Buffalo Tom Turns 25 Part 2 of 3: Late at Night

Two summers ago the four of us minimally packed up the Mini with clothes, sheets, ipods, books, assorted library materials, and drove down to Rehobeth Beach, Delaware for a family reunion. Me and my extended family are transplanted New Yorkers now living up and down the East Coast, and a few westward, so this particular year Delaware was the neutral location decided on by the more geographically convenienced of the family. As usual, us Bostonians had the longest trek, but despite the unavoidable hell-ride through New York, our week in the smallest state proved bountiful. We had the beach, the boardwalk, the amusement park (where we saw Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters putting his kid in a rocket ship and my wife was star-struck), frozen custard, Dogfish Head brewery pub, crab hammering…plenty enough to keep kids and adults happy for the week. At the rental homestead, where ten of us were adequately dispersed, we all managed quite well. There was both public and private time to be had. Sometimes, with my then four-year-old clamped to my ankle, I would wonder where my wife and oldest daughter had drifted off to. And where my laptop disappeared to. And the Red Sox tote bag filled with library materials. I sensed a connection.

I found them, like two squint-eyed shut-ins, shouldered together in a dark room between two beds, faces lit up by my laptop screen, watching episode after episode of the 1994-95 teen-angst television hit “My So-Called Life.” The hit that was cancelled after one year. My wife had taken out the series before we left. All nineteen episodes. It was their bonding thing, my wife and her step-daughter. Their inbetween time activity. Back from the beach, they’d brush off sand and pop in episode three. While the men shelled crabs, they holed up like addicts for episodes six through ten. Dinner reservations were strategically placed by my wife, whose calculations allowed for both pre-dinner primping and so-called watching time. That’s how it went for a week. At dinner, on the boardwalk, in and out of seaside shops, the talk between them was always Claire Danes this and Claire Danes that. Penalized by my gender, I guess, I was excluded from this so-called sorority.

Then, one day, they let me watch. Episode twelve. Special dispensation. It was called “Self-Esteem.” Of course, I had seen this episode before, and my friendship with the special guests won me a berth for the carpeted viewing.

Kristen Hughes and Bob Hamilton at Record Release Party of Buffalo Tom's Big Red Letter Day. Boston, MA. 1993.

Thirteen years before there had been a chain of phone calls (pre-email) made between our circle of friends – all nosing thirty - alerting each other to the coming “My So-Called Life” episode. It was November 17, 1994. I was teaching, coaching, and houseparenting at an all-girls boarding school during the mid-nineties. Not surprisingly, the girls on my corridor loved “My So-Called Life.” It was made for them. An assortment of cute, alternative, misunderstood, unrequited high school boys. An equal assortment of catty, aloof, aggressive, lippy girls. Goofy English teachers. Addled yet sensitive parents. And kissing, lots of kissing. Especially in that “Self-Esteem” episode, in which Angela and Jordan meet in the boiler room for a series of publicly forbidden make-out sessions. A good-looking but reticent nineties grunger, Jordan’s romantic urge – evidenced by his identification with a Shakespeare poem about un-fantasized love – remains unspoken, or “in a jar,” as the emotional weight of the episode culminates at the much-anticipated Buffalo Tom show. Angela, who risks failing a Geometry midterm, attends, believing that Jordan will risk his social standing amongst his fellow grungers, and acknowledge their bond at the show.

Buffalo Tom at Paradise Rock Club. Boston, MA. 1993.

But alas, he cannot. He would if he could, and hopes she knows he would, but cannot. The song “Late at Night” from the album Big Red Letter Day is played during the club scene and echoes throughout the episode seemingly as a theme for felt but unarticulated love. We want so badly for this night to be a public reckoning for Angela and Jordan. For god’s sake, have some sack Jordan and put the pool stick down, profess your love in whatever simian gesture you can muster, and let your friends go eat chips somewhere else. She is your unspectacularly spectacular babe, so go claim her, dude. But of course he can’t. Not there. Not until the end of the episode, with “Late at Night” again playing overhead, does Jordan cross the social divide in the riskiest of places, not the boiler room but the locker-lined corridor. The jar for Jordan is now open and despite the crowd of onlookers, he crosses over to Angela’s locker, takes her by the hand, finally claiming her in public, and the two walk down the corridor, fingers linked, in what is arguably the most romantic scene in the history of high school dramatic television. I know, because some of the girls on my corridor who watched that episode that night of November 17th, 1994 left our living room sodden in tears.

Tom Maginnis on skins at Paradise Rock Club. Boston, MA. 1993.

The fact that I was friends with Buffalo Tom gave me some cred with the boarding school girls back then, even though they weren’t Nirvana. The anticipation of the Buffalo Tom show in that “Self-Esteem” episode is borderline silly – a veritable chorus of “Are you going to the Buffalo Tom show?...I’m going to the Buffalo Tom show…You’re going to the Buffalo Tom show?...I can’t wait for the Buffalo Tom show…” That’s how I remember it, anyway. And I guess it wasn’t so different from our chain of phone calls asking each other if we were going to watch that particular episode.

I thought again of that episode this past Friday night when Buffalo Tom played “Late at Night” during the first of a sold-out three night set at Brighton Music Hall. Before and after the show, the band was flanked backstage by friends and local celebs. If still alive, Joe would have been there, too, chatting briefly, but all the while readjusting his tripod, switching lenses, and flashing shots, just as he did at the Record Release Party for Big Red Letter Day back in 1993. That was when Buffalo Tom was hitting its stride, pumping out an album about every two years during that decade, traveling the globe and gaining international recognition.

Kristine and Paul (forground), Eric (middleground right), Rosie and Maureen (background left) at Buffalo Tom's Record Release Party of Big Red Letter Day. Boston, MA. 1993.

Much of Buffalo Tom’s work over the past quarter-century has to do with time passing, good things lost, readjusted dreams, exhaustion and renewal. Maybe that’s why they speak to so many of us, why for years committed dudes in the front row would shout out lyrics as if part of the band themselves. As a friend and follower of this band for those many years, I can look at this batch of Joey’s photos, his documentation of Buffalo Tom, and see again the energy they radiated. Still do. Joey would have taken a hundred pictures alone of their encore late Friday night, an awesome rendition of Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer,” with legendary guitarist J. Mascis leading them through.

