Blast from the past

The Remains, the Lost, and Volcano Suns

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

Barry Tashian has an important message for any old fans who might be coming to see his band the Remains reunite next weekend: he promises to get you home at a respectable hour. "A lot of the people that knew us . . . I don't know how many are still around," he ponders from his current home in Nashville. "If they're my age, they may be more prone to sitting at home. So it's not going to be a real late night. I want people to know we won't be on at midnight or anything. We'll probably be starting no later than 10."

Such is the legacy of '60s punk rock, three decades later. During their heyday, the Remains were a band more suited to staying out late and behaving irresponsibly -- and Tashian's caveat aside, a few fans will probably be doing just that when his band play the Paradise this Saturday (March 20), their first local date in 30 years. The show kicks off a week when Boston's ghosts will walk the earth. First the Remains share a bill with Willie Alexander's original band the Lost, each outfit with its original line-up (the Rising Storm, an Andover band who played everybody's high school in the '60s and apparently never broke up, will open). The following Saturday (March 27), at the Middle East, WMBR 88.1 FM's Pipeline live-music show will present an '80s dream bill with the Volcano Suns, Busted Statues, Voodoo Dolls, the Titanics, and Moving Targets -- none of whom has played in anywhere from seven years (Volcano Suns) to seven months (the inexhaustible Titanics). The usual Boston attitude toward reunion shows -- get cynical beforehand, then show up and have a blast anyway -- will no doubt obtain.

Boston in the '60s tends to get a bad rap among rock historians, who point to a cadre of truly bad psychedelic bands (Ultimate Spinach, Beacon Street Union, Phluph) who were promoted during the ill-fated '68 "Bosstown Sound" hype. True enough, but the real action took place a couple years earlier, when the Remains and the Lost laid the groundwork for all the punk rock that was to follow here. Both had national releases (on Columbia and Capitol, respectively), both got within spitting distance of success -- most famously when the Remains opened a Beatles tour. And their respective frontmen are now a real study in opposites. Alexander, who remains a fixture on the local scene, never shook the rock-and-roll bug. But Tashian apparently got it all out of his system. Having befriended Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris in the late '60s, he moved closer to country music. He now does a successful stone-traditional acoustic act with his wife, Holly.

So why put the Remains back together after all these years? "I just figured, if not now, when?" he notes, with the Southern accent he's acquired over the years. "I got to the point where I thought that country music and bluegrass were up on a pedestal and that rock and roll was way below it. But I'm coming to realize it's all part of the same spectrum."

Tashian recalls that his conversion to country came soon after he met Gram Parsons (who was then with his pre-Byrds outfit, the International Submarine Band) at Isis, a hip '60s clothing spot on Mt. Auburn Street in Cambridge. And that was the end of his rock days, until he put the Remains back together last year. "If anything helped change my mind, it was finding the same kind of guitar I had in the Remains -- an Epiphone Al Caiola, the same model I had. When we started talking about the Remains, I went to a guitar store out here in Nashville, and there it was on the wall -- the first time I'd seen one since the '60s. And it's funny that my singing sounds the same, but it does. This kind of music is less technically demanding than bluegrass, so that frees up a lot of energy."

The Remains have since played a Mod festival in Spain and a one-off show in New York, and Tashian says they're talking very tentatively about trying out some new material in the studio. "We want to keep playing from time to time, so next week won't be the last one," he promises. "But it will be just for a few select places that really want us. I just want to keep us out of the hands of the booking agents -- they'd be trying to put us into casinos and state fairs. I'd like to keep it so that it's an event when we play."

The notion of a Lost reunion seems pretty surreal to singer/keyboardist Willie Alexander -- not least because it's a week before the show and they haven't been in the same room yet. Guitarist/singer Ted Myers, who instigated the reunion, is still in Los Angeles, working his regular job in the A&R department of Rhino Records. The current plan is for all the bandmembers, who haven't seen one another since 1969, to assemble before the show for a couple days of intensive rehearsal at local-music archivist Erik Lindgren's home studio (Alexander's current drummer, Jim Doherty, will be standing in for Lost drummer Lee Mason, who has hepatitis and can't play; but Mason will likely make a guest appearance). Historians will also note that Lost bassist Walter Powers was, with Alexander, part of a post-Lou Reed line-up of the Velvet Underground.

"You don't think that often about your first band," Alexander explains from his home in Gloucester. "But jeez, the notion that we're going to be performing together, camping out at Erik Lindgren's -- that's like waking up with a two-headed dog in your room. It's totally removed from any kind of reality."

