Actually, it's a pretty long history. I've known Adam since 1985 when we were introduced by a mutual friend, Mark Lo. At the time, Adam had a band called Beginners Only. We went to see them play at a club in Cambridge (the name of which escapes me now, but it was on Mass Ave. towards Central Square - it burnt down in a suspicious fire in the late 80s). I had just moved to the Boston area and I was busily immersing myself in the music scene. (Looking back, I wished I'd grown up in Mass.) I wasn't too impressed by the band, but they were okay. I hadn't been exposed to too much indie rock during my college radio days (at WRPI - Troy NY), and I was discovering the joys of WFNX at the time. I probably met Adam briefly at this point.
In the meantime, I had gotten it into my head that I should try my hand (or voice) at singing in a band. I'd been inspired by my time at WRPI, especially after participating in a couple of airband contests, and having had a lifelong interest in rock and pop music anyway, I thought I'd give it a shot. Through 1985 and the first half of '86, I jotted down some lyrics. I envisioned some sort of technopop thing. I answered an ad in the Boston Phoenix and performed a terrible audition for a goth band called Visions of Violet, or something like that. The problem was that I did not have a great voice, nor did I look the part of a musician. (Still don't.) I tried working on a song ("How Things Work") with a friend of mine, but he was too disorganized to get things together, and we didn't accomplish a damn thing. The problem was I had a melody and lyrics for the song, but no idea how to put a song together. (The other three songs from that summer were "What's yours is yours", "I know it's real" and "Limited dancing". None of the three are any damn good.)
The turning point was probably a trip to Lechmere in the fall of '86. Lechmere was a Boston area department store that was a forerunner of Best Buy. I bought one of those one-touch-chord Casio keyboards. (Still have it.) I took it home and started working on some new lyrics and tried to fit some chords to the melodies I heard in my head. By this time, I had moved to Brighton and was living with a bunch of hard-living musicians, most of who played in a decent pop band called Pulse 8. Again I found myself in a situation where I really didn't fit in. One of the guys in the house was Drew Townson, a local scenester who had a girlfriend who was a DJ at WBCN. I remember demoing one of my songs ("The Nice Channel") for them. I think they thought it was cute ("Aw, look honey, it's trying to think.") One time, I rehearsed with the P8 guys and played them one of weirder numbers called "Whatever Baby Wants", which was about a serial killer. I didn't get asked back to rehearsal after that.
I started to develop a decent number of songs that were actually worth playing to other people: "Friends Enemies People", "Freedom Of Speech", "Dreams And Visions", "Good Idea", "The Nice Channel", "Photos Of You", "The Moving Aquarium", "Breeding Ground Zero", and "Fatal Position".
Before I knew it, it was the summer of '87. I was getting into a new relationship and things were looking up. I'd been in Boston for about a year at this point. Mark and I went to see Beginners Only at the long-gone Chet's Last Call in Boston (near the Garden). Now that I had some songs, I thought I'd run 'em by somebody who knew a little about songwriting. Adam was the only musician I knew, so I put together a tape of six songs (I believe they were Freedom, Breeding, Fatal, Aquarium, Nice, and Dreams - Adam probably still has the tape!) and gave it to him to get a professional's opinion. What happened next was quite unexpected...
Part 2: Wipe your feet on the Welcome Mat.
