Heavy hitters

The Bosstones swing back into action

by Matt Ashare

It's opening day at Fenway, and the Bosstones are in the house. Someone thought it might be a good idea to debut the first video from the forthcoming Pay Attention (Big Rig/Island; in stores May 2) at the game, and since the timing was right, the plan got the thumbs up. So, a half-hour before Ramon Martinez throws his first strike of the day, the Bosstones' resident pitchman, singer Dicky Barrett, pops up on the scoreboard rattling off a short pre-recorded introduction. Then, as fans file toward their seats, the band's one-two-punch of overdriven punk guitars and ska horns blasts into the park as the video for the new "The Skeleton Song" takes over the scoreboard. High above the crowd, a plane towing a banner that reads "Pay Attention! -- New Bosstones album in stores May 2" circles against a gray sky.

This is just the latest example of the co-branding of major league sports and alternative-leaning rock that's captured the imagination of marketers over the past several years. And it does make a lot of sense: played between innings or at halftime, an upbeat alterna-hit like the Bosstones' "The Impression That I Get" helps make a new generation of potential baseball and football fans feel welcome while exposing bands like the Bosstones to an audience that might spend more time watching ESPN than MTV. And yet, as is often the case with things Bosstone, there's more than meets the marketing eye at work here. Like the Sox, the Bosstones have become a local institution, a band so readily identified with the city of Boston that the rather favorable review of Pay Attention in the new Rolling Stone doesn't even bother to mention where they're from, opting instead for "The South End's finest put rock & roll front and center." (Hmmm, Barrett does live in the South End, but you do have to wonder whether maybe RS really meant South Boston?) And despite all the success they've had over the past decade, the Bosstones, like the Red Sox, remain underdogs, in part because they've never really been media darlings and in part because their big triumph, "The Impression That I Get," was viewed by some as nothing more than a symptom of the Summer of Ska that turned a style of music the Bosstones had favored all along into a fleeting trend.

So Pay Attention turns out to be yet another test for a band who have proven themselves again and again over the last decade. And the start of the 2000 season is, no doubt, being closely watched for any signs that last year's run to the playoffs was nothing more than a fluke.

A FEW DAYS BEFORE the game, I meet up with a rather worn out Dicky Barrett for dinner at Eat, in Somerville's Union Square. Barrett, who after years of criss-crossing the country in vans still gobbles down his food with such dizzying speed that you half expect a tour manager to bust in mid meal to whisk him away, had just returned on the redeye from Los Angeles that morning. ("Eating fast is a habit I picked up from [Bosstones bassist Joe] Gittleman," Barrett explains after he'd wolfing down a jumbo pork chop. "By now he'd already be out front in the van honking the horn.")

The West Coast had been the last stop on a pre-release publicity tour that Barrett had undertaken solo with the blessing (and relief) of the rest of the band. It's something the extrovert in him enjoys, and he realizes he's good at it. Like a natural politician, Barrett makes the people he encounters -- be they radio programmers, regional promo guys, or simply fans -- feel important. And because he understands that they are important (cumulatively, they're the people who make or break a Bosstones album), there's something genuine about the aura of warmth and interest that surrounds him when he's in Bosstones mode, whether he's greeting fans before or after a show, putting $100 of his own cash down for a round of rock-and-roll Jeopardy on the radio in Philly, or sparring with the host of MTV's 120 Minutes.

In a way, Barrett is in the midst of a political campaign. He's been out drumming up support for Pay Attention, hoping to put the right spin on the disc so that people will be paying attention when it hits stores on May 2. And it's the occasional bleary-eyed candid shot of John McCain on the primary trail that comes to mind as I watch Barrett at work over dinner. "The last album had a personal theme -- it was about us and the strength of us as a group, the power of friends and of being a team. But this album is more about the individual." He stops just short of admitting that the lyrics on Pay Attention are the most personal and revealing lyrics that have ever graced a Bosstones album. "There's a song on the album, `I Know More,' which is about the realization that you never really get to a point in your life when you're done, when you don't have anything more to learn. You just realize at some point that you're never going to know it all. And then you know a shitload more."

