If there is one single place that I could say completely changed my life it'd have to be the Record Garage. It was there that I began to truly immerse myself into the Boston music scene, there that I met many of the musicians who would become friends and colleagues. It was also there that my recreational drug use spiraled into full-blown addiction. It was the sort of place that could only have existed in the middle of the decade of the nineteen-seventies, and it was an inconspicuous but integral hub of the Boston rock world. Through it's doors passed most of the key players in that world, and it counted among it's employees at one time or another Billy West (voices of Wren and Stimpy and the Spacejam characters, Howard Stern Show, WBCN's Big Mattress), Billy Cole (Real Kids, Taxi Boys, Baby's Arm, roadie for Reddy Teddy and the Modern Lovers), Greg Tawa (Streets, Johnny A's Hidden Secret , manager at Boston founder/guitarist Tom Schulz's Rockman factory), Billy Loosigian (Willie "Loco" Alexander and the Boom Boom Band, Joneses, Andy Pratt), and Peter Lembo (manager of the Stompers). Owner Jack Griffin also ran the Cambridge Music Complex, where members of the Nervous Eaters, Joe Perry Project and a score of other bands worked, and where the group Boston rehearsed. The old mattress factory next to the Complex was where Tom Scholz started the original factory that built his Rockman , the hugely popular devices that miniaturized amps and emulated the stellar guitar effects Schulz developed for the first Boston LP (I once snuck into Boston's practice space to look at the Rockman prototype, a floor pedal with traffic-style lights marked Stop! Go! and The Works!).

The Record Garage began it's life as a TV repair shop. Former English teacher Jack Griffin opened the place at 12A Eliott St., in Cambridge's Harvard Square, with the intention of selling and repairing new and used stereos and televisions. Soon, in response to requests from customers, used records were added to the shop, this of course being well before the boom in the used records/CD market (well, certainly long before the CD market, as they hadn't been invented yet!). The tiny basement operation stuttered along until the arrival of Midwestern emigrant Greg Tawa- then guitarist for Streets, who were one of the most musically talented bands of the period, although the fact that they had a more mainstream style of hard rock, reminiscent of Aerosmit, kept them from being as popular as they should've been in that punk-prone era. Bandmates with Greg in Streets included drummer Bobby Lytle, Dean Cassell, Steve Hannon, and fellow guitarist Johnny A, who went on to form Johnny A's Hidden Secret, and is now a succesful solo blues-rock guitarist. Greg, (nicknamed Bernie by fellow RG employee Billy Cole, because Cole liked to tease him that he was "burnt") asked Jack Griffin if he might hang up a few guitars he was trying to sell on the wall of the store, in exchange for a commission on the sale. With nothing to lose Jack said "OK". When the guitars sold during the very first week, bells went off in the smiling owner's head. Soon they were actively seeking out used guitars and amplifiers, the walls and floor space of the cramped space filling with vintage equipment. By 1975 what little inventory was still left that related to TV's, stereos and records was stacked up in the dark back room used to put guitar cases. Boston's first store dedicated exclusively to used musical equipment had been born. At a time when musicians were just beginning to realize the advantages older instruments had over new one, it was a serendipitous event.

I first stepped into the Record Garage in the summer of my junior year in high school, that being 1975. I had only been playing a very short time, but I was already well on my way to being a manic gear-head. Predating the overvaluation of old instruments caused by collectors who purchased them as investments, the Garage was a wondrous place. Rows of Fenders and Gibsons from the 50's and 60's covered two walls, while the rest of the wall space was filled with now-rare instruments from Rickenbacker, Vox, Epiphone, Gretsch, Guild, and Martin. Oddball instruments like the Rickenbacker with Christmas fairy lights under the pickguard, the stand-up, fretless Ampeg electric bass, and the original Gibson EB1 violin bass came through so often that they barely caused a stir. It was a guitarist's dream place, a place to spend a long afternoon, perched on one of the amps that covered every foot of available floor space, copping riffs from the great players who passed through regularly. Over the next year I got to know the guys at the Garage pretty well, and like many, many other local players I would drop by for the entertainment as much as to check out the merchandise. And what a splendid show it always was. The cast of characters seemed endless, but the principle characters were nothing if not colorful. Little did I suspect that by the next year I would be good friends with several of the Garage crew, nor that by 1977 I would become an employee myself.