The late Billy Ruane, Legendary Boston Rock Promoter, at Buffalo Tom's Big Red Letter Day Record Release Party. Boston, MA. 1993.

Packing up for a trip is often a process of deciding what parts of the past to bring into the future. When we return, we are changed by that merger.

Buffalo Tom Turns 25. Part 1 of 3: The Initiated

There was a pack of us in high school, in the spring of 1983, who took very little seriously. Except, perhaps, punkish music and what street to fuggin take. Joe had the money and the wheels, since he had already started throwing down rugs for his father. On afternoons he wasn’t working for Joe Sr. or at Randy’s Texaco, we would slide into the cab or hop into the bed of his shiny new red Ford S-10 and set about the streets of Medfield, with open minds and the thrashy chords of The Clash pumping us stupid with some sort of rebellion. We spent our afternoons wending our way around the confining neighborhoods, a serpentine enough route to allow for the entire cassette to play through, and for “White Riot” to stimulate our suburban blood with plebeian rage. Looking back, I can admit that our brand of suburban angst didn’t quite measure up to the racial and economic strife among class relations in England during the late seventies. But it was pretty damn close. Back then, it was enough that Joe Strummer’s lyrics were firing Joe Cafferelli’s cylinders.

A couple years later, Joey traded in his S-10 for a brown Ford van. We named her Wicked Brown, paying mock-homage to WBCN’s Wicked Yellow van, which showed up proudly at the biggest rock shows in Boston during the eighties. A year or two later he traded in Wicked Brown for what would be Wicked Blue. Wicked Blue, like its predecessor Wicked Brown, was a plush den of potential mischief. On wheels. Joey had built a cargo-length bench out of plywood and two-by-fours to box his carpeting tools and to hide other sundries. The three hinged doors opened upward and doubled as seats, upholstered, of course, with a durable commercial carpeting for both seating comfort and added protection for the van’s various inhabitants.

During the daylight hours, Wicked Blue was often stuffed with 2 or 3 rolls of 300 pound shark-skin-backed carpeting, extending from cab to gate. The gate doors usually had to be tied with rope or bungied with cords to restrain the rolls and hinder their jostling. Atop the rolls of carpeting lay as many rolls of padding, encased in plastic wrap to maintain a cylindrical shape.

During the twilight to midnight hours, the cargo’s inhabitants were anything but restrained. We were now twenty-year-olds, who – after clearing carpet remnants for a mosh pit- slam-danced to bands like Flipper and The Sex Pistols and a little-known local band out of Andover called Plate of Mutton (later Schuyler Heinkel), the members of which we met through college. At the helm was Joey, who drove Wicked Blue like a dirt bike. On the dashboard stood several varieties of plastic, glow-in-the-dark dinosaurs. Basically, it was a rock club on wheels.

Phil Retelle, lead singer and guitarist of Plate of Mutton. Party at Joey's Dale Street house. Medfield, Massachusetts. 1984.

There was a tacit understanding between all of us passengers and Joey that at some point during our van residency we would have to pay for our accommodations with initiations, or tests of humility. For instance, since I was Joey’s lackey during the day, he would make me unload bales of carpeting sticks into his father’s supply room. You’ve seen these sticks. The ones with quarter-inch spikes angled forty-five degrees outward that, when nailed to the borders of rooms, grip the shark-skin backing and anchor the rug tight. They came bundled in logrolls, and to carry a bundle from van gate to storage area was crucifying for a college kid with soft palms. So Joe Junior and Joe Senior would jeer me with female monikers, as I shuffled, pierced and wincing, with these malevolent instruments of torture. “C’mon, Sally, hurry up,” said Joe Sr. “Move it, Mary,” said Joe Jr. I was initiated. Bloody as Jesus. But initiated.

Others of us had their own brands of initiation. Sarah, for one, after selflessly offering to be designated driver from a house party in Andover to our homes in Medfield, had to endure mock threats. “Just drive,” said Joe, brandishing a loaded cap gun in the passenger seat of his own van, “and don’t worry your pretty little head about a thing.” Bill Janovitz claims to have introduced this line to the mini-drama, and maybe he did. But whatever its origin, the line was shamelessly repeated over and over, taking on further dimension as the ride wore on, and the scene did its best to approximate the innocent girl taken hostage by evil wrongdoers plot. Or something like that. Even when the gun went off, she took it like a champion, and got us all home safely. She was initiated. Charred along her neck. But initiated.

Bill Janovitz, Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts. 1994.

Speaking of Bill, he was another. Admittedly, my memory is a bit hazy here. But the story is legend, so anything goes. Wherever this happened - it could have been Brattleboro, or it could have been Northampton, or it could have been Vegas (the Medfield Vegas) – it happened at the end of a boozy spiraling night with Billy in a bathtub, faucet running, water rushing up around him, and Joey plunging Billy’s face beneath the surf, pretending to drown him. When motivated, Joey could be quite convincing as a serial killer. It would be wise at these times to avoid his crosshairs. Whatever brought us to that point in the night might have had something to do with Vermont’s then generous drinking age, but I remember a bunch of us clamoring around the bathroom doorway, edging for a glimpse of the mock drowning. The realism was remarkable. Hitchcock meets Tarantino. The menacing laughter from Joey, the blue face and splashy protests from Billy, one would have almost thought a real murder was taking place. In the end Billy escaped alive and we lauded him for his stellar portrayal of a drowning victim. But he stayed in character, serious and shivering under a towel, refusing our praise. He was initiated. Damp in the lungs. But initiated.

Chris "Flippa" McGinley in Slapshot tee, Salisbury Beach, Massachusetts. 1994.

