Notes on the return of the Late Risers' Club
By JIM SULLIVAN | August 28, 2007
The Outlets
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On September 8, the Baseball Tavern will host the 30th-anniversary party for a Boston rock-and-roll institution: THE LATE RISERS’ CLUB. What began in 1977 as a four-hour show from 9 am to 1 pm on MIT’s radio station (WTBS until ’79, when Ted Turner gave the station $50,000 and the call letters became the now familiar WMBR) has remained a vital local source for new underground rock. And it’s launched more than a few DJ careers over the years. “Boston had a booming local music scene,” recalls LRC founder and former DJ Tom Lane. “Nationally, the Ramones brought back three-chord rock, and the Clash and Sex Pistols spearheaded the new British invasion. Commercial radio ignored this. We didn’t. We played it and we lived it. I don’t know if I was ever happier, playing those records on the radio.”
The show now airs Monday through Friday from 10 am to noon at 88.1 FM. And as veteran LRC DJ/producer Joanie Lindstrom points out, it’s still where people “go to hear punk rock.” Lindstrom says the emphasis is “on new stuff, not oldies.”
The September 8 celebration will include sets by the reunited Neighborhoods, Outlets, and Band 19. On the club’s roof deck, former and current MBR DJs will spin tracks. Lane is returning from Las Vegas to participate, and Marissa Acosta will screen her Late Risers’ Club documentary. And long-time punk-video maven Jan Crocker will show vintage performance tapes.
The North Shore label DEATHWISH has merged with the hardcore/punk label MALFUNCTION RECORDS. And DAUGHTERS — the Providence band who like to call themselves a “five-piece musical fistfight” — begin a European tour September 19 in Birmingham, England, opening for the Fall of Troy.
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