|
My table assignment
for the1976
Harvard Club Dinner, held to celebrate the new Harvard Club Scholars.
We were selected mainly on the basis of interviews with former alumni
who also came from the Boston area --
after several drinks
I told my
second interviewer a
dirty joke that broke him up, and I guess that cinched the deal. My
Feinberg Family Fellowship was later upgraded and I became the William
E. Lincoln Scholar. No, I don't know what that means either, but the
money allowed me to kick Holy Cross and BC to the curb.
1976,
Currier House, with my first Les Paul Custom.The
Harvard bib came in handy Freshman year.
(photo
by Dave deMilo)
Me in 1978
wearing standard late-70's rock uniform: Mirror shades, check.
Shag haircut, check. Stupid aluminum-neck guitar, check. Stupid "guitar
face", check.
(c. Harvard Crimson, photo Dave deMilo)
Playing the '78 Inn Square Men's Bar Battle of the Bands, the year before
it moved to the Rat. Richie Parsons is on guitar, I'm playing bass in
the Hawaian shirt.
A month or so later the Harvard Police tore up my Sunn Colliseum Cabinet
looking for drugs they didn't find.
In 1978 I was doing graveyard shifts at the Cambridge Music Complex.
In
late1980: poster boy for the bones, the photo was taken by Leslie
Fields at the Club.
Circa '80, trying out Slow Children guitarist Joe Fagan's FLying
V, backstage at the Rat. Slow Children manager Mark Rosenfield looking
bemused.
Outside of my East Boston rehearsal space -- formerly
Vi's Variety -- two days after the Blizzard of '78.
It was in this empty storefront at 269 Webster St. in Jeffries Point
that I finally decided to abandon cover bands for good and try my luck
in the indie scene. Dig those bell bottoms.
Tall Ships, 1980.
The bones play to a crowd of fifteen hundred on Pier
One, East Boston. We launched a destroyer playing a psychadelic medley
version of "Anchors Aweigh/Tarantella"! The picture is full of memory-inducing
bits, like the Marc [Bolan] T-shirt, which I bought at Piccadilly Circus,
my very first stop after arriving on my first trip to London. I put
it on immediately, and it led me to a meeting with Terry Livingstone,
who worked at my second stop: a cool guitar shop called Macari's Music
Exchange. Terry introduced me to members of the T-Rex Fan Club, took
me to the Jewish Cemetery where Bolan's ashed are buried, and bought
a few of the guitars I brought over to pay my way on subsequent trips.
Also, note my old 1957 Les Paul Standard goldtop, bought with cash I
got to put a deposit on a hit man - when the hit was cancelled, I used
the remaining funds to grab the goldtop. I took my 1st trip to New Jersey
two months after this photo was taken, to sell the guitar in Red Bank,
so I could buy a ticket to Pakistan. The white Capezio dance shoes tell
you this was close to the seventies.
New Year's Eve, 1980.
With Sunny Bhutto at the Intercontinental Hotel, Karachi Pakistan.
New Year's Eve, 1980.
Sunny and I in Pakistan at the Prime Minister's residence, 70 Clifton.
We're sporting matching zipper trousers from a trip to the original
Boy shop on London's King's Road. All those zippers and still there
were no pockets!
  
Original Bones lineup, seen here during our 1980 tenure as House
Band at the Rat: Joe, Bob, Richie and Dave.
Discover
the bones,
our cassette-only release, was done at the Sex Exec's home studio,
Contempt. Ironically, it predated my involvement in archaeology, as
well as my partnership with engineers Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie,
who would become half of the collective that founded the original
Fort Apache [Jim Fitting, another Sex Exec, was the fourth member;
the collective lasted a year before I took over the studio as owner,
but we remained a team in every sense of the word]. Sean produced
this, on a Teac reel-to-reel, 4-track tape machine. Because my Vox
AC-50 was too loud for the basement, Sean had me use his old Ampeg
ReverbRocket II amp to
record the guitar tracks.
I fell in love, and 4 years later I traded him my own older, slightly
smaller ReverbRocket I - which fit in his back seat better - for that
slightly decrepit amp that
I'm still using today,
albeit with a few modifications. Some things are just meant to be.
Me, Dave "Bone" Pedersen and Richie "Cunningham"
Maddalo, from the inside cover of Discover the bones
1981. Packing up our bones and tents to leave after 2 months in the
Arabian desert.
That wooden contraption behind me is a traditional camel saddle.
1981. Two years of summer school was the price I paid for all that
undergrad fun.
As a three-piece,
playing Harvard's Freshman Mixer at the cavernous Memorial Hall. I'm
using one of Joe Perry's upside-down Strats, courtesy of an Aerosmith
techie pal.
1982. Finally the six year plan is over! With mom and dad in front
of my room at Adams House.
|