Wicked Blue spent a lot of time on the Pike back in the mid-eighties, racing between eastern and western Massachusetts while we were all out at Umass. Particularly Northhampton, where two Medfield guys and an Andover guy would come together to form a band. Bill Janovitz, guitarist for Rambunctious Llamas; Tom MaGinnis, bass player for Plate of Mutton; and Chris Colburn, guitarist for Watch the Teeth Kate, joined together, shifted instruments, and in 1986 Buffalo Tom was born.

Tom MaGinnis on bass for Plate of Mutton. Party at Joe's Dale Street house, Medfield, Massachusetts. 1984.

Wicked Blue is gone now. And so is its driver. We are left only with memories. I try not to live too much in the past, but I guess hanging out with the same friends over decades requires we do that to a certain extent. Some of my fondest memories have to do with the driver of Wicked Blue torturing his friends as compensation for the accommodations he made for them. There he was, that squirmy little red-head, frequent passenger, begging for breath in a bathtub. Ah memories. Ah friendships.

Buffalo Tom in concert, Paradise Rock Club. Boston, Massachusetts. 1995.

In a couple of weeks, Buffalo Tom will celebrate twenty-five years together by putting on three gigs over the Thanksgiving weekend. Congratulations to them. As is often said about bands that stay together for so long: it has been quite a ride.

One thing I learned from Joey was this: There are no free rides in life; we all must pay for where we go.

Other Way Around

The other night my five-year-old daughter Ruby got upset at dinner because we were all talking about our ages. That I was ten months older (and more experienced) than mommy, and that Fionna was nine years older than her. I also told Ruby that she is lucky, because there are many things she can learn from her big sister. She banged her forehead on the table and huffed a sigh. I read this as sassiness, a rebellion sprouting from jealousy. Like most younger siblings, she always wants to do what her older sister does. Stay up later, paint her nails, wear earrings and flip-flops, thumb through catalogs, watch Glee, say big words. Then Ruby whispered, “not fair.” And with a grumpiness said, “you’re all going to die before me and leave me alone.”

Okay, obviously I read her head slam the wrong way. Where’s that handbook when you need it. What to say and what not to say to a child who is concerned about death. I remember when Fionna was Ruby’s age. No, younger. Maybe three or four. It was after the split and I had Fi for the weekend. Joe came over for dinner, and afterwards took some portraits of Fionna and me. Then, after downing his coffee, he snapped open his chrome lighter. When he lit up a cigarette, Fionna dropped her jaw incredulously. “Those aren’t good for you,” she said. At my shrug he tamped out the orange glow on the window sill. Then he said to Fi, “cigarettes won’t be what kills me.” It probably sounds eerier now than it was at the time. She pat him on the knee as punishment and then went to find the cat. Joey looked at me and grinned. Then I grinned. We both understood that he had gotten away with something.

When he actually did die about two years later I was grateful to the Cafferelli’s for letting me do the eulogy. “I’m glad today’s a clear, crisp, sunny day. As a photographer and perfectionist Joe would demand that.” This was what I started to say to those sitting in the pews in Saint Edward’s church back on the morning of December 9, 2003. At the wake the night before, the undertaker handed me a couple of articles to read regarding eulogies. He was big as a sand pile and had a thick beard and wore a dark pinstripe suit. He was gracious, too, enacting all the pleasantries inherent to his profession. Like many other businesses in town, he knew the Cafferelli’s. “Joe Senior put this rug in thirty years ago,” he said, both of us looking down as he tapped the toe of his shoe to the greenish blue commercial carpeting. “Damn shame,” he said, “a father shouldn’t have to bury a son. Should be the other way around.”

I had been to this funeral home before. It was the one in my home town, where Joe and I grew up. Peter Kennedy’s wake was the last I had been to here. The undertaker told me in hushed tones that he was required by the Archdiocese of Boston to give me the articles, and then, whatever I did with them was up to me, but that it was his job to make sure I received them. He said that what I was doing was a special thing, that it meant a lot to the Cafferelli family, but that it was up to him to make sure I didn’t make a mockery of it.

I’ve never been sure if he was really worried about my degree of seriousness with the business I was to conduct the following day regarding my deceased friend. Or was it standard catholic protocol to shake out all the fun in things. Or was he clued in to my ways. “Basically,” he said, towering over me in his dark suit and deep cologne, “the Archdiocese wants you to keep it to five minutes and ice the funny stuff. There I said it. Now send him off however you want.”

I was grateful for that, so I read the articles. One of them encouraged you – the eulogist – to find out ahead of time what the readings were going to be and then thread your eulogy to their message. I didn’t know what the readings or their messages were, and it was too late to find out. But working at a catholic school I knew enough to play the odds, so I scribbled down anecdotes about patience and forgiveness. Two things Joe had little time for, unless absolutely necessary. Patience for having to repeatedly show Pete and me – we worked for Joey at different times – how to stick a room, hammer staple padding, trowel on cement. Forgiveness for Tom - who worked with Joe when he came to live with us in Watertown - for destroying a customer’s rug.

Tom at Beach House. Salisbury, MA. 1994.

This is one of my favorites. Joe ordered Tom to cut pieces of carpeting for stairs, so Tom cut them. But he cut them on top of the newly installed living room carpet. Tom’s cuts went right through both rugs, making a series of four foot parallel slash marks in the newly installed one. Joe had to rip up the carpet, order a new one, and go back another day and re-install it, all at his own expense. And all because Tom hadn’t enough sense to cut the pieces somewhere else. What an idiot. I remember being glad it wasn’t me. I'm not sure Joe had much voluntary patience in any of us,or that he actually forgave Tom, but time goes by and we have to live with each other.

The other article listed the following five guidelines: 1. Write everything down so you don’t ramble. This was sound advice. As a high school English teacher I’ve made a career out of rambling in front of an audience for a class period. Five minutes would not allow for that and I didn’t want to come off like one of those academy award winners who puke gush before getting the hook. 2.Stay away from potentially embarrassing material (i.e. anything involving sex, drugs or troublesome in-laws) Well, Joey never married, so that was a non-issue. The drugs and sex part, I had already relegated that for another time in the future. The article offered an example of a man who gave a eulogy mentioning his late father’s daily habit of squeezing favorite parts of his wife’s anatomy. 3. Share upbeat recollections; don’t exacerbate the sorrow and weeping. No crying, no problem. Joe would be pissed if I did, so excessive show of emotion was out of the question. 4.Don’t just talk about your relationship with the deceased; mention other friends and relatives. I wanted this eulogy to be anchored where it should be, with Joe’s family. 5.Give a copy of the eulogy to someone else, who can take over if you break down. Refer back to rule #3.

