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Soothing Sounds For Baby
I Hardly Knew Ye
by Allan Heifetz
 In the beginning there was THE STORM CENTER, formed around the summer of '84, which was Matt Kaden, his brother Josh and their friend John Fields.
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John's family had a lot of money (his dad owned the successful Fields Hosiery chain of stores) so it was only fair that he provided the facilities.
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The facilities, which we would all come to love and abuse over the next few years, were in John's fully furnished teen-bachelor pad basement haven, complete with video projector; tons of musical equipment and a breathtaking wall of sports trophies.
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I remember being amazed at the regal spiral staircase that led down from the main living room to his hangout.
Matt let me sit in on a couple of numbers with THE STORM CENTER, and even though I really couldn't sing (sadly, after puberty I never recovered full control of my vocal cords) I soon became the lead singer.
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Thus the JUICE NIGHTCLUB was born.
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Matt doubled on keys and drums, John played keys; drums and bass, Josh Kaden, a year older than Matt, was the lead guitarist.
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Somewhere in the fall of '84 and winter '85 we all got into punk rock, or rather our old friend Tony and new friend Max did, so Matt and I quickly emulated their behavior and manner of dress.
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Matt and I ended up messing our hair up so badly that we were even shunned by the punk rockers.
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They didn't take kindly to kids giving themselves receding hair lines.
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Tony already knew Max from punk rock shows.
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I believe we met Max on Halloween '84.
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We were all at Tony's house.
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I can remember a large group of young, mayhem-crazed ruffians coming up onto the porch and trying to start some shit.
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We responded by locking all the doors and windows and taunting them from behind the curtains.
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One of the hoodlums mooned us as they stomped away.
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Max responded with a taunting, "We saw your A-nus!
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We saw your A-nus!"
I think we picked the wrong decade to be punky.
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Or the right one, depending on how you look at it.
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The Reagan era was in full swing -- BORN IN THE USA and PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN were on bumperstickers and T-shirts throughout the nation.
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Max actually did belong to a young communist group, and from time to time would kick some knowledge and take us to school in the ways of radicalism.
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Soon he ruined naked women for me by going off about sexism.
Tony and Max had formed a band called CRISIS AT CENTRAL HIGH or C.A.C.H., with Max's punky and spunky gal pal Julie on bass and Dave Schulkin on drums.
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Shulkin is now a published author, having written a book about Wes Craven's terrorfest THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT.
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As a drummer though, he really sucked.
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Both Matt and I fully agreed on that as we watched C.A.C.H. rehearse.
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During this time, Max moved from Newton Lower Falls to Newton Highlands, where he was given the attic to make horrible noise in.
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Somehow, someone got up the nerve to kick Mr. Shulkin out and I was handed the sticks.
While the whole C.A.C.H. phenomenon was in full swing (we never did get to play a gig), Matt, Tony and I began to play together in Matt's attic / bedroom (was I the only one without an attic / basement suite?).
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We called ourselves THOSE UNSTOPPABLE RAT MOLES.
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Wait -- was it Moles or Molds?
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It's all so hazy now. The Rat Molds took a more subtle approach, adding fake jazz and fake funk to the fake punk pop mix.
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We really liked what we heard and all of a sudden CRISIS AT CENTRAL HIGH was in crisis.
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THOSE UNSTOPPABLE RAT MOLDS changed to SOOTHING SOUNDS FOR BABY, probably in early fall 1985.
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Max was left with no band and we continued to feel badly for many years afterwards.
SSFB's first few gigs were very strange.
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I believe the very first gig was at Florencia Lozano's birthday party.
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She definitely liked Tony, I can't say the same for me and Matt.
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I can remember hangin' on Florencia's front lawn and her inquiring about my fly UTOPIA t-shirt.
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I described them as "well-crafted pop."
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"You mean like Survivor?" she asked.
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Sigh.
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The gig was going OK in her cramped basement until she unwrapped her last gift -- a MODERN ENGLISH record.
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She squealed with glee and proceeded to play I MELT WITH YOU non-stop and the gig was over.
Our second gig was at Tony's father's birthday party.
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I had been grounded that weekend and at first I was not allowed to play the gig (I had gone to a Minutemen show without permission) but Tony gathered up all of his courage (and fibbing skills) and talked to my parents, saying that his dad was really looking forward to us playing and it would break his heart if we couldn't do it.