The owner, Jack Griffin, was a good natured, ever-smiling guy that was nice enough to hire some of the most unemployable people in history. This role was wholly appropriate, and in keeping with his appearance, as Jack resembled nothing so much as a younger, brown-haired Santa Claus. In the early days Jack was a fairly conservative guy- for a musician that is -in keeping with his former English teacher status. He watched the druggie hijinx that permeated the store with a mixture of bemusement, paternal concern and curiosity. Often times he'd see or overhear some drug-related incident, and he'd shake his head in bewilderment and say "you fuckin' guys!".

The RG manager was Billy Cole, [see Baby's Arm and Real Kids articles], scenester extraordinaire and babe magnet. Greg Tawa, whose guitars started the whole RG ball rolling, and Billy Loosigian of the Boom Boom Band- another early employee- -were both long gone by the time I started to work at the Garage. Tony Cazzone was the other full-time employee. Rail thin, with the black hair and dark eyes of a full-blooded Italian, Tony was taciturn. He often seemed sullen, if you didn't know him. Once you did, he had a great sense of humor and at times when he was really amused his eyes sparkled and he would giggle like a little kid. Most customers, however, never got that far, as both Billy and Tony had strong tendencies toward musical snobbery. It was their tastes that I quickly adopted as my own, eschewing the metal and pop I'd been listening to for roots bands like the Stones, and Yardbirds, as well as British Invasion and guitar heroes such as Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, early Eric Clapton and- the junkie king -Keith Richards. Hendrix was acknowledged as a genius, but his tendency for acid (as opposed to heroin) and his love child aura went against the grain of the darker, tougher material the Garage crew embraced. Indeed, nothing was worse than "hippy shit", those endless Grateful Dead acid jams, ponchos and moo-moos and bare feet. Beatle boots, leather, suede, heroin, the so-tough-I-can-afford-to-be-feminine attitude of Brian Jones and company...that, I soon learned, was where it was at. It was an education, and while I was impressionable I was also stubborn. I still listened to Yes, Hendrix, the Allman Brothers, Thin Lizzy and other "forbidden" groups in my spare time, still smoked pot ("that stinky hippy shit", Billy called it), still spent a lot of time with the crew of mostly-gay guys that my girlfriend had introduced me to. But I found that there was a great allure to the stylish decadence favored by Billy and Tony, who were walking embodiments of their ideals.

At this time I was playing in a band with my close friends Anthony Rauseo (Slow Children, Boys Say Go) and Ricky Risti (Ellis Island, Street Kid, Ball and Chain), two of the other two guys from Jeffries Point, East Boston that escaped into the Boston music scene. I had convinced the Jeffries Point Bicentennial Committee to hire my band for a July 4 block party, and to add enough money to hire another group as well. The other band I picked was Baby's Arm, the outfit that rehearsed at the Record Garage after hours, which Billy Cole was in along with Frank Rowe- it was a source of great amusement to friends of the band that Frank had chosen the group's name to describe Billy's legendary reproductive equipage. Sitting in the park outside my house with Billy and his beautiful red-headed girlfriend Kathy Does, Tony and his beautiful girl Maria, and my own teen queen Kathy Pompeo, I felt like I had arrived. Compared to the average Eastie residents these guys looked like rock stars, and Baby's Arm played a set the like of which was never before- nor since -seen in my old neighborhood.

It was the following fall of '76 that the Garage staff bestowed upon me the sobriquet and nom de guerre that I bear to this day: Joe Harvard. I had gotten completely out of my head eating quaaludes and shaved my head, but as I hadn't cut my hair first I was left with a bleeding, scabby scalp. My best friend and roommate Joe Beaulieu had come in as I swayed before the mirror, my head a mass of cuts and oddly cropped patches, and he got some scissors and cut it properly, helping me to finish the deed. When I walked into the Garage the next day, the staff was aghast. After I left, Tony was trying to explain to Billy who he'd seen with this insane, bald pate, and he said "you know, Joe...Joe...Harvard". And the name stuck as fast as the little green lint balls from the cheap felt beret I bought to hide my badly misshapen skull from the world. Then, in the summer of 1977, while I worked construction to save for a semester off I was planning that coming fall, my foot was badly crushed when a flatbed trailer I'd been standing on drove off too soon. My right foot was propped on one of the large tires as I hauled a steel form to the edge of the flatbed, and when the vehicle moved forward that foot was pulled into the wheel well, hit a cross-brace and got rolled into a ball. I was laid up for the summer with a mess of broken and dislocated bones, and come September I got my semester off- but without the vacation part. I wondered into the Garage one afternoon complaining about my boredom, and Jack offered me a job. When my foot healed and I returned to school, I went part time. Within months I got thrown out of Harvard, and asked to take the next year off for disciplinary reasons, and I went back to full time, sometimes filling in at the Music Complex as well. With my newly developed penchant for pain killers I fit right in. It wasn't long before I shot drugs for the first time with Tony, and became close friends and running buddies with Billy.

