Thanks for writing my thoughts down. Except I was in Boston not Chicago. And I shopped at Newbury Comics, where I bought the On Fire vinyl and devoured it just as you did. Had the pleasure of seeing the madness at the Rat many times from 1985-1988, when I lived there. His savage reputation came through live, and that anger was spewed back at him via the audience, between dancing and collisions. It was a beautiful thing, changed my life too, and found a way to torch our souls. So glad we had him for those moments, forever in his debt.
Right on, Bob! Their Chicago shows (at least the ones I caught) were less emotionally-fraught, maybe because there wasn’t so much built-in baggage between Jeff and the audience. But goddamn, they were incredible.
Turned on to Lyres by WHFS, I loved their records. A fine slice of real rock n roll that hasn’t faded one bit over the years. Seeing Lyres in a small college town club I was able to witness the banshee approach in person, and hear tales of the promoter-promoter aftermath from my friends who put on the show. Good times! Jeff was a real one, and left us an awful lot.
Oh, and Dan, unless you want to be haunted for all time by Jeff’s sweaty fractious spirit, please mend your ways and remove the The from Lyres name. Using it was a famously sure way to get him going…
Loved the Lyres, but Connolly was a notorious asshole. Help You Ann is a great track, still one of my all time faves from that era of Boston rock, one I knew dearly at the time and will miss forever. RIP Monoman
Superb piece and tribute to Jeff Conolly and the Lyres, Dan! I fell in love with the group’s debut album around the same time you did and for all the same reasons. Like you, I had been searching for rockin’ sounds that resonated with me following the punk explosion of the mid - late ‘70s, and that offered a welcome contrast to mainstream AOR and synth-pop, the latter of which did have its moments, mind you. Besides REM, for example, the Fleshtones along with the Lyres certainly did the trick, big time! I also had the same initial reaction to the cover of the Chesterfield Kings’ first album that you had, but upon first hearing it, was completely sold on its contents. I subsequently happily got into the ‘60s garage revival of the Eighties and Nineties, doing a radio show, writing in zines, and singing in a group. While I admit that a number of bands were dully copying the original Sixties fuzz-blasting sounds, there were many others which, to my ears, excitedly recaptured the spirit and the music such as Thee Milkshakes, the Wylde Mammoths, the Untamed Youth, and my Montreal hometown faves, the Gruesomes. Anyway, thanks for your excellent story on your immersion into the rockin’ madness of Monoman!
Thanks, Phil! The Fleshtones never really did it for me on vinyl, but I’ve always dug them live. Thee Headcoats were a definite favorite in both realms, though — and I’ll never forget the completely unhinged show they put on at LA’s Spaceland in the late 90s. And I totally agree with you now about 80s synth-pop; I’ve come around to a lot of that stuff in the past 15 years or so. At the time, though, I didn’t get it at all!
I especially treasure the Fleshtones’ first two albums, Roman Gods and Hexbreaker, and, yes, they were a real force to be reckoned with onstage. They still are, IMO. I only saw Thee Headcoats once, in the spring of ‘97, and they were a blast. When it comes to ‘80s synth-pop, at the time I basically wasn’t especially keen on the sound of the synths, the drums, and what I considered to be fey vocals. I STILL don’t really care that much for the instrumental sound, but I certainly admit there were some strong songs and, in particular, melodies on the part of, say, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode.
Very cool write up, thanks for doing it. There is some kind of delicious irony that Conolly would have been pissed at you over it for repeatedly calling his Vox Continental organ a Farfisa. :)
Hi Dan, wow did that album make an impression on you! As you know, I spent a lot of time in Boston in the second half of the 1980s, and successfully pitched various Boston-related features for UK mags, which meant, inevitably, I interviewed Jeff. At his home. And I hate to burst peoples' bubbles, but he was great fun. Energetic enough that I later wondered if he was speeding, but perfectly pleasant, I had no bad memories of it all. (Sometimes us UK crits get the favorable treatment.) But here's what I really remember, and it also flies in the face of your summation of his 'lo-fi' reputation, at the end of the interview we'd been talking about The Who and he wanted to play me something from his collection. And it was a hell of a collection he had, also.
Yes, I guess chances are it was mono, and whether it was The Who Sell Out so we could salivate about an individual song or some 7" single he was enthused over, he had one of those incredibly expensive turntables the likes of which I had never actually seen before. The kind that has so many weights and measures that you wonder if it belongs to NASA. The type that takes up its own entire space on a countertop where nothing else is allowed to come close to it. I certainly wasn't allowed to touch it. And, as you might have done so yourself, I was left to ponder about this person operating at the margins of North AMerican indie music, a total 60s garage rock obsessive who could not be making money from his music but nonetheless had decided that a turntable of this quality was everybit as important as a decent guitar.
I presume somewhere I have the manuscript of the interview, but primarily I just wanted to share this memory. Good to have a good one! RIP Monoman.
Hahaha - that’s amazing! And a mutual friend told me this morning that Jeff actually collected 80s metal albums. Clearly, the man contained multitudes!
Fantastic piece. Growing up in Boston, you absorbed the local music scene conventional wisdom of how important Conolly's DMZ and the Lyres were not matter what kind of music you were into.
