Back In The Day

I lived in Boston or Cambridge MA from Sep 1968 til July 1974. I graduated MIT June 4, 1972, 4 days before I turned 21, then worked at MIT until Apr 1974. I played in bands from early 1970 until Oct 1973.

1. Band whose name I didn't remember:
   • Tom on keys & rhythm & lead guitar. He was the bandleader.
   • Me on lead guitar & harmony vocals & pedal steel/slide guitar.
   • Mickey(?) the lead singer.
   • Terry Borroz on bass (and vocals?).
   • John Broderick (J the D) on drums.
   I remembered this as a Led Zeppelin tribute band. I give the lead singer 3/10 channeling Robert Plant.

   I met Tom between classes at MIT. Early in the spring semester, 1970, long-haired hippy me was walking with another LHH talking about working up a Jimi Hendrix song. This tall, gangly guy with long dark hair & bangs invited himself into the conversation. He'd played keys his whole life and guitar a couple of years. He later asked me to join the band.

   I probably quit the band when I went home for the summer to work at Jeffboat for the 2nd year. That was my last time going home for the summer. So we played together from early 1970 til maybe late spring. We never gigged.

2. Blue Eyed Boy Mister Death:
   • Delbert Lionel Hilgartner III ("Del") on Hammond B-3 with Lesley, blues harp, lead vocals, & bandleader. Del died 6/24/2015.
   • Me on lead guitar, harmony & lead vocals, & pedal steel.
   • Randolph Axel Nelson ("Randy" later "Axel") on rhythm & bass guitar, harmony vocals, & percussion.
   • Barry Levine on bass, sax, & harmony vocals. Barry just died, 6/14/2022.
   • John Broderick on drums.
   We were a dance band, did a lot of Santana, the Stones. We had a few originals, mostly written by Del. I think Randy wrote 1 also. We gigged at bars, ski resorts, frat houses, etc. We played most of my junior year, and disbanded when Del graduated June 1971 and moved to NYC to work in film at Cooper Union.

3. Salamander - motto, "Walk Thru Fire":
   • Richard Griggs, (later Zvonar) on rhythm guitar & lead & harmony vocals. Salamander was Richard's band. Richard died 8/3/2005.
   • Me on lead guitar & harmony & lead vocals.
   • Robert Desautels ("Desi") on bass.
   • Barry Levine on sax & harmony vocals.
   • Terry McGeough on drums & harmony & lead vocals.
   • Gragg Lunsford, who joined a few months in, on keys & lead & harmony vocals.
   A good dance band, it started up right after the demise of BEBMD. Richard was friends with Del from the MIT Humanities Department, he knew Del was leaving & was waiting to snatch me & Barry up. We did some Richard originals, a lot of Kinks, Stones, Van Morrison, Allman Bros, Delaney & Bonnie. Gragg was much bluesier. We played pretty regularly. Our best gig was 2 weeks on Nantucket Island in the summer, playing at Preston's Airport Lounge. Great club, big stage & dance floor, pool tables in the wings, George of the Jungle pinball machine, air hockey. They put us up in a beach house, fed us at the club. Beach every afternoon, socialize in the evenings, play 9-2, sleep 5-noon.

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I've been touch with Desi, John, Del, Barry, Richard, and Terry McGeough over the years. In late January, 2019, John Broderick sent an email to Barry and me. He had found ~4 hours of tracks by BEBMD: 12 including 5 originals from the basement; 2 sets at 1 club & 1 set at a different club. He included a Google Drive link.

BEBMD didn't suck! We weren't bad! I was really fast on lead guitar! I've listened to them a few times now, not bad. To quote John Broderick, "What a great selection of songs played with a lot energy."

He also included 17 tracks by the 1st band, which apparently was named Tesseract. Not just Zep either, there's a fair variety of stuff. The instrumentals are pretty good, the vocals, not so much. A couple of songs are painful - "Sea of Joy" for 1.

Here's the link to the google drive folder. There are 4 .xls files with the track listings, and 4 mp3 files of 1, 2, & 1 hour length. John pointed out you can separate the tracks with audacity, which is free software available here. It came with the USB turntable my kids got me 10-12 years ago. It is good software. It has a feature to automatically separate tracks. It didn't work well when I 1st started using it, but it may work better now.

But then at the end of the email Jon sez "How many people have Tom Scholz recordings from before his success with Boston?" ??? Tom Scholz? Iconic rock band Boston?

I look up the Boston wikipedia page, and the Tom Sholz wikipedia page. I look at pix of Tom - "Holy shit, I know that guy! I remember him well."

Tom wrote most of Boston's material, created their sound, created their 1st album in his home studio, and still tours and releases music as Boston. He also founded Scholz R&D which sold a ton of Rockman practice amps, + boards to create the Boston sound.

I bought the 1st 4 Boston albums, I recognized most of the songs on the 1st 3 albums. From 1975 until 1997, I spent very little time on music - pretty much just the car radio, so they must have gotten pretty good airplay. A definite part of the rock canon, and some complex songs with different sections, voices, etc.

Ha ha, so I find out 49 years later that I played in a band with a guy who went on to become a rich, famous, and accomplished rock star. No idea for 49 years. I guess this means that, again, I love living in the future!

I got Tom's email from the MIT alumni directory. I emailed him, and later fwded John's email to him. Never heard back, oh well. I have enjoyed the old bandmates with whom I have been able to reconnect, particularly Desi & his wife Brigitte. Brigitte is an accomplished artist.

I tried to reach out to Axel Nelson. Randy quit MIT after 2 years & moved to Point Reyes in Marin Co CA to be a carpenter with his hippy girlfriend Lesley. I think he's still out there, I found online what looked like a good phone & email. I called and emailed, no reply. I also googled Gragg Lunsford. I think this might be him.