Barry Tashian

September 5 - 12, 1 9 9 6 [Music Reviews]

Beatle juice

Barry Tashian relives his rock-and-roll history
by Brett Milano
Whatever you were doing 30 years ago last week -- assuming you were born -- it probably wasn't as exciting as what Barry Tashian was doing.
"Let's see, is today the 28th?" he asks over the phone from Nashville. "Thirty years ago tonight was when I rode through Hollywood with George Harrison. He was a good guy; there was a spiritual quality about him that always came through in our conversations. So I went to this house in Los Angeles for dinner with the Beatles, and we ended up riding around, visiting rock stars -- Jim [now Roger] McGuinn, Cass Elliot, Peter Tork of the Monkees. Then we ended up at [Beatles publicist] Derek Taylor's house, and Brian and Carl Wilson from the Beach Boys dropped in. I was loving it. I always tried to spend as much time with the Beatles as I could. I was pretty quiet, though. I probably just sat there sipping my orange juice."
Of course, it wasn't the orange juice that got Tashian in the same car with the Beatles. It was his band, the Remains -- who are rightly considered the best band to come out of Boston in the mid '60s. (Willie Alexander's former band the Lost being the only real competition.) Although they never had a national hit single, they did snag an opening slot on the 1966 tour that turned out to be the Beatles' last. Tashian, who now records for Rounder with his wife, Holly, has since moved on to a cult-level career in country music and hasn't looked back much at his rock-and-roll days. But this week he publishes Ticket To Ride (Dowling Press), a book of journal entries, photos, and memorabilia from that Beatles tour. And the collectors' label Sundazed has released a disc of newly unearthed audition tapes, A Session with the Remains.
The book is well-timed for the wave of Beatles nostalgia prompted by the Anthology series, but Tashian says he never planned it that carefully. "People were asking me for years to write something, but I never took it seriously until recently. What did it was that I was cleaning my attic and discovered my original journal in a box. I showed it to a friend of mine who teaches English and he said, `You've got a book here.' " In fact, Tashian's diary entries are a relatively small part of the book, which is heavier on goodies for trivia buffs, including a copy of John Lennon's set list from the Beatles' last show. Tashian was evidently clever enough to realize that if you're in a '60s garage band and you're on tour with the Beatles, you shouldn't spend a lot of time hunched over a notebook.
Still, the book challenges the idea that the '60s rock world was always paradise. Read between the lines in Tashian's diaries and you'll see that there were a lot of down times. In fact, the Remains broke up just after the tour. "It was an uphill climb," he notes. "Imagine playing to a crowd of 8000 to 15,000 people every night for 18 days, one night after another. And you go out and do the best job you can, in some cases getting a good response, sometimes a damn good one. But then you see the reaction that the Beatles got, which was tumultuous. It was a really conditioning experience."
Tashian has changed as much as anyone who played music in the '60s. Listen to the rootsy acoustic performing that he and Holly do nowadays and you'd never guess that he ever jumped around in a proto-punk band. And you wouldn't necessarily think that he feels nostalgic for those days -- especially since the book never blows his own horn about how good the Remains were.
Does his current audience even know about that band?
"A few of them do. Whenever Holly and I play, there's always one person with a Remains album in a plastic bag that he wants me to sign. The band had some fun, we really did; we were like a ball team. I don't know if the expression `Take no prisoners' was popular then, but that was our attitude."
Tashian began to drift away from rock and roll during the Beatles tour; and save for the occasional Everly Brothers tune he does with Holly, he hasn't played much of it since then. (The Remains last appeared together in the late '70s; keyboardist Bill Briggs, who plays the North Shore with the blues band Little Malo & the Malfunctions, is the only member left in the Boston area.) "In the end, the tour made me decide to break up the Remains," he says. "We were a wild band, and I wanted to play music in a more dignified way. Plus, I thought we'd arrived at some place [careerwise], which we didn't at the end of the Beatles tour. I was only 21; I didn't know that it takes years and years."
Besides, he'd recently become friends with the late Gram Parsons, who proved to have more influence on him than the Beatles did. Parsons drafted Tashian into a prototype of the Flying Burrito Brothers; Tashian played in Emmylou Harris's band during most of the '80s.
"Gram was doing something nobody else was doing: playing country music with a rock attitude. Take a song like `Sin City,' which has those Louvin Brothers harmonies but lyrics that could only have been written by someone of his age, in his situation. Gram didn't like the term `country rock,' but it created something new. And I picked right up on that; it was a pivotal point for me."
Over the years Tashian has taken up a more traditional brand of country music, and his next album with Holly should go further in that direction. "I've gone from rock and roll to country to bluegrass to old-time music. I keep getting interested in music that makes progressively less income."