Thanks for writing my thoughts down. Except I was in Boston not Chicago. And I shopped at Newbury Comics, where I bought the On Fire vinyl and devoured it just as you did. Had the pleasure of seeing the madness at the Rat many times from 1985-1988, when I lived there. His savage reputation came through live, and that anger was spewed back at him via the audience, between dancing and collisions. It was a beautiful thing, changed my life too, and found a way to torch our souls. So glad we had him for those moments, forever in his debt.
Right on, Bob! Their Chicago shows (at least the ones I caught) were less emotionally-fraught, maybe because there wasn’t so much built-in baggage between Jeff and the audience. But goddamn, they were incredible.
Turned on to Lyres by WHFS, I loved their records. A fine slice of real rock n roll that hasn’t faded one bit over the years. Seeing Lyres in a small college town club I was able to witness the banshee approach in person, and hear tales of the promoter-promoter aftermath from my friends who put on the show. Good times! Jeff was a real one, and left us an awful lot.
Oh, and Dan, unless you want to be haunted for all time by Jeff’s sweaty fractious spirit, please mend your ways and remove the The from Lyres name. Using it was a famously sure way to get him going…
Hahaha — I figure his spirit is too busy digging for obscure 45s at the Next Life Record Store to haunt me, but I'll see what I can do...
Loved the Lyres, but Connolly was a notorious asshole. Help You Ann is a great track, still one of my all time faves from that era of Boston rock, one I knew dearly at the time and will miss forever. RIP Monoman
Hahaha - You were one of the first people I knew to tell me that Monoman was an asshole!
Great read, my man.
Superb piece and tribute to Jeff Conolly and the Lyres, Dan! I fell in love with the group’s debut album around the same time you did and for all the same reasons. Like you, I had been searching for rockin’ sounds that resonated with me following the punk explosion of the mid - late ‘70s, and that offered a welcome contrast to mainstream AOR and synth-pop, the latter of which did have its moments, mind you. Besides REM, for example, the Fleshtones along with the Lyres certainly did the trick, big time! I also had the same initial reaction to the cover of the Chesterfield Kings’ first album that you had, but upon first hearing it, was completely sold on its contents. I subsequently happily got into the ‘60s garage revival of the Eighties and Nineties, doing a radio show, writing in zines, and singing in a group. While I admit that a number of bands were dully copying the original Sixties fuzz-blasting sounds, there were many others which, to my ears, excitedly recaptured the spirit and the music such as Thee Milkshakes, the Wylde Mammoths, the Untamed Youth, and my Montreal hometown faves, the Gruesomes. Anyway, thanks for your excellent story on your immersion into the rockin’ madness of Monoman!
Thanks, Phil! The Fleshtones never really did it for me on vinyl, but I’ve always dug them live. Thee Headcoats were a definite favorite in both realms, though — and I’ll never forget the completely unhinged show they put on at LA’s Spaceland in the late 90s. And I totally agree with you now about 80s synth-pop; I’ve come around to a lot of that stuff in the past 15 years or so. At the time, though, I didn’t get it at all!
I especially treasure the Fleshtones’ first two albums, Roman Gods and Hexbreaker, and, yes, they were a real force to be reckoned with onstage. They still are, IMO. I only saw Thee Headcoats once, in the spring of ‘97, and they were a blast. When it comes to ‘80s synth-pop, at the time I basically wasn’t especially keen on the sound of the synths, the drums, and what I considered to be fey vocals. I STILL don’t really care that much for the instrumental sound, but I certainly admit there were some strong songs and, in particular, melodies on the part of, say, Soft Cell and Depeche Mode.
Very cool write up, thanks for doing it. There is some kind of delicious irony that Conolly would have been pissed at you over it for repeatedly calling his Vox Continental organ a Farfisa. :)
Hahaha — I'll keep it in, then!
Hi Dan, wow did that album make an impression on you! As you know, I spent a lot of time in Boston in the second half of the 1980s, and successfully pitched various Boston-related features for UK mags, which meant, inevitably, I interviewed Jeff. At his home. And I hate to burst peoples' bubbles, but he was great fun. Energetic enough that I later wondered if he was speeding, but perfectly pleasant, I had no bad memories of it all. (Sometimes us UK crits get the favorable treatment.) But here's what I really remember, and it also flies in the face of your summation of his 'lo-fi' reputation, at the end of the interview we'd been talking about The Who and he wanted to play me something from his collection. And it was a hell of a collection he had, also.
Yes, I guess chances are it was mono, and whether it was The Who Sell Out so we could salivate about an individual song or some 7" single he was enthused over, he had one of those incredibly expensive turntables the likes of which I had never actually seen before. The kind that has so many weights and measures that you wonder if it belongs to NASA. The type that takes up its own entire space on a countertop where nothing else is allowed to come close to it. I certainly wasn't allowed to touch it. And, as you might have done so yourself, I was left to ponder about this person operating at the margins of North AMerican indie music, a total 60s garage rock obsessive who could not be making money from his music but nonetheless had decided that a turntable of this quality was everybit as important as a decent guitar.
I presume somewhere I have the manuscript of the interview, but primarily I just wanted to share this memory. Good to have a good one! RIP Monoman.
Hahaha - that’s amazing! And a mutual friend told me this morning that Jeff actually collected 80s metal albums. Clearly, the man contained multitudes!
Fantastic piece. Growing up in Boston, you absorbed the local music scene conventional wisdom of how important Conolly's DMZ and the Lyres were not matter what kind of music you were into.
Thanks, Matt!
Thanks, Matt! Yeah, I got that sense from my Boston pals at the time…