S"
and wear it as a pin in support of the Bosstown Sound. Some also claim to be new
fans of the artists, having found and listened to the Ace U.K. reissues.

Another prominent Boston club owner of the time, George Papadopoulo, was a
major force in Boston music prior to the Boston Sound, and made his Unicorn Coffee
House (where Dick Summer held frequent live broadcasts of Bosstown artists) and
his other clubs, the Psychedelic Supermarket and Cambridge Electric Ballroom,
important spots for this new talent.

Of all the Boston clubs, Ray Riepen's Boston Tea Party (mostly a showcase for
psychedelic music) became the most active in promoting Boston Sound's new groups,
bringing these performers through initial and transitional stages into national
recognition, where they ultimately played the Filmore East & Filmore West and
toured other major venues and arenas throughout the USA. Some groups such as
Orpheus were opening acts for Janis Joplin, 10 Years After, Blood, Sweat and Tears
and Cream.

Of course, the artists and record producers were the primary contributors to the
movement. Within 6 months every major label signed and/or released at least one
Bosstown artist. Within a year, 200 Boston-based albums and singles were
marketed by 40 different artists, containing over 2,000 new songs of varying
sounds, styles and concepts, some product still enjoyed today, some 28 years later.

The most extraordinary impetus which gave intense national recognition to the
Bosstown Sound came from the press, the anti-establishment underground national
rock press led by Rolling Stone magazine, which presented itself as the voice of the
counterculture of the time (taking negative views of anything "establishment,"
which included the Bosstown movement), and the "establishment press," such as the
Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, etc. which looked at the Bosstown Sound as a
business, and presented itself as the voice of the anti-counterculture.

Practically every day for more than a year something was written about the Boston
Sound, placing the movement in the crossfire of an establishment's reading of a
trend, vs. the counterculture's rejection of it, ultimately making it one of the most
written about rock music phenomena of the time.

It is odd, however, that the Boston Sound was so quickly woven into the social fabric
of the time, since it was born into the chaos of 1968, the most turbulent year of the
60's, a year in which there should have been no open column space at all.

"Stop the War!"
The Picture of America in 1968

Stop the War! was the theme song of America in 1968. A radical confrontation, with
Vietnam as the catalyst, and the counterculture its voice of opposition. The outcry was
never more prevalent than on the campuses and park commons across the USA, in
the neighborhood hippie-turfs such as Central Park in New York City, Lincoln Park in
Chicago (the site of the August 1968 protest at the Democratic National Convention),
the Boston Common at the top of Beacon Hill, and Haight Street in San Francisco.

Civil dissent, mind-consciousness, drugs, anti-establishment flower people fostered
the nucleus which became the central core of this explosive time. It was 1968, the
year of Nixon, the year of Vietnam's escalation, the year Robert Kennedy and
Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed, the year of "Rage," "Biafra," "Chicago".
American Man, as the cover of this package depicts, was looking in on a window of
a country-for-sale, awash in a chord of America screaming!

The local Boston scene was a microcosm of the time, a smaller society reflecting the
greater national picture. It was their big year, too, a dream year for this
impassioned sports town when the Red Sox baseball team finally came close to
winning the national championship (St. Louis Cardinals and Detroit Tigers played the
World Series, to a Tigers' win). In 1968 Boston was an avid sports-town (The Bruins
ice-hockey team, the Celtics, basketball, and the Red Sox baseball team). But it was
still the same conservative establishment it had been 10 years earlier when it
opposed the rock music community. In contrast was the vast progressive student
population thriving on pop music and the artists who created it.

Masked in the subtle nostalgia of The Red Sox Are Winning, Peter Rowan's (Earth
Opera) allegory best describes the voice of the city in 1968 within the conflict of a
nation aflame. "The weather is strange. No summer this year, in the days of the
war," sings Rowan, depicting the national dissent, and at the same time suggesting
a more local, direct route to home plate — Boston. The roar of the crowd at the
song's end, and the "pitch", "Let's make Boston America's #1 baseball city. Kill The
Hippies! Kill The Hippies!" reflects the scoreboard of both the local and national
hurrah.

More deeply representative of the Seal of America exploding is Peter Rowan's
powerful anti-war saga, American Eagle Tragedy, a song-collage of the Lyndon
Johnson years of the American presidency during the escalation of the Vietnam war.
Rowan's lyrics, steeped in imagery of a Kingdom in revolution, describes a "King in
a counting-house" (wealth and power with soldiers dead in a foreign jungle war),
and a Queen in a rose garden (Lady Byrd Johnson, the First Lady of the time, in her
White House Rose Garden) as "an orchestra assembles while the hounds are
howling in the stables."

Rowan clearly recalls the time in a recent interview: "Yes, we were part of the
historical thing," he related. "Especially since we played for people who were doing
protest, playing in places like Sanctuaries — safe places where people stayed who
were dropping out of the Army. You have to remember I was educated on Henry
David Thoreau, in civil disobedience, and civil disobedience was the whole thing
behind the protest movement of the 60's," he continued. "Our forefathers told us we
can do this. We can stand up against what we don't believe. So I felt a high
connection with my particular roots as a musician from Boston, and I had historical
residence to say what I felt in this kind of form."

