Tom Dickie and the Desires. Competition 1981.
Produced by Martin Rushent, Engineered by Martin Rushent and Michel Sauvage
Recorded / Mixed at Electric Ladyland Studios, NYC
Tom Dickie - lead vocals and guitars
Mickey Curry - drums
Jon Macey - bass, vocals
Michael Roy - guitars, vocals
Gary Corbett - keyboards

Jon Macey started his Boston career with one of the groups that has been largely overlooked in retrospectives of the time, yet were as big as any Beantown outfit during the crucial mid-seventies period: Fox Pass. Fox Pass -- yup, the name is a play on the phrase faux pas -- began their lives as a band with a stripped down sound, with songs and playing that were compared to the Velvet Underground on more than one occasion. By the end, in a frustrating example of bad timing, they abandoned their pre-punk credo for a more polished approach, only to discover that suddenly their old sound was in, and labels were now snapping up the underground groups with punk credentials. Despite a strong and loyal fan base, their new sound and look was causing them to lose credibility with critics and clubs eager for slash and burn sets.

In their final incarnation, Fox Pass were along the lines of the Atlantics, a power pop outfit with a bit more musical prowess than their competition, a slicker sound and a more professional approach to the business end of the music. These qualities were enough to earn the animosity/envy of bands in the roots-rock, one-four-five progression crowd. That may be why they haven't been lionized and embraced in the way that the Real Kids, the Mezz, the Boom Boom Band, DMZ and other contemporaries have. Unlike the Atlantics they didn't manage to get a song into regular rotation on WBCN, so they share the fate of fellow power popsters Sass, whose talented West brothers, Dana and Vernon, go largely unheralded. Maybe they just weren't rough enough around the edges to be sought out by the next punk-influenced generation. But there they are on Live at the Rat, and there they were at the center of the scene when the events were occurring which made it possible for today's alternative scene to exist.

Jon and Ricky, both Fox Pass alumni.

Jon and I took a shine to one another right away and decided to start a band. He hadn't been playing much but just like riding a bike he was back in the saddle almost as soon as he picked up a guitar. We both knew guys who were clean and sober, and as I was fresh out of a detox and eager to try to stay clean we played with some twelve-steppers. This was an interesting experience. We did a number of shows at "sober clubs"- Club Surrender in Waltham, for instance -as well as playing a few shows at the Middle East, a gig at Harvard's Sanders Theater and a Sober Day show at the amazing Hatshell on the Charles River (the outdoor concert auditorium that the Boston Pops plays in on the Fourth of July). We had a conga player and percussionist named English Steve and my Narcotics Anonymous sponsor Charlie on flute (!) and acoustic guitar. At the Middle East show the former Chet of Chet's Last Call sat in on harp and vocals for a blues jam version of "Steamroller Blues". It was fun, but I realized that clean and sober are not necessarily musical credentials and turned in my resignation when the variety show atmosphere clashed with my need for order and my commitment to playing songs, not instruments. Jon agreed to split with me and start a less substance-abuse defined group.

Jon supplied a drummer- his old mate Ricky from Fox Pass days -and I supplied a bass player- John Rosato, who'd played with me in the Troublemakers (a name we got from Dave Bone, who now has a smoking group by the same name in Austin, Texas). I asked my friend Florence Doore to share vocal chores and we became Flo and Joe. The union was short lived, though it was a total blast to play with this band. For one thing Florence is a fantastic singer. Besides being a beautiful woman and a wonderful person she has a deep, husky voice with strong country overtones that she applies an honest rock-and-roll sensibility to, the results being both unique and aurally gratifying. Florence and I had done a few shows together as a duo. She played okay guitar back then but that was enough to allow her to write some great songs. The band Fuzzy recorded her tune "Christmas", one of my favorites to play with her, and later it was also covered by the Posies, I believe. Florence's prior experience with the Chromatics also gave her a good, strong stage presence necessary to stand in front of a band without an instrument- something that unnerves many former instrumentalists but didn't visibly affect her. John Rosato and Ricky made a good solid rhythm section, while Jon is probably the most satisfying guitarist I ever worked with. His parts were always complimentary and his experience made him a super-quick study who learned tunes as fst as I could show them to him. The two guitar band should always work in a way that both guitars function as a single instrument, like some Indian god who has four hands and twelve strings. This can be heard on most Stones records and on all the Beatles stuff and is something I can't live without in a band, particularly on vocal sections of tunes. Jon Macey was a pro and a half in that respect. The only other experience that parallels playing with him has been with Dave "Bone" Pedersen in the early bones (when we were still a four piece) and a handful of shows I did with John Felice sitting in around 1995.

