Deep in the heart of Roxbury where few of us have reason to regularly go hidden between moving and storage companies, cab garages, and a neighborhood watering hole, is Fort Apache South, perhaps the most talked about studio in the Boston area. The buzzer, nailed to a small board which dangled the buzzer's wires, produced a mangled response from the intercom. "zzzzhooizz-ittzz? 'It's Doug from the Noise' "zzztrytheduh. iZZITTOPPN?" 'NO, IT'S STILL LOCKED." ZZZWAYTAMINTAZZZ." Tim O'Heir, Apache engineer, opens the door. "Sorry, sometimes the door latch doesn't work. C'mon in. Joe's upstairs."

Inside the studio's control room, one would never think it was located in an area of the city where person and property are a bit more at risk than usual. It's a different world behind that big window in front of the soundboard, and even different-er on the far side of the glass, inside the recording area. There stood three young men aound a microphone, hands and arms folded like innocent choir boys, headphones on each one. My ears are aurally strangled by seriously vicious sounds. "HERE'S ONE FOR THE LADS! HERE'S ONE FOR THE LADS! Oi! Oi! Oi!" It's members of Slapshot working on a project called Stars and Stripes. "SKINHEADS ON THE RAMPAGE!" Very accurate vocalizations, but as yet, Joe Harvard hasn't appeared. The glass between the rooms distorts my vision. "Isn't that Joe in there on the left? I ask. Tim gives me that 'What, are you on drugs?'- look. "He's right there". I'm still in the dark. "There on the sofa" Tim informs.

Buried in front of the sound board, under all the monitor speakers, lay Joe Harvard, reeling from the cold capsules he took earlier. "Sorry I'm so out of it," Joe appologizes, "Everybody is sick lately." "Staying up late doen't help either, like last night at the Plough," I joke. (Joe has been a fixture at the Plough and Stars in Cambridge, on Monday nights for quite a while now. It's an open jam session, all are welcome). "Yeah, but the Plough is lots of fun. We have three sets of material now, so we can play with almost anyone on something." "Do you work at the studio late at night too?" I inquire. "Well the studios (Fort Apache South, 16 tracks in Roxbury; Fort Apache North 24 tracks in Cambridge) are working all day from 10am to about 1 or 2 am. That's a pretty long day. So, when someone calls up and asks for a special rate for an all night session, it's like hey that's even more work, and to work all night when your ears are shot from working all day isn't going to help the quality of the session. I have done marathon sessions, though. When the Neats were doing Crash At Crush, we did a 19 hour day of recording. I'm real proud of that record. People still call me and say "You know, that's a really great record.' I remember wanting to put some keyboards and backing vocals in it, and The Neats were like 'No way. We want to keep it simple.' But I tried a few things and they saw what I was talking about and ended up liking it."

As an experienced and accomplished producer, Joe likes to drive into his work. "When I work with a band, I need to have my hand in the production of the music, not to just sit back and take their money. I like to go to their rehearsals and to the shows, make suggestions about instruments and song structures. In both studios, there's about 25 different guitars and 15 different amps, some old Fenders, Ampegs, Marshalls. I think it gives a record more depth to have different sounds for each song. To me, a recording studio is like a kitchen, and the guitars and amplifiers are the spices.!" Recently I've been working with these two Danish women called Maria Excommunicata, who are now based in New York. I arranged some songs and played rhythm guitar. Also, I have a tape of live stuff from the Middle East that I've been working on. Another band I'm working with is GWAR, who have some pretty out-landish stage attire."

These projects, and keeping two recording studios running keep Joe Harvard pretty busy. That's why he's put together a crack team of engineering staff. "The engineers at Fort Apache (Sean Slade, Paul Kolderie, Lou Giordano, Tim O'Heir, and Tom Hamilton) are all armed and dangerous! Some people are nervous when they can't get the engineer they had last time. All these guys work together so they pretty much know all the same things, the same ins and outs.

Fort Apache North and South, have credits up the alley. Throwing Muses, Volcano Suns, Pixies, Big Dipper, The Bristols, The Boogaloo Swamis, Busted Statues, and on and on. They've been in the Phoenix and the Boston Globe. They should be listed on your band's next studio effort too.

{NOTE: Visitors to the club row on Boston's Landsdowne St. might notice that "Bill's Bar" has a sign identical to the one above. No coincidence; it's the same sign. When this article was written, I was asked where I wanted the photos taken, and I chose one of my fave local architectural features: the defunct Bill's Bar. The blue and white ceramic bricks surrounding four central panes of bank glass created an undulating, Arabesques effect, and the counterpoint of the red on white sign and deco letters made it a marvelous facade. I was negotiating to try and re-open the long-closed lounge on Mass Ave. by Berkeley School of Music, as a rock club, but I discovered to my chagrin that the neighborhood association was adamantly opposed to having live music at the location, and had already shot down other attempts over the years. One day I went by to gaze at those hypnotic concentric squares and the sign was gone. The next time I saw it, it had moved a dozen blocks uptown to become the visual hook that the current Bill's Bar on Landsdowne hangs it's hat on.-- JH)

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