MIDDLE
EAST RESTAURANT - HELLDORADO
by Joe Harvard
In 1970 I was eleven. I was corresponding with my 18 year old brother in Vietnam, building plastic models of "power cars", and hiding my dungaree jacket in the backyard before I went in the house- because it had an American Flag pinned onto it, and my mom threatened to beat my butt if she caught me wearing it. I didn't know where Cambridge even was- indeed, I wouldn't visit there until I was almost sixteen. But events were unfolding that would touch my life significantly in years to come. That same year an older, quiet, Lebanese couple started a sleepy little restaurant business in Cambridge's Central Square. It had a tiny kitchen and a half a dozen tables for serving customers. Four years later, in 1974, Joseph and Nabil Sater came to the United States from Lebanon. Like other Lebanese leaving behind the country they loved, their family had suffered tragic losses due to the religious violence endemic to the area. The final incentive to seek a new home probably came after the compound that housed several generations of the Sater family was attacked by a mob. As with many of their compatriots this tragic violence induced the Saters to uproot, and like many Lebanese-Americans they were to achieve success based on solid family bonds and a strong work ethic. After arriving in America the Saters joined with the couple who owned the Middle East, bringing with them all the drive and business acumen they had accumulated in the old country. That same year they bought the business outright. This was to have serious- and very fortunate -future ramifications for the Boston Rock scene.
Below:
"Helldorado is us: Billy Ruane, Greg "Skeggie" Kendall, Joe Harvard",
Fast
forward back to the very start of 1988, circa Billy's birthday. When Billy
decided to throw himself a birthday party he endeavored to invite all
his favorite bands. Bonnie over at T.T. the Bear's had given Billy
the room for that night, and he'd then asked Skeg and I to host the proceedings.
As the invited bands began to respond, most in the affirmative, it soon
became clear that there were going to be WAY too many groups for one night's
festivities. I can't recall who was the first to turn to the others and
suggest popping in right next door to the Middle East Restaurant to ask
for the use of their very ample stage. Recently Billy told me that Joyce
Linnehan actually had done the first rock show there, a month or so
before his party, with Roger Miller and Danny Mydlak- but
he was wrong...it was Mission of Burma genius Roger Miller's wife,
Su Millerz (now an accomplished slam-poet, Su also 'invented' the
Punk Rock, a novelty version of the Pet Rock sporting a
mohawk) who first put rock into those hallowed rooms. Roger Miller relates: And here I was thinking all these years that we were the first men on that moon. I'd been in there for the Arabic music and Belly Dancing on a number of nights, and bowled frequently at the candlepin lanes downstairs (now the big stage), but as yet hadn't met Nabil or Joseph, the owners. So we strolled out of T.T.'s and around the corner to Mass. Ave. and went on in to ask for the owners. They turned out to be beautiful cats, and quicker than you can say "Baba Ganoush" Billy's monaural party became stereo. The night eventually ended up a resounding success despite the awesome logistics of putting on over a dozen bands in separate rooms while drinking and smoking at toxic levels- and having Billy Ruane in charge.
I'd
helped open a new club on Huntington Ave. a few years back, a place called
Jimbo's (now Huskies) that I convinced the new (and very
conservative) owners would be a perfect place for rock shows. I'd booked
the room for a few months, with the help of Mark Rosenfield (manager
for Slow Children and the bones), and got screwed over on
the deal. Even after a healthy opening night, with the Remakes (ex-Real
Kids) and the bones (Jonathan Richman played drums for the bones that
night, making it the closest thing to an original Modern Lovers reunion
ever, though John Felice and Richman were on stage for seperate sets),
the owners were unimpressed. One was a Winchester water inspector, the
other a nephew of powerful North End restaraunteur Joe Tecce), and they
complained that their pals who came to the show thought it was too loud.
I remember one night in particular we had gone through hoops to book the
popular Peter Dayton, and the owners pulled the bill to put in
Delphina, a band one of their pals had seen at a wedding! A lot
of effort went into Jimbo's, and all for naught. So I knew how much work
was involved getting a new venture off the ground. But the Middle East
was a very similar room to Jimbo's, and it was perfect for rock shows,
so I was half hookd already.