Five minutes is not a lot of time to recount a life. It’s not a lot of time to sip a cup of coffee. Yet, if a photograph captures a moment in time, and that moment is but a fraction of a second, then does it not make sense that five minutes could actually amount to an infinitesimal period of time? Think of all the moments that could fit into five minutes, three hundred seconds. It’s eternity really, and that’s sort of the way I ended the eulogy:

Phil and Matt on Northampton Bridge, Northampton, MA. 1987.

“…I like to think he’s got a studio set up there, with perfect lighting. He has a camera with a zoom lense. He’ll be taking pictures forever. Pictures of the special people who gave his life meaning.

Erin at Hotel Arenula. Rome, Italy. 1994.

Pictures of Erin and Phil and Giorgio. Pictures of his friends playing music, laughing and telling funny stories. Pictures of Italy. He’ll take pictures of Gianna and Brendan and Paul growing up. Pictures of Kim and Paul and Jeff and Victoria as they grown in marriage.

Kim and Jeff at Gianna's Christening. 2000.

And I know he’ll take a special picture of Carol and Joe on their boat off Marco Island.”

What Ruby was worried about the other night had to do with the unfairness of her being left alone after our deaths. It was Fionna who answered Ruby’s concern. We don’t have to worry about death now, she said. We just have to live and be happy. And she’s right, I suppose. But Ruby’s right about the unfairness aspect of it, too. While death is never fair to the dying, it’s not fair to those left behind either. I guess writing about Joe is a way of keeping him alive in some sphere. He still appears in my dreams, flesh and blood alive, sometimes center stage and other times sitting in the balcony. Either way, when I wake up, I’m grateful for his appearance.

Wheels: Part 3 of 3 Joy Ride

In 1986 Joe and I shared an apartment in Watertown. One day we went into Boston, just to hop around record shops and grab a bite. Nuggets, Newbury Comics, some other place for lunch. Maybe Stevie’s for a New York slice. Anyway, we were walking along Boylston Street when suddenly we were each approached by two different pamphleteers. The man who approached me was very smiley and agreeable, and as he showed me a copy of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics, he gestured down a few blocks to a church and said they were hosting a wine and cheese get together. All we had to do was take a twenty minute personality test and then we’d be entitled to keep this book I was now flipping through. More out of disorientation than interest.

I was forming a polite no thank you when I noticed Joey walking toward where this man was just pointing. The woman who had approached Joe was also bubbling with enthusiasm. She had a sort of cute college friendliness to her, flirty and attentive to Joey’s apparent interest, his slow affirming nods as he blew out his cigarette smoke.

Joe with Cigarette, taken by Claudia, 1992.

We walked for almost five blocks, Joe and the girl leading, me and the guy following behind. It was Fall and the windows of dormitory brownstones were festive with college tapestries. I remember trying to tell Joe, while fast-walking behind him, in not so unkind words, that this was some sort of sham we were being shoveled into, that we should turn around, high-tail it the hell out of there. But he had already been sold enough by this girl who kept tucking her hair behind her ear when she talked. Ah yes, the allure of the siren’s song. “Let’s just check it out,” he kept saying.

So I assumed the role of some naturalistic character in a novel and just followed the path that was laid out by some higher source. When we finally made it to the church, the two of them escorted us inside, got us each a glass of wine (we were both twenty-one) and told us to help ourselves to the cheese and fruit. There were about a hundred or so people milling around, chatting with intense joy. We were given a questionnaire and pencil and directed to two Windsor chairs where we were to color in the bubbles to our answers. I filled mine out in a minute and a half, but Joey really labored over his, considering each answer carefully. I can’t remember the exact wording of any one question, but I remember the nature of them. Personality questions – do you prefer company to solitude and shit like that.

We were there forty-five minutes before meeting with a representative. Yes, a representative. These representatives turned out to be the same girl and guy who initially accosted us five blocks down the road. They were now our individually appointed personality analysts. We were led into separate pews and were then teased into discussion, the point being to, I don’t know, unearth our deepest fears and faiths or something. Anyway, I didn’t like leaving Joe with that Goddess of Hubbard, and things were becoming just a bit too Clockwork Orange for my comfort level, so I gave the dude the stop sign and went to the pew where Joey was having an animated discussion with the church babe.
“We’re out of here,” I said.
“You go,” he said.
And that was that. I left. I walked around Back Bay for a while, stopped into the Pour House for one, and then returned to the church. It had been three hours since we first were ushered in and I felt very tired. When Joe was done we went home.

Joe on Suzuki, 1992.

About a year later we were on his Suzuki motoring around Back Bay. It was late summer and the college kids were starting to return with their futons and tapestries. We wended our way through the congested, tree-lined streets, dodging college kids, U-Haul trucks, and colorful joggers. Joe skidded to stop lights, slowed for dog walkers and bike riders and nervous parents with children, but yielded nothing when we finally made our way to the B.U. Bridge, portal to open road. I tightened my grip around Joe’s waist. The force of acceleration suddenly introduced itself and the front of the bike tilted upward, and my view became blue sky. Then Joe brought the bike down to two wheels, yielded in a jolt to the cars rounding the rotary, turned right onto the ramp leading up to Memorial Drive and sailed toward Route 1A and headed for the ocean on the North Shore.

Andrea and Tom "Mag Wheels" Maginnis. Salisbury Beach. 1992.

Neither one of us ever had anything to do with L. Ron Hubbard again, except that Dianetics literature was regularly sent to my parents’ house. I had given their address when I had filled out the questionnaire. My mom thought I had joined a cult and I gave no indication that her worries were unnecessary. It was the son in me. In fact, I asked that all communication from the church of scientology be forwarded to my address in Watertown. She didn’t think that was very funny at all. Still doesn’t.