Jon and John, from our first Flo and Joe show at the Middle East.

I was too much of a mess to hold this band together- I was barely holding myself together at the time. Florence's schedule as a Catholic grammar school lay teacher was tough to work with, and other members of the band had their own issues at the time. We did a single show at the Middle East, though, that made the time spent at rehearsals more than worthwhile. A group of nuns from the school that Flo taught in had trekked in from Somerville to attend the show . As the end of the set came Florence -- although she is by no means a prude -- was squirming; she asked might we end the set with a different number than the one we'd planned on. Partly because I'm an evil-minded bastard who rejoices in the social discomfort of even my closest friends, and partly because I figured "one day she'll look back on this and have a good laugh", I said "absolutely not". Florence could easily have refused to sing, and been well within her rights and authority since it was a partnership, but being the trooper that she is, she shrugged and said "ok". We were closing with Iggy Pop's "Cock in My Pocket", which she had to start by singing the opening lines:
"I've got my cock in my pocket and I'm heading down the old highway!"
plus some other innocent, demure lines later in the tune like "gonna whip it on you baby want to see your blood today" and (my personal fave) "I just wanna fuck and I don't want no romance". I made a point of announcing "hey everyone, Florence has something special with her that she wants to tell you all about", while she blushed and said "why don't we just start playing it and I'll come in later...". She apologized to the sisters before starting, saying "please don't tell my students about this", which struck me as so funny I could hardly play the song. Imagine, Sister Mary Grace or whatever announcing to the class: "well, students, some of the other Sister of Perpetual Motion and I attended a lovely musical recital last night, and your teacher Ms. Doore performed a splendid version of a composition... by James Osterberg...entitled 'Cock in My Pocket'- although I must add that the sisters and I harbored a strong suspicion that she actually had the aforementioned appendage in the specified location...now, please turn to page 12 in your catechism textbooks "

After Flo and Joe broke up Jon spent a while reorganizing, and then put together Macey's Parade. The network debut of an early version of the group occurred spontaneously at a gig I was playing with my own band at the time, the Troublemakers. Jon and English Steve, who sang and played congas, asked if they might do a bit of a set after we had played. As I was booking the Middle East at the time, and we had enough time for it, I said "sure". First Steve and Jon got up and we played "Foggy Notion" by the Velvet Underground, with yours truly on second guitar, Mente drummer Greg Mahoney on bass, and Scatterfield vocalist Dutch on drums. Then Greg was replaced by Jon's bass player and we did "The Clinic", a very cool song Jon wrote about the ball and chain of methadone treatment (hey, it beats shooting dope, but it does have it's downside). Soon thereafter John Rosato and I joined Jon in recording some of his songs at a home 4-track studio run by a friend of his. They turned out really well, and a solo section of one of the songs can be heard in my resume on the Audio Jukebox section.

Jon plays while English Steve sings "The Clinic".

The definitive recordings of Jon's material, however, would occur two years later, with different personnel and in real studios. The band recorded some of Jon's songs that we'd been doing- notably the sardonic ballad about methadone treatment "The Clinic", which I think is a great tune. Working with veteran crack guitarist Joe Martino and a crew of otherwise new faces Jon made a melodic and powerful record that speaks to his skill as a songwriter, singer and guitarist. Jon continues to play out at the time of this writing, January 1999. I'd learned through the grapevine in the summer of 1998 that he had been doing shows with the very talented Sal Baglio of the Stompers, a fellow East Bostonian whose work I admire a lot. This group was called the Bittersweets, and the name seems to have predicted the eventual outcome of the outfit, now disbanded. In January of '98 Jon wrote to me with a few fun facts relating to this article:
" 'Fox Pass' is 2 words as in 'faux pas', which is what it was based on. Interestingly, my new project involves Michael Roy, the lead guitarist in F.P. and Tom Dickie. He has moved to the Cape and we have been writing and recording new songs. We are using John Jules on drums who was the drummer in the most famous version of Fox Pass ( the version that played the Orpheum and Paul's Mall). I have a project studio now and am trying to become a savvy engineer."
I have no doubt that with Jon's penchant for survival in the all-too-perilous world of rock music, he'll meet his goal and be a hot shit engineer before you know it.