Tag: The Boarders

Song of the Month! 2024 May

Posted on by songs_dxiu85

MUSIC FOR MAY 2024

‘WHY THIS PASSION’

Depicting a lovers’ quarrel, the lyrics of “Why This Passion” never changed after I wrote it, in 1983. But musically, the song shifted shape quite dramatically — from rococo New Wave romanticism to something like punk to something less easily defined — during its long tenure in the repertoire.

I wrote “Why This Passion” for my band the Fashion Jungle, an ensemble distinguished by credible sorties into high drama. But the song’s ornate original arrangement ultimately proved too utterly utterly even for me. So after keyboardist Kathren Torraca departed and Dan Knight succeeded Steve Chapman on bass, I turned the song into a musical hot rod, stripped down and sped up.

We kept that chopped, channeled and supercharged setting when Steve returned to the FJ in 1987, and that’s the version presented here in a rough recording from a Geno’s Rock Club show (at the Brown Street location) in May of that year. Ken Reynolds plays drums, Steve is on bass, and I’m singing and playing my trusty “two-knob” Strat.

(The song would hang on through two more bands, bringing its stay in the repertoire to a total of 20 years. It evolved with the Boarders, whose dabblings in “world music” inspired Jon Nichols-Pethick’s rolling tom-tom beat with its vaguely Middle Eastern feel. That propulsive rhythm worked so well, in fact, that Howling Turbines, with “Rumblin’ ” Ken Reynolds back on the drums, made sure to keep it. Gretchen Schaefer was the bassist in both combos.) — by Doug Hubley

Hear it below! Buy it on Bandcamp! (“Why This Passion” copyright © 1985 by Douglas L. Hubley. All rights reserved.)

album-art

00:00

The 1987 Fashion Jungle: from left, bassist Steve Chapman, guitarist Doug Hubley, drummer Ken Reynolds. Photo: Minolta Self-Timer

Song of the Month! 2024 April

Posted on by songs_dxiu85

MUSIC FOR APRIL 2024

‘JE T’AIME’

“Je t’aime” is an interpretation of an affair I had in central Europe in 1976. I changed the setting for the sake of the song because, well, Paris.

Also altered were the emotional facts of the matter. I wanted to make a song about being betrayed in a romantic locale and used that 1976 relationship as  the departure point. The result is hardly fair to the woman in question — there was betrayal but it was mutual, and merely a betrayal of naive expectations.  But it works on its own terms, which is the only basis for judging any song, and remains one of my favorites among my compositions.

“Je t’aime” needed a long time to come into its own. I wrote it in 1982 to perform with the Fashion Jungle, but with that band it has settled into place only during reunion shows since 2021. Instead, it was with The Boarders, heard here in spring 1996, that “Je t’aime” coalesced. Later it was part of the Howling Turbines repertoire. — by Doug Hubley

Hear “Je t’aime” by The Boarders, below: Doug Hubley, bassist Gretchen Schaefer and drummer Jonathan Nichols-Pethick. Buy it on Bandcamp! (“Je t’aime” copyright © 1983 by Douglas L. Hubley. All rights reserved. Photo above: Doug enjoying a happy relationship in Paris, June 2000; photograph by Gretchen Schaefer. Below: The Boarders in 1947, er, 1994, in a photograph by Jeff Stanton. From left: Doug, Jon, Gretchen.)

album-art

Je t'aime

00:00

2023 April Song of the Month!

Posted on by songs_dxiu85

MUSIC FOR APRIL 2023

‘1,000 POUNDS OF RAIN’

April 2023 is a far cry from the depths-of-the-pandemic November of 2020, but one thing those months have in common is rain, at least in Maine.

“1,000 Pounds of Rain” was Song of the Month! that November, but here’s a different rendition. Where the previous example was recorded by Howling Turbines in 1997, this one comes from a rehearsal two years earlier by The Boarders — the band that introduced the song.

I finished “1,000 Pounds of Rain” in spring 1994, but got the title earlier. The inspiration was a 1990 Cowlix performance at a Portland, Maine, seafood joint called the Drydock. So as not to disturb the tourists in the dining room enjoying their lobster and fried clams, we were told to carry our equipment to the second-story performance area up a cast-iron fire escape. It was pouring rain.

I liked the title, but it took me years to figure out what the song should be about. Finally completed around the time the ’Lix were splitting up, “1,000 Pounds” turned out to be a cry of despair at reaching middle age. (If someone complained to me about such a thing now, I’d tell ’em, “It beats the alternative.”)

It was one of the first numbers the Boarders learned (and as a matter of fact, the Boarders’ future drummer Jonathan Nichols-Pethick was in the Drydock audience that night and, liking what he heard, later joined the ’Lix, which segued into the band heard here).

Hear “1,000 Pounds of Rain” below! Buy it on Bandcamp! (The Boarders, below, from left: Doug Hubley, guitar and vocal. Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, drums. Gretchen Schaefer, bass. “1,000 Pounds of Rain” copyright © 1995 by Douglas L. Hubley. All rights reserved. “Peaches in the rain” photo by Doug Hubley. Boarders photo by Jeff Stanton.)

album-art

00:00