I remember telling Joseph and Nabil that I supported the idea but I was a bit too busy with owning the Fort and playing in a zillion bands and my bowling league and all, but when I talked to them the next day they made it clear that while they liked the three of us my participation was mandatory or no dice. That was probably because I owned a business so I may have seemed safe (Ha!), or maybe I appeared to be the least potentially dangerous ( Double Ha!) because I was running a weekly gig at the Plough and Stars...either way it was too good an opportunity to lose so I agreed to be one of the principals. I think they were looking at Billy and thinking "hmmm, he truly looks like a psychopath", maybe they'd seen him dancing at the party or something, leaping nine feet in the air like some pneumatic dervish on No-Doze and Budweiser. They needn't have worried as Billy was the real mover behind the booking policy, he truly found his niche and did a fantastic job getting the place off the ground. The deal was this: we got one night a week to book and if we made it work Joseph and Nabil would talk about others. Hence the Tuesday night series was inaugurated on January 26, 1988. Skeg and I hosted the shows, sort of taking the vibe from the coffeehouse thing and moving it from the Rat to the Middle East. Billy knew a kajillion bands, not only locals but national groups as well. I had pretty good connections through the Fort and was close to a lot of the old "Boston 500" crowd, and Skeggie, shit he knew everyone, with especially good connections to the Southern, New York and Rhode Island rock communities. Billy said we needed a name and since I was pretty good at coining monnikers (Fort Apache, So-So Sound, Little Big Horn Productions) I got the job and came up with Helldorado Productions. I chose it because the Middle East was obviously a gold mine, a "land of gold" for punkards and drunkards, but I also had an idea it was going to be tough for a while.
 Kathy Lang and Sonya Sater take a much deserved break in a Middle East booth.  Terri, the upstairs booking agent, and Skeggie, Minister-Without-Portfolio and spiritual guide.  Franks, expert mixologist and front bar manager, and his photogenic "favorite dishwasher", Robert, . Cash-wise, nobody was making squat for a long while. Helldorado made no income and noone drew a paycheck. We spent all we made on putting the shows together and paying bands, in fact I think it was well over a year before Billy was paid anything. He would borrow money, take personal funds and use them to cover a guarantee if the club couldn't come up with it- whatever it took. But the bar was making money, it was getting easier to bring crowds and bands into the club, and progress was being made. Things went so well that the hallowed Friday and Saturday Belly Dancing was bumped and Helldorado became a weekend enterprise. It was a serene life, Billy calling when he woke up to ask about bookings, then periodically through the day calling up to ask my opinion and Skeg's opinion of umpteen changes often involving out of town bands I'd never heard of. "Joe, listen, there's a problem with DogBalls, they can't open on the Tuesday for PaPaMamboneck but I was wondering would it be OK do you think if I let them have the Sunday headlining for Nueva Puta and Splorch, since they'll be between Providence and New York that weekend?" Pause on the line. "Oh, sure Bill, that sounds good." Five minutes pass, phone rings, similar conversation takes place, process repeats several times over course of day, finally ends with a call something like "It's OK, ahhhhhm, never mind, DogBalls can make it after all. Do you think that'll work?" Pause on line. "Oh, sure Bill, that sounds good."
The Middle East grew fast. There were so many creative and energetic people looking for a place in town to make their own that soon there was a revolving cast of dozens of regulars who served as both paid and unpaid staff. Among those who helped to build the club into the institution it remains today were: Joyce Linnehan, Jennifer Cares, Martin Doyle, Jodie , Artie Freedman, Francis DeMenno, soundmen Eric and Sluggo, Kathy Houlihan, Amy from Athens, Jennifer and Wayne, Hogs on Ice, and three dozen others who you can write me and remind me of. Mr. Ruane was continually trying to come up with new and improved ways of running the enterprise. Early patrons can recall the whole laminated membership card project that went on, and on, and on...The idea was to issue a card to regulars that gave discounts on shows, but as the mailing list grew it became unmanageable. I think Billy had managed to buy the laminating machine by salting away a buck from each door fee, but then it didn't work or some such crap. Later there was a VIP Pass for Life as well, it was funny- the card read "Don't you know who I am?" and your name. There was the whole Music for Ten Dozens marketing that Billy did for the original room, to make it seem exclusive instead of just small when shows began to fill the room to capacity- and beyond. It did help keep that atmosphere of intimacy that we had the first year or so. You knew a lot of the patrons and the crowd would actually try to make the waitresses job easier, get out of her way instead of in it. And then Joe or Nabil were always showing up and giving someone a plate of hummus or a piece of baklava or a chicken sandwich gratis. There'd be Ruane flying about and laughing maniacally, climbing off his moped with his hair wildly confused. I always loved Billy, but after that I got to know him better and I gained a lot of respect for him. He is THE Boston rock fan, and found a way