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The tugging on their heart strings, plus my incessant sobbing broke them.
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We played in the backyard on a sunny, somewhat chilly day.
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We started our first song figuring they would all come pouring out of the house in a dance-crazed frenzy in no time.
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After a few more songs, however, it was clear that we'd be playing to absolutely nobody.
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Christopher "Superman" Reeves' brother was there!
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I think he was the first one to tell us to keep it down.
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As we ended our fifth song, we heard a distant yell coming from the vicinity of the big condominium complex on the other side of the fence; "My baby is trying to sleep!
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Please stop!".
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To add to the insult, a cop, or rather the hand of a cop, protruding from the top of the wooden fence, shook and pointed in our direction.
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"Keep it down or else!"
Such rock and roll mayhem could not have prepared us for our third gig: the Teen-Aid Benefit Concert which was held at The Metro club on Landsdowne Street in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.
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TEEN-AID was a benefit for an organization called Bridge Over Troubled Waters, which helped homeless teens.
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John Fields, who was one of the benefit organizers, submitted our tape to a panel of judges and we ended up winning the teenage band competition.
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This meant we would open up for such Boston luminaries such as Ball & Pivot and The Drive.
For the gig I actually wore the ultimate 80's piece of clothing -- a skinny leather tie.
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Matt wore a dashiki. The crowd of 300 or so was filled with teeny boppin' chickies.
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It went OK until the last song when my snare drum stand gave way and I had to hold the snare between my legs the whole time.
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After the gig as I walked nervously around the dark club, I passed a portly young maiden who mistakenly thought I was rock royalty.
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"Touch me!" she said, stunned by my sweat soaked beauty (maybe it was the tie).
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I managed to poke her in the shoulder with my index finger.
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We were both very disappointed.
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It was all downhill from there.
I ended up wanting Soothing Sounds For Baby to become The Velvet Underground (60's), The Soft Boys (70's), the Agitpop (80's- early 90's), meaning, a great band that was completely ignored by everybody during it's existence.
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We certainly achieved that in spades.
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Why, if we could have just tasted one quarter of Agitpop's fame and fortune, just think of what I would have smelled like!
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Soothing Sounds was always waiting for a miracle to take us out of obscurity.
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But now I don't think in terms of how many fans we had or if we got on a label or not, but what SSFB meant to me as a source of pride and an artistic outlet.
Of course, during the teen years I thought I was the most miserable human being on the planet.
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But the band gave me a real sense of belonging and brotherhood.
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It was a great way to show and prove our love of music, as well as, the only way we knew how to give a big SCREW YOU to MTV.
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When I listen to our old tapes, we actually seem tighter than what we ended up being, even though we had only been playing our instruments for a handful of years.
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Back then there was no question of what we were supposed to be doing and that was to play fast, tight and crazy.
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We didn't know anything about dynamics; we played everything at the same frenetic pace and volume.
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We challenged each other by coming up with music that we didn't necessarily have the chops for yet.
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For the first few years I would break sticks constantly, often minutes after I had gone to the store to get 'em.
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For most of SSFB's existence I would come very close to passing out after certain songs -- I didn't even know how to breathe right.
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We had no idea what we were doing, but we did it.
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We never really even learned to tune our guitars.
The Minutemen taught us that every instrument must come up with something special for every song.
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No one was allowed to be musically lazy -- no one was allowed to relax.
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We only knew we had to come up with stuff that has not been heard yet.
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If we brought a tired and cliched riff or chord progression to the table, it would be rejected immediately, or it would be worked on and screwed with until it was unrecognizable.
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We didn't do pseudo-jazz, blues or roots rock, we hated all that crap.
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We didn't jam.
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We had an unnatural fear of bar-chords, which we are all trying to get over to this day.
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We basically looked down on the rock & roll mentality and acted like obnoxious rock stars only to get laughs.
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I'm not down with that snobbish and ignorant attitude now, but when we were starting out it was a positive and creatively healthy position to take.
I can't even believe we managed to put a CD out, but I am truly thankful.
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In the SSFB time capsule, THUNK will be the first thing I want people to see.
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In the end, all we are left with are hundreds of songs, videos, photos, 45s, tapes and CDs -- and I'm gonna love going back to all that over and over again.
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