Day After Day #111: Talk About Love

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Talk About Love (1987)

When you're a rock fan, it's important to support your local music scene. If you're lucky enough to live in or near a decent-sized city, there's likely a bunch of local acts that are worth your time. When I started going to concerts in the '80s, I only knew about big arena shows, and those were the days when bands could routinely fill hockey rinks in major metropolitan areas. 

But once I started seeing bands in clubs, that's when my eyes really opened to the wide range of shows you could attend. And it was way more fun to be right up in front of the stage instead of way back in the rafters a mile away. 

Boston's music scene was especially healthy in the '70s and '80s with plenty of great bands playing interesting venues in the city and in the suburbs. In the '70s, there were bands like Aerosmith, the J. Geils Band, the Cars and more unique acts like Mission of Burma and the Neighborhoods. In the '80s, there was Til Tuesday, the Del Fuegos, Scruffy the Cat and later, the Pixies and Throwing Muses. 

Another Boston-area band that emerged in the '80s but got less fanfare was O Positive. Led by singer Dave Herlihy, the band formed in 1983 and soon became known locally for its earnest indie rock and its great live shows. O Positive's jangly sound and Herlihy's vocals were reminiscent of R.E.M. and the band could deliver the goods live. They released a few EPs Only Breathing and Cloud Factory, that got a lot of play on college radio and on bigger Boston stations like WBCN and WFNX. The band made videos that were played on the Boston-based music video channel V66.

"Talk About Love" is the lead track on 1987's Cloud Factory that starts with a stirring riff and finds Herlihy singing about lost love.

"I've got a flavor for the outside/Well I couldn't look away/Thinking about the book/That I read or that I wrote/And it feels like I've been read to/Talk about love."

In an interview, Herlihy says the popularity of "Talk About Love" caused Only Breathing to sell more copies at the Newbury Comics store in Harvard Square in December 1987 than any other record, even R.E.M. and U2, who were huge at the time. 

"I saw your face in the paper/You look so happy/You look right at me/I sing at your star/And I'm dying to smile but/I just couldn't be myself I had to/Think of someone else and never/Celebration day is broken/Talking about the words we should have spoken/Talk about love."

The band signed with Epic Records in 1989 and released its major label debut, Toyboat Toyboat Toyboat, in 1990. It's a great record, but the music industry was still focused on hair metal at that point so O Positive was lost in the shuffle. College radio still played them, but the label didn't pay for any videos, which at the time were hugely important for new bands. 

The band eventually left Epic and did one more album, Home Sweet Head, before splitting up in 1995. Herlihy had graduated law school before forming O Positive and became an entertainment lawyer; he's also a professor at Northeastern University. O Positive has played some reunion shows over the years (including one at the Paradise in January; see below) and Herlihy released a solo EP last year. 

I caught the band a few times at an old rock club called Grover's in Beverly, where I live. When I first moved down to this area in 1989, I went there often and saw great local acts like O Positive, Tribe, Heretix, Barrence Whitfield and the Savages, and Bim Skala Bim. But then one day, the club was closed because of failure to pay back taxes and it eventually became a restaurant. A lot of the old suburban clubs have come and gone, but there are some newer non-Boston venues for cool indie bands like Deep Cuts in Medford, Faces Brewing in Malden and Notch Brewing in Brighton and Salem (occasionally). There's still good local music out there, but you've got to look for it.

The Sound of Our Town

A few months ago, I was at a used bookstore in Hampton, NH, with my mom and my daughters. While the girls looked for books, I perused the music section and came across Brett Milano's The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock n' Roll. I was familiar with Milano, a freelance music writer who has done reviews for the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix and Boston Herald over the last few decades; I also see him at a fair amount of shows in town, most recently at the Wild Flag gig at the Paradise.

Knowing him as a seasoned observer and a good writer, and also noting that the book was $8 used, I picked it up and plowed through it over the last week (that's pretty good for me, given all the distractions I have going on at any given time). The book traces Boston's music scene from the 1950s to the present (it was published in 2007), so Milano has a lot of ground to cover in 241 pages. He does a good job of hitting the high points and giving the reader a taste of what was happening in town at a particular time.

I moved to New England in 1983, when a lot of cool shit was going on in town that I was sort of aware of from listening to local radio, but I didn't start going to club shows locally until 1989 or so. My actual first forays were to a grimy little rock club called Grover's, right here in Beverly, seeing bands of local renown like O Positive, Barrence Whitfield and the Savages (Barrence still lives in Beverly and is a cool dude), Tribe, Heretix and Bim Skala Bim. The Rolling Rocks were cheap and it was my first experience of seeing bands up close and in my face, as opposed to the many arena shows I'd attended by that point. Sadly, Grover's went out of business in '90 or '91, reportedly because of unpaid taxes; one day the doors were padlocked shut and that was that. The site of the club now houses a fairly upscale restaurant.

After that, I caught bands at the Salem clubs Bleachers and the Dodge Street Grill, but mainly I started going to Boston clubs like The Channel, the Paradise, the Middle East and Lansdowne Street clubs like Avalon, Axis, Venus De Milo and Bill's Bar. Soon club shows made up the majority of my concertgoing, and they still do. Just last night, I was out late with my good friend Mr. Breitling as we checked out one of his favorite bands, Soccer Mom, as well as AM Stereo and Ho-Ag at the relatively new club Radio in Union Square in Somerville. All three acts were excellent and kicked several kinds of ass, and it was cool to see a wide range of ages in the attendees (albeit the older folks in the crowd were there to see AM Stereo, who have been around since the late '90s). It was hot as balls and loud as hell, which is really what any good rock show should be. Even if the suburban clubs are long gone for the most part, the Boston rock scene continues to churn out excellent bands. And although I'm less able to go out and see them on a regular basis, it's nice to know they're out there.