Pssst!! Hey, phone users! Try reading this page in landscape. You know, horizontally. Easy to read that way. Just sayin’.

 

(one) Confrontation and creation

Boston, not L.A.

The space was a sea of young, aggressive, mostly male energy, stretching deep into the room. “Get the [n-word] off the stage!” The words hung in the air at The Channel that night, April 8, 1982, between songs during 007’s set. Facing feral fans of the notoriously confrontational Los Angeles hardcore band Fear, Dee Rail, all skinny Black fury and punk defiance, didn’t hesitate. His voice cracked from the mic and shot across the vast, packed rectangle of the venue: “Oh yeah? Suck my big black dick!” This was Boston, not L.A.—a phrase that also turned up that spring as the title of a local hardcore compilation, though the connection was purely atmospheric. That night at The Channel, the mood was already volatile. The crowd was loud, mostly white, and mostly local—but the slur didn’t need a zip code. When it came from one unlucky heckler, Dee met it head-on—not with diplomacy, but with fire.

The headlining band from L.A. hadn’t even taken the stage yet, but their energy was already leaking into the room. Later that night, Lee Ving would skewer the crowd with one of his signature jabs:

“How many of you have girlfriends?”

Hands went up.

“Okay. Now the boys.”

It was half stand-up, half threat—a tightrope between comedy and confrontation, and exactly the kind of tension that had the place wired all night.

“Tommy Gun” and brown ale

To understand how a night like that could even happen—how a band like 007 could hold its ground in that room—you have to go back to where it all started. Every band has a creation myth, and this one starts in the mid-1970s in a suburban basement north of Boston. It centers on two teenage boys who met in ninth grade, Larry LaFerla and Garry Miles, a constant musical pairing from that point forward, unlike other high school friends whose tastes would continually diverge. In the story that follows, you’re going to read about all the aspects of 007 that differed from the usual Boston punk/post-punk scene, but there was one aspect that was very typical: the band was half college transplants from elsewhere in the States and half locals. That's very Boston. Garry and Larry were the locals in the band. Just suburban kids chasing new noises, styles, and undercurrents through copies of Creem and Trouser Press, with imported issues of NME bringing the sharp edge of the UK’s concurrent rebellion into view, as underground rock on both sides of the Atlantic exploded in tandem. Most high school rockers stuck to the familiar pages of Rolling Stone, not bothering to explore beyond the mainstream, but the ones searching deeper knew where to look. Breaking out of Melrose, Norwood, Quincy, Reading, and towns all around Boston, finding NME meant a trip to Harvard Square, to the kiosk where Out of Town News stocked publications from around the world—or later, to Newbury Comics (before it became a mainstream chain). Of course not all locals were suburban. Some came from Dorchester, South Boston, Roxbury, East Boston, Charlestown, or Allston/Brighton; others from Cambridge or family condos overlooking the Common or the Charles. High or low, near or far, they transcended class, race, and hometown—drawn together by sound, volume, and shared intent.

Boston’s underground was a web that pulled these scattered seekers into orbit: college radio, record stores, underground venues. The city flattened boundaries, and in the Hub, you weren’t isolated anymore. The musical bond between Larry and Garry at the end of the 70s was one among many in towns across the metro area, part of a scattered movement that refused to settle for what was easy to find, drawn toward the pulse of cities where rock thrived—London and Manchester, New York and L.A., and so on. Probably every small town across the Western world had a few who saw things this way.

By 1979, in Garry’s Saugus basement, fueled by cheap weed and the raw energy of their musical heroes like The Clash, the two stoned young punks could entertain themselves for hours, working out the machine-gun intro to Tommy Gun with Larry’s amp cranked and Garry’s drumming always the rhythmic backbone. That same year, everything was shifting; The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls had given way to punk, post-punk, and ska, soundtracking aimless drives in Garry’s van fueled by smoke and brown ale, the speakers blasting David Johansen or Gang of Four. Larry was also exploring Jamaican compilations and writing his first ska-punk hybrids, including Teenage Captive—a track that eventually found its way to Steve Harrell, then just a prospective future bandmate.

Part technician, part stylish groover

By 1980, Larry and Garry, now semi-adults with a taste for post-punk, ska, and mod revival, were still making music. Thirteen miles away in Fenway-Kenmore, in a two-room, fifth-floor apartment on Boylston Street overlooking the park in the Back Bay Fens, a jazz-schooled guitarist named Steve Harrell—part technician, part stylish groover—was critically eyeing the local band scene and itching to form a band. Placing a hopeful, if odd, ad in The Phoenix for musicians “into ska reggae punk etc.,” he unexpectedly found the right mix: Larry, Garry, and a kinetic force named Dee Rail (Derryl Johnson). Dee had responded weeks before the others. He wasn’t tall—slim, compact, with neat dreads tucked into a black cap and a scruffy little beard—but he arrived at Steve’s door like a scene already in progress.

Peter Holt vividly recalled his first encounter with Dee at Boston College back in 1978: “There’s this skinny Black kid with an army cap and a Ramones t-shirt on… I knew right then and there that that skinny Black kid was going to be a very good friend of mine.” Holt also remembered Dee’s intense passion for reggae, recalling how Dee would “borrow” his valuable records by artists like Eric Donaldson and Toots, driven by a genuine need for the music.

No commercial potential

Boston College wasn’t exactly friendly territory for punks in the late ’70s and early ’80s—preppy, conservative, and out of step with the music brewing beneath the surface. But in the cracks, a subculture took root. That is, Boston College wasn’t an obvious breeding ground for punk’s underground currents, but in this period, a small, self-sustaining subculture emerged. Within it, a handful of musicians, DJs, and scene-builders shaped the music landscape in ways that stretched beyond campus.

While the sheer number of names might seem overwhelming please follow along if you can. They formed a connected network—part of a larger ecosystem that ran parallel to 007’s rise and the post-punk movement in Boston. They were among the ones who helped define underground spaces in real time. Their various roles will become clearer as the story unfolds.

At its center was a small, self-made circle of iconoclasts who found one another through instinct and shared need: Dee Rail, John Sox (later of The F.U.’s), and Peter Voltmeter Holt, a sharp-eared WZBC DJ with a deep crate of post-punk and industrial records. Their dorms were crash pads, their basement rehearsals chaotic, their friendships intense. WZBC 90.3 FM wasn’t just a campus station; with its pioneering Modern Rock daytime programming and its influential nighttime No Commercial Potential (NCP) block dedicated to experimental and avant-garde sounds, WZBC became a vital hub for underground music, reaching far beyond the Boston College campus and helping define college radio nationwide. Dee co-founded The Slaves with Sox and Peter Cristofono. The Slaves even played a couple of live shows on BC stages, making them one of the few bands that performed publicly within the college scene. Dee briefly attempted to join Kenny King in a project that became The Kenny King MIAs. The band never played live, only rehearsing in Kenny’s basement, and Dee ultimately wasn’t part of it. Soon after, Kenny left for New York, appearing in at least one iconic underground film of the era. (Remember that name. We will meet Kenny later in the story.) Meanwhile, Microwave Bonanno, who would become 007’s first roadie, the muscle behind the band’s early days, lived with roommates off and on, including Sox at one point, but mostly rotated between staying with girlfriends and returning home to Medfield. Eventually, he took his grit to the Dead Kennedys’ crew. Through Boston College’s underground scene, Dee Rail formed bands and played campus shows. This was his world before 007 entered the picture.

Young, fast, slave maniacs

From Sox’s perspective, there’s a direct lineage: The Slaves gave way to The Manics, 007, and the F.U.’s. The F.U.’s themselves formed when Sox responded to Bob Hatfield’s musicians wanted ad, with early rehearsals taking place off-campus at BC High in Dorchester. The F.U.’s later became part of the landmark hardcore compilation This Is Boston, Not L.A., released in May 1982, just weeks after 007 opened for Fear at The Channel. “Dee of course became a vocalist and bassist for one of our favorite Boston bands with Lawrence LaFerla… I formed a band called The F.U.‘s, but I’ll always be a branch on The Slaves’ musical tree.”

Within that Boston College scene, the sense of shared origin ran deep. These weren’t just kids in bands. They were tastemakers before the term existed. They threw parties, made tapes, programmed radio sets that shaped what others heard and how they heard it. Without quite realizing it, they built a cultural outpost in a place that wasn’t built for them. And decades later, their imprint remains—not just in club flyers or vinyl reissues, but in the lives they touched, the sensibilities they sharpened, and the odd, lasting gravity of the world they helped (in whatever small ways) to create. They didn’t try to be influential. But in some circles, young punks like them just were.

When Steve, Larry, Garry, and Dee came together in mid-1980, their contrasting personalities and shared instinct for pushing boundaries clicked. Steve, acting as a musical director, helped shape grooves and arrangements for their chaotic live performances. This grounding force was crucial in developing them into a working unit with three songwriters. They rehearsed in two distinct environments: Steve’s Fenway apartment for intimate arrangement work and Garry’s Saugus basement for full-volume rehearsals.

Dee brought Larry into his social orbit, only to discover they already shared more friends than either had realized. And so, the network connected with the band just widened. Larry started living in Brighton, just down Lake Street from Boston College. Sox roomed with him there.