Joe and I never really talked about what it was that so interested him in that scientology fest. It could have been the girl, but Joe had more depth than that. A ride on a motorcycle can teach us more about our place in the world. I suppose it had something to do with identity. He was interested in that. I have all his graduate school essays, his videos, his photographs. His search for identity was always his holy grail.

When a stranger to his work can see the relationship Joe has with his subjects, the godly pursuit of truth, there is artistry. And thank god for these kinds of strangers.

Wheels: Part 2 of 3

I live at the end of my road, between a town forest and an air force base. Most of the time it's very quiet and peaceful. Until a pair of F-16s take off in quick succession. Then the glassware clinks for a time and we have to pause the movie we're watching until calm is restored. In that and other ways the rhythms of my house are dictated by the regularities of daily military routine. Reveille at 7:30 a.m. National Anthem at 5:00 p.m. Taps at 9:00 p.m. When my oldest daughter was little she used to turn to face the base at five o'clock and hold a hand over her heart at the playing of the National Anthem. I thought it was cute and as a show of paternal and patriotic support I would turn and join her.

A trailor camp for families of military is just beyond my house and stretches along the fence that lies parallel to the runway of the base. It's a good place to take a walk, watch the planes come and go, meet dogs, say hi to folks, check out their motorcycles in tow, compliment their various motor homes, portable abodes held up by wheels. License plates from Arizona, Texas, Wyoming, Maine, Florida, and everywhere in between. I'm always struck by the community of motor homes that gravitate here from all over. The people all seem to possess the qualities of that unique American who takes both pride in her country and all practical measures to ensure seeing it. This kind of community reminds me of the series of photographs in Joey's portfolio that documents a profoundly similar American phenomenon.

Every August for the past seventy-one years, bikers from around the country gather in Sturgis, South Dakota for the annual Motorcycle Rally, originally known as The Black Hills Cycle Classic. Like Pamplona in Spain for the Running of the Bulls, Sturgis in South Dakota books up hotel rooms years in advance and local businesses look to cook up half a year’s revenue during the two week Bikerfest.

In 1994, Joey and his then girlfriend Lex, made the trip out west to take part in the festivities. I believe it was also to attend longtime friend Chris Warren's wedding. The following photographs record their trip.

American bikers at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota. 1994

Unknown biker with bullwhip, Sturgis, South Dakota. 1994.

Black Hills Cycle Classic, Sturgis, South Dakota. 1994.

Lex and Joe before Renee and Chris' Wedding, Winona, Minnesota. 1994.

Lex at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota. 1994.

Manikin at Rushmore Leather, South Dakota. 1994.


Woman lighting cigarette. Sturgis, South Dakota. 1994.

I love how the Rally is sponsored by both the American Cancer Society and Camel Cigarettes. Only in America.

Wheels: Part 1 of 3

I’ve never been much of a thrill seeker. At least in the vertical sense. Never parasailed. Never hang-glided. Never took trapeze lessons. Skateboarded only on level ground. I’ve gone skiing once in my life, with an old girlfriend when I was about seventeen or eighteen, and was passed on the bunny slope by a kid who couldn’t have been older than eight, a kid who while sailing off a jump swung both skis to the side in a crouch and announced to me while airborne “daffy,” before landing in stride and gliding down the hill in front of me. I don’t know exactly what the little shit meant by that, but I felt the effects of it right where it hurts most.

My oldest daughter has tried unsuccessfully to get me on a roller-coaster, but I don’t even enjoy them from the ground. When my first wife won a trip to Disney World we were lodged in the Dolphin Hotel, which offered a clear view of Disney’s newest construction, The Tower of Terror. If I understood correctly, it was intended to simulate the feeling of freefalling down an elevator shaft. Safe, I knew I was, since in the four days we would be there, the suicide ride would not be finished and ready to take on passengers. Still, the immense height of the scaffolding from my hotel window sent chills.

But that’s more a matter of verticality. If that’s a word. Speed, moving strictly along the x-axis, is a different matter. I like to ride my bike. Fast even. But for Joe, who grew up in a household bred for speed – Joe Sr. used to race cars - biking meant something entirely different. He was mastering moto-cross while I was learning how to shift on a ten-speed. He had a semi-circle of moto-cross trophies aligned above his stereo cabinet in his room in Medfield.

Joe's Moto-cross bike, #594. Southborough, MA 1985.

For one of his races out in Southborough, Pete, Sarah and I rode out with him. This was probably 1985 or so. It was hot as sin and somewhere out there on the dusty trail number 594 was kicking up a storm before he took a nasty spill. He was pissed afterwards, complaining about another rider who was apparently trailing him too tightly. I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was the time that this same unsportsmanlike rider ran his front wheel into Joey’s back wheel, tripping him up while passing him and then from behind another rider trampled Joey, tire treads permanently imprinted on his lower back to prove it. For years afterward he would lift his shirt and show the pattern of grooves to people and tell the story of the asshole who did it to him. I think he was more proud of that brand than any of the many tattoos that festooned his arms.

Joe's Suzuki. Medfield, MA 1988.

When Joey retired from moto-cross he got himself a road bike. A Suzuki 1100 GSX. I took a hundred or so rides on the back of that machine and not once, surprisingly, did I ever fear for my life. Trust comes with knowledge I guess. And despite my aversion to high-risk activity, I always trusted Joe behind the wheel of anything. His Chevy S-10 pick-up, his Ford cargo vans, his snowmobile, his Suzuki 1100. I was passenger to all those and more. There were times on the back of that bike that I deliberately didn’t look over his shoulder at the speedometer. I knew the rate at which we were passing cars on the interstate, but I didn't care. This was better than anything Disney would have to offer, and I always knew we’d come out alive.