There's also the relatively laid-back "High School Dance," with a verse that goes, "Hello, mom and dad, is this a bad time/If it is, too bad, see, the reason that I'm/Disturbing you both, I'm settling scores/You fucked me up bad, this dance is yours." There's the soulful, mildly R&B-flavored ska ballad "The Day He Didn't Die," the 16-track disc's closer, in which Barrett remembers someone (an uncle, it turns out) who meant a lot to him. "I really miss him," he sings. "He would have loved this/I hope he can hear me/I really miss him." And there are half a dozen other songs that, perhaps picking up where "The Impression That I Get" left off, find Barrett confronting ghosts from the past and coming to terms with regrets and growing pains, including the anthemic "The Skeleton Song" -- "Some boundaries I once overstepped/Shortcomings I must now accept/Secrets that could not be kept/I wish my skeletons had slept." No matter how you slice it, that's a long way from "Where'd You Go?"

But it's getting late. Barrett, who long ago cleaned his plate, is in the mood to call it an early night, and he's been forthcoming on questions about the low proportion of ska on Pay Attention ("We had to let the songs be what they needed to be, and I think we owe it to our fans to keep branching out"), the current state of rock ("It just felt like we limped across the finish line into Y2K"), and the departure of founding Bosstones guitarist Nate Albert ("This isn't Slash and Axl here . . . he's going to college, advancing his education, and it's better for him to do that now"). Besides, and maybe this is partly a measure of Dicky's charisma, songs are meant to be interpreted differently by different listeners. Why ruin that?

A FEW DAYS AFTER opening day, I meet Joe Gittleman and his English bulldog, Francine, for coffee on Newbury Street, across the way from the boutique where his wife of less than a month works. Gittleman's always struck me as Barrett's right-hand man -- the one who has been more instrumental than any other individual Bosstone over the years in working with Barrett to chart the course of the band. And now that Albert, who has ceded his guitar duties to a fellow named Lawrence Katz, is no longer listed under "The Bosstones are: . . . " in the Pay Attention booklet ("Guitar playing on Pay Attention by Nate Albert" is how he's credited), Gittleman's role in keeping the Bosstones together -- not to mention writing Bosstones songs with Barrett -- has become that much more crucial.

But first, it's worth mentioning that along with being the most diverse Bosstones albums to date, Pay Attention is also the most accomplished and appealing. If 1997's Let's Face It was the breakthrough where the band finally came to terms with the truth that what succeeds on stage (high-impact skacore explosions) isn't necessarily what works best in the studio, then Pay Attention builds on that by letting the band settle into different grooves without having to cut into a mosh-worthy chorus or a buoyant ska refrain. There are plenty of both, but there's also the very Pogues-sounding folksy yarn "Riot on Broad Street," the Caribbean-flavored "She Just Happened," and the aforementioned semi-ballad "High School Dance." And though the Bosstones haven't quite pulled a No Doubt with Pay Attention, ska takes a back seat to driving rock tunes that capitalize on the ability of the rhythm section, after years spent mastering ska's tricky rhythms, to give a subtle spring to even the most straightforward rock number.

Pay Attention is also heavier on the guitar firepower than were past Bosstone offerings, a feature that wasn't unrelated to Albert's impending departure. "To be honest, I think that was an attempt on mine and Dicky's part to keep Nate interested in the band," Gittleman admits. "We knew perfectly well what was up with Nate when we got started on this album. Whether we wanted to admit it at the time is another story. He made it really clear that he wanted to stick around and help us make the record, but that he had other things that he needed to do.

"It was scary. Nate leaving kind of forced us to deal with the possibility of the band ending. But I don't feel that's a problem at this point because enthusiasm is at an all-time high. We've been practicing so hard and so much that I kind of forget that we have a new guitar player. Not to say that I don't miss Nate, but it's starting to feel really good again."

In other words, the Bosstones are once again ready to go out there and prove themselves with what will very likely amount to two full years on the road, starting with a stint on the main stage of this summer's Warped Tour. It's what they do, and it's what they've been doing for the past 10 years. "The way I look at it is that there are eight Bosstones, and the chances of eight people wanting to do the same thing at 31 that they did at 19 are pretty slim," Gittleman reflects. "And if growing up to some people means leaving the band, which I don't understand personally, then that's understandable. I mean, I don't feel that being in the Bosstones totally defines who I am, but even if it did, I'm comfortable with that. But that's me, and that's probably how Dicky feels too. I'm proud to say that I'm a Bosstone, and if that's my greatest achievement in life, well, I think it's a good one."