Rude bwoy dem gone a jail

Events would conspire quickly to deepen the bonds between the members of this new band, 007.

One night, not long after the band had formed, Larry and Dee got arrested. They were supposed to see The Slits that night at the Bradford Ballroom—both had tickets and everything. Instead, they got boxed in by cops and never made it to the show. Typical boys.

It was November 1, 1980. Still early days of the band’s existence. After rehearsal in Saugus, Larry was driving Dee and Steve into Boston when, after letting Steve out in front of his Boylston Street apartment, an unmarked police car boxed them in. The ensuing stop and frisk, prompted by alleged reports of “screaming in the area,” escalated quickly when a small amount of marijuana was found on Dee. While up against the car, he called on passersby to witness this “police brutality!!” His loud protests were backed by an equally mouthy Larry, leading to their arrest.

They spent the night in jail at the station on Harrison Ave.

Microwave, their ever-resourceful roadie, bailed them out the next morning with a lawyer. During arraignment in Roxbury Municipal Court, a casually racist remark from the presiding judge stung years later, but the case was soon reassigned and dismissed by a second judge who reprimanded the police.

This incident, far from derailing them, added to the band’s growing underground mystique, giving them a touch of outlaw glamour that resonated in the city. (Though at heart, they were gentle souls.)

Not long after the arrest, 007 members—including powerhouse, leather-jacketed roadie Microwave—went to see the Jamaican film Rockers at the Orson Welles Cinema on Mass Ave in Cambridge. At the film’s end, Microwave inexplicably spray-painted “007” across the screen, incurring a fine but further boosting the band’s notoriety. Shortly thereafter, he moved on to work for the Dead Kennedys. The 1980s had just begun. And this incident? It was sooo 1980.

Around this time, the thriving artist lofts around Albany and Thayer Streets and the industrial edges of Roxbury became a central hub for Boston’s underground rock community—a kind of local Warhol’s Factory. Live sets, parties, and late-night hangs flowed across neighboring units, with scenesters drifting between rooms in a loose orbit of punk bands, experimental artists, new wave kids, and performance freaks. On any given night, the music might bleed into parties hosted by other subcultures—from fashion students to disco heads to Black gay dancers spinning soul and early house. It was a porous, high-energy scene. The members of 007 were quickly embraced within the punk and post-punk core of that creative swirl, where they became one of its magnetic centers. The notoriety may have been fleeting, but for that brief moment in early 1981 they were young, vivid, and impossible to miss. For a time, they were the newest ones everyone in that crowd was watching. Just for a time. Prior to them it had been Boy’s Life. Before them it had been The Girls. Each interesting newcomer would create the next buzz of the moment.

But once again—to understand why, you have to go back… Top

 

(two) Dirty water

“Dear God, another audition”

Arriving in Boston in 1976, jazz studies at Berklee couldn’t contain Steve’s wide-ranging musical interests, which stretched from complex improvisations to the stripped-down soul of reggae—and, by the end of 1980, the clipped grooves and sharp edges of the Jam’s Sound Affects. A sharp mod with a “killer” guitar style, fluent in everything from sophisticated jazz chords to the infectious skank of ska, he envisioned a band that could fuse these seemingly disparate sounds into something potent and new. Years later, this “Brian Jones” in waiting, driven by a restless creative energy and a fear of musical stagnation, placed a hopeful ad in The Boston Phoenix. He wasn’t just seeking players; he was looking for partners to forge a unique sound, a raw and dynamic collision of his Berklee-honed technique, his deep appreciation for reggae’s cool groove, and the rebellious fire of punk—a project he hoped would ignite a path beyond his student life and his anxieties about a future devoid of making music. And if it led to something resembling a living, that wouldn’t hurt either.

The Boston music scene, while vibrant, wasn’t necessarily a hotbed for instant bandmate connections. As the song Dirty Water playfully acknowledged the city’s eccentricities, finding the right musical collaborators often felt like navigating a similar landscape of the unexpected. So, when Steve placed that musicians-wanted ad in the Phoenix—a method known more for attracting the musically lost or wildly incompatible than future legends (though famously, The Pixies’ genesis some years later would lay in a similar Phoenix ad, for example)—he had a certain expectation.

“Forget about finding your average ‘lovers muggers and thieves’,” he quipped, alluding to the city’s anthem. “The real adventure is in the Phoenix musician ads! That’s where you encounter the amateur freak-a-zoids. I know nothing worse than auditions for musicians. The first person to answer was a female bass player. She came up to my place and I was trying to show her the chords to a Reggae tune Some Like It Hot very basic chord progression. She could not wrap her head around it. ‘I don’t relate to notes and chords. I just play whatever is on my mind’ ... Dear God.”

Larry, among many others, responded to the ad, and Steve very nearly didn’t follow up. There’d been a phone call and a demo cassette sent—likely Teenage Captive. Steve liked it. But he was worn down from auditioning misfits and had already begun writing with Dee Rail, envisioning a band with a single frontman. Another audition felt like a chore. In truth, the connection might have ended there—no second call, no meeting.

But something else happened.

No Annie? No band

Spit wasn’t just another Lansdowne Street club. In the early ’80s, its dark, neon-lit space pulsed with the energy of Boston’s underground—the kind of venue where punk, new wave, and post-punk collided nightly, attracting misfits, musicians, and industry types alike. It shared walls with Metro, its larger and slightly more polished sibling, but Spit had its own rough-edged gravity. It was a place for discovery—bands on the brink, moments before impact.

Steve worked there in various capacities—not front and center, but present enough to absorb the scene firsthand, to know the faces, the movement, the momentum. It wasn’t just a job; it was a vantage point. He and Annie were coworkers, navigating the same late-night rhythms, moving through Spit’s charged atmosphere.

Annie—a sharp, funny Thai-immigrant punk who worked the bar at Spit and knew Steve as a coworker at the club—quietly stepped in. She didn’t know Larry, but she’d heard the demo. Steve had played it one night during a break at Spit, and Annie was intrigued. When he mentioned that this guy had a gig coming up at Cantones, she figured she’d tag along.

Then Steve bailed. The weather was bad. He liked the tape, sure—but not enough to head out. Annie went anyway, just on instinct. A kind of secret audition.

That night, Garry, Larry (and...?) played a short, rough set as The Standards—just a one-off band thrown together for the gig. Annie wasn’t focused on the music. She was watching Larry—his presence, his timing, his attitude. She didn’t analyze it. She just knew. He was what Steve was looking for.

Back at Spit, she gave Steve her verdict. Something blunt, something unmistakable. “That guy? He’s got it! You’d be crazy not to follow up.”

Annie wasn’t just a workmate. She was known by nearly everyone in the Spit orbit—a local legend with a killer eye for what mattered and zero patience for what didn’t. Her words had weight. This wasn’t flattery—it was a bartender’s truth bomb delivered over a slow Tuesday shift.

According to Steve, it wasn’t the demo that got him to follow up. It was Annie. Annie was the reason it happened at all. Without her instincts, her nudge, her matter-of-fact authority—007 would never have existed. Not in that form. Not with that lineup. Not at all.

Brady Bunch in the Nite Klub

So, against these odds, and the general unreliability of such ads, Steve struck gold. What he found was a potent combination of talent and chemistry. It came together in two stages. Dee and Steve had already begun co-writing material in Steve’s Fenway apartment weeks before Larry made contact. Meanwhile, Garry and Larry were working on Larry’s ska-meets–Buddy Holly/Eddie Cochran-style songs, like Teenage Captive. They were basically two separate two-man bands. So when the four of them finally met, it was a kind of Brady Bunch instant family—three songwriters and two frontmen converging and somehow understanding each other instantly. Even early on, “Dee Rail referred to Larry as a ‘smooth operator,’” Peter reported. And, between them, they already had a bunch of original songs. All they needed was to learn each other’s material and just step on the accelerator.

Believe it or not, before they had even met, Dee and Larry were photographed together. Well—they were both featured in an amazing crowd shot some months earlier. The photo, taken by Philin Phlash at the Specials’ show on 27 February 1980 at The Main Act in Lynn, MA, captured both of them just feet apart in the audience, sharing the same charged musical moment. They had no idea they’d soon be band mates. They probably didn’t notice each other at all. The photo itself wasn’t surfaced until decades later, but in hindsight, it’s proof that they were already drawn to the same scene, same bands, same energy—orbiting the same world before their paths crossed. Dee, mid-jump—a truly extraordinary jump, part of what makes the whole photo great. And Larry, not jumping, but caught in the crowd, eyes fixed on Lynval and Terry on stage. You can see it for yourself, just below. And, little did either know, but they’d be sharing a stage with the Specials in the near future.

• Photo 1: Dee and Larry in detail
• Photo 2: The full image (Specials and crowd)

The hopeful(ly) obscure

And, so, the four met and became a band that had the essential elements from the start: Dee’s raw energy, Garry and Larry’s driving force, and Steve’s focused musicianship coalesced into something truly original, proving that sometimes things just happen to work out. A new band that seemed like it had always existed.

