Lou will never forget that morning in June 1989, sitting in accounting class as graduation loomed when Mr. Romich, the teacher, asked Chris Orth, the sometime student, what he was going to do with his life. Chris leaned back in his chair and exclaimed, “I am going to buy a motorcycle and check out the L.A. metal scene.” It was like watching an exchange between Jeff Spicoli and Mr. Hand. Lou was there for it. You go Chris! But little did we know in the summer of 1989 that Chris, if he indeed headed West, was going to a scene in its death throes. No, Chris should have headed his Harley further north to Seattle to check out a scene in its birth where he could have attached himself to a band like Nirvana or Soundgarden as a roadie and seen some real shit. He could have been the ultimate fan boy. Or started a fanzine. Or learned to play bass. Or something.
Both L.A. in the 1980s and Seattle in the 1990s were part of a true corporate rock phenomenon. The feeding frenzy of rock executives rushing to sign bands and artists in a singlegeographical area in search of capitalizing on that region’s sound and culture. A much less successful geographic scene was Cleveland, Akron, and the surrounding areas in Ohio in the mid-1970s. Devo, Pere Ubu, Rocket from the Crypt and The Dead Boys were the music side of this scene, but there was a whole experimental art scene as well. Division Leap, once one of the most interesting and forward-thinking rare bookstores in the world, issued a catalog on Ohio’s contributions to experimental art and music in the 1970s and like all great book catalogs it has become an important historical document as much as a marketing tool.
The geographic-hype phenomenon did not start in America. Like many things in rock and roll, it began with The Beatles in Liverpool in 1962 or so. With the success of the Fab Four anygroup of young men with longish hair and instruments could get a record contract. Like remora fish attaching themselves to a shark, the Liverpool poetry scene fed off the feeding frenzy of attention into national prominence. Roger McGough, Brian Patten, and Adrian Henri became idols to the bookish. So much so, that Allen Ginsberg could exclaim that Liverpool was the center of the world. And so it was, for a time.
By 1966, the major mainstream magazines like Time and Lifewere exclaiming that London was swinging and the center of the counterculture. Everything London was hip and more important it sold. London music, London cinema, London literature, London art, London fashion. The gold rush was on.
Naturally, American record companies wanted to find their own goldmines that contained platinum records. The Byrds were the first American band that challenged the dominance of British music, post-Beatles, on the charts. And L.A. had a group of bands like The Mamas and The Papas, The Doors, and Love to enable them to argue there was an L.A. Sound, but the geographic explosion of Liverpool did not truly happen in the United States until after The Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, and the realization that something profitable was happening in San Franciso that could be exploited. The San Francisco sound of The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service became the next big thing. And like in Liverpool, any band that looked the part could get a record contract. Interestingly, in poetry this happened exactly a decade earlier with the San Francisco Poets, who were featured in The San Francisco Scene issue of Evergreen Review, The Chicago Review, and on spoken word LPs in 1957-1958. The Summer of Love and the San Francisco Sound of the rock bands really started back in the 1950s when Allen Ginsberg exclaimed, “I saw the best minds of my generation starving, hysterical, naked . . .” Allen Ginsberg always knew what was going on. He was a scenester and starfucker. And a poet who wrote three towering poems: “Howl”, “Kaddish”, “Wichita Vortex Sutra”.
In the wake of the success of the marketing of San Francisco as a scene to young consumers, the search was on for the next big thing and Vinyl Vogue has the second LP by Ultimate Spinach, Behold and See, which serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of this type of hype and marketing. Ultimate Spinach was a Boston psychedelic band headed by Ian Bruce-Douglas in 1967. For Bruce-Douglas, the inspiration for the band’s name came from an acid trip, but for Boston producer Alan Lorber theUltimate Spinach was cabbage. Lorber saw in Boston, with its college audience, rock music infrastructure of a major label (MGM), media outlets, and clubs, and collection of bands, an East Coast San Francisco. Lorber promoted his vision heavily in the press, particularly in Newsweek in 1968, producing The Bosstown Sound: The Sound Heard Round the World tagline. At first the major bands, like Ultimate Spinach, Beacon Street Union, and Orpheus found moderate success. Ultimate Spinach’s first album peaked at number 35 and sold over 100,00 copies. Things looked promising.
Yet as the rock corporations grew more sophisticated so did the rock audience and rock critics. Originality, integrity, and authenticity became as important as virtuosity, looks, and style. Rock critics and the popular audience quickly turned on The Bosstown Sound as a creation of the record industry and not a vital music scene at all. It was a scene created by the Man. The MC5 in Detroit would suffer a similar fate. In short, Ultimate Spinach lacked credibility. They were plants. The bands associated with Bosstown became pariahs and dissolved before the end of the 1960s. For Lou, the real Boston bands that matter, The J. Geils Bands, Aerosmith, and The Cars, would come of age in the 1970s from the ashes of Bosstown.
The Bosstown Sound phenomenon has been evaluated and re-evaluated relentlessly over the years. There are compilations of late 1960s Boston bands out the wahzoo. For some, the music has become cult listening for others it is the very definition of hype. For Lou, the best band in Boston in the late 1960s was The Velvet Underground, who became the house band for The Boston Tea Party venue and delivered some of the best jamshows of the period with droning 20 minute-plus renditions of “Sister Ray”. Without a doubt, there was a Boston scene (read Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968) but it was over-hyped and mis-marketed to the extreme. It has become less remembered as a vital counterculture scene than a cautionary tale of hip capitalism.
What remains is the music. Ultimate Spinach’s second album is widely regarded as not being up to the promise of the first album, in large part because the sound has changed. The signature organ was gone for one thing. Behold and See for yourself. You just might like it.
Suggested Sites and Sounds:
Liverpool in the 1960s: Liverpool in the 1960s (1994)
Swinging London: SWINGING LONDON 66-67 APOCALYPSE:A REQUIEM for the SIXTIES 1977【HD】
Hello, Akron. I hear you’re the rock and roll capital of the world!!: How Akron Became 'the New Liverpool' of Punk Music - Midstory
Hype!: Documentary || Hype! || Seattle Sound & Grunge Documentary || 1996
The Bosstown Sound Blow By Blow: The Bosstown Sound - The Boston Sound
Behold and See: Interviews: Behold & See "The Bosstown Sound" Interview W/Harry Sandler, Ian Bruce-Douglas, Ted Dewart, The Lost
— Lou Waxman