John: April or March 1983. Jack and I went to see this band called the Fall that was from England. We saw them at the Rat and we were kind of disappointed and I remember we were outside, we were hanging around. We ran into my old friend Fred Nazarro who used to play in a band called Cryptic Edge, and then this guy named Dave Shibler who we didn't know from Adam - he'd seen him around the scene and we'd seen him. We got together that afternoon and jammed. And that's how the band the Turbines got started. And we never changed our membership, the four of us, right 'til the end.

Joe: Wow! So the Fall in a sideways manner inspired the Turbines?

John: Yeah, yeah. We said "we don't want to be like this- they suck anyway"! God! We expected a little more out of this band- "they came all the way from England, their records sounded okay, what's the matter with them?" So we decided to jam and that's how the Turbines got started.

Joe: So was there somewhere in the back of your mind at that point that the band live should be the band, period. As opposed to guys who make great records and then you go see them and they blow.

John: Uh, we never really thought it through to that extent, but that was really obvious. It was really direct music. It was just supposed to be a real rock and roll band. I don't think we even anticipated doing the tiny bit of overdubs that we did.

Joe: The Turbines record that we did at the Fort, Magic Fingers and Hourly Rates is one of the most visceral records that we did during that entire period- in fact, ever.

John: I'm really psyched about it...I think that at least half that record is absolutely wonderful.

Joe: Yeah, it's real straightforward. It sounds a lot like the band.

John: The band was just off from touring even though we'd already decided to break up. We were still really hot. It's a really good record and I'm really, really happy with that project.

Joe: In retrospect I think making it was a really good move, 'cuz when people are looking around for Boston stuff- I mean, in my mind there's a very discernible Boston sound, bands like the Neats, the Turbines, Willie Loco, there's a roots rock purity that I can identify: "THAT'S BOSTON!" Now Magic Fingers..., that's one of the classic records as far as I'm concerned. Even if I hadn't worked on it, I would have thought that it was one of the classic Boston scene records. So you guys knew you were going to break up when you made that record? Did you have second thoughts...?

John: About doing the record?

Joe: Yeah.

John: No way, I don't think so. We wanted to document it. When a band sounds that hot you have a responsibility to the Western world! Someone's going to give you the money, you have the opportunity got to do it.

Joe: Did you fell bad after you made the record and were listening and saying "this band rocks" and you guys were breaking up- were there second thoughts about that.

John: I already felt bad that we were breaking up and the record didn't have any effect on that one way or another at all. But by that time I had already made up my mind to move to New York and start a new project. It might not even be a rock and roll thing. I had no idea what I was going to do when I showed up.

Joe: Kind of a good feeling, cutting loose...

John: Well when you gotta go there's no use hanging around. I didn't see the point of starting another Turbines band, and I didn't see the point of having the Turbines without Jack.

Joe: Right.

John: I just didn't see it

Joe: You mean at that point was it that Jack (Hickey) and Fred (Nazzaro) were being lured away by Nat Friedberg of the Titanics?

John: I never really talked to them about that. There was that aspect. People really did feel like moving on- I had no desire to move on but if everyone else was going to move on then the heck with it, I was going to move on too.

Joe: I think in retrospect, if they knew then what they know now, any one of those guys might have made a different decision- if given the chance.

John: Dave (Shibler) never wanted to move on- he was even more applied to it than I was.

Joe: Had Dave played in other bands since? That you know of?

John: I dunno. I don't know that he has- I'm not sure.

Joe: Fred and Jack did the Titanics briefly...

John: Jack did the Lyres. He did a very good job with them too. He was wonderful. He was the guitar that really stood out in their whole history as far as I was concerned. I saw a show, God, they did this show at CB(GB)'s, it was...God!...the most chaotic mess I've ever seen. I really like the Lyres a lot. I've enjoyed most of their shows, this one I'm not really sure...but Jack's guitar playing at that show was completely amazing, he was doing stuff that...it knocked me out!

Joe: I only saw Jack play with the Lyres once but he was great. He fit that band like a glove!

John: Yeah, he was real, real good with them.

Joe: I thought what a perfect gig, especially going from the Turbines. In my mind, of course, I thought of Jack Hickey as the Turbines guitarist. I still do. I forget he was in other bands 'cuz his Turbs work was so fucking right. I don't say "he was in the Lyres" I find myself saying "he was in the Turbines" though the Lyres are better known...

John: I always do too.

Joe: That whole sound- the Gretsch thing and that big almost 50's guitar sound that he was building throughout the Turbines and that came out so well towards the end- was pretty much what he took with him, his trademark sound, by the the time he got to the Lyres. I guess I'm curious- was Jack's playing and his sound always like that, with Noise Pencil for instance?.