Their first public show was on Saturday, 13 September 1980, at Boston College’s Lyons Hall—an early-semester gig organized by WZBC. The lineup featured The Runes, Kenne Highland’s new band The Heroes, and the brand-new 007. Kenne had just arrived in Boston after a stint in the military. In the 70s he had co-founded cult proto-punk outfit The Gizmos out of Bloomington, Indiana, and was already a name that carried weight. His appearance created a noticeable buzz leading up to the gig. For 007, this was their first show in front of a real crowd, and they may have caught some off guard.

Garry was reportedly blind drunk, crashed in the bushes outside the hall before the set, and had to be fetched in time to play.

No, really. Hopeful!

Larry took the mic under the name Larry Williams, in part to project a rock-and-roll image with a nod to early R&B. With close-cropped hair, a t-shirt, and sunglasses, he cut a distinctive figure. Dee was already a storm front in boots, his wide-brimmed white hat only amplifying the drama, like a safari gone punk. Steve, in a dark blazer, looked as if he’d just stepped out of 1966, anchoring the set with clean, focused guitar. Their sound was raw, rhythm-heavy, and original—drawing from ska, punk, mod, and R&B.

Reviewer Dave Gionfriddo, writing in The Heights, called 007 “a new local band with … a good deal of promise.” He described Larry as “a charismatic figure with a Terry Hall-ish presence,” and singled out Steve’s guitar work and Dee’s “startlingly agile” bass. For a first gig, it was a small but memorable debut—and the start of their long presence in Boston’s underground scene. “Boston was the perfect town to start a band in back then,” Steve later reflected. He was growing more at home with the stripped-down rawness of new wave. “There was a lot of lame-ass shit clogging the arteries of the music scene in the 70s,” he said. “The punks cleared a lot of that out... it was exciting to watch that happen and be a part of the action.” Gionfriddo concluded that 007 “may be new, but they’re not kidding around.”

The exact thread connecting 007 to the booking agents at the club at the center of Boston punk couldn’t be retrieved by any of the informants this writer relied on for facts. 45 years was a long time ago, and although a lot of early scene logistics of course didn’t just happen, in hindsight things can seem that way. All that’s remembered about gigs just after the BC debut is that one of the band’s earliest breaks came at The Rathskeller (Rat), where the booking office overlooked Kenmore Square from a second-floor window. Kathei Logue and Julie Farman were both working there for owner Jimmy Harold. They booked the club and, for a time, co-managed 007. That proximity helped. Getting weekend opener slots at the Rat—and taping there early—gave 007 a shot at the same kind of buzz as more established locals. It sounds to this writer a bit like insider trading. I’ll let the reader judge.

That live tape of 007 at the Rat, featuring Dee’s fast-paced ska/bluebeat original Betcha By Golly Wow, started making the rounds on Boston’s college radio stations—WMBR, WZBC, WERS, and others—not long after the band’s earliest gigs. Dubbed to cart for quick rotation and replay, it gave 007 an unexpected early boost at a time when radio DJs were championing the city’s most vibrant and up-and-coming live acts.

Momentum built quickly in this early stage. No marketing plan. Just a name—007—and a shared obsession with rhythm, rebellion, and not fitting in. “Dee Rail was one of the most irresponsible, over the top, manic, flippant, dogmatic, self-destructive, magical, hysterical, complex motherfuckers that I ever met,” recalls Peter. “And those are some of the reasons that I miss that son of a bitch so much.” His chaos fueled the band in unpredictable ways. Sometimes it drove them to push harder, sometimes it tested their patience, sometimes it sparked reckless inspiration, and sometimes it left them utterly mystified. The band was getting tighter, thanks largely to the steady hand of Steve’s musical guidance, even as some moments onstage remained unpolished and a bit loose. The raw energy was undeniable, shaped by the unpredictable force of Dee’s chaos, and the unrelenting loudness that Garry pounded into every beat and Larry hammered into every chord. At the Rat, after one particularly loud and transcendental packed-house encore, Steve leaned his guitar against the amp, pickup still on, letting the room shake with that last untamed noise. The band walked off. The sound stayed. Then, finally, the noise faded, swallowed by the restless hum of voices still vibrating with what had just happened.

Signals, calls and marches

As autumn’s restless energy faded into the bite of early winter, change felt inevitable. For Larry, school had never been the centerpiece. Salem State was a backdrop, a place that increasingly felt secondary to the pulse of his real world. The band was gaining traction. Friendships were deepening. Life outside the classroom demanded more of him. Leaving school midway through the first semester wasn’t some dramatic declaration. It was just a choice made in motion, another step toward wherever the music might lead.

Beyond that shift, Boston was alive with new sounds and, simultaneously, the wider world was grappling with seismic shocks. Just five days after John Lennon’s murder, U2—barely known then—played a small show at the Paradise. Their raw urgency was caught on camera by Philin Phlash. That moment, barely noticed at the time, was a glimpse of what was to come. Lennon’s death, however, was felt immediately. A collective gut punch. A loss that cast its weight over everything. And yet, in the shadows of that grief, new bands like 007 were carving out space. Stepping into whatever came next.

By the end of 1980, they were already playing The Underground in Allston. Though it had a short lifespan, the Underground was one of Boston’s key post-punk venues. It matched its moment perfectly. It had already hosted Mission of Burma, New Order, and others. It was raw and vital. The live support crew for 007 started out as a one-man operation. Microwave was the muscle behind the band’s early days. He wasn’t just handy. He was a force, hauling massive amp cabinets up and down the Underground’s stairs on his own. An archival recording from a late December gig there captures the loose ends, the unpolished thrill, and the fast-developing songwriting. 007 became regulars at the club. The band fit right in. 007 was treated like the new scene “thing” from the start, locally. The hip notoriety may have been somewhat fleeting, but...

This is where it begins. By the time Dee roared back at The Channel heckler just over a year later, 007 weren’t just bold. They were battle-tested. But all of 1981 still lay ahead, pushing them further and faster toward something much bigger. They had no way of knowing then, but soon they would be booked as openers for exactly the right international acts—the kind that could shift everything.Top

 

(three) Bradford Ballroom breakthrough

Boots, braces, and Buckinghams

Steve wasn’t just a mod. Onstage, he was a precision showman. Sharp, kinetic, and coolly theatrical. His movements had flair, but never sloppiness. A pivot here. A crouch into a solo there. A sudden stillness to let a chord ring out. All deliberate. Dialed.

You could tell he’d thought about it. Not in a vain way, but like an understated performer, instinctively mapping the stage. The rest of the band might be surging, chaotic, even wild. But Steve was the stylish anchor, cutting through the blur with moves that were part performance, part punctuation. It was flash with intent. Geometry, not chaos.

It was a visual language. Sharp lines. Stylized moves. A kind of musical geometry he’d inherited from London’s most prominent mod guitarists of fifteen years past—Steve Marriott, Dave Davies, Eddie Phillips, et al.

And then, there were the other two up front.

If Steve was the anchor, Dee and Larry were the act. Like Sam & Dave. Jake and Elwood. Neville and Terry. Salt-N-Pepa, et al. Their chemistry played out in motion and mic passes, in shouts and sidelong glances. They worked the stage like co-conspirators in a livewire sketch. They flipped roles from song to song: foil and firebrand, preacher and cynic. Double trouble—in boots and braces.

Soon, a fifth member joined. Billy Bacon (William Hope Bacon III), an energetic organist formerly of the Rentals (a band that had shared a bill with The Clash and Bo Diddley at Harvard Square Theater on 16 February 1979). Billy brought an infectious vibe and helped shape the early sound. He brought more than musical chops to 007. He brought heart.

In rehearsals and sound checks, he and Dee Rail would sometimes fall into a loving rendition of “Kind of a Drag” by The Buckinghams. It was like a private joke, or a sweet ritual between the two. Half affectionate parody, half genuine delight. Billy clearly adored Dee, and it showed.

The band quickly gained a reputation for explosive live shows, opening for varied local acts like The Outlets, The Peter Dayton Band, The Proletariat, The Neighborhoods, Boy’s Life, Lou Miami. In July 1981, they opened for Mikey Dread at Spit in Boston. He watched from the DJ booth. He gave a polite nod afterward. Later that summer, 007 opened for The Lone Ranger at the Bradford Ballroom. This was another reggae booking. It reflected the band’s unusual crossover status. The band wasn’t really part of any single scene. They straddled mod, punk, reggae, and dub. This felt natural at the time.

It was the perfect moment… the perfect room… the perfect crowd.

August 27, 1981, was the date of the Specials show at the Bradford Ballroom. The Specials were on what would become their final mini-tour of America with their classic lineup. Though their manager had ambitions for the US market, the band’s primary motivation was to get out of England, which was in the grip of a deep recession and widespread social unrest, including riots fueled by racial tensions. Their song Ghost Town had recently topped the UK charts, its lyrics capturing the era’s mood of urban decay and youth anger. At the time, New York, Pasadena and Boston felt a world away from the deep recession and social unrest gripping Brixton, Toxteth, and Birmingham.

The room was ornate, a holdover from a more formal era—a wide wooden ballroom floor surrounded by white balconies, high ceilings, chandeliers, a kind of faded elegance. Activists with pamphlets clustered near the entrance—anti-apartheid, pro-labor, anti-nuke. It added another layer to the night: music, politics, and subculture all colliding on a humid evening. It wasn’t a punk club. But on nights like this, it became one.