to give something back to the bands he loved: the best club in the city. And that's the story...without Billy there would never have been a rock club at the Middle East, never mind three separate rooms for music. The only thing I regret is that the Central Square Lanes bowling alley had to go eventually, but it was a sacrifice needed to build the large room downstairs which hosts the bigger shows nowadays. Maybe the finest hour of those early days was when the Licensing Board started to crack down on local clubs and bars. Some of the less cheery local residents were raising a stink, a minority really of curmudgeons with a hair across their ass as almost nobody lived within range of most of these places. Central Square has always been, and continues to be, a place with an active nightlife and loads of people roaming around after dark. Rowdies came from a few local joints and bars, some goofy MIT students, and a lot were residents of the nearby projects returning from Boston after closing. There was a hearing at City Hall. There must have been a hundred people there, most of whom had come to support the Middle East. A few of us got up and said our piece, I talked about how as a business owner in Cambridge I'd be proud and pleased to have Joe and Nabil and their establishment in my neighborhood. They improved, not diminished the quality of life, and were good neighbors from any vantage point. That meeting made me realize that there was a sort of family that had built around the club, an unlikely but very functional amalgam of local Cantabridgians, Gen X punks, Lebanese-Americans, and roots rockers. Even as I began to fade more into the background I was really proud of that whole episode. The music community had lost a lot of clubs without a whimper- just down the street they'd turned one into a parking lot- but this was one time when we were able to have some voice in the process. I'm still proud of that, and of being even a small part of getting that scene started at a time when it was sesperately needed. One last point. Right from the start Billy and I discussed how it sucked when a club sank and all the great shows and music just vanished. We agreed to try to document everything at the Middle East, literally every show, to make a record of the birth and growth of a new scene. Every show we put money aside for video and audio recording, and I kept a journal of every show with comments, high points and low points (sadly it was lost in Columbus). The idea was to build a library, but as soundmen came and went and videographers were replaced the tapes were spread around, some weren't turned over to Billy and then the cameraperson moved. I had originally held the first bunch of four track tapes, but gave them to Billy who gave them to whoever and now I wonder where they are. Maybe Billy still has the masters. The first year and a half- at least -was videotaped and had stereo or four track audio recorded, and now that ten years have passed it'd be nice to round the tapes up and throw a cassette and vhs tape together for posterity. I do have the masters from one special night. That night I asked Paul Kolderie and Sean Slade to come down from the Fort and we set up a 16-track one-inch recorder, taping the night's events. I was playing with four bands that night. Unfortunately I was so drained from the whole setup procedure that my performances were less than stellar. The Lazy Susan set was not one of their best, the Bones reunion was below par, and my own band was uninspired. The coolest thing was the One Rehearsal All-Star Band that played a dozen of my favorite cover tunes. I invited some of the players I most admire to participate and that stuff sounds hot. That was as close as I got to making the Live at the Middle East release I was dying to record. But somewhere, all those shows are waiting for an editor... UPDATE. I recently got an email from the very lovely and tres sexy Jody Urbati, former (and the most incongrously wholesome looking) member of the backup vocal group known as the Cockettes. I had played with the latter and Jody in the always-outrageous Peecocks (remember "Pets Who Died", which got significant local airplay around 1988?). Jody is known as the Longest Lasting Cockette -- whether this was because she remained in the band so long, or for reasons known only to her ever-so-lucky husband, is open to speculation; it's a nice title, though, sort of like being the Sugar Daddy of backing vocalists. She certainly enjoyed the lengthiest tenure of any Cockette (I myself enjoyed the lengthiest tenner.... but that's another story!), though, and wrote to me in 2000 or so to say: "Hey
Joe , how are you? Was reading your Helldorado story, all jazzed to read
about myself (concieted or what) and that's where the story ended! When
Billy's videographer moved to Cali in early 1990 I took over recording
for Helldorado every show every night and 2 shows on Sunday (free tube
steaks and $1 Keystones!) for years. I lived at the Middle East 7 days
a week! Besides the Middle East I ge,
The Rat, etc. etc. In the almost 10 years of shooting for Billy I have
maintained a library of thousands of bands, my favorites being the years
thru to 1995 when bshot
shows at Green St. Station, Bunratty's, Nightstay that time things had
changed. I'm still archiving to this day. Other "archivist" were Artie
and Francis, as you know, and Sluggo (audio). So if you are looking for
tapes, I've gottem baby. And I know Billy got some returned to him from
earlier videographers, plus there's Artie and Francis. I always thought
it was such a waste to have these little gems just sitting on the shelf."