Props

At my dad’s fiftieth birthday barbecue, Joe and Pete came over with six packs and water rockets. They were the kind of aqua-explosives that required excessive pumping in order to maximize the height of the launch. During the party, they worked as a team, Pete holding the module still while Joe torqued it up good before letting it fly. The rotation of the rocket acted as a lawn sprinkler, spraying water on those below. What impression I gave my friends that my dad was into air-propulsion jet toys I don’t remember. But I do remember the air show. Pete chortling in his hushed, rollicking way while Joey cranked them up with boyish enthusiasm. Those things were flying all over our yard, and at some point one of my dad’s softball teammates tapped the ash off his cigar and asked what those fucks were up to.

Joe often brought props to a scene. Whether it was water rockets to enliven a backyard party or jello-colored dinosaurs to grace the dashboard of his van, the introduction of objects to a place deliberately changed the atmosphere. Since Joe was also a master of video production, it’s not surprising that many of his photos owe their interest to the props, sometimes called mise-en-scene, that lend elements of story to the moment contained in the frame.

David in his Bedroom 1994.

In “David in his Bedroom,” the props share the stage with the person they serve to describe. The black coffee, Camel cigarettes, busy ashtray and book overturned and opened to a page all make up the foreground and combine to imply that we have intruded on someone perfectly content in his isolated world. The guitar and television on the right border sit opposite a window covered by a printed textile, further enclosing David with his humble belongings and sealing him off from the outside world. Still, this is not the filthy artist living in abject squalor, as the peeping bottle of Clorox - not center stage but center frame – reaffirms for us that a life of chosen seclusion need not be one without everyday practicalities.

Phil at the Mantle 1994

Joe was a perfectionist with his sets. Every detail within the frame had to contribute to the overall effect; otherwise it was jettisoned. In “Phil at Mantle” the gothic effect is achieved with the help of the objects that column the center of the picture. The old-fashioned perfume bottle brings us to a world of antiquity, and reminds us that self-adaptation occurs every time we put something on, including fragrance. The spider plant that rains down in regenerative sprouts visually mimics Phil’s hair, even merging with it in the mirror image. The bonsai acts as a calming device, stabilizing the viewer as we negotiate the division of opposing worlds, the actual and the reflected.

Giorgio with MacDonald's Cup 1994.


I think Joe was having some fun with “Giorgio with MacDonald’s cup.” He might even have been calling attention to the whole act of using props by blatantly abusing the practice. Can we really contemplate the complexities of life, as Giorgio seems to be doing here, sipping from a cup whose place of origin brags of one billion served? If you’re a fan of irony, like me, you’ll appreciate the effect Joe is after here. And it comes with fries.

For the most part, the props that appear in the above photos are either pre-arranged or manipulated by the photographer for full effect. But not this one. Joe got lucky with “Girls Getting Ready.” Let me rephrase that. What I mean is that the props that make this photo interesting are readily available to him. First of all, he has entered what is traditionally forbidden territory – the bride (Amy) getting ready while her attendants fawn all over her, plying her with compliments and wine. Thus, we are all privy to the private affair.

Girls Getting Ready 1995.

Not only that, but someone besides Joe seems to have entered the room, judging by the variety of reactions that look offstage. As we swerve across the room and gauge the undulating figures, the expressions of annoyance, indifference, modesty, puzzlement, shock, and cheer heighten our curiosity and up the dramatic stakes. Who has barged in and what have they seen? The tangle of snow-laden branches in the window framing Alice and Sarah add to the tension, and seem to slither into the room. Moving back across the room we follow the serpentine swirls of the wall shelf and mirror sconces, one of which shines light on Andrea, while the other coils over her head. I’m not trying to suggest witchcraft here, but the empty wine bottle and open paper bags add to the secrecy. Just what kind of sorcery was afoot here we are left to wonder. The prim little flower girl in the center stands as straight as the bride, clutching the bouquet tight and balancing the occasion of the photo with puritan decency. Joe’s artistic instinct is timed well here, as the props that already exist season the mood of the photo.

Joey understood how objects in a frame could jazz up atmosphere, but he used them both sparingly and purposefully. A perfume bottle, a loaded ashtray, a wax cup, and long ago a water rocket were all things he used to suit up the scene. My dad’s birthday celebration would not have been as memorable without those rockets shooting up and raining down.

Me, Joe, and Pete at Dad's Fiftieth. Taken by my mom, I think, after putting an end to the antics. Medfield, MA 1984.

Discretion was a mode of discipline Joey cared little about. It got in his way and would make him shrug, even today. He knew what was necessary according to his own quick survey of the immediate landscape. The rest was audience.

A Brief History in Four Parts

Family

At four years old Joey could drive a nail flush and ride a two-wheeler without training wheels. His early interest in musical instruments – trumpet, drums, guitar, and piano – encouraged his parents to enroll him in music for tots. He could play any sport he tried and was always looking for other things to do that challenged him. “I did notice at an early age Joey was extremely creative with his hands,” says Carol. “He enjoyed drawing and building.” As a teenager, he could fix any electrical and plumbing work. He could take apart an engine and put it back together, if only to stave off boredom. In high school he could jump tombstones in a snowmobile. By the time he finished high school, he was more than qualified to install carpets on his own.

Joe Cafferelli Sr. started C&J Carpet in 1968 with partner Bob King. He opened the business in Medfield, MA and ran it for thirty years. In 1978, C&J Carpet began a family run business, which Joe Sr. referred to as a “mom and pop operation.”

Joey and his younger siblings, Jeff and Kim, helped out on their summer vacations. After high school graduation, Joey became a full time employee of C&J Carpet. Joe Sr. retired in 1998.

Carol and daughter Kim

In his early twenties, when Joey struggled with drug addiction, Joe Sr. and Carol stepped in to help get him clean. He told me once, quite matter-of-factly, that he didn't think he'd live past twenty-five. The way he was accelerating into the world of hardcore drugs at that time made me think his prediction might be accurate. When he did hit rock bottom, his parents were there to help. Their support in getting Joey into rehab paved the way for his second career as a Photographer. Quitting drugs ran concurrent with hanging up the kicker, jammer, hammer stapler, seam tape, hot iron, and other tools of the flooring trade. Joe Sr., Carol, Jeff, and Kim would all support Joey in his art, attending his exhibits and posing in whatever way he directed them to at family get togethers.

