Rick Harte literally suffered to stake out his role in Boston music history. “When I got interested in recording live music, I had the Crown company build me a two-track recorder,” he explains. “This was in about 1977. I started going to clubs and recording jazz bands to learn how to make good live recordings, which seemed extremely difficult — especially later when I got interested in recording rock bands with vocals.
“I got paranoid about leaving the recorder in my apartment over a Memorial Day weekend, so I tried to bring it down the stairs and out to my van myself. It weighed about 100 pounds. I fell down the stairs with it and broke my arm badly. Somehow I managed to hoist it up using some two-inch tape reels and kicked it into the back of the van.” Then he went to the hospital.
Shortly after Harte healed, he embarked on one of the most illustrious and influential careers in local rock history. As the founder of Ace of Hearts Records and the producer of early recordings by Mission of Burma, the Neighborhoods, the Lyres, the Nervous Eaters, the Infliktors, the Neats, and a host of other bands, he helped create a blueprint for Boston’s club-rock sound that endures today. And its indelible lines can be found on the just-released Ace of Hearts retrospective 12 Classic 45s, a sonic blurt from the ’70s and ’80s built of Harte’s trademark punchy sound and progressive, artist-inclined aesthetic.
Ace of Hearts released terrific albums by the aforementioned bands and others, but it’s really the 25 tunes here that had the most impact. In particular, Mission of Burma’s “Academy Fight Song” backed with “Max Ernst” and the Lyres’ “I Want to Help You Ann” with “I Really Want You Right Now” had nationwide repercussions, fueling the post-punk era and the second coming of garage rock.
“I never wanted to be a producer, per se, or have a record label, but there was a great scene here in the wake of the punk-rock revolution and nobody was making records with these bands that had something important to say. I just wanted to make the best records I could. Most punk 45s had cheap packaging, lame artwork, and bad sound. I had already been collecting records for years and still have the 45s I bought in the ’60s. They looked and sounded great. I decided there was no reason why the records I made couldn’t do the same.”
Harte’s sincere passion for music can be traced back to a single night in the mid-’60s. “There was no turning back for me after my dad came home from work one day and said, ‘How would you all like to go see the Beatles?’ We jumped up and down and got in the car and went to Suffolk Downs for the concert. The energy was amazing. After that we’d sit at home playing all the new 45s over and over.”
There was no turning back for Harte after his label’s second release, the Neighborhoods’ power-pop marvel “Prettiest Girl,” an enduring number that’s one of the compilation’s highs. Harte had made his first 45 with punks the Infliktors on his beloved two-track behemoth, but “Prettiest Girl” was his — and the ’Hoods — first foray into a professional studio. It sold 10,000 copies.
“When ‘Prettiest Girl’ became a regional hit, I realized there was no reason why I couldn’t make records that would succeed nationally.” And the Lyres and Burma discs accomplished that, creeping from the underground into the tendrils of the mainstream.
Neighborhoods frontman David Minehan, now the in-demand local producer and engineer behind Woolly Mammoth studios, describes the music-obsessed, pageboy-haired Harte as a “true eccentric.” Also as a deep talent and mentor. “When we started working together, Rick handed me a box of English singles that today would probably be worth $30,000 — original 45s of the Stones, Traffic, the Beatles, the Kinks — and said, ‘Find out what it is about this stuff that’s magic.’ He helped my musical education immensely. His knowledge is incredible. Rick had an uncanny knack for drawing your attention to some ingredient you took for granted and hadn’t stopped to think what role it was playing. He was extremely interested in capturing my vision as an artist. But he also became a real part of forming that vision.”
Harte remains an active member of the Mission of Burma camp. He was a consultant for the band’s 2004 comeback OnoffOn (Matador) and provided archival music and footage for the forthcoming Burma documentary Inexplicable, which premieres April 22 at Somerville Theatre.
“When Rick first came to a rehearsal, we were a bit baffled by him,” Burma guitarist Roger Miller says. “He’s got an interesting demeanor and he looked like Jeff Beck. But he was very supportive of any idea we had.”
More important to hard-core Burma fans, Harte recently rediscovered a pair of unfinished songs on the same tape reel as “Max Ernst” and “Academy Fight Song,” which the band returned to the studio to complete.
“It was peculiar because we don’t have that much attachment to these songs anymore,” Miller relates. “We hadn’t heard them since 1979, and we played only one of them out, for only about six months.” Nonetheless, “Devotion” and “Execution” are now complete and will appear on Harte’s next compilation as well as the Burma EP Signals Call and Marches when Matador reissues the band’s historic catalog later this year. As for Burma’s current music, their new The Obliterati (Matador) hits the street May 23.
And Harte is still a devoted recordist. “I’ve been redefining my whole concept of live recording lately. I recently recorded a CD by drummer William Hooker, Roger Miller, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth that Atavistic issued” — Out Trios — “and it’s 50 minutes of music that really goes somewhere. It’s proof that live albums don’t have to be an afterthought, which I’ve always believed.”
On the Web
Ace of Hearts Records: //www.aceofheartsrecords.com/