007 weren’t originally scheduled to open. The show was planned as a three-band bill—The Specials, The Fabulous Billygoons, and Someone and the Somebodies. The Billygoons weren’t just another band in the scene—they were a chaotic, unpredictable presence. Their humor, their energy, their sheer absurdity made them unforgettable, even if their legacy is scattered across old records and rare footage. They had pushed the promoter to get 007 onstage, and their hustle paid off. That made four bands in total. It was 007’s biggest stage yet—and the perfect crowd: Boston mods, punks, and ska kids all converging in one space. They played three songs just before the Specials came on. They were fast and tight. The crowd roared.

The Specials are dead. Long live The Specials.

The vibe was surreal. That night marked the final performance of the Specials’ original lineup—the band whose hit Ghost Town had just captured the despair and defiance of a country in crisis, and whose 2 Tone aesthetic had shaped 007’s musical DNA. This transatlantic cultural importation, with American bands drawing on Jamaican/British bluebeat (ska), rocksteady and dub, much like British Invasion bands had drawn from American blues two decades prior, was exemplified by punks like Dee Rail and Larry, who devoured imported copies of NME and The Face, eager to catch the latest from across the Atlantic. Ghost Town may have sounded as exotic on American FM radio in 1982 as Little Red Rooster had on the BBC in 1965. Adding to the strangeness of the night, John Bradbury mistook 007’s singer for Iggy Pop, a case of mistaken identity heightened by Larry’s eye makeup (applied to cover an infection—the Specials’ drummer had seen Iggy with a black eye just nights before). John, Dee, and Larry had beers backstage for hours, while other Specials members passed by, polite but detached. That Jerry Dammers, Terry Hall, and Neville Staple would never share a stage again must have been known to them internally. The Specials seemed to carry the weight of a nation’s social unrest along with their own internal strife, a tension that pulsed beneath the surface of the night’s music. A definite tension hung in the air. This performance, on this night, put the seal on the classic Specials lineup.

At the time, 007 had seemingly overnight become a club scene fixture and were already getting invitations to the town’s most fabulous parties. They were fast. They were racially mixed. They had an unpredictable mix of influences. They didn’t think too much about branding. This early association with the Specials, a band whose music was so deeply intertwined with the social and political climate of England, further solidified 007’s image as part of a new wave of bands with something to say. It was a splash. There was no calculation. There was no blueprint. There was just impact. Top

 

(four) Vinyl and volume

Licensed to kill

By late 1981, 007 were a known name in Boston’s underground rock world. They weren’t just promising. They were peaking. Crowds were growing. Promoters knew their name. They were often the go-to local opener for out-of-town acts. Internally, the band felt confidently locked in. The chemistry between Larry, Dee, Steve, and Garry was privately sometimes volatile but outwardly always electric. Everything still felt possible.

he band’s racial mix and genre-blending set them apart in a scene that was still mostly white and musically siloed. There was no blueprint for what 007 was doing—and that’s probably why it worked. They played fast punk. They played heavy dub. They had bursts of mod swagger. They had just enough melodic sense to keep things moving forward.

At this point, Larry and Dee were sharing a small apartment in Allston—a classic bachelor setup. Vinyl stacked high, rolling papers scattered, dub and reggae playing at all hours. Yellowman, Mikey Dread, and King Tubby were in heavy rotation, their influence slipping into sets. Between songs, they’d often fall into dubbed-out riffs, borrowing grooves from Adrian Sherwood’s Singers & Players records. Loose but confident, they let the sound breathe.

Larry would later say it wasn’t always precise, but it had a “knowing gracefulness.” That was the vibe—not slick, just fully lived-in. Steve had long been tuned into these riddims, even while studying jazz guitar. “Reggae was stripped down, direct, and soulful,” he said. “It reminded me of early R&B on the Stax label. But the guitar cuffed the strings. The organ stabbed on the offbeat. The drums felt backwards in the best way.” He dug it.

New York, New Hampshire, and terrible manners

It wasn’t part of a tour, just a raw, one-off street-level party in SoHo. The band never quite knew who booked the show. Kenny King was in the crowd—he had recently surfaced as Dexter, a drug addict with a foot fetish who terrorizes women as the “Baltimore Foot Stomper” in John Waters’ film Polyester, still playing in art-house theaters at the time. He was there to see Dee. The band lugged their gear down, plugged in, and let it rip—pure 007: fast, loud, unapologetically out of place. A Boston dub-punk unit dropped into the belly of Manhattan cool. No flyers. No next gig on the books. Just one night of sound among fabulous art world types. Then, just like that, they were gone.

Back in New England, they stayed on a tear. On October 10, 1981, 007 opened for Peter Tosh at the Capitol Theatre in Concord, New Hampshire. A Boston reggae promoter got them the slot. It was a big deal. The hall was packed. The headliner was legendary. 007 was on the same stage. They were also supposed to open for Rita Marley. But her visa was denied due to old legal baggage. No matter. The Tosh show stood on its own as a kind of surreal credential. 007 were the unruly Boston upstarts. They were opening for a Wailer.

Then there was the Bad Manners show at The Channel. Larry, buzzing after the set, sat out back by the van and greeted each member of Bad Manners with a cartoonish “See ya, mate. Yeah. See ya, mate,” channeling his best Mark E. Smith. Drummer Brian Tuitt paused, deadpan: “Are you takin’ the piss?” Just a weird, harmless moment. But the kind that sticks.

Groove makers in the Allston roach hotel

By the end of the first few years of the decade, 007 was operating at full force. There was no Dub7 foreshadowing. There was no fragmentation. These were free and easy times, just a band doing what they were built to do. They were doing it better than ever. The gigs were steady. The crowds were there. The Allston apartment remained a smoky creative hothouse. It was filled with dub, rum, and a constant pulse of new ideas. They co-wrote No Longer Funktional there. They recorded on two little cassette players. They used an improvised tambourine. They used a tinfoil hi-hat and an acoustic guitar. Top

 

(five) Running with Roger, waiting on Kosmo

You might meet her in the bathroom

In 1981, The English Beat made their Boston debut. The venue was Metro—formerly Boston-Boston—with the club Spit serving as the backstage hangout. That night, two young musicians from 007, Larry and Dee, found themselves deep in conversation with Ranking Roger backstage.

They hit it off immediately. Roger and Dee were both Black punks around the same age, and though neither had a Jamaican accent, both performed in that stylized way—part shout, part swagger—like ranking MCs rocking ‘pon di riddim. Roger, in fact, spoke like any young Brummie. Dee, on the other hand, sounded like a Jesuit-educated Black man from the South Side of Chicago. The contrast between their offstage voices and onstage personas only made their new bond somehow more real/familiar.

Plans were made to jog together the next morning in the Fenway. They kept the plan. Afterward, Larry drove them around the city in his old Buick, pointing out dive bars, basements, and record stores like a makeshift cultural tour. There was no agenda. Just mutual respect and easy camaraderie between artists navigating similar waters.

Larry had Mirror In The Bathroom on an 8-track in his car. He somehow had never noticed the title. Most songwriters don’t really like to be asked about the meaning of their songs, but Roger offered up an explanation freely. This amazed Larry, who had been mishearing the refrain, “You’re my mirror in the bathroom.” He had thought they were singing, “You might meet her in the bathroom.”

The next year, when 007 opened for The English Beat at The Channel—likely on November 8, 1982—it felt less like a support slot and more like a reunion. The band delivered one of their sharpest sets to date. Backstage, the mood was loose and open. There was talk of more. A possible East Coast tour with The Beat. Real interest. Real momentum. But we’re jumping ahead.

For now, nothing felt fragile. If anything, the center was holding strong.

Overpowered by funk?

By mid-summer, Julie had a glimmer in her eye. She had gradually taken over full management of 007, with Kathei stepping back once the band was on its feet. She was now steering the band’s path with growing confidence. She was getting their demo into the right hands, pushing for better bills, sharper photos, bigger venues. The band had started to believe her hunches. She knew the pulse of the city. She knew who was watching. And lately, she kept saying the same thing: The Clash are coming to the Cape. There’s a support slot up for grabs.

At first it was just talk: the kind of possibility you don’t repeat out loud in case it floats away. Then it became “You might be in the running.” Then: “It’s looking good.”

There was a photo—taken backstage at the Paradise. You could see the band’s identity in it. Black and white. Punk and dub. Larry with slicked-back hair. A band that didn’t look like anybody else. There was also a tape. Steve Barry’s mixes of Zen Gangsters and Los Federales—fast, off-kilter, funk grooving. Word was that Kosmo Vinyl, The Clash’s manager (for the moment), had both in hand.

Still, no confirmation.

Julie kept checking in. “Any day now.” “Still waiting.” “Hold tight.”

Then the morning of the show arrived.