Jeff Cafferelli at Sister Kim's Wedding. August 24, 1996.

Addiction/Recovery

It’s hard to know for certain what enticed Joe into serious drug use. I've always suspected it had something to do with his innate talents, as odd as that may sound. Mechanical things came easy to him. Drugs may have been that extra challenge he needed when his days became too predictable. Too easy. It may have been a retreat, or a mind expander, or something to fill a void left while his friends enjoyed the relative luxury of college life. Or maybe drugs initiated him into an underworld that fed his growing desire to express himself creatively. I don't know.

Giorgio in his Room, Arlington, MA 1994.

I worked with Joe for a while after college, laying rugs. In the morning I would drive from Charlestown to his apartment in West Roxbury and wake him up so we could go get the van loaded for whatever jobs we had lined up that day. I began to discover increasing amounts of heroin paraphernalia in his apartment that he took little care to disguise. There was a vacancy in his expression, and every morning I edged into his apartment, wary of what I might find.

Paola, Boston, MA 1994.

In 1994, a few years into Recovery and a couple years into RISD, Joe had an exhibit of his photographs at Art Market in Jamaica Plain. He shared the gallery space with fellow Medfield artist Steve Matthewson. Many of Joe's photographs featured people in different stages of addiction and recovery. There was a kind of brutal honesty to the photographs that revealed in Joe the need to document the pain he had himself experienced and survived. Recovery became his next addiction, and it was the vision of a recovering addict that became the identity behind the lens and often the subject in front of it. I was glad that friends and family were able to merge for this opening and celebrate the artist Joe was shaping into. Photography gave him purpose. It was the mechanical thing that made the abstractions of addiction and recovery concrete.

Rome

Joe started college a decade later than the rest of us, and before you could blink he had acquired two degrees. From 1993-96 he attended Rhode Island School of Design, where he met Erin, and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and Video. In 1994, Joe and Erin were both admitted into RISD’s European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. After graduation, Joe and Erin moved to Chicago to continue their work in the arts, and from 1997-99 Joe attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Film and Video.

Erin Hasley in Capri, 1995

For the next two years Joe took on various teaching appointments in Chicago.

He was an Adjunct Professor in the Video Department of SAIC; he was an Instructional Technician for Video Machete, a non-profit community-based youth organizing and education project; he was an Artist-Teacher for the Marwen Foundation, a non-profit organization providing art education to underserved public high school students; he was an Instructor in the Academic Computing Department at Columbia College; and he was an Instructional Technician in the Video Department at SAIC. He was the recipient of numerous Grants, including the Open Society Institute, The Crossroads Fund, Girls’ Best Friend Foundation, Learning Matters, and The Illinois Humanities Council.

When they moved back to Boston, Joe worked from December 2000 to May 2003 as a Technical Support Representative for Media 100 Inc., in Marlboro, Massachusetts, providing twenty-four hour product support for all Media 100 Digital Video Editing Systems, MediaPress, Cleaner 5, MPEG Charger and Super Charger encoding packages. In the months prior to his death on December 3, 2003, he was preparing to teach a Photography course at RISD, the place where his second career had begun.

To look at his resume, the European Honors Program in Rome appears as only one on a list of many accomplishments in a relatively short, ten-year period. However, to look at his whole volume of work is to see Rome as his coming out party.

I think it was both the program and the place that fueled his productivity. It’s a period in his life when he began to take more chances with his photography, to challenge convention, to trust his teachers and classmates in learning the more acute aspects of his craft, and to come to an understanding that the peaks and valleys of his past life were now fertile ground on which to redirect his art.

Yutaka on her bed at the Hotel Arenula, Rome, Italy. 1994

Friends

When I was in college out at UMass, living in a large battered house on School Street in Northampton with seven or eight buds – the number and faces changed with the semester - Joe made semi-regular trips out to visit me and our larger circle of friends.

Bob and Kristen at the Cyclone Halloween Party, Boston, Massachusetts. 1993.

One late night, Joe decided that the white wall of my bedroom was too, I don’t know, plain. Safe? Too virgin? Whatever his assessment of it, that deviant look in his eye and the mischievous fan of his brow made it quite clear that this wall in front of him was now a newly-stretched canvas beckoning him. I had taken a few art classes and had enough charcoal, paints, and pastels lying around to quench his creative impulse. As often had been the case in the past, and would be in the future, I became passive audience to his recklessness. It was an odd kind of recklessness, though, one that was tempered by order.

Kristine and Paul Janovitz at Buffalo Tom's Red Letter Day Record Release Party. Boston, MA. 1995.

Once he had a project in mind, nothing could ever stand in the way of his pursuit of it. Paint brush in hand, be began to swipe my white wall with purples and blues and yellows and blacks. Then with his other hand he started flicking paint at it in sudden bursts, speckling not only my wall but my records, my typewriter, my turntable. Before long my entire bedroom became a kind of three dimensional Jackson Pollock splurtation that left me agape with worry and wonder. My cautions about security deposits and evictions didn’t seem to concern him in the way it did me. In fact, you might say it encouraged him, taken more as fodder than warning. It fanned his artistic tempest. There was a clear purpose to his creation, and as he worked he became evermore demonic and detached. There was nothing I could do about it, so I just stared in disbelief.

Sarah and Pete Simonsen at Cyclone Halloween Party. Boston, MA 1993.

In the following weeks, fellow residents of 11 School Street - Bob, Jay, Pete, Jamie, Bill, Tom - brought others in to view Joe’s exhibit. I’d be sitting in my chair reading John P. Marquand and a couple people would knock on my door and then force their way into my room and bust out laughing, pointing at the multi-media chaos on my wall. As victimized as I felt at the time, I have come to look back on this event as one of many announcements Joe would make that art was exploding from within.