STILL QUEER
The Queers are nothing if not persistent. They were playing dumb punk rock when it was out of fashion. They were playing dumb punk rock when it came back into fashion. Now they're playing dumb punk rock when it's going out of fashion again. Having outlasted last year's punk revival -- hell, having outlasted even the Ramones -- the Queers have just released Don't Look Back (Lookout), the latest in a long string of loud, fun albums. And they'll be back to play dumb punk rock tomorrow (the 6th) at the Middle East.
The Queers' stoopid-and-proud stance may have cost them some local street cred, but they're doing as well as nearly any Boston-based indie band. Their albums usually sell at least 20,000 copies; the new one has already shipped that many.
"I don't see any backlash, I just see more people getting into it," singer Joe King reports. "We're lucky to be playing the same goofy shit we've always played. We could probably get signed [to a major] if we wanted, but who needs it? Jawbreaker went to Geffen and broke up; the Muffs are on Reprise and they still have day jobs. Forget it, man. We make money off our albums, and we're sitting pretty where we are."
The new album is a little more polished and poppy than previous ones, thanks in part to the input of J. Rassler, the former DMZ and Odds member (and current Rounder publicist), who co-produced, added guitar and, co-wrote a few tunes. The title track is a little-known, mid-'60s Beach Boys number, on which King manages to copy Brian Wilson's high vocal part. ("There were some cute girls in the studio and I wanted to show them I could sing falsetto," King offers.) And tunes like "Number One" and "I Always Knew" are solid candy-pop numbers that hark back less to the Ramones than to the '60s one-shots that they always emulated.
Still, you don't go to a Queers album to hear smart, grown-up songwriting: You go to hear songs like "I'm OK, You're Fucked" and "I Only Drink Bud" (which takes issue with the punk trend of teetotaling: "Ben Weasel don't know a thing; Rancid don't even drink/Even little Vapid's on the wagon, don't it stink?"). But the album's moronic masterstroke is "No Tit," which defends a girlfriend for, well, being less than endowed. ("She's flat as a board and I don't care . . . They say I'm missing out on life, that I'm being deprived/But I love my girl and she loves me, so don't laugh and don't act snide.") Does King, who's well into his 30s, feel a little odd singing "No Tit" or a song about his mom wanting him to wash dishes?
"Well, it was really a woman who asked me to write `No Tit,' " he offers. "But there's no message in our music except to have fun. That's not a bad thing in this day and age."
Given his long-standing jones for the Ramones (the Queers even released a limited-edition cover of the Rocket to Russia album in its entirety), is King coping with the break-up of his heroes?
"Guess they finally packed it in," he answers. "I don't know; when I saw them lately it didn't look like they were having fun, and we're still having fun. They got away from the punk audience with $18 tickets and age-restricted shows; those are things we'll never do."

SAFE AND SOUND
After many delays, a release date has been set for the Safe & Sound compilation, which will now be coming out on the Big Red/Mercury label (run by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones) on October 23. The album, which grew out of the benefit shows prompted by the Brookline women's-health-clinic shootings, features most of the local-music A-list. Along with new or unreleased songs by the likes of Buffalo Tom's Bill Janovitz, Jennifer Trynin, the Bosstones ("The Impression That I Get"), Juliana Hatfield, Scarce, the Dambuilders, and Lou Barlow's Folk Implosion, it will include live material by Morphine and Tracy Bonham plus a few interesting covers -- among them Letters to Cleo's version of Scruffy the Cat's "You Dirty Rat" (previously on a rare import single) and a terrific Belly cover of Harry Nilsson's "Think About Your Troubles," likely to be the last thing released by that band.

POSIES DO FUZZY
One of Seattle's finest pop outfits, the Posies, have just recorded a cover of Fuzzy's sad seasonal tune "Christmas" (from their Electric Juices album), with Velocity Girl frontwoman Sarah Shannon singing back-up. The song will appear on a seasonal compilation to be released on DGC later this year. Meanwhile, Fuzzy are in the market for a permanent drummer now that former Lemonhead Dave Ryan has bagged out.

COMING UP
The Austin-based Spoon no longer have a local connection now that ex-Dogzilla bassist Andy Maguire has departed, but they're still a hot little punk/pop outfit, and they hit the Middle East tonight (Thursday). Meanwhile, the Fat Possum label brings its Mississippi blues to the House of Blues with Junior Kimbrough and Paul Jones, the Varmints and Surficide hit Club Bohemia, Happy Bunny, Girl on Top, and six other bands play Mama Kin's Music Hall, and Bison and Red Eye Nine are at T.T. the Bear's Place . . . The Lilys (profiled here last week) do their CD-release gig with Those Bastard Souls at T.T.'s Friday; Vision Thing and Worcester's favorite garagers, Black Rose Garden, are at the Middle East along with the Waiting Kates and Huck. Meanwhile the Nines play Mama Kin, and reggae statesman Toots Hibbert brings his Maytals to the House of Blues. And Ireland's long-running folk group the Wolfe Tones, whose pro-IRA stance likely keeps them from getting mainstream gigs, begin two nights at Nostalgia in Quincy.
The Gravel Pit, Eve's Plum, and Poundcake all make with the pop at T.T.'s Saturday, John Felice's Devotions headline Mama Kin, the Friends of Dean Martinez do the lounge thing at the Middle East, and Curious Ritual and Jet Velvet Trash play Club 3 . . . It's a big punk blowout at the Rat Sunday with the Freeze, the Outlets, and others . . . Cold Water Flat's Paul Janovitz plays a solo show at the Middle East Tuesday . . . Juicy and Boy Wonder headline T.T.'s on Wednesday; zydeco hotshots Nathan & the Zydeco Cha-Chas play Johnny D's.