[bomp] review of Brett Milano's book

[Louis Shukat <louis_shukat@xxxxxxxxx>]

from our friend Joe


REVIEW:



Brett Milano is passionate about the music he likes,
but "The Sound Of Our Town: A History Of Boston Rock &
Roll" (Commonwealth Editions, 2007) is more about
Milano's tastes than what actually transpired.  This
book is his version of the Boston music scene, and
doesn't even scratch the tip of theiceberg.

Looking for information on the highly influential
Wayne Wadhams, Berklee Professor and producer of Full
Circle, singer in The Fifth Estate? Don't look here. 
There should be a lot more about Moulty & The
Barbarians, there's nothing I could find about Jon
Butcher's Axis & Johanna Wild bands, Farrenheit (one
mention of Charlie Farren?), Girls Night Out, Didi
Stewart & The Amplifiers(one mention of Didi that I
could find), MCA artist The Rings, two mentions of Fox
Pass - nothing on Fox Pass founder Jon Macey who went
on to produce demos for Elektra Records'.  Maxanne
Sartori is not discussed and with only two references
to Sartori - a powerful scenemaker responsible for
helping Billy Squier, Aerosmith, The
Cars, Fox Pass...in fact, why is Squier and his band
Piper merely glossed over?

If you want to read about "Brett Milano's Favorite
Boston Rock & Roll Bands" - The Pixies, Mission of
Burma, The Lyres and a few more essays from the Milano
scrapbook, the list is $24.95.  If you want to read an
objective overview of the Boston Music Scene just put
"Boston Music Scene" in google, you'll get much better
results.    Brett is a much better
writer than this and needed to be more objective and
less tunnel-vision.  This is hardly "The Sound Of Our
Town" and by leaving so many important individuals
out, or putting other acts higher up on the
ladder, Milano does a great disservice to the scene he
is claiming to document.   There are thousands of
hours of interviews on audio and videotape and tens of
thousands of articles on the Boston area scene that
Milano could have accessed if he really wanted to
write "a history of Boston Rock & Roll".  That he
failed to do put the elbow grease into this
collection of thoughts is an insult to the thousands
of hard-working musicians who built the scene long
before Brett Milano joined the party after-the-fact. 
A critical moment in scene history, when The
Neighborhoods defected from original manager Richard
Nolan, lead singer of Third Rail, is not even
mentioned.  Nolan wrote a lengthy article for
Boston's THE REAL PAPER "I created Frankenstein's
Monster".  It is harrowing stuff, and it is that
information that is missing in this text. 

But far worse, after the few pages on The
Neighborhoods the unfocused Brett Milano writes a
paragraph about The Fools - a band that can
still out-draw and out-sell The Neighborhoods.  So
this material isn't about what the community wants or
what happened in real time in 1975, 1976, 1980, 1985,
it is only what Brett wants to discuss and put his
blessing on.  There's no doubt that Maxanne Sartori
was more important to the launching of the Boston
music scene than Oedipus Hyson, a man who -
like Milano - jumped on later and capitalized on the
hard work of others, but Milano goes to Hyson instead
of Sartori for his information.  A better
source would have been the wife of a member of Blue
Oyster Cult, Deborah Frost, who wrote for New York
Rocker and had a punk show before Oedipus on
the rival station WHRB (Oedipus was on WMBR).  With so
much missing and much too much revisionist history
don't expect Volume 2 because it is obvious Mr. Milano
thinks he has the final word on the Boston scene.  If
Mission Of Burma are featured, yet leader Roger Miller
hailed from Ann Arbor, why couldn't Milano have done
pages and pages on other huge figures
like Al Kooper, Stones producer Jimmy Miller, Herb
Reed of The Platters and author of Grammy winning song
"A Natural Man" and "Sunny" Bobby Hebb
who lived in the Rockport area for decades.  Scruffy
The Cat and The Neats were fun, but hardly as
influential as Brian Maes and RTZ (featuring Brad
Delp and Barry Goudreau of the band Boston). If you're
looking for extensive information on Ron Scarlett,
Childhood, Little Joe Cook (with a
world's record number of appearances at The Cantab),
Mickey Bliss, John Kalishes (of Susan and the Ben Orr
Band), Jonzun Crew/Peter Wolf/New Kids
On The Block guitarist Tony Rocks, Quill (a sentence
and a half or so), Shane Champagne, Gary Shane & The
Detour, Pure & Easy Records and other key figures
there's always Wikipedia.   The New York Dolls get
more coverage than the band New England.  Don't let
Milano try to tell you that Hirsh Gardner, Gary Shea &
John Fannon were too mainstream because the
author does cover the band Boston which was just as
arena rock as New England.

Andy Pratt gets a mention but Clint Conley gets pages
and pages and pages.

Is Milano trying to pass Clint Conley off as a bigger
star than Andy Pratt?

How is that objective?

Conspicuous In Their Absence is a play on an album by
Grace Slick's The
Great Society.  It is a perfect title for Brett
Milano's revisionist
history of The Boston Rock & Roll Scene.   It is a
travesty.


Thank God we have the internet
http://bostontheeighties.blogspot.com/2007/07/80s-boston-rock-roll.html

-- 
Joe Viglione
p.o. box 2392
woburn, ma 01888




       
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