That kind of Iggy Pop verve was something Joey remained highly attuned to even in his advancing years as a photographer. Joey loved to document his experiences. In our post-college years, Joey never showed up anywhere without his camera case. Whether it was someone's wedding, the beach, a record release party, a rock show, a Halloween party, a road trip, or just a casual get together, Joey would bust out his tripod, camera lamps, various lenses, and turn wherever he was at into an instant studio. He would take dozens of shots and later pour over contact sheets to decide the right one to print.

Hank Peirce at the Beach House, Salisbury, Massachusetts, 1994

When I used to work as Joey's lackey, I would marvel at the way he would orderly unpack and repack his toolbox with the kind of precision that underscored the quality of his craftsmanship. Everything had its place. Later in life I would see him unpack and repack his camera case in the same way - the zoom lens replacing the hammer stapler - and it always reminded me of how much talent he brought forward from his youth. I think maybe the reason I have lived a longer life than him is because my talents were not as prominent as his at an early age. I banged my fingertips black and blue before I could hammer a nail straight.

A Revealing

On a warm, grey Saturday in August of 2004 Erin Hasley and I drove out to visit Carol and Joe at their home in Wrentham, Massachusetts. It had been about eight months since we all stood in Saint Edward’s church saying goodbye to their son. Carol fixed us some delicious chicken sandwiches for lunch, and we passed that afternoon trading Joey stories. It felt good to laugh with them. It was time for that and we all seemed willing to allow for it.

Erin and I spent the rest of the afternoon sifting through the stacks of photographs Joey had thematically stored in labeled boxes. Not surprising since everything the man owned had a place chiseled out for it. We were grateful. He took care of the initial organization for us, which was needed given his prodigious output. And yet, we felt with each lift of a box cover the removal of a casket lid. So many pictures, each with a memory, a story, a mood, a vision of his world, a sad remainder. For months we had been talking about putting together a show for Joey, possibly even a book. Carol and Joe were willing to support whatever project we would fashion, allowing us full access to their son’s basement studio. Take anything you can use, they said.

Hours of shuffling boxes, naming portraits, rubbing temples, and not knowing what to claim and what to leave behind left us limp. We sighed at each other with little left to say. It was simply too much.

Joe Sr. and Carol at Kim (Cafferelli) Marchetti and Paul Marchetti's wedding

And then Carol and Joe came downstairs. Take it all, they said, as if to lift the shroud they knew was weighing down the room. Maybe they sensed our weariness, or maybe we had worn out our welcome. We could have been there all night. It was too big a job. We thanked them profusely, flattened the back seat of my Golf, and loaded her up. With everything. Even his music – Bauhaus, Peter Murphy, Schuyler Heinkel – everything.

All we left were a couple of computers, whose contents, without a password, would always remain entombed.

Almost seven years have passed since we hauled away Joey’s black and whites. Seven and a half years since he passed. Over those years Erin and I have met many times at my house, where his work has resided, and we have waded tirelessly through his photos. We have separated and labeled. We have created spreadsheets and files. At times we laughed our asses off. Other times not. We have distinguished between must be seens and must never be seens. We have had over to the house Paola Savarino and Giorgio Della Terza to survey the work in which both of them figure so prominently. They were good friends of Joey, Giorgio his close confidant, Paola his artistic mentor.
Giorgio Della Terza and Paola Savarino

Erin and I have enjoyed many splendid lunches together (thanks to Rosie)and planned for shows. And yet, we have been delayed by the immediacy of our ongoing lives and wearied by the ever-conflicting notions of whether to hoist the dead or allow him rest.

In February of 2007, Erin curated an exhibit of a selection of Joe’s photographs and video at Piazza Cenci 56 in Rome, Italy. It was a show organized in conjunction with Rhode Island School of Design’s European Honors Program, in which Erin and Joe both took part during the school year of 1994-95. “He returned several times to Italy,” Erin writes on the show’s invitation card, “drove the Autostrada fearlessly, and documented his travels with photographs and video.” Many of Joe and Erin’s classmates and friends attended, as did current Honors Program students, as did members of Erin’s family. In fact, many of those attendees helped in the transport, repair, and hanging of the works. For Erin, it was an enormous achievement, one built on faith and reliance, calling on past and current participants of the Program to help pull it all together. It shows what a community of like-minded people can do when honoring one of their own.




















Both sides of the Rome Show invitation

Erin’s curatorial debut was entitled “Altro Sara Svelato,” or “More Will Be Revealed.” It was an expression that Joe often used during their program in Rome back in the fall of 1994. “If he was uncertain or at a crossroads,” Erin explains in the show’s leaflet, “- whenever patience was needed - Joe would say, ‘More will be revealed.’” The Rome show was a long process brought to completion for Erin. Its beginning, middle, and end were expertly documented in her accompanying PowerPoint put to her own music. There is now a very important stone there that marks his spot forever with this Program, with this country, home to his ancestry. But more importantly, home to where he realized artistic happiness. The Rome show was one of the nicest gifts anyone has ever given.

This blog – a virtual gallery of photos and essays - will also have a beginning, middle, and end. It will be a project that attempts to feed off the energy created by Erin’s show, an attempt at another means of making good on Joe’s promise.

Joe and Erin en route to Amy Custance and Paul Hamilton’s wedding, where Joe was the wedding photographer. 1995.

It would be fitting for his saying – more will be revealed - to ring prophetic and recurrent, as he has left behind for us so many images, so many memories, so many stories to tell. Whatever plans Erin and I originally had, the exercise of uncovering Joey’s photos has always felt communal. It is my hope that this is a place where friends and family, acquaintances and admirers of Joe can view his work, talk about it, celebrate it.

The photos included in this project might ring nostalgic for those who favor the backward glance: an array of portraits, landscapes, and stills taken primarily in the eighties and nineties. For Joe, this was a period of experimentation, destruction, rehabilitation, friendships, self-discovery, and entrance into the art world. My narrative accompaniments to these photographs are associative, as a friend and follower of his work. Joe and I sometimes talked about doing a project together, his pictures with my words. We did a little bit of that over the years, but maybe this blog in some way can be the accrual of those plans made long ago. I look forward to working with him again and welcome whoever wants to join us.

Joe and Matt (me with hair) at Watertown apartment, 1986