John: No. He totally developed it over time. He always- even with Noise Pencil -had that sort of surf type sound, but it became even more obvious by the time he got to the Turbines I thought he was just doing his own thing totally. But in Noise Pencil he also used a lot of noise- he used boxes and he made a lot of noise. Was a band that didn't really quite get to do as much as they should have...like a lot of bands. Who knows if we stayed around longer , who knows we may have got to go a lot farther in the direction we were going. I really liked the Noise Pencil band a lot. We didn't always do good shows, though.

Joe: Did Noise Pencil record?

John: Recording? We actually did one track that we did at a studio- at Baker Street, but it's pretty lame next to the live stuff I've got- the Exit 13 show, the Rat show right around the end of '82 really kicked butt, but the recording quality's awful. At Baker Street we were just getting started and we really needed a tape- I was going to move to West Virginia. Everything sounds nice but it didn't have the jagged edge that the band was really into especially towards the end. I have this tape I strung together out of old rehearsals- oh man! It's very jagged and very imaginative. The fifteen minute version of "On Broadway" is really screwed up sounding. One of the most nuts pieces of music that I ever heard! I really like it. We did that one live but there was some stuff we only did at rehearsal that I just can't believe.

Joe: sounds like what I thought of as an Underground band: they only played at the Underground.

John: There was more to the music but the real problem was where does this band fit in with what's going on? We were sort of sandwiched between people getting into hard core and punk rock or other people getting sounding more slick or polished in one way or another. I just felt like the band was losing out because we didn't really fit in with what was going on. 1983, the time people were doing this stuff -though there are people doing this stuff even now -but the time for it had really ended.

Joe: There was a very amorphous period in local- and national -music right around '82-'83. Nobody really knew where they stood because Punk had happened and it had opened up a lot of doors. DIY, people had sort of shot off in every direction. Suddenly at that point there was a tendency towards compartmentalization in Boston and probably in the national music scene as well. You had the techno-funk people and the noise thing...

John: Which is why I thought a lot of the noise bands kind of got the short end of the stick. Bands like Vitamin and Jax these were really good bands, but somehow...Noise Pencil were a lot more pop, less punk, but nevertheless that type of thing. The bands that were going to make it were either the bands like SSD or the bands like Primary Colors, or also you had this sort of synthesizer approach- bands like the November Group had their own thing going on. We didn't fit in with that, and then all the punk groups moved into the Gallery East space and we didn't fit into that type of scene. We would have if we could have, I dunno. It was a long time ago...who cares...I care!

Joe: So we fast forward to, let's see, I guess the good feeling I had around the years '85, '86, '87- there was a re-jelling of the scene. People put down their compartments and there was once agai na lot of interaction between bands. People had moved back and forth enough that everyone knew everyone else and the scene was much more cohesive.

John: Yeah, there was a whole lot of stuff like the Dogmatics, the Del Fuegos, what we (Turbines) were doing, stuff like that- it got to be a lot of fun!

Joe: It a real rock and roll scene. People weren't taking themselves tremendously seriously. I might over-intellectualize but I see that as a sort of classic period for Boston rock, where the promise of bands like the Modern Lovers and the Real Kids reached fruition. Right now from what I gather running around and talking to folks it looks like it's back to a degree of compartmentalization again. Cubbyholes, cliches and all. A strange hard-to-tell-one-band-from-another period, in Boston anyway. I don't know about your new home: New York.

John: New York's always like that anyway

Joe: There's always so much going on...

John: But in some ways there's so little going on. They all sound like just another one of these New York bands. Their all kind of, well, another... NEW... YORK... BAND.

Joe: It 's ironic to me that in many current musical retrospectives Boston is accorded a back seat- like in this review I just read on the Internet of the Rhino punk releases and this guy says of the Boston volume that it's OK, it has its moments, but that the Boston scene wasn't as strong as the New York or LA scenes. Seems to me two points are important here- one, Boston groups of that time had a real originality to them that was not as marketable, so guys like Willie Loco Alexander who should have been huge never were. A guy like Jonathan Richman manage to slip through with the Modern Lovers 'cuz the first record sounded like the Velvets, thus they enjoyed a degree of national success- that Jonathan then shrugged off and turned his back on but that's another story. But most of the guys playing in Boston- guys like Steve Cataldo and John Felice -were playing music that was so roots, so straight ahead and without gimmicks that record companies didn't know what to do with them.