There were other cats who worked for Jack on a regular or semi-regular basis. His youngest brother Paul, a quiet, industrious kid, came in some days after school. Paul was a total non-druggie, he was bright and ambitious and straight-edged. His mild-manner was deceptive; it hid a dry sense of humor, often turned against the debauching habitues of the store. Paul was ambitious, and he never seemed to get over the fact that I got into Harvard- to this day he probably still regards it as an enormous administrative snafu. Paul was the "baby" of the Griffin family. Jack's next-youngest brother couldn't have been more different from Paul if he'd been purposely designed to be that way. Will- known to us all as Spider -was as un-ambitious as they come, and his taste for any and all mind-altering substances was the source of great in-store humor. Spider played guitar in a rudimentary way, but every time he picked a guitar up it seemed he played the same series of barre chords- a ponderous number that was soon dubbed "the Song of the Spider".

Spider's exploits were the stuff of Record Garage legend, and his frequent misunderstandings with older brother Jack provided hours of entertainment for the bored counter help. One day during an argument over a Conn Strobe Tuner- a very expensive piece of gear at that time -Spider hurled the thing at Jack's head, screaming "Here! You suck! Take your fuckin' tuner!!", and beat it out the door before Jack beat it out of him. Jack always forgave him, though, and when Will was broke Jack'd throw him some hours at the Garage, or more often at the Music Complex. Will was forever wrecking his car, or getting into a fight or some other mayhem. I was surprised to find out he was good friends with a few guys I grew up with in East Boston: a former all-star hockey player and boat motor thief named Billy Boy and a guitarist named Damian, both from my neighborhood. The Three Dust-kateers, as I called them, were constantly on the prowl for new sources of Angel Dust- that was how they met in the first place. The first time Spider showed up at the Garage with these two guys from Eastie was one of the clashes of worlds that are vaguely disturbing, like seeing your teacher outside of school at a party or something. Like attracts like, they say, and I'd see Billy around the Music Complex every once in a while, or at shows that my band played that he'd started to attend.

One night Billy Boyand a crew brought our mutual friend and fellow East Bostonian Paul Leo to Cantone's, that marvelous dive in the Financial District. Paul had just that day gotten back out of the Air Force, and we made a welcome home party out of the gig. Within five years all three would be gone: Paul and Will died from overdoses of T's and D's, Billy was beaten to death with a bat by a punk who returned to the Jeffries Point Yacht Club after he interceded to break up a fight between two girls. Damian, the third Dust-skateer, was a naturally gifted guitarist. He has been in and out of jail since then, a tremendous waste of a talent; as a kid in Jeffries Point we'd all crowd outside his cellar window to listen to him. Once when he was trying to stay clean after a detox, and complaining of the boredom of staying in his house, I lent him a Fernandes Strat copy, a lovely red guitar. Two weeks later Rick Risti called me to say he'd run into Damian, who offered him a nice guitar for just 60 dollars...by the time I hunted him down it was too late. He'd sold it to a mutual friend, Kevin Graham, who'd mailed it to his nephew in California. Last year Kevin died too. Jeffries Point was a hard luck neighborhood for guys my age.

There were other guys who worked on and off at the Garage, like Peter Lembo. Peter was a big Elvis fan, coiffed in a like manner to the King, big sideburns and aviator glasses and all. A collector of baseball cards back before it became the big business it is today, and one of the few stable and straight members of the Garage's extended family, Peter ended up being sucked in to the rock scene, and he became the Stompers manager. In that role he proved to be truly effective, a real professional. He got an office in the Haddon building on Comm. Ave., an edifice that jutted up among the surrounding, much lower brownstones in a fashion that led me to re-christen it the Hardon Building.