Visit
these other sites for bands in the Middle East Restaurant family tree:
the bones... Fort Apache ... Mr. Happy ... 500 TV ... Local 22's ... Mission of Burma ... Roger Miller ... Pink Cadillac ... Lifeboat... Brothers Kendall... |
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In
the summer and fall of 1988 Greg "Skeggie" Kendall and I were having a
blast. We were playing together in Goo, the world's least rehearsed
pickup band, as well as in Boston country-rock pioneer Dave Bone's
group, the Jolly Ranchers (until Dave fired virtually the entire
band one at a time- Skeg first, me last!). Along with the amazing Bob
Kendall we also made up NACO: the Noise Award Ceremony Orchestra,
a great gig wherein we received winners' names a week ahead of the show,
learned 30 seconds or so of one of their tunes and played it as they came
up for their Noise Award. This segued organically into co-hosting a Sunday
night variety show at the Rat, done as a coffeehouse except in place of
beatniks and caffeine it was post-punk psychos and weed. We had a house
band, the Different Drummers, which included Sean "King" Devlin
and Goo playing nothing but percussion instruments. The shows went well
and we tried to feature members of local bands solo, in oddball configurations
or exhibiting a seldom-seen talent, like Larry Bangor's dissertation
on the tomato, or Mike Cudahy and Steve Michener from Big
Dipper doing a song they wrote about Side Butlers and Boxing Day.
Billy Ruane was a regular, just as he was a regular of just about
every Boston area club I can ever remember.
I
had known Billy for a while. As soon as I began to frequent clubs back
when I was a still-illegal seventeen I'd seen Billy around. It was damn
hard not to notice him, dressed either in his trademark trenchcoat or
a suit jacket, often wearing a tie, he stood apart from the average seventies
rock patron. But it was his behavior that made really him such a standout.
It is nearly impossible to explain the way that Billy moves when he gets
"into it". There's the stance: he stands in one spot, crouched slightly
like a ska dancer frozen in mid-skank. His arms start churning, moving
his beer up and down in front of him in a motion not unlike a judge banging
his gavel, somehow managing most of the time not to spill it, as though
through some supreme power of concentration and split second timing he
causes the bottle to begin its downward journey just a fraction
of a second before the rising beer hits the top of the bottle. When he
does get carried away and jettison liquid it mysteriously almost always
lands on him alone, a factor that has probably helped keep him alive for
all these years despite the attention he draws from surly bartenders,
skeptical bouncers and aggressive, drunken fellow clubbers. Then there
is the Billy Bouce- more of a leap actually. At unpredicatable moments,
when the mood hits, he will leap- explode kind of -straight up into the
air, both legs tucked into his chest and the omnipresent beer raised high,
then come slamming down into the ground hard. There are variations on
this, but in all the years I've known Billy, all the hundreds of times
I've watched this move, I have only seen him slip and fall once, and when
he did he added a break-dancing sort of floor spin and came up grinning,
so it looked like an intentional addition to the maneuver. At times the
Billy Bounce is repeated in multiples. It reminds me of when I was small
and I truly believed there was way I could fly if I could only figure
out the right way to launch myself. I'd jump as high as I could, over
and over, each time trying to "stay up" a fraction of a section longer
than the last. The very first time I noticed Billy he was executing an
early version of this move at Cantones , during an Unnatural
Axe show. There was nobody in the club beyond the two of us and a
small handful of other patrons. And yet he somehow managed to keep careening
across the room and bumping into my table. Every time he did it spilled
my drink, and I was getting pissed. Finally, I propped my foot against
the side of the chair opposite mine, and at he right moment I gave it
a strong push with my leg, sending it sailing across the dance floor and
right into Billy. It missed, though he saw the missile whip by. I launched
another, and this time it knocked him on his square on his ass. He popped
up like one of those inflatable Bozo dolls with the rounded bottom, the
ones that are impossible to knock over. He was grinning madly, and mouthed
the words "thank you". I couldn't help but laugh at this crazy sum'bitch,
and henceforth I regarded him with the warmth one accords to the truly
unbalanced souls who always enliven a dead night at any club. A few years
after that, when I was a sophomore at Harvard, that I found out Billy
was also a very intelligent person. I would see him around the Square.
He always seemed to be coming from Widener or one of the other libraries,
struggling under the weight of an enormous stack of books. One day when
I asked what class all those books were for he told me he wasn't a student-
he just liked to read...the ten volumes he had with him, ranging from
history to anthropology to literary fiction, were his "week's pleasure
reading"!
