Boston Sound 1968 -
The Music and the Time
by
Alan Lorber
© Iris Properties, Inc., used with permission

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."

(See the Editor's note in the "Something Called the Boston Sound" article, above)

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

* * *

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.

A Few Observations in Retrospect
by
Eric Gulliksen

Alan wrote the above more than a decade ago. During the intervening years the music industry has evolved even more quickly than it had previously, into a form that could not have even been imagined in the days of the Boston Sound. CDs, DVDs, P2P file sharing, the Internet, iPods, digital distribution, surround sound, etc. were things of fantasy. Today it is far more difficult for new artists to gain recognition. In the late 60s the difficulties revolved around artistic issues, a plethora of competition with hundreds of records being released weekly, culture and counter-culture, etc. But, then, there were literally thousands of labels vying for a piece of the pie, seeking new talent.

Today, the scene is entirely different. Consolidation within the industry has resulted in the vast majority of commercial music residing in the hands of four multinational conglomerates, whose focus is strictly on the bottom line (profits). Most are run by accountants, not by "music people." Concern over profits has led "RIAA" (read: establishment) labels to cut back on their artist rosters, and to almost entirely eliminate artist development. Successful artists either have a long legacy, have achieved substantial success as "indies" at their own expense, or have been "manufactured" by the labels in order to minimize risk and limit product release, insofar as possible, to "sure things." Most media outlets (radio, television) are controlled by mega-corporations, and "Digital Rights Management" has literally set the music industry and much of its customer base at each other's throats.

The Internet gives independent artists a chance to be heard even without the backing of the major labels. It is, however, not an easy task to get one's music to the ears of the general public, because the nature of the Internet is such that would-be listeners or potential fans have to discover it amidst the billions of web pages out there.

Love it or hate it, the Boston Sound was a phenomenon without parallel. We believe that one of its shortcomings lay in its very name, which implied that there was a single, identifiable and discrete sound. After all, even then there were the Detroit (Motown) Sound, the San Francisco Sound, the Nashville Sound, the Memphis Sound, the Liverpool Sound, etc., which were identifiable. Boston, as a melting pot and fusion of various musical genres, did not have a single sound. We, as Orpheus, used to say when interviewed that we were "one of the Boston Sounds" (emphasis on the plural). The addition of that little "s" might have made the concept less controversial - but that, too, may be an oversimplification; as Alan said above, neither he nor MGM had ever had any intention of grouping the artists for any purpose other than to get the biggest "bang" for the marketing dollar.

I personally don't think that a phenomenon like the Boston Sound could happen today - at least, not as an orchestrated commercial effort - because the market and musical tastes have become too fragmented. Billboard magazine now publishes 129 different charts weekly; in 1968 there were less than a dozen. A new movement like the Boston Sound could concievably arise from a grass-roots source such as an Internet community, but this would likely be limited in penetration and acceptance.

Some have said that the Boston Sound set Boston's musicians back by years, if not decades, because of the negative aspects of the "marketing plan gone amuck," as Alan outlined above. I beg to differ. If nothing else, the Boston Sound served to bring the music of the time and region to the forefront of the minds and hearts of the local kids, just growing up, inspiring them to write and perform. Without the Boston Sound, would we have Aerosmith? the Cars? Boston? the J. Geils Band? Godsmack? Donna Summer? the New Edition? Howie Day? Pat Metheny? Aimee Mann? Jo Dee Messina? Staind? the Dropkick Murphys? the Mighty Mighty Bosstones? John Mayer? maybe ...

maybe not.

Eric Gulliksen
January, 2006

"...If there was a Boston Sound, it was Orpheus..."

(excerpted from a review of one of the Orpheus CD compilations, posted on amazon.com)

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