tk: So why The Noise?
T Max: I was playing
guitar in a band called The Machines, and we couldn't get any press. So we
figured if we started our own monthly mag, we'd at least get one article per
month. (T. pulls out the first issue, and sure enough on page 3 there's a
Machines write-up.) At least we didn't put ourselves on the cover… It was a
band effort, we'd write it, then one guy would make a thousand copies at his office and
smuggle them out - page one on one day, page two the next day - then we'd get together and
staple them.
tk: How long did the
band last?
T Max: About a year from
then. We did a 45, "Disposable Music," which made the cover of issue
3.
tk: By the time we met,
I don't think you were playing.
T Max: After The
Machines broke up, the other guys lost interest in The Noise, but I thought the scene needed it so I kept it going. It
started feeling like a conflict of interest to be both playing in the scene and
writing about it.
tk: I notice the very
first issue has the famous bugle logo…
T Max: …which I lifted
from Time Magazine. My mother-in-law
worked for Time, and I asked her if
she thought they'd mind. She told me no one who read Time was going to read The
Noise. I occasionally played a bugle in my very first band, TCD - Mr. Timothy
Charles Duane, dating back to high school on Long Island. We were very
creative, used ukulele, clarinet, bugle, guitar, and three part harmonies like
the Andrews Sisters. We moved to Martha's Vineyard together and got pretty
popular. Then I started feeling claustrophobic on the island, and moved to
Boston in '79. I joined Artyard -
tk: I remember them!
T Max: I thought I added
a lot, but I eventually got kicked out. I was trying make it my thing when it
was already their thing. I guess I wasn't meant to follow.
tk: But you're playing
again now.
T Max: I'm doing the solo
singer-songwriter thing, though I gig with my Gretch (electric) instead of an
acoustic.
tk: Go Gretch! - The
main character in my book plays a lime green Country Gentleman. You have a new
CD out, On British TV, that's about half your songs and half
covers, including a Sonny & Cher tune (!), and a stark, Leonard Cohen-esque
"No Reply," which was also on the Low Budget Beatles tribute Across Their Universe.
T Max: I've been opening
my shows with it, people seem to like it. I recorded the CD in Haverhill, out
in the country, very different vibe than Kenmore Square…
tk: …which was where my
band's rehearsal space was. When I moved to town it seemed The Noise always championed the underground, avant garde bands that
wouldn't get played on WBCN.
T Max: BCN was such a
big deal - they had a local Top 3 they'd run in the Phoenix, and those bands could pretty much count on sold out shows
that week. I interviewed Oedipus (WBCN's music director) early on; he liked The Noise. But who we covered was pretty
much determined by our writers. I never said, go out and write about so-and-so.
The writers have never been paid, so they write about who they want to.
tk: Yeah, I did some
reviews for The Noise, and seem to
recall that… One thing that impressed me about the Boston scene was the
accessibility. I'd lived for five years in LA, and the record companies all had
security people prowling the lobby, you could barely talk to a receptionist
without an appointment. But Boston had the Cars building a studio, with one of
their stated goals being recording new bands.
T Max: Synchro Sound [the
Cars' studio] was The Noise's first paid advertiser.
tk: That period, early-to-mid
'80s, seemed like a very hot time, with the Cars' studio on Newbury St., Aimee
Mann working across the street at Newbury Comics and then her band 'Til Tuesday
getting signed. Publishing The Noise
for 30 years now, are you aware of ebbs and flows in the Boston scene?
T Max: It's funny, whenever
somebody asks me that, they always remember their time, the five or six years
they were active on the scene, as when it was really hot. We had a great scene
in the late '80s, then the goth scene in the '90s, and all the Boston Rock
Opera shows [which T Max was one of producers of, from 1990-2000]. I've come to
the conclusion that there wasn't one Boston scene - there are five to seven
scenes happening at any given moment, who don't know the people outside their
own scene. I only know because my writers write about them.
tk: Has the magazine
changed now that you're up in Gloucester, after leaving Jamaica Plain after 28
years?
T Max: I used to be out
in clubs every night. Now it's more like a few times a month. You'll notice our
masthead now says "Music New England" - I want to cover artists who
have had some success, who are doing creative things, across the region.
Freezepop (on the cover of the current issue) did two completely different
videos for their latest single, and set up their website so you can toggle back
and forth between them as you listen to the song. That deserved the cover.
tk: I notice Rita and
Lolita - the Rona Barretts of Boston rock -
are still at it.
T Max: They were in the
very first issue. "The question of the month" was an excuse to talk
to people. Even though we were a tiny little fanzine, I always thought of us as
a real magazine.
tk: That sounds like a
good note to end on. Can you imagine stopping?
T Max: No - I've always
been attracted to creativity, and that doesn't change.
Visit
www.thenoise-boston.com to check out the latest issue of The Noise,
and www.gimmesound.com/tmax for
a sample of T Max's latest CD. And any similarities
between The Noise and any fanzine in my upcoming novel are purely coincidental
and not legally actionable...
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