A big part of working at the Garage was coming up with nicknames for people, bands and other shit in general. A case in point is that of the Ball Brothers. Billy West and Tim Reagan. Having played together since they were teenagers in Roslindale, Timmy and Billy were almost never seen apart. And they were both short, and a bit round. "They're like a like a pair of balls, left and right!" someone said one day, and henceforth they were always referred to as a single entity: "where are the Ball Brothers...did the Ball Brothers come by this afternoon?" Billy and Timmy were both brilliant on their instruments, and countless afternoons were whiled away watching them run through television theme songs, rock standards and just about everything else you could imagine. Tim would tear off virtuoso bass lines, crazy shit like "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" played using nothing but harmonics, and Billy would be doing these Jeff Beck-style runs, all the while keeping up a running series of jokes and "who's on first" type dialogues. Everyone in the store would be just falling out laughing. But the best part was watching all these fashion-damaged Keith Richards clones trying to act like they weren't impressed by Tim or Billy's playing. Having consistently spent more of their day picking out their clothes than rehearsing, they'd be looking out of the corner of their eyes, attempting to appear uninterested, while desperately trying to cop some of the wild riffs and outside orchestral chords the Brothers were casually tossing off.

I believe it was Jack Griffin that suggested to Billy- for whom Mel Blanc was as much a hero as Jeff Beck - that he utilize his talent for mimicking voices by doing custom phone messages for people. Star Voice (or was it Star Phone.) wasn't an immediate fiscal success. But the demo tape did get into the hands of Charles Loquidera, star DJ for the powerful radio station WBCN. Billy began to drop into the Big Mattress show to do voices, then became a regular part of the show. From there it was all uphill, career wise. Billy tried stand-up comedy for a while, but his forte was studio voice-over work. I went with him to a few of these sessions, including one where he was earning big bucks to impersonate John Wayne for a golf video: "that thar nine i-ron is a bit too big fer you tah handle, lttle lady", etc. He made it look easy, and I realized for the first time just how good he was at doing this stuff. I also attended a show at New England Life Hall, when Billy read the part of the Narrator along with Bill Scott and June, the voices of Rocky and Bullwinkle. I got a dollar bill signed by Bill Scott: "To Joe from Bullwinkle, Dudley and George of the Jungle", and had June say "Good night, Joe, and thanks for comin'" in the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel- a terrific experience for a childhood TV junkie. I recall at one time Billy was one of three finalists for the position of Captain Crunch's TV voice- at a hundred grand a year (he didn't get the gig)! After a couple of years of being a regular on the Big Mattress, Billy finally followed the work and relocated to the Left Coast. He made his mark there on the highly successful, animated Wren and Stimpy Show- first doing one voice, later both. Since then he has been unstoppable, and in what must have been a huge pleasure for a Mel Blanc fan, he was hired on to do the Warner Brothers' character voices for Space Jam starring basketball legend Michael Jordan. As of this update, summer 2001, he is the voice of the Red M & M on television, as well as countless other voices from commercials and cartoon features on both cable and network TV.

One afternoon we were hanging out at the Garage, bullshitting, and we got a call from Jack saying his brother Martin was coming over, and would leave some stuff in the back room. We all knew Jack's younger brothers- Kevin, Tour Manager for Boston, Paul, still in school, and Spider, the affable but trouble-prone middle sibling. We'd never heard of an older brother. It turned out that Martin had emotional problems of some kind, and had been at a special institution where he studied clock and watch repair. He moved a bunch of repair tools into the back room, taking over the small repair bench, and would come in and quietly work on his clocks. We never got to know him too well, and then just as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone- dead of heart failure. I'm not sure if he was even forty years old. We put the clocks and tools in a box, and the quiet man left no trace behind. Well, actually, there was one. With all serious or tragic events at the Record Garage, the established way to deal with one was through black humor- laugh so you don't cry, as it were. Henceforth any references to mental breakdown or insitutions for those so afflicted was: "headed for the Clock Factory". And heaven? It was now "the Big Clock Factory in the Sky".

