LaPeste: Peter Dayton, Roger Tripp, Mark Karl
photo by Chip Rock Dayton

If I was forced at gunpoint to pick the dozen most exciting and important Boston bands of the punk and post-punk underground periods, I would have to put LaPeste high on the list. During the band's Beanscene years, when they crafted their sound and did their most vital work, few bands could match the outpouring of energy that their live sets generated. Their set during the finals of the '79 Rock and Roll Rumble remains a classic, as does that of that years winner, the Neighborhoods. I have had them both on bootleg cassettes, and after years of repeated listening I know I would have been hard pressed- had I been a judge -to choose between the two. The year before , in fact, at the very first Rumble (Rumble Zero, before WBCN stepped in as a sponsor) LaPeste had taken the garland against a field as impressive as any since.

To witness a LaPeste set when the band was at its' best was akin to standing just outside a hurricane, looking in. Drummer Roger Tripp was at one at the same time the eye of the hurricane and the fury of it, his arms a blur of percussive motion, his head at the dead-center calm from whence he would sing his vocal parts. Peter Dayton shared this controlled chaos, often rooted to one spot on the stage while only his arms and hands moved as they tore thick chunks of riff from the Gibson SG he favored onstage, his head bobbing with a whiplash freneticism that made you worry it might just snap off at any moment and land at bass player Mark Karl's feet. Karl anchored the bottom with his Travis Bean bass, lights reflecting off the aluminum-neck headstock while tiny snatches of Tripp were visible through its' characteristic "T" cut-out. Karl favored a tight, fairly clipped approach, with taut, muscular notes replacing the obese, bottom-heavy sound favored by many of his four-string contemporaries. The rhythm section sound was never thin, though, thanks to the oversized tom-toms that Tripp used to great effect, tightly tuned toms as large as some jazz drummers' kick drums, and the density of the notes from Karl's weighty Travis Bean.

Roger Tripp
photo by Chip Rock Dayton

Mark Karl
photo by Chip Rock Dayton

Peter Dayton
photo by Chip Rock Dayton

On songs like "Don't Wanna Die in My Sleep Tonight" and the evergreen classic "Better Off Dead", the band honed a dense, edgy three-piece sound that belied the sparse instrumentation creating it. They were masters of the subtle, repeating riff and the open string drone, marking the path followed- in different ways - by bands like U2, the Smiths and Husker Du. LaPeste songs were often filmic, and they could sway lyrically from the film noir of "Spymaster" to quickie power pop confessionals ("You're Too Cute", "I Don't Know Right From Wrong") to the seedy slice-of-life of "Better Off Dead" like scenes in a movie.

During the years they spent in Boston, LaPeste were one of the most popular and critically loved groups on the scene, and their live shows never failed to generate real excitement, a sense that this was an event you were witnessing. In that respect, they had the stuff of stardom. But like most of the others I'd put in that list of the dozen best Boston bands, their star never really ascended. They got close, though. Ric Ocasek of the Cars was one of the people who recognized the band's potential, and he joined them in the studio to produce "Don't Wanna Die in My Sleep Tonight", "Let Me Sleep" and "Don't Know Right From Wrong"- which also figured Cars bandmate Greg Hawkes on keyboards. While the tracks were locally popular, they failed to attract the attention of the kind of label that could have launched LaPeste beyond the East Coast audiences that already knew them. Guitarist Peter Dayton turned down the "power" and turned up the "pop", moved on to the Peter Dayton Band, and scored with yet another seminal Boston group. Drummer Roger Tripp went on to other pastures...I confess I don't know which bands he was in, but I know I saw his name around for a while after that. The excellent reissued LaPeste LP, on Matador, is dedicated to the memory of Roger Tripp, so it seems he joins the long list of key figures in the Boston music scene who are no longer with us. That LP includes the July, '79 Rumble set, professionally recorded by WBCN, as well as the first single and the Ric Ocasek tracks, and it I am thankful to both BCN and Matador for preserving the LaPeste legacy for the next millenium.

Typical weekend at the Rat back in the late 70's, when you really got your five bucks worth (plus, remember these were in those halcyone days of yore, when a two-band bill meant that each group played two sets in alternation)! The cutting edge guitar assault of Burma and LaPeste on Sunday, and the more mainstream power pop of relocated New Yorker's Shane Champagne the next weekend.