Also coming soon is a Lost CD on Lindgren's Arf-Arf label. They recorded a full album for Capitol but only two singles were ever released -- the rest was held up by legal battles for decades and has come into the band's hands only through Myers's Rhino connection. "I just heard the tape lately and was thinking, `Shit, I really like some of this stuff,' " Alexander notes. "I think Erik's going to lend me a vintage piano so I can get the sound I had 10 million electric pianos ago. The real nostalgia will probably happen as soon as we see each other. But being on stage together and looking at each other's faces . . . that's going to be some kind of weird thrill. Which is just what it was back then."

Although he's been unusually quiet since moving to Gloucester last year, Alexander has a few projects cooking. His current band, the Persistence of Memory Orchestra, have a second album (and a mighty good one) due on Accurate Distortion this year. And he's scoring a Henry Ferrini film, Lowell Blues.

When Volcano Suns headline the Pipeline 10th-anniversary show at the Middle East next Saturday, it will mark the first time singer/drummer Peter Prescott has been in a reunion of any kind. His earlier band, Mission of Burma, probably turned down more reunion offers than any other Boston band before people wised up and stopped asking. Having moved on to Kustomized and now the Peer Group, Prescott has never been the type to get sentimental. "I don't believe in nostalgia. And that's a weird thing for me to say, because most of the music I listen to and the movies I watch are from other eras. I'm not opposed to reunions in principle; it's just that I usually throw up my hands and say, `Why bother?'

"There's nothing more depressing to me than going to a reunion show and seeing a bunch of 45-year-old punk-rockers. It's probably cool if you're 20 years old and you're just getting to see a band run through a bunch of songs you like -- but to me it's a heinous thing. All you can do is treat it as an excuse to get drunk and see your friends, which is how we're treating it. To me the music sounds pretty dated, and Mission of Burma does too -- it just doesn't fit into the world of music we live in."

Of course, they didn't quite fit in back then, either. At the core Volcano Suns were a punk/pop band, but they absorbed a lot of Mission of Burma's loose-cannon proficiency and filtered it through Prescott's cynical/wise-ass streak (which had never really surfaced in Burma). They put out six albums (including a double) in as many years, with one (the second, All Night Lotus Party) ranking as a local classic, and a bunch of good stuff scattered throughout. Whereas Prescott has carried his cerebral punk songwriting to his other bands, his drumming -- ridiculously intricate by punk standards -- has been missed. It was the one anchor in Volcano Suns, who maintained a consistent sound even while changing guitarists and bassists at will.

Next week will feature the last and longest-running line-up, with bassist Bob Weston (now in Steve Albini's band Shellac) and guitarist David Kleiler. Prescott says they'll focus mainly on their final album (1992's Career in Rock), with a smattering of oldies. And don't expect it to be too teary an event. "We were always full of bad attitude. Though not like Motörhead or Nashville Pussy. We were more oblique, and that annoyed people even more. There's nothing like coming out with a bad attitude and then being smug and snotty on top of that."

Prescott has maintained a love/hate relationship with the rock world. Although he professes to be jaded about the current scene, he gets enthused when talking about the new CD he's making with Peer Group. "It's turning into a sort of Germanic, kraut-rock drone thing in a rock context, which I wanted all along. It's funny how nobody says they're in a rock band anymore -- everybody says they're in this or that kind of band, but when Volcano Suns were happening, everyone just said they were in a rock band. So I hope that everyone who was around back then will come see us, because I can't imagine it making sense to anyone now."

COMING UP

Star Ghost Dog and the jive-talkin' cover band Boyjoys are at the Lizard Lounge tonight (Thursday). Nancy Wilson (the Heart one, not the jazz one) goes solo at the Paradise. And it's retro-metal night, with Blue Öyster Cult headlining the Middle East . . . Once (and maybe still) great UK punkers the Vibrators are at T.T. the Bear's Place tomorrow (Friday), the mighty Lyres are at Club Bohemia, Bim Skala Bim and the Allstonians are at the Middle East, Asa Brebner plays Toad, and the Curtain Society and Ultrabreakfast are at the Linwood . . . Babaloo do the House of Blues Saturday, Rick Berlin brings his new combo to the Lizard Lounge, Honkeyball and Bourbon Princess are at the Linwood, the Ape Hangers and Caged Heat are at the Lansdowne Street Music Hall. And it's a local-heroes double bill with Buffalo Tom and the Gigolo Aunts at Avalon . . . The sold-out Sleater-Kinney show is at the Middle East on Monday . . . Duke Daniels, signed to Adam Duritz's E Pluribus Unum label, is at the Lansdowne Street Music Hall Wednesday. And local rockers Digney Fignus, who had a local hit with "Girl with the Curious Hand" a couple hundred years ago, are at Johnny D's.