John: Yeah, you take these bands like the Motels or something, a new wave type band, they'd say "why don't you play a bit more pop" and the band'd do it and have a moderately big hit. Then you'd hear about them: the MOTELS!

Joe: They'd die a quick death...came and went...

John: It came and went but at least it came! In NY these bands had a unique sound, bands like the Bush Tetras, but I don't see that Boston had less of a sound, just different.

Joe: My second point is that in New York there was the CBGB's scene up until around '79, by then most of those groups were strung out, falling apart or fell apart, but a few like Blondie, the Talking Heads, the Ramones and Patti Smith went to the next level. But in terms of recognition of that scene those few years of strong music, those couple of really succesful bands, that was enough to carry them through until now. The whole NY scene they're still talking about now was what, four years maybe from the Dolls in '74 until '79 or so? And since then hardly a squeak.

John: All those bands are back together again. You want to see the Bush Tetras you just...go see 'em!

Joe: Scary... not them, I mean- the Tetras that is. I'm not speaking of NY or LA or anyplace now, but all those 80's bands that are doing revivals. Simply Red, all the vershlogginer one-hit wonder bands coming out of the woodwork and touring.

John: Katrina and the Waves! (Joe screams) Sorry! They make the Motels sound real good by comaprison.

Joe: The first Motels records were actually very good. They got big 'cuz they were produceable and Martha had a fine voice. Hot shit LA producers'd come in and put in a snazzy change and a synthesizer line that's going to sound dated in five minutes...

John: ....but it will sell the record right now.

Joe: It's just ironic. Boston's live scene was as vital- more vital in my eyes -than anyplace. Recorded work is scarce that reflects that.

John: Yeah it was wild. Bands would play NY and noone would dance, meanwhile up in Boston people were going wild. Y'know, it was really fun.

Joe: Due to a lack of record industry marketability- and just plain lack of record industry, period - a lot of Boston stuff never got put properly on record. And a lot that did- Willie, DMZ and such -the companies tried to add some "production values" but ended up shaving off all of the great edges that made the stuff so vital in the first place instead. That first Willie record on Music Cemetery of America (MCA) record broke my heart.

John: But the scene was great, very healthy.

Joe: Editorializing over. Back to you... the Turbines became popular it seemed pretty quickly, and then decided to call it quits after...?

John: Three years- a little bit over. We spent most of '83 just practicing.

Joe: Any gig that stood out in your mind as "that was a great gig"?

John: A lot of them went really well. They all kind of blur together, but there were more good ones than bad ones.

Joe: If you're rock to suck ratio is high you did OK. You've been a pretty productive record maker, no?

John: Well sometimes it stopped. I stopped for six years, from the "Drilling" single in '91, and I didn't go back into any kind of studio until '96 when I started working on the next Hovorka record.

Joe: Your "ouvre" then is...

John: Five singles, two albums and a CD....plus the two unreleased albums.

Joe: Any interest in releasing either of those if someone's interested?

John: Yeah. Some, part, all. A lot of the 2x4's stuff is great, and the Hovorka record (Empire State) should be released too. We're talking about putting the old Hovorka band together to record some of the material we never got to. Ras was involved in the production of the new album. He sat and listened through every session just about, argued with me about parts- nothing too serious. He was there from beginning to end and when he wasn't there I really missed him. He was very important to the project. Then Ramona came in and did some drum stuff and helped mix. We worked at a place just called Studio, then it got to be called Brass Giraffe. It's over on 27^th Street.

Joe: Any highlights or lowlights of studio work over the years?

John: I always liked working at the Fort (Apache). We worked at the old one and at the new one.

Joe: We recorded Empire State at Coyote in Brooklyn- I was soooo strung out - then mixed at the newer Fort South in Roxbury, and remixed the old 2x4's tapes at old South. I think that's right, isn't it John?

John: Mmm-hmmm. And of course all of Magic Fingers... at the old original Fort South. Now the first record was a different story. We were doing a complete tour of every studio in Boston on the first Noise Pencil record. That record was recorded in seven different studios! Started at one down in the South End. Mmmm, we went through a load of 'em. Ended up in Carlysle (Blue Jay). We blew a LOT of money there and got absolutely nothing out of it, it was really horrible. And we then went to the one in Revere (Euphoria). That's actually where we straightened everything out with Rick Granelli. We actually managed to make everything go in the mix- the remix phase -we actually managed to get something out of it instead of just spending money. We were at some studio in Boston where we spent an entire session just trying to get the beginning of "Skull and Crossbones" right. Without a cue track! Somehow nobody knew enough to put one on and later noone knew how to do it- to add one. It was like 95 degrees. At least we got it!