The rest belongs to the next section. Top

 

(six) TWO SEVENS CLASH

007: All systems go. Groove-ready, battle-tested

They were fully functional (and “funktional”) in 1982. By spring, 007 was on fire. That original lineup was seasoned. The set was tight. The crew behind them gave the band the scale of a small army. This was no longer the story of a band finding its way. This was a band at its peak. The engine was humming. No Longer Funktional was getting solid college radio play. This included all local college stations, but was championed especially by the Mystery Girls show on WMBR. Based at MIT, WMBR 88.1 FM was another crucial pillar of Boston’s burgeoning underground music scene, standing alongside WZBC as a vital independent voice. Its Late Risers’ Club, launched in 1977, was a pioneering punk rock program that broke new bands and fostered a club-like community for listeners. Then, starting in 1981, The Mystery Girls, hosted by Spencer Gates and Sheena (Lisa Buchholz) on Friday afternoons, became a local favorite, known for its irreverent style and deep focus on the local punk scene. WMBR, particularly through Spencer and Sheena, provided valuable airplay and exposure to 007, among many other local acts. These shows, among others, offered a platform for innovative sounds long ignored by commercial radio, helping to shape the sonic landscape that bands like 007 navigated.

Julie was now pushing harder than ever. She had them playing out more, landing better slots, and getting proper photos and demos into the right hands. The latest tape featured Zen Gangsters and Los Federales.

Rehearsals still happened in Garry’s parents’ basement in Saugus, though. This was a surprisingly consistent setting. They were about to open for a band with two singles in the Billboard Hot 100. Those cramped sessions honed every beat and bar. On stage, they were a machine. The original four—Larry, Dee, Steve, and Garry—were now joined by keyboardist Ron Marinick and percussionist Rick Sorel. Meanwhile, Steve Barry had taken over dub mix duties. He was increasingly treated like a seventh member. He essentially was. Jon Alper was now doing lights at every show. Erik Streeter was their roadie. He was part of the glue. He taped setlists and lugged gear like he was part of the act. Along with Julie, they were now a team of ten. They were ready for business.

The whole operation felt like it was probably on the edge of something big. And then, lo and behold, that edge did arrive on 20 August.

Julie’s got “balls” at the Coliseum

The Clash were playing the Cape Cod Coliseum in Yarmouth on their Combat Rock tour—more specifically the second leg of their Know Your Rights Tour. On the day of the show, Julie got the call—just hours before doors opened. Kosmo Vinyl, the Clash’s manager, had picked 007 specifically. A racially mixed band with a “funk” undercurrent? That’s what Kosmo was after. Mick Jones reportedly said at the side of the stage, “They sound like us,” perhaps equivocating with a hint of bemusement or mild wariness. Paul Simonon didn’t equivocate when asked about 007 later that night: “They were great.” And after their set, Joe Strummer grabbed the mic and asked the crowd, “How was 007?” How surreal to wake up expecting just another Friday, and end the night being spoken of by the Clash from the stage.

It was the biggest audience 007 had ever rocked. There were seven thousand people. Somehow, despite the short notice, they nailed it. Steve called it the most exciting gig of his life. Four tracks from the set were captured directly off the mixing board. They would eventually appear on the band’s retrospective live album.

Julie recalled promoter Don Law telling her, “You’ve got balls.” Roadie Erik Streeter remembered feeling like a rock star as he taped setlists to the stage. Friend of 007 Tracy Everbach took photos from the front of the stage, near Simonon’s side. Later, backstage, when she adorably asked him, “Did you play White Riot because we requested it?” he grinned and said, “No. Me mum rang up and said, ‘Play White Riot tonight, Paulie.’” Another friend of the band, Jae Johnson, quit his job to make it to the Cape—only to miss 007’s actual set, even though they got him in as part of the road crew. But he did make it to Joe Strummer’s birthday party that night, where Joe laughed when Jae sheepishly admitted he’d missed 007’s set: “You’re not a very good roadie then,” said the Punk Rock Warlord.

This Is Radio Clash at the Orpheum

Eighteen days later, The Clash returned to Boston for the first of two nights that would close out the final leg of their Know Your Rights tour. Joe Strummer was fond of the city. The Orpheum Theatre, one of the country’s oldest venues, was familiar ground; Joe (with help from the crowd) noted it was their third time playing there, emphasizing its human energy over the hockey-rink enormity of Cape Cod Coliseum. With The English Beat opening both final nights at the Orpheum, this penultimate night and the next (the 7th and 8th of September) carried the charge of something significant. Eleven songs into a set full of crowd favorites, Joe leaned into the mic and decided to take a break from the music to address the crowd:

“Okay, uh... Just turn the lights on a little bit, Mr. Foster, so I can see the whites of their eyes, yeah? Now, All right. Uhm. How many people here went to the Coliseum uh, in Cape Cod? It sounds better in here, don’t it? Yeah, I don't know why we went to the, uh, hockey rink, anyway. How many times have we played in this hall [Orpheum Theatre]? Anybody know? No, more than twice. I'm not even sure myself, see. So you could guess me out on that. So this is the third. This is the third one. Well, I don't know why, but certainly in Boston is... is one of the better places for us in America.” [Crowd roars.] “I mean, I hope you realise: in England... They hate us in England for going to America. I hope you realise that. Yeah, they really think we stink a big one, I’ll tell ya. They think we've all got condominiums on the East Coast and the West Coast and in Florida and Miami. I don't know... OK, just play. Uh, this is called This is Radio Clash.”

The next day would be a long one. The echoes of the night lingered, but before the final show, the afternoon had its own story to tell. Hours before the crowd arrived, a stripped-down This Is Radio Clash pulsed through the Orpheum during soundcheck. (Yes, the story has a lot of odd symmetries. I swear I’m not making this stuff up.) Crisp September daylight still hung sharp outside as drums set the foundation, bass locked in, guitars slowly bleeding in. No vocals at first, just rhythm—an engine slowly revving before release, stripped-back and surreal.

From his seat in the near-empty Orpheum, looking up at the stage, Larry took it all in.

Note: When I came across this detail, I wondered, amused: “Wait, what? Was Larry some kind of Zelig??” I had to know why he was there and what he must’ve been feeling. Was it just like any other Wednesday afternoon, or something else entirely? So I asked him, and, even all these years later, amazingly, he could still recall:

"I was starstruck. Probably shifting between equanimous grooving with the beat and a kind of dizzy realization that it was like some important rock history right there in front of me. But I didn’t applaud or disrupt anything. Haha. I probably left right after, saying ‘See you tonight’ or something like that."

But why was he there in the first place? Well, back in August, Paul had invited him to sit in on the September soundcheck. The two were barely acquaintances, but Paul had liked 007’s set at the Coliseum, and they got on well backstage after the show. Their girlfriends were friends, and Larry had found himself in the right band at the right time. So, he arrived at the Orpheum at the appointed time mid-day on the 8th. That afternoon may have cemented a quiet sense that 007 wasn’t just a local story anymore. This sense might have been delusional. Or maybe it wasn’t delusion after all. Perhaps it was just a glimpse of how far the echo could carry. (Hush hush, keep it down now...)

By nightfall, with the theater filled to capacity, the pulse carried over. (...pulses carry!) The English Beat had performed a great set and had vacated the Orpheum along with all their equipment. Then the Clash took the stage. Allegedly Joe says to the crowd sometime during this final night: “Boston is a Clash City!” But I couldn’t find it in the existing audio.

A mandolin has eight strings at the Channel

Elsewhere in town, the night’s momentum carried on—straight down Summer Street, over the Fort Point Channel to Necco Street. The English Beat, after warming the Orpheum stage, pulled a second shift—a late set at the Channel, where the after-hours scene took shape. Joe Strummer and Larry, both friendly with Ranking Roger, were there. The bar was packed with hundreds of scenesters crammed near the entrance, by the bar and apart from the cavernous performance space. A lot of faces for a Wednesday night.

Strummer stood in the middle of the crowd, unmoving—the eye of the storm.

Larry kept it brief. He thanked Joe for the Cape Cod gig, and, not knowing what else to add, thought he could get away just by wishing the Clash a safe trip back to England. Joe was always a quiet judge of character—he’d met Larry before, seen him around, and could probably clock the unspoken back-and-forth unfolding. The awkward thanks, the well-wishing, the effort not to sound too much like just another fanboy. He leaned in and left Larry with his parting words in his ear, half cryptic wisdom, half a knowing laugh: “Remember: a mandolin has eight strings.” Larry backed away, and Joe was grinning ear to ear, still showing off his fresh dental work. “I was being gently toyed with,” the 007 singer later recalled.

The afterglow

Throughout the later part of 1982, 007 was also playing a lot back in Boston. They played the Rat often. They played The Channel more often, opening for punk (Circle Jerks) and post-punk (Bush Tetras) bands. And they played Storyville in Kenmore Square. This busy stretch felt inevitable. It felt like albums and bigger tours were just around the corner. They had a complete set. They had real chemistry. They had momentum that didn’t need forcing. Even the backstage vibe had changed. They weren’t scrambling anymore. They were cruising. They were in top form, no question.

Hero takes a fall

A rupture came in the fall of 1982. By then, 007 was on the edge of bigger things. But something happened in the Leather District loft between Chinatown and South Station where the band practiced. An incident threw everything off course. Way off course.

They had been sharing rehearsal space with another band, Rin Tin Tin. One day, the guy who lived in the loft pulled them aside. $200 was missing from a drawer in his living area. He believed it had been stolen. Without much discussion or clear evidence, he pointed the finger at Dee Rail.