We hadn't really known Martin, and he and Jack hadn't seemed very close, so it wasn't hard to screw around that way, however insensitive it may have been. It was different when Spider died. Will "Spider" Griffin was a good guy- trouble prone, but a real good guy, and one of the crew. He would tell you himself: "I may be a fuckup, but I'm not an asshole". One incident comes to mind. One night we were both travelling in a van full of maniacs, and just after I was dropped off I realized I had left my Harvard archaeology thesis behind. I was back at my dorm room, frantic. Unlike most honors candidates, who met frequently with their advisors, handing in updated copies as they went along, I had nothing to fall back on. My advisor, the eminent archaeologist and Peabody Museum Director C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, had also been my boss for the two years I worked as Assistant to the Director at the Museum. He was busy, I was busy, and we were pals- so he left me to my own devices. I'd met with him once, at the mid-year, and we hadn't got together to discuss the thesis a single time since then. The realization that it was due soon provoked an orgy of last minute cramming, and that copy I'd left in the van was the fruit of a month and a half of frantic, non-stop, round-the-clock, learn-to-type-as-you-go labor. And it was due in less than 2 weeks. <i>And</i> it was my only copy! The other guys in the van were all dustheads- or junkies, like myself at the time -and they were on a "mission", trying to score drugs. No way they were going to stop 'til they copped, and if and when they did they'd be so loaded noone would give a shit anyway. I knew for certain that my thesis was never coming back, and I sat in my room in a state of utter despondency, alternating with adrenaline bursts of panic. An few hours later there was a knock on the door. There was Spider, in the short black leather jacket he often wore, holding in his hand my 100 page tome: "I though you might need this". I have seldom been so happy to see anyone, ever, before or since . I thanked him profusely, and told him I could kiss him, and he held up his hands, backing out into the hall, as he said "MMMM, nah, that's OK, just a thank you is...cool". Spider Griffin was one of the first of the Garage crew to meet an early end. He took an overdose of T's and D's- also known as a Package -a combination very popular in the late 70's, made up of a handful of Tylenol with Codeine and the hypnotic sedative Doriden. Alone neither was very strong, but in combination they piggy-backed into a powerful high that was similar to shooting four or five bags of good dope. I lost four friends to Packages, and was myself slapped and screamed into consciousness one night by my girlfriend, Eve, when she found me passed out on the toilet in her dorm room. Will's death was compounded by the fact that his script for the pills was legal, prescribed for problems he was having with his back. After his death, Jack found it harder to maintain his bemused attitude toward his employees chemical adventures.

One of the projects that Jack Griffin became involved in was Garage Records. He was the "Executive Producer" for the first Willie "Loco" Alexander singles. Up until he sold the store there were stacks of those 45's in the bathroom. They're collector's items now, fetching upwards of 30 bux a pop in some places. We used them as weapons, as coasters, you name it...I wish I had one today.

On a good day there was no place in town like the Garage. When Robyn Lane came to town and put her band together, it was done using the Garage as a clearinghouse. Billy Cole suggested Asa Brebner and Leroy Radcliffe, who were Modern Lovers when Billy went to Europe to stage manage the band, and he suggested Scott Baerenwald, who'd been in Reddy Teddy when Billy was their roadie. There were so many good players that passed through the place that you could have built a dozen great bands just hanging out for a couple of weeks recruiting. Rick Falk, who later started RSF Music, would ride in on his motorcycle, with newly-found guitars strapped to his back to sell on consignment- or he'd stroll in, pushing his glasses up his nose where they were forever sliding down, uttering his signature cry of "Where's My Money?" After a while he wouldn't be through the door before we'd all chime in unison: "WHERE'S MY MONEY!?" Billy West did a good Rick Falk imitation, and soon "Where" became Rick's new nickname. Will McFarlane, who played with Bonnie Raitt, used to come by to show off the gorgeous 50's Fenders he had a knack for finding. That'd always piss off Eric "Rose" Rosenfeld, the lead guitarist of the original Sidewinders, who had been Bonnie's boyfriend way back when and would wonder aloud why she didn't hire him now that she was doing all right. Eric was the single best player I've ever seen, on stage or off, with my own eyes. Even better than Billy West at the flash Beck-style stuff, he was a four finger picker with a devastating arsenal of country, rock and classical riffs he'd effortlessly throw out. Phil Russo, whose death (from what they called Leukemia, but we now know as AIDS) deprived the scene of a beautiful cat and a fantastic guitarist, was another Garage regular with monster talent. He would come down fresh from working on his father's produce truck, and have everyone in stitches with his off-the-cuff musical skits. John Felice and the other Real Kids were around a lot, as was the late, great Matthew MacKenzie of Reddy Teddy. Tall and lanky Stefan "Swine" Lovelace, who produced the first few Willie Loco singles as well as my own band, the bones, was another regular, smoking Djarums and wearing his white leather jacket, a Jazz bass afficionado. Andy Paley might be there shooting the shit about his most recent production project, Jonathan Richman might be found stretching on the floor, Billy Loosigian putting a Marshall through its paces, Maynard Ferguson taking time off from his blues band to paint the sign out front. And in between the regulars, just about every guitar and bas player involved in the local scene would pop in to have a look see. Jack never cared if you hung out all day, it was that kind of place.