Other depictions of the turbulence of the time are represented in the songs of
Bosstown Sound artist Ted Myers (co-founder of In the Lost and lead of Chameleon
Church & Ultimate Spinach III). His moving description of the August 1968 Chicago
Democratic National Convention riots in The World Has Just Begun is a compelling
commentary on the crowd, the Chicago police, the rage.

In the Front Page Review's unusual apocalyptic Prophecies/Morning Blue, Silver
Children and Valley of Eyes, Steve Cataldo, writer and lead vocalist, describes heroic
"mystic Soldiers" drowning in a sea of oblivion, another deliberately devastating
picture of humanity in a world which needs saving from itself.

In contrast, Ian Bruce-Douglas saw the future of a new generation in Fragmentary
March of Green where he reflects on a late 60s hippie society giving way to
suburbia, status-symbols, relationships, religion and success, the fragmentary
march of "green 60s people into the 70s, beginning a new materialism, and ending
anti-establishment ideals.

A Shot Heard Round the World:
Another Kind Of War

As the social/political events of 1968 unfolded, so did the chronicle of the Boston
Sound. The first record trade advertising for the Bosstown Sound came in January
1968: "The Shot Heard Round The World," and featured the LP covers of the first 3
artists of the movement (Orpheus, Spinach and Beacon Street Union), with
renderings of Revolutionary Minutemen poised, rifles ready to fire.

The same week, a cover story ran in the Wall Street Journal, "The Selling Of A New
Sound", which reported on the pitfalls and gains of the then modern music business,
using the new "Boston Sound" campaign on MGM Records as an example of what
was entailed in launching a new artist, highlighting the group Ultimate Spinach. The
story was picked up as front page news by every Wall Street Journal affiliate across
the U.S.A. The financial editor of the United Press (UP) carried a follow-up story
asking "Why not Nashville as a profit center?" Newsweek published a feature on
the new artists of Boston. Time, Village Voice, Cosmo, Jazz & Pop, Christian Science
Monitor, UP, AP, House and Garden, Playboy, and all the dailies across America
carried Bosstown Sound as important news. Even Women's Wear Daily found
fashion in Boston. Some syndicated columnists found it simply more fun just to play
the "What's In A Name" game: "I'll take Moby Grape!" "Make mine Ultimate
Spinach!" "One Electric Prune to go, please!"

"Establishment hype!" "Boston Shucks!" cried Rolling Stone magazine, a new but
already powerful publication out of San Francisco, ironically condemning and
discrediting Boston Sound's anti-establishment attempt to form a Boston rock 'n' roll
movement as smacking of "commercialism": "The side of Boston that is reaching the
national audience with the first three albums (Orpheus, Ultimate Spinach, Beacon
Street Union), is inextricably bound to an extremely heavy promotion by MGM, and
the question should really be whether or not there is anything lying beneath the
hype."

As the leading arranger in the USA through the early 60s, and as a successful
producer in the mid and late 60s, I had seen the marketing of artists expand from
simple promotions to sophisticated strategies as the industry grew. As a result, I was
completely surprised by Rolling Stone's reaction and assertions of "hype," since
editorially it was vehemently opposed to Boston's type of political conservatism. But,
in retrospect, it was important at the time for Rolling Stone and its sister
"underground" publications, in a different kind of "hype," to commercialize
themselves in order to become powerful members of the "establishment press".

Nevertheless, the reaction triggered a national controversy which continued for more
than a year. It became more trendy to talk "Boston Sound" than to hear it. A
snowball became an avalanche, with the artists buried under the outpouring that
overshadowed the music, and eventually destroyed whatever future they might have
had.

Strangely though, Boston Sound marketing was successful for Boston itself. Record
outlets prospered. Revenues of rock 'n' roll radio multiplied. Circulation of local
music papers doubled. Boston clubs experienced overflow attendance. For the
groups, Orpheus' single Can't Find The Time was #1 in most US markets. The first
Ultimate Spinach album sold 110,000 copies its first week out. All the Boston artists
flourished creatively in a wonderful diversity of things political, things poetic, things
classical and jazz, things of the time.

Wayne Ulakey, John Lincoln Wright and Robert Rosenblatt, bassist, lead vocalist and
keyboardist of the group Beacon Street Union, recall the development of their band
from its emergence in 1966 as a club and backup band for visiting rock 'n' roll
artists such as Chuck Berry to complex psychedelic conceptions in 1968. In 1971, at
the height of their musical evolution as Eagle as heard here, they return to their rock
'n' roll roots. For John Lincoln Wright it marked the beginning of his transition to
country.

Willie Alexander of Bagatelle in a recent interview remembered his growth in
Boston. "I worked out of a little rehearsal studio on River Street, called Riff's. A lot of
people came to Boston from other parts of the country. They came to go to school and
they formed bands. It was the thing to do. We were all different. Very distinct!" he
said (as evidenced in his Back On The Farm): a sudden blaring of matador-trumpets
heralds almost scat-vocal. "She was stolen by gypsies!" "The song was free form,
kind of free association. But the first song I ever wrote was Everybody Knows,"
Alexander recalled (both in its Bagatelle version, and in the original with the Lost,
the vital predecessor group he and Ted Myers founded). Alexander recorded
Everybody Knows a third time in 1978 in one of his two Boom Boom Band albums for
MCA. Today he continues to perform and record in Boston.