The accusation itself seemed to imply all sorts of things. It wasn’t just about money. Dee was Black. Everyone else in the band—except Rick Sorel—was white. The accuser was white too. It was a volatile moment. It was volatile racially and personally. The air was thick with everything unspoken. Dee had a known heroin habit. This naturally complicated things further. Some in the band might have believed the accusation. Others weren’t so sure. In fact, this writer’s research found that no clear consensus has ever emerged about what happened. Not even now, decades later.

What is known: the band quietly paid the man the $200. Dee left shortly after.

Whether he was guilty and ashamed, or innocent and humiliated, no one seems to know. The truth, if there was one, got buried. Members mention only a weight of discomfort and silence. There was no confrontation. There was no resolution. The distance between Dee and the band would be permanent. The sudden rupture final.

007 derailed

It broke the band’s momentum. They had been about to join The English Beat on an East Coast tour. The invitation had just been made. But with Dee gone, the opportunity collapsed. The Bangles took the slot instead.

For many, it remains one of the deepest mysteries in the band’s history. This isn’t just because of what happened. It’s because of how quickly everything fell apart afterward.

The fallout was immediate.

Dee’s departure wasn’t just a personnel change. It was a rupture in the center of gravity. He was a founder. He was a frontman. He was a writer. He was a bassist. He was a bridge between punk urgency and dub groove. He couldn’t be replaced. The band didn’t pretend otherwise.

What made it worse was the timing. 007 had just come off their biggest high. They had opened for The Clash. They were landing more frequent college radio airplay. They had developed a set that felt like a debut album waiting to happen. They were playing tighter. They were playing bigger. They were topping local bills. Boston bands as promising and talented as the Del Fuegos and ’Til Tuesday were opening for 007. The English Beat had tapped 007 for an East Coast tour. Everything was lining up.

Then the center cracked. The tour was canceled. The Bangles took their place, marking the East Coast debut of the all-female band from Los Angeles. It’s impossible to know whether they would otherwise ever have found a path to some similar break. But the fact remains that this moment in 007’s rehearsal space became at least part of their trajectory, part of the chain of events that placed them in that tour slot. A butterfly flapped its wings, and history shifted. For now, it would be L.A., not Boston.

Scrambling

Inside the band, nobody quite knew how to recalibrate. They kept moving. They added players. They brought in new energy. But something essential had been lost. It was the chemistry. It was the bite. It was the edge that had made them 007. Dee and Larry had been the yin and yang front men. Without Dee, the stage felt wider. Every spotlight suddenly hit Larry twice as hard.

Yes, life goes on. What doesn’t kill you might keep you moving, but never quite the same in this case.

But the story didn’t end. It changed. This was a break, the moment when the thing they’d built lost its axis. They had built it through nerve, noise, and sheer instinct. Though the music played on, the original alchemy proved impossible to recapture, leaving them to navigate an uncertain future with a fundamentally altered sound. Top

 

(seven) Dub7 rising?

Lose this skin

So, the rupture clearly left a vacuum at first. Dee was gone. Something elemental went with him. Dub7 wasn’t born with a bang. It oozed into being. It was half reinvention, half salvage operation. After Dee Rail’s exit, 007 didn’t so much regroup as molt.

The center cannot hold

The name change felt both inevitable and hollow. United Artists owned the rights to “007.” Even if the music is unrelated, the distinctiveness and fame of the “007” brand meant that the owners could challenge the use on grounds of trademark infringement or dilution. The band was no longer that band anyway. Dub7 emerged as a legal workaround. It also captured something truer. The new identity wasn’t slick. It was sideways. Measured. Groove-driven. Haunted.

The band still had gigs booked. 007 fans were in the room. The band still had material in the setlist. But the pulse felt different. Dub7 was more deliberately introverted/meandering than 007 had ever been. The band now leaned into dub and experimentation, stretching out their sound. At times, you would have compared this sound to CAN or something like that. But it was less of a surge, more of an artful stagger. What had felt inevitable now felt imperiled. The falcon was no longer hearing the falconer.

Julie stepped back, handing things off to her assistant, Dawn. Dawn was enthusiastic but less connected. The energy around the band began to change. The good gigs came less often. The sense of forward motion wavered.

Cool out. Cool out. Cool out. Cool out. Cool out. Cool out.

Still, they added people. Kenny Epps came in on bass. He was a welcome presence. He had musical confidence and poise. He brought ideas. One idea was the name “Dub7.” This was floated as a way to sidestep the legal mess of “007.” And Steve Barry had already been handling dub mix live. He was now even more central to their evolving sound.

In this reshaped configuration, the band kept working. They opened for the Bad Brains a second time on 10 July 1983 when the new Dub7 still featured a lot of reworkings of their 007 repertoire. It was perfect. A packed all-ages show that turned out to be two full sets by Dub7. Why, you ask? In very Bad Brains style, their van had taken a detour in Connecticut to buy a resupply of ganja on the way up from DC. They were hours late.

It put the focus most of the night on Dub7, and this was the perfect (huge) audience for the new lineup’s public debut. They killed. At the end of the second set, Larry’s parting words were: “Cool out.” Steve Barry captured the phrase spontaneously and it repeated for more than a couple of minutes as the band left the stage. It became almost like Reich’s experimental piece Come Out. Dub7 made their way back stage and Larry’s phrase was still repeating. Then, when the Bad Brains finally arrived, that summer night got even hotter.

Most of that summer, though, Dub7 spent time back at the loft, working on new material.

Groove and gravitas

Craig Spears joined during this interstitial phase. He was a percussionist with serious jazz pedigree. He’d played with Pharoah Sanders. This brought a cool sophistication to the sound, giving him instant gravitas. He replaced Rick Sorel on congas. He agreed to stick around long enough to record one single. Gavel Groove became the band’s only official release. It was tracked in late 1983 (or early 1984). The recording was helmed by Fred Giannelli, who would go on to significant work with Psychic TV. Fred was an old friend from before the 007 days, and he knew how to steer things toward a particular rhythm and aural atmosphere. Craig brought precision and weight to the sessions. Everyone knew he wasn’t staying long. He made that clear from the start. But his playing was undeniable. He didn’t know it at the time, but he became the rhythmic engine behind the radio single that would drive the band’s unexpectedly busy and increasingly public year ahead.

The studio mix of Gavel Groove was huge. Massive. It was spacious, rich, and layered. Fred handled the dub with finesse. The track closed with a shimmering, dub-soaked instrumental coda layered with backward guitars and slippery delay trails. Craig’s congas pulsed beneath the surface, echoing the band’s deeper dive into dub—what they still consider the best thing they ever recorded. “Fred and I just got it,” Larry said later.

Gavel glitch: How not to master a single

Then came the letdown. The pressing plant mastered the tape according to a budget plan that didn’t include client approval to proceed. The final vinyl sounded far removed from the studio mix; while “walkie-talkie transmission” is an exaggeration, that’s how diminished and compromised it felt to the band. A full-dimensional recording had come back thin and tinny, pressed into two thousand vinyl 45s. It was a shadow of its former self. There was no money for a second run. No recourse.

To the band’s further dismay, a Boston Phoenix review infamously misinterpreted the song’s lyrics as “anti-busing.” The lyrics, intended as an apolitical lament about being thrown into harm’s way, became a point of controversy. Luckily, most listeners understood the intent. WBCN picked it up, and the station’s compression restored some of its sonic impact. Gavel Groove hit the airwaves, a modest but fragile victory.

There would be no follow-up. No EP. No album. Just that one single. Every city has bands like this. They are legends in their time. They are unforgettable in the room. But time favors the recorded. The album endures. The broadcast loops. A bootleg becomes a memory you can play. But the band that never landed its great album? That band begins to fade. Unless the story is retold or a tape turns up or a single survives long enough to be reissued.

Craig Spears left soon after the record’s release. He had done what he came to do. He was one more ghost in the corridor.

At shows, the band had become more professional. Song arrangements were genuinely strong. Audiences still showed deep appreciation at times, but the crowds were thinner now. The overall reception felt more relaxed. It wasn’t anyone’s fault—there’d been no mutiny, no dramatic split. Just time, doing what it does, eroding a bond with former followers that had once felt indivisible.

By the end of 1983, the name “Dub7” had settled in. The new lineup was tight, though no longer fast and loud like before. That reckless wholeness of the early years wasn’t coming back. Something else might still rise. But the ferocious, kinetic center of attention had slipped quietly out of frame.

Life’s in dub

1983 wore on. Its final months weren’t the loudest of their career. After the chaos of 1982, all things seemed to have turned inward, not just the music. More time was spent in the rehearsal space next to Chinatown than in the clubs. The band probably didn’t even notice that they weren’t networking in the clubs in Kenmore Square as much anymore. Forget it, Jake.

Days blurred into evenings. Songs came together under dim light. There were fewer gigs, but none of this felt like a downer. It was more like regenerative downtime. The playing was tight—contemplative, even. This was Dub7’s real beginning.

And then there was Life’s In Dub. Steve wrote it. Larry sang it. It was post-punk laced with King Sunny Adé. It was a hypnotic mix. Angular guitars met elastic groove. It wasn’t released. But it lived in the set. It was an emblem of where things might have gone.