A
few days after the show we were talking on the phone and Skeg and I both
hit on the same idea: Boston needed a new room, WE needed a new room.
The attrition rate for clubs was far outstripping the replacement rate,
to the point where whoever was booking the Rat was like some fucking autocratic
poobah and the bands who'd helped build that place couldn't get a phone
call answered. A call was made to Billy. He'd barely answered before laying
the same idea on us, and a club was born. Of course, we still had to talk
Joe and Nabil into the whole idea! Billy hit them first, but they were
a bit cool on the idea so we all three returned to gang up on them. I
was a bit ambivalent about being too deeply involved. I was too busy having
only just opened a second studio (Fort Apache North) and taken
a new partner (Gary Smith).
It
didn't take long for all of us- Skeg, Billy, Nabil, Joseph and I - to
see the possibilities. Joyce Linnehan (then of Green St. Station and now
of SubPop) was another early principal, she gave us a lot of help with
the booking. Her experience was invaluable, especially when we got a second
night (Thursday) and then a third (Sunday), plus she was grounded in a
way that offset Billy's hyper-driven super-fan approach. Billy loved bands
and would kill himself trying to get a band a guarantee even though he
knew we'd take a beating at the door; he still will pay for shows he believes
in out of his own pocket, even ten years later. Joyce was more of a realist,
she was a real pro. She helped Billy with strategy, things like booking
a money making show before a prestige gig with an out of town band
so the former paid for the latter. At first I was pissed because Billy
would pay a touring band more than the locals, giving them good guarantees
even though we knew nobody would show for their first few gigs
in town. I said "hey let's treat the homeboys with more respect if anything,
not less", and I had a "happiness begins at home" sort of philosophy.
But when I thought of it from the bands point of view, how much it means
to a touring group to know "well, at least we'll make a hundred-fifty
in Boston and that pays for our gas for another week", I realized Billy
was right. When we were on the road these things were so important to
me and mine: a little bit of a guarantee, an offer of a free meal and
a maybe a place to crash. So a lot of the booking policy followed Billy's
philosophy (Ruane's Rules of Disorder?) and was geared towards being fair
to the bands, promoting a scene and the music out of genuine love for
it all.
Joe
and Nabil were great to work with. For one thing they had a successful
business already so there wasn't this huge pressure to make the rock thing
work. For another they had their shit way together, and knew how to run
a business properly so the shift to rock club was seamless. And lastly
they are just two of the nicest guys on the entire planet, and the rest
of their family that operate and staff the place are great people as well.
Name another club north of Virginia where they fed the bands every night
(and the stale bread ends that they kept in the bowl on top of the freezer
at Cantones doesn't count). The door is always a straight count with no
shenanigans (at the Rat if you didn't have Mitch or one of the staff like
Gregg working and watching out for you, forget it; there were nights when
the unsupervised Southie bouncers would look you in the eye with this
wad of bills in their hands and say "tough night, here's seventy five
bucks"). Before long in that first year Joseph and Nabil's fear turned
to bemusement. After a few months of democracy Billy was doing such a
bang-up job that they could see he didn't need hand-holding and both Skeggie
and I faded back a bit. We were on the phone one afternoon and almost
simultaneously told one another we were going to lay back: "I can't take
it any more" may have been the exact words we both used. We agreed that
Billy had really found his niche anyway, he was kicking ass so why get
in his way? We still did some hosting and Skeggie and I booked shows for
years after that (Skeg is back as of this writing, April 1998!), but "just
get out the way and let the gentleman do his thing" was the rule. The
whole project had started to become communal anyway, and pretty soon there
were all sorts of people involved in booking and promoting shows- most
at Billy's invitation. In fact it got a bit chaotic for a while around
1990, when you didn't know who the hell you were supposed to call for
a gig- it was a situation of "if it's Friday this must be Rome". I finally
took every other Wednesday as my night to book until I left for Ohio in
'91. Billy was the glue that held the whole thing together for a long
time, though, whether logistically or spiritually. Jennifer Cares from
T.T.'s also helped out greatly when Skeggie and I left by stepping in
to fill the breach as Billy's partner, and later others such as Martin
Doyle handled the primary booking spot. In Jim Sullivan's Boston
Globe article "Ruane and Cares Rock the Middle East Cafe" Jennifer says
"Billy and I squabble a lot". That seemed to me to be very diplomatic.