Ian Bruce-Douglas' first and second Ultimate Spinach albums' haunting sounds with
Theremin and psychedelic guitars were played extensively on radio throughout the
world. Ian's (Ballad Of) The Hip Death Goddess, with the eerie vocals of Barbara
Hudson, is a psychedelic standard today.

In Spinach III, Ted Myers lyrically reflects the socially defiant picture of the time (to
his earlier songs with the Lost and Chameleon Church), while his co-member ...Jeff
"Skunk" Baxter... found comfort in a heady cure of blues guitar and harmonica in
Eddie's Rush for his hazy days of 1968. Eventually, Jeff Baxter found his creative
right in the Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan. Chameleon Church added to their
expression the sitar genius of Colin Walcott (late of Oregon and Codona fame) and
used a choir of oboes and bassoons. Chevy Chase, a member of the group
Chamaeleon Church, ultimately became the heart of Saturday Night Live and star of
movies and TV.

In the day-dreamy Puff, or the timelessness of Ill Wind with Connie Devanney's
longing vocals, there lived things of great promise.

Orpheus spoke mostly of love, with string orchestrations reaching out to touch the
emotion of their words. "That's where we made our connection. About basic
emotions, the heartbeat," Bruce Arnold, lead singer of the group remembered.
"Our framework on records and live performances never detracted."

Eden's Children sang with Doors-like vocals and be-bop guitar, while the Rockin'
Ramrods and the Lost as predecessor groups displayed more of a basic, vibrant
early 60s rock 'n' roll roots.

Ken Frankel of Ill Wind experimented with the group's bluegrass and folk
orientation. "I added new electronics as an inspiration, as in the double-fuzz sustain
of the solo melody played on the electric bass in In My Dark World," Frankel said.

In more sizzling contrast, Ted Demos, Apple Pie Motherhood Band's lead guitarist
and vocalist found personal fire in his interpretation of Born Under A Bad Sign,
which was originally cut by Albert King. Producer Felix Pappalardi, who produced
this one odd cut for the band's Atlantic LP, had done it with Cream for Wheels of Fire
at about the same time Apple Pie's version was made. (Cream recorded theirs in
April, '67, and released it August of '68).

Earth Opera fused John Coltrane- and Ornette Coleman- influenced jazz with
bluegrass/folk and rock. After Earth Opera, Peter Rowan joined Seatrain, recorded
in England with Beatles producer George Martin, and eventually returned to
bluegrass roots. Earth Opera co-founder Dave Grisman extended his body of work
with remarkable associations with John Sebastian, Steve Katz and Jerry Garcia.

Bosstown Revisited

In compiling this first edition of Boston Sound artists, I was moved by the ageless
quality of the music. Though created 28 years ago when early expansions of stereo
and multi-tracking were on the cutting edge of modern technology, these artists,
most of whom never achieved universal acceptance, made music both significant in
quality and performance, and left a legacy of the time. Articles on the Boston Sound
have appeared frequently during the last 28 years. In 1971, Boston's Fusion
magazine recounted the event, penciling out parts of the words, "Boston Sound" as
the story progressed. Boston radio's WBCN's Beat Magazine featured it in its "Boston
Music R&R" Sections. In 1976, on the occasion of his first Boston album release, Tom
Scholz recounted his Boston Sound experience in the Real Paper, and credited the
Bosstown artists' influences on him as a teenager growing up in Ohio seven years
earlier. In 1987, the Boston Phoenix did an extensive piece called "Bosstown Sound
— Scene Not Heard."

In 1988, in its encyclopedia of rock Rock Of Ages, Rolling Stone conceded that "With
an anti-Boston critical backlash, it was easier to put down Ultimate Spinach and the
other Boston groups than it had been to like them.

In 1992 I wrote an extensive piece for Goldmine Magazine, which was coupled with
a fine work by Professor Gary Burns of Northern Illinois University — a Boston
Sound collector and documenter.

When Orpheus, the last surviving member of the Boston Sound chose to perform in
the Sculpture Garden of New York's Museum of Modern Art to announce it's
"farewell", the concert was carried in the New York Times' Sunday Theater Section
in an impressive six-column photo spread: "Everything In The Garden — Love
Songs and Rodin."

* * *

Looking back, as Peter Rowan wrote in his The Red Sox Are Winning: "The past is
behind, when believing and beauty celebrated the birth. It was green, lovely green.
So long ago, when we could fly like milkweed."

Whatever sense one makes of the 60s, the moral upheavals, the spirit, the rhythms,
the freedom, the dreams and promises, defiance and love, killings and cleansing,
baby-boomers giving way to a loss of innocence, there exists in these recordings an
exact record of the time, and within it a slice of rock 'n' roll history — the artists, the
music, the story of something called the Boston Sound.