They were no longer loud. They were no longer trying to prove anything. Dub7 was building something strange. It was elegant. It was deeply internal. It didn’t shout. It pulsed.

Top

 

(eight) Groovy decay

The hometown contenders

By the summer of 1984, Dub7 occupied a strange and beautiful space. No longer a band with commercial momentum, but far from a burnout case, they were a group of serious players with fresh material and no illusions. This period marked both an artistic coming of age and the beginning of a slow fade.

For Dub7, the 1984 WBCN Rock & Roll Rumble was a public unveiling after months of disciplined evolution. Internally, the band had transformed, rehearsing with a new intensity. By late June, they were musically tighter and more focused than ever, sounding like a band ready to record an album. And the crowd could feel it.

By the time the Rumble moved there, Spit had already been a backdrop for so much. Late-night shifts, chance meetings, the pulse of Boston’s scene. That night, it became something else: a proving ground. The competition unfolded across the venue’s two faces. The intimate chaos of Spit and the larger-scale energy of Metro, where the finals took place. Dub7’s single, Gavel Groove, had earned them a spot in the competition. From there, momentum surged. Their professional live show, a mesmerizing spectacle of grooves, chops, dub mixing by Steve Barry, and lighting by Jon Alper, propelled them through the preliminary and semi-final rounds. By the time they reached the final at The Metro, Dub7 were local favorites, headlining news stories as Boston’s hometown contenders going up against The Schemers from Providence. Larry was surprised later when his mother mentioned that she had seen him briefly on TV news.

Number two with a bullet

For Larry, the Rumble period was deeply personal. Living in a one-room basement apartment in the Fenway, just blocks from Spit, he would prepare for each night by listening to Joy Division, immersing himself in a mood that matched Dub7’s introspective shift. Onstage, he wore a cardigan, channeling a casual detachment reminiscent of Mark E. from The Fall—deliberately moving away from his earlier extroverted frontman persona. The crowd response was powerful, but the band had coached him to go bigger with his gestures for the Metro finals. In retrospect, he felt those movements came off as forced.

The finals brought high drama. The club was packed with thousands, and backstage, tensions mingled with absurdity. During soundcheck, one of Joan Jett’s crew knocked over Larry’s amp, breaking a key button. When he complained to WBCN DJ Carter Alan, Alan promised it would be fixed—or Jett’s songs would be pulled from airplay. Carter meant it. Backstage became filled with media personalities. WBCN jock, Mark Parenteau, threw his arm around Kenny and jokingly sang, “My boyfriend’s black and there’s gonna be trouble.”

As the results were announced, Larry saw Boston Globe writer Jim Sullivan gesture for him to step forward. He instantly knew by the look on Jim’s face that they hadn’t won. And they hadn’t. The Schemers took the crown. Larry mock-strangled The Schemers’ frontman onstage in a theatrical moment that nearly crossed the line. Backstage, the press made a beeline for the victors, their corner of Spit lit up with cameras and microphones. In Dub7’s corner—quiet, a little stunned but still smiling—Steve started the chant: “We’re number two! We’re number two!”

Dub7’s set had been tight. Their musicianship was undeniable. For a band that had been through so much upheaval, they landed in that moment with dignity intact. The music held. The chemistry flickered back to life. It was only for a night. They didn’t win. But something was won. Ask the people who were in the room. Ask the people who were on the stage. They’ll all tell you the same thing. The final set they played at the Rumble? Garry, Steve, Kenny, JG… It was gorgeous. Not slick. Not desperate. Just good. Tuned. Balanced. Weirdly graceful. Kenny on bass gave them warmth and rhythmic precision. John “JG” Goetchius had settled in on that kind of Kingston organ sound. He was and still is a keyboard player with killer instincts. Steve, Larry, and Garry were the nucleus—seasoned, instinctive, and locked in. Brett Campbell’s percussion added a hypnotic layer with its repetitive yet intricate patterns, weaving through the band’s sound and enhancing their groove. And they had songs.

The machinery never caught up. But the sound—that stayed real.

A legend that would last a lunchtime

WBCN, the dominant FM rock station in New England, had embraced both Rumble finalists, providing a summer of high publicity. WBCN invited both the Schemers and Dub7 to play a series of heavily advertised follow-up gigs in the wider metro area, like a tour of Eastern Massachusetts. To promote the shows, the station began airing commercials that opened with snippets of each band’s track. Suddenly, Gavel Groove was getting airplay again—this time as a sonic backdrop for a slickly produced promo spot. It was surreal. Most of Gavel Groove wasn’t like its dreamlike instrumental coda. And of course that wasn’t the part WBCN’s producers used for the ad. They just clipped the vocal “hook.”

Larry would be standing in a convenience store, hear a radio blaring the ad, and catch a few bars of his own song (and voice) drifting out across the potato chip aisle. The irony was thick. The band’s muddled identity, a deepening embrace of dub alongside a more abstract post-punk sound, made it difficult to retain earlier fans or build a consistent new following. And yet, here they were: being positioned on commercial radio as one of Boston’s finest. It felt like a eulogy wrapped in a compliment.

What followed was less visible but no less important: a drift into deeper experimentation, tighter musicianship, and the slow, winding road toward the Kessels (a side project they were developing). Dub7 was never good at branding, and by that point, the band’s identity had started to blur. Post-007, they still had the chops, and arguably a more dynamic range of sounds. But they never quite figured out how to package whatever this new thing was that they were doing or identify a specific target audience. Some bands knew how to bottle it. Dicky Barrett did. He built the Bosstones into a Boston institution by giving the audience a uniform, a tempo, a feeling they could name. It was smart, loud, proudly local—ska-core with a steel jaw. By the time Dub7 leaned into abstraction and dub textures, that younger punk audience had mostly moved on. In a sense, the loud and fast aspects of 007 evolved into the Bosstones, Bim Skala Bim, and eventually Dropkick Murphys (via the Bosstones).

As for Dub7, branding wasn’t something they ever got around to, or even agreed on. They weren’t selling a tribe. They were chasing a sound. And the sound didn’t hold still long enough to put on a shirt. They were aging out of the scene that once defined them. The name still meant something, but it didn’t mean one specific thing. The band played on, though the momentum from the Rumble began to wane, and the initial excitement gave way to a growing unease. Live sets were tight, sometimes even elegant. Great lighting. Deep grooves. But the underground scene that once held them close had already moved on. Dub7 wasn’t part of the conversation anymore. They’d become the evening’s entertainment—fluid and hypnotic, then forgotten the next morning. A few A&R reps came to see them, but nothing materialized. Underground radio, which had loved 007, found Dub7 too slick. Major labels, on the other hand, found the sound too weird for the mainstream, leaving the band stranded between worlds. The members tried to project confidence, but the strain was beginning to show.

Another album that wasn’t

Dub7 played beautifully that year. The musicianship was deep. The material was taking shape. But without a full release—without the proper document—they became harder to name. They became harder to find. They didn’t vanish. But they drifted. They drifted like sound escaping a room.

In hindsight, there’s a temptation to call this the quiet before the fade. Dub7 never got the rollout. They never got the record deal. They never got the PR push, except briefly from WBCN during that summer. They didn’t tour the single. They didn’t drop an album. But that’s only half the story.

Looking back, a pattern emerges. It took 007 approximately two years to forge the songs that could have comprised their debut album. Now, Dub7, in its own way, had taken a similar journey, arriving at a sound that felt like a complete statement, a new would-have-been album. A second album, if you will. In hindsight, it’s clear to those involved that the lack of these albums is the primary reason the band is not more widely remembered. As 007’s friends, whose records have helped fuel a Boston hardcore revival in Japan, can attest, tangible products are what allow music to endure and find new audiences. “All we really lacked was a lot of quality time in the studio with a good producer,” Ken Epps recently pointed out.

WBCN airplay had buoyed the band while the single remained in rotation, but that public attention faded by late summer. After all that, there was no second single, no plans to record, no clear follow-up. And though the band continued to rehearse and perform, the wave had crested. The sense of a missed opportunity, of a potential breakthrough slipping through their fingers, hung heavy in the air.

Or, had it?

Boston pops!

Well, by early 1985, Dub7 still weren’t breaking up. Not yet. Some called their new sound artful. Others said it was unfocused. But the songwriting was, in rehearsals, so advanced now that the band in fact retained a lot of self confidence. Rehearsals shifted to a new space near Fenway Park. And then there was still tape rolling. In 1985, Dub7 contributed two tracks—“Green Winter” and “True Romantic”—to the cassette-only compilation Boston Pops!, curated by Gary Smith. The project, recorded on a Tascam eight-track at Pyramid Studios, also featured songs by The Blaros, Lifeboat, and Three Colors, capturing a snapshot of Boston’s post-punk and power-pop undercurrent.

Nobody can remember exactly, but Dub7 sort of agreed to disband. Garry, Steve and Larry remained as a unit, just writing songs and rehearsing for a while around the end of 1985.

