Scarce went right back to work after Graning’s three-month hospitalization, adding new songs to the delayed A&M album. Yet it wasn’t the happy ending they’d hoped for. “An experience like that kills your physical confidence and your confidence in the universe,” says Graning. He’s made a full recovery; as he points out, however, “The cognitive stuff comes back, but feeling like a human again — that’s difficult. So I was emotionally flat: I could see what I was doing, but I couldn’t feel anything — very much like being a robot. We’d be rehearsing, and the others would be looking for a reaction, and I’d be saying, ‘Sorry, I’m trying. Can’t feel it.’ We’d already had problems with lawsuits and changes of drummers, and the aneurysm was the cherry on top.”
“That period really broke my heart,” says Raskin. “For me the band was always an emotional thing. I fell in love with Chick’s music from the first practice we ever had. After the hemorrhage, it took years before he even felt like himself again, and the hardest part was to see him standing next to me but not relating to me. I got angry, which didn’t help, and it spun out after that.”
Neither did it help when the band played the usual no-glory showcases after Deadsexy’s belated release. Graning: “They weren’t mentioning my experience in the publicity, and I was thinking, ‘Go on, use it!’ They had us touring the Midwest playing to nobody. The last show was in Chicago, where we had 50 radio people standing there with their arms crossed. After that, I looked at Joyce and said, ‘You know what? I’m done.’ ” By the time they got a rave review in Rolling Stone, the band had already broken up. Graning says he never even read it.
Graning’s emotional recovery took a few more years. He says he cried for the first time when he saw Neil Young play a live version of “Powderfinger.” He moved to New York and formed a short-lived solo band, then made a solo album (Empty) that came out only in Germany. He drifted to New Orleans and played the streets in the French Quarter before returning to Tennessee, where he’d been doing stage construction. He’s been away from Boston long enough that he’s surprised when I tell him the Rat has closed.
Raskin took a different route. She wound up with a computer job, a husband, two kids, and a house in the suburbs. But her attachment to Scarce died hard, and this year she completed a self-published book, Aching To Be, about her time with the band. That led to her contacting Graning, and then to Scarce’s re-forming.
Songwriting is already under way for a new album. And the band hint that some of their pre-A&M demos may leak. Raskin is looking very much like someone who’s seeing her fondest dream some true. “For one thing, I’ve got my Chick back. And I’ve been away from this long enough that I feel like I did listening to the Ramones when I was 14 — just getting into it and having a ball. It feels like we don’t have to worry about making this what it was. Let’s just make it what it is right now.”
SCARCE + BLIZZARD OF 78 + DIRTY TRUCKERS + THE CRUSHING LOW | T.T. the Bear’s Place, 10 Brookline St, Cambridge | October 6 | 617.492.BEAR
