SLOW
CHILDREN
by Joe Harvard
 Illustration by Deb Dimonte 
With the transition from Slow Children to Boys Say Go, it was guitar rock and leather jackets out, sequencers and synthesizers and stylish suits in. The times changed and we all had to change with them...but until Anthony's untimely and tragic death in 1989, I always held out hope for an eventual Slow Children reunion. I guess we won't hear those clear blue Ludwig drums again until Anthony's nephew- Rocco -follows in his uncle's footsteps, and pulls them out of the closet to have a good old bang.
 Sorely missed, often thought of. Anthony "Ant'ny" Rauseo 1961 - 1989 |
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Slow
Children were the brainchild of guitarist Joe Fagan and bass player
Austin "Aut" Powell, both of Newton. In the beginning they were
joined by Aut's brother Dave Powell, but he gave up the drum throne
in the fall of 1978. They had a wry and often humorous approach to their
lyricism, with gems like "Oriental Bondage" and "the Babies Go First"
(a paean to Jim Jones cyanide Kool-Aid) that stick in the mind almost
20 years later. I met Fagey at the Record Garage in Harvard Square where
he was a regular like myself. Later when I worked at the Garage I got
to know him a bit better, and he invited me over to jam one day. This
led to my joining Joe's already established but as-yet unnamed trio. Returning
from a rehearsal at Aut's house in Newton one night and mulling over the
name issue we passed a yellow sign that seemed to cry out "here's your
new name"; I pointed to it and everyone looked, and as of that moment
our quartet became Slow Children. The name fit the crew - not that anyone
was stupid, mind you. Hell, Aut was a genuine second-generation intellectual
whose parents had books all over their decidely un-domestic abode, the
house simply reeked of academia and a solid gene pool. Fagey obviously
shared Aut's inquisitive spirit, and if his recreational tastes tended
towards smut at the time he was no more preoccupied with sex than the
rest of us, just more outspoken- and since he was willing to channel them
into his songwriting his sexual tastes loomed larger than they otherwise
might have. Despite the fact that they were essentially great guys with
above-average senses of humor, Dave and Aut and Joe were somewhat, ummm...socially
challenged let us say, due to their intellectual predilections and the
relative isolation of their Newton abodes. Like many of the punk eras
finest acts they funneled this isolation and humor into some terrific
material.
I
played with Slow Children for a short time after leaving Unnatural Axe,
but my only lasting effect on the band was bringing in "All Over
Now" as a cover- and inviting my friend Anthony Rauseo from
East Boston to become the group's drummer when Aut's brother Dave went
back to college. Ant'ny and I had played together for 3 or 4 years at
that point- in fact we were both in our first band together. I knew I
was not long for the band, and I felt some guilt over leaving, and I figured
Anthony was just what the doctor ordered. What Aut and Fagey may have
lacked in aggressiveness when it came to booking and biz Anthony made
up for. Anthony stayed on, I left, and before long he was one of the principal
members of the band. He and Fagey would stay partners right up until Anthony's
untimely death nearly a decade later. When Aut was replaced on bass by
John "Fly" Risti Anthony began to micromanage the group image-wise,
and his worldview pushed them towards their eventual transformation into
Boys Say Go. I need not have worried about leaving the band; when I listen
to old rehearsal tapes, it's clear to me that my songs- I had just begun
writing -were the weakest thing about the band. To coin a phrase they
sucked out loud. And Joe played a stark,
thick style
of guitar that really didn't need noodling leads or rhythmic backing;
my efforts at a fancy, schmancy two-guitar approach were only smearing
that clarity, mucking things up. Fagey's style was made to order for a
three-piece band. So once my tunes were removed from the equation, and
Anthony added, Slow Children started to sound like a real band.
The
addition of John Risti into the band brought the group up several notches
in terms of musicality and prodessionality. "Fly" is one of the two Risti
brothers from East Boston's Jeffries Point, a pair of natural musicians
who were self-taught and went from beginner to gunslinger in an amazingly
short time. Sharing a room with his
older brother, virtuoso
guitarist Amadeo "Ricky" Risti, John seemed
essentially
to pick up the bass one day and become an expert the next; in reality
it was less than a year before he could play the shit out of those
four strings. John is shown at left onstage with the Slow kids at the
Paradise Rock Club. After Slow Children Fly went on to play in
Revere-based 
Because Fagey wasn't afraid to try more musical ideas, and the band wrote
witty little ditties that improved with repeated listening, many of Slow
Children's keenest fans were musicians. I counted myself one of them,
as did my own band the bones, and we tried to play together as
much as people. In 1978 Slow Children became the first band I ever produced.
I ambitiously wrote my ideas down on a piece of loose leaf paper (see
pic at right) and we went into Baker Street Studios in Watertown
to record "Another Girl" and "Babies Go First". As I recall my big production
ideas included a track of hand claps and a castinette for the first song
and an intro of recorded jungle noises on the latter. Earth shattering
creativity! Among other brother bands who seemed to appreciate what Anthony,
Fagey and company were up to was Pastiche, with Ken Scales
and Mr. Curt taking a paternal interest in the slow kids. Pastiche
helped Slow Children along with some plum gigs as Fagey and the crew fought
to establish a local name for themselves. Beside gigs (like the one above
below at the Paradise) Mr. Curt helped out by producing a 1980 session
for the slowsters at Poly Trax Studios.
Anthony
met a guy from Berlin and he made a trip to Germany to visit. Besides
spending a lot of time visiting the baths and other hot spots (this was
pre-AIDS of course) Anthony made the rounds at many of the clubs in the
Berlin area, and when he came back he was rife with new techno-sounds
that were all the rage across the pond and under the wall. He also seemed
to have absorbed a cinematic approach to music, abetted perhaps by his
association with his German lover Gert who ran an independent film distribution
service. Whatever the catalyst, Slow Children began to show a decided
Teutonic influence, evidenced by the inclusion of new material like "(I'm
Going to) Germany" as well as an overall darker Euro-mood. Fagey had gone
along as well and soon places like Stutgaart and Frankfurt were popping
up in his lyrics. This somewhat darker trend continued until the band
metamorphized into Boys Say Go in 1983. 
Bob
Belvedere, guitarist with frequent gig-mates James Straight and the
Bureaucrats, assembled a Slow
Children CD
containing a live recording at the Rat, plus the compiled studio recordings
that the band made during their life span. Even though the material was
dubbed from cassette, it still kicks ass, and songs like "Oriental Bondage",
"I'm Going to Germany", and "Pseudo Girl" pack a sonic
punch that even a cassette-to-digital transfer can't shake. My own band,
the bones, also recorded at Polytrax, and I'd have to say that it wasn't
the height of rock and roll recording technology. It was actually in an
office building in Newtonville, so recording could only commence after
the droids went home and on weekends, and although owner/engineer Gene
Vega was a personable guy the real reason we were there was the low hourly
cost. Mr.
Curt
was a real pro and a mensch besides, but I've often wondered what those
sessions would have sounded like had they been done at a place like Radio
Beat, Downtown or Electro-Acoustic, where the engineers were more experienced
with heavier rock sounds. I would have loved to get the band into Fort
Apache, but they were defunt by then, and the closest I got to a repeat
of my debut production work on "Another Girl" and "The
Babies
Go First" was a Boys Say Go session at So-So Studios, my pre-Fort
Apache home studio... and then I was debuting as an engineer, so once
again it was less than the ideal situation. As it was Pseudo Girl got
a fair bit of airplay on local shows such as Nocturnal Emissions, and
I still pull out "Easy to Move (Time)" from that So-So session
for a listen now and again.