In the new year, Matt Elmes joined on bass, and they were now a four-piece band again. The focus turned to songwriting. The band treated the room like a studio. They arranged gear carefully and recorded full-band demos on Larry’s high-end Sony recorder with a stereo mic. And the genre had shifted again. What was emerging now was something like Boston’s answer to the Paisley Underground: jangly, psychedelic post-punk, melodic but moody, sharper around the edges, more harmonically adventurous. Steve and Larry both felt it. They knew this was the sound they’d both been heading toward. And the rhythm section followed with ease. This wasn’t just tape rolling in the background. They did multiple takes. They listened back. They were trying to get each demo right. Several members emphasized that these were meant to be strong demos of this new set of songs, carefully arranged, high-fidelity recordings, even if not multitrack. As of this writing, it’s unclear whether the tapes still exist or if someone knows where they are. The songs were flowing, spacious, and fully formed. Loosen Up is the one that made it to the studio. You can hear it there.

Looking back, the pattern is obvious. The songs 007 played in 1982 could have been their first album. Dub7’s 1984 set—tight, layered, exploratory—was a second. This new batch from 1986? That would have been the third. They were well-written, well-arranged, and well-rehearsed. In another timeline, in another universe, there would have been three albums. And they would have made sense. Because the material was there. The 1986 batch, in particular, was full of promise, carefully written, tightly arranged, and recorded as high-quality demos. But only one of those tracks ever made it all the way through the studio process.

The story that follows is the story of what happened next—the unexpected and largely unheard music that emerged as the band transformed into the Kessels. Top

 

(nine) What remains

Into obscurity, and kind of loving it

The name “The Kessels” began to surface—less a rebranding than an informal designation for what the group had become: a loose creative project, still playing, still rehearsing, but no longer a band in the ascending sense. There was no grand announcement of change. The old name simply began to fade.

The only times The Kessels were seen and heard in public were at two gigs. One was with Salem66 at the back area of a food co-op in Allston. Larry had set up this daytime Sunday “hoedown.” The space was huge and chilly, like a big barn—one of the strangest, most memorable gigs they ever did. There was something surreal about it: a once-ambitious band delivering spaced-out pop-dub in a room that smelled faintly of miso and root vegetables. And yet, no one seemed disappointed. Least of all the band. The show was good. Even fun. Actually, lots of fun. Everybody called it a wicked good time. But no one called it a breakthrough. The other gig was with Camper Van Beethoven at T.T. the Bear’s Place. Both shows were well-played. The crowds were perfect, too.

In 1986, they tracked Loosen Up with The Kessels at Polymedia Studio and handed the mix to Tim O’Heir. The result was polished, pop-smart, and hooky—too pop, in fact, for the college radio DJs who once embraced their rawer sound. The recording was shelved. Not because it wasn’t good. Because it didn’t fit.

The Kessels played their last show in early 1987 at Jacks. The gig was fine. Nondescript. But it would be the last time that Steve, Garry and Larry would perform live together. The new songs had been great. The band had been getting along fine. But...

Moving on with life

Around this time, the band members were beginning to feel the pressure of real life taking hold. Steve, who had carried so much of the group’s musical direction since day one, was haunted by the idea that he might end up behind a record store counter for the rest of his life. He needed something to click. Something to prove that all the years of playing meant more than just a reel of good memories. He started a business that’s lasted decades since. But ending the Kessels wasn’t Steve’s idea. Larry was first.

Larry, tired of night clubs, more and more interested in reading critical theory, felt the edges of burnout and decided to leave the rock scene behind. His creative drive was intact, but it was time for change. He sold his guitar to Mark Sandman (Morphine singer). He returned to university, and later set his sights on East Asia. It was just a quiet shift in direction at first, until he moved to the other side of the planet.

Garry, ever the rhythmic backbone, also needed something steadier. He began taking more reliable gigs—something that could bring in real money. Music had always been about love, but love alone doesn’t pay rent. Eventually, he started a business creating bespoke kitchen counter tops for Manhattan clients. Ken continued in engineering and business, eventually becoming a C-suite executive in the semiconductor industry. John “JG” Goetchius has been a keyboardist ever since, most notably with The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Dee Rail passed away in April 2000 at the age of 41. Garry had become closer friends with Dee in later years right up until his death.

1980–1987. No LP, but what a story

Some years later, the surviving members of 007 decided to feature Dee Rail in an archival release of live tracks, many of which include his vocals and/or songwriting, which was the first time he had been digitized. Larry felt it was hard to adjust to the reality that he would never reconnect with Dee Rail via the web, as he had hoped.

There were no new releases. No PR push. No tour. Just a strange little artifact of a band out of phase with itself—and with its city. By 1987, it was over. Quietly. No blowup, no farewell. No one came to reclaim the name. There were no reunion shows. No lost album to bootleg. Dub7 had always been hard to pin down. Now, it simply faded. What had once crackled with urgency became something you remembered, maybe—if you’d been there. And then it was gone.

Years later, the old tape of Loosen Up with The Kessels was pulled from storage and brought back to life. The masters were baked, restored, and released in 2023. For a moment, the old sound shimmered again. But that’s another story—an echo from long after the lights went down.

The real one ends in 1987 in the rehearsal room near Fenway, dim light, no stage. Just a few people having fun making great new music no one would hear. Then they just stopped. There was no breakout album. (In a different universe, it could’ve been a third album.) No perfect ending. No tidy summation.

They’d had a good run! There were wins. Real ones. They opened for The Clash. They held their own with Peter Tosh. They played beautifully at the Rumble and got airplay when it counted. They wrote songs that stuck. They built something original, unstable, and unforgettable—at least to the ones who were there. And when it all drifted apart, it wasn’t failure. It was time doing what it does.

If you ever heard them live—at The Rat, Storyville, the Cape—you probably remember. And if you didn’t, well… the streaming still exists. A few glimmers made it out. The rest? It happened. It mattered. Maybe that’s enough.

One last thing

For the ones coming up: if you’re building something strange and original—something that won’t be understood right away—record it. Properly. Don’t wait for someone else to hit the button. Don’t wait until it feels important. Because it already is. Your best show might happen in a room with 40 people and no cameras. And when those 40 scatter—when they grow up, move away, forget—that show will vanish, too.

Even the greatest live acts fade from public memory if they leave nothing behind. In Bristol, the Wild Bunch threw genre-bending warehouse parties that changed music history—but you’ll struggle to find footage. In Lowell, Massachusetts, basements once pulsed with hardcore brilliance that was never recorded. In Osaka and Fukuoka, brilliant bands played weekly to packed live houses, but left no LP, no video, no proof they ever existed outside of memory. Minor Threat helped define straight edge punk—an entire movement—and yet they never released a full-length album. Their influence is enormous, but even they are sometimes reduced to a footnote for people who never saw them or hunted down the tapes. The Screamers in L.A.? Total legends. Zero albums.

That’s the risk. That’s the truth. Audiences age out. People leave the scene. The ones who swore they’d never forget start to forget. Memory isn’t a vault; it’s a tide. What’s not anchored gets pulled out to sea.

So if you’re lucky enough to find your people, if you build something that burns even for a minute—don’t let it disappear. Make a record. Make a book. Publish something. Film your weird show. Press one perfect album. Put it somewhere future people can find it. Because scenes vanish. Cities change. But a document, if you’re careful, can travel without you.

If you want to be remembered, leave more than smoke. Leave a trail.

Epilogue

Jump forward to September 2024, and the F.U.’s are onstage in Shizuoka, Osaka, Tokyo, and Nagoya—over forty years after the original Boston hardcore wave broke. The posters shout “NOT L.A.” in bold letters. The crowds are mixed: late teens up front, flailing and ecstatic, but also elder punks leaning against the back wall—people who were there the first time around, or close enough to remember. Some had flown in. Others had simply never let go.

On the bill: Warhead, Systematic Death, Stupid Babies Go Mad. Japanese bands who inherited the blueprint and made it their own. Boston’s early ’80s energy had crossed the Pacific and been reborn—filtered through new instincts, sharpened by different lives—but unmistakably part of the same global subcultural bloodline.

The scene hadn’t vanished. It had migrated, evolved. What once happened at Gallery East, in VFW halls and basement shows in Massachusetts now echoed through concrete live houses in Japan. The names may shift. The accents, too. But the energy? The refusal to conform? That’s intact.

And so it loops back to where we began: John Sox, the roommate, the friend, the link to that legendary This is Boston, not L.A. compilation. Standing in Tokyo, surrounded by young fans wearing the logos of Boston’s 1981 hardcore giants, it’s clear that the echoes of that scene still resonate. The influence is woven into the fabric of those who remember. The youth in Japan slamming to the same beats are part of a continuum that stretches back over four decades—a testament to the enduring spirit of a scene that refuses to fade.

In the end, maybe that’s the real legacy: the connections, the influence, and the stories that keep getting told, long after the amps have been turned off.

That’s why this was written. For one of those influential live bands that didn’t leave much behind. No LP. No box set. No merch. Just a few tapes, some flyers, and the other aging rockers who still remember. If memory is all they had, then maybe the memory deserves a shape.

 

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Vivian Zito (@dubwisereview) has been documenting underground music scenes for decades. Her writing has appeared in Rockin’On Monthly, Dubwise Review, Billboard, and Trouser Press, alongside contributions to out-of-print anthologies that only the most obsessive collectors have seen. A fixture in late-night radio circles, she’s known for asking deceptively simple questions that leave panelists scrambling.

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