College students previous or current in Northeastern’s music business focus are seemingly conversant in this mantra: “Be nice, receives a commission.” That phrase is usually mentioned by professor and program coordinator Dave Herlihy as a reminder that it doesn’t matter what you do within the enterprise—be an artist, work at a label, dive into ethnomusicology, and so forth—you can also make a dwelling out of your love for music with the correct abilities.
Extra to the purpose, Herlihy is an embodiment of being nice and getting paid within the music enterprise: Earlier than turning into a Northeastern professor and leisure lawyer, he was the frontman of O Constructive, a mainstay of the Boston ’80s alt-rock scene.
Again within the day, the music video for “Think about That” was consistently taking part in within the Inexperienced Line Information workplace. Now, roughly 20 years since his final launch, Herlihy is again with “Postcards From Kindergarten Vol. 1,” an EP of tracks written and recorded in the course of the pandemic. Together with the discharge of the EP’s first single, “The Invisible Woman,” Herlihy will carry out at The Burren in Somerville on Friday, Sept. 16.
[email protected] just lately caught up with Herlihy to speak in regards to the new EP, his reminiscences of O Constructive and the Boston music scene, and the state of the music business.
How did this EP come about?
Earlier than the pandemic, I spent a lot time touring from level A to level B, from my home to high school, so I by no means had time to put in writing songs. I’ve this metaphor {that a} tune thought is sort of a fish swimming round on this fishbowl in your cranium. It may be there within the background, however then you definitely get distracted—you might have a category or work—and the fish is gone.
When COVID hit, I used to be caught at residence, I used to be at all times at level A. Immediately all of the water round my boat was very calm. And I may see the fish. I’d simply placed on the voice memo app on my telephone and seize my guitar and sing one thing, work on it, after which ship an mp3 to my musician buddies. I wrote about 60 songs throughout that interval, not considering I used to be going to do something with them.
In 2021, when individuals started getting vaccines and you would exit once more, I visited my cousin Beth Burnett, who can be a producer, and she or he mentioned I may come right down to her residence studio in Rhode Island to file some songs. So I went right down to her place.
We had this settlement that the classes have been going to be similar to hi-tech kindergarten—we’re simply going to get collectively and have enjoyable and see what we will do. That’s as a result of I see songs like writing postcards: when you learn a postcard, it doesn’t should be “Conflict and Peace.” In truth, when you suppose you’re going to create some epic work, you can provide your self high quality paralysis.
However kindergartners can do something. You can give a kindergarten child any immediate on the planet, and so they’ll simply do it. No kindergarten child ever goes again and fixes their finger portray. So Beth and I agreed to take a kindergartner method within the studio, and the songs have been going to be “Postcards from Kindergarten.”
How lengthy has it been because you’ve launched music? How does this recording and launch course of examine to your previous albums?
I used to be in a band known as Toy Boat, which is a remnant of the O Constructive guys, and we launched a file earlier than Napster, iTunes, on the daybreak of the web.
In 1995, I’d have gone toe to toe with anyone about what it takes to be in a band. However issues are very totally different now. Like, I do know that it is mindless to only drop an album on-line until you’re Beyonce. It’ll sink like a stone, proper? You need to learn the way individuals eat issues and hunt down those that may pay attention. Fortunately, that’s what my buddy Paul Buckley, who runs Lunch Information, is aware of all about.
However actually, I’ve no industrial expectations for the EP. I simply need to prefer it, and I hope individuals who know me will take heed to it. However I’m not doing it for a return on funding. Again with O Constructive, I needed to be the most effective band on this planet. However now, I simply need to like what I do and never examine or compete.
Are you able to inform me about O Constructive and your expertise within the ’80s Boston music scene?
Boston within the ’80s was an unimaginable music scene, and there have been great bands on the town like Pixies, Tribe, and Scruffy the Cat. I used to be an undergrad at Boston Faculty and a DJ on the college’s radio station throughout this era, and it was all such an enormous a part of opening up my mind to music.
I went to regulation college at BC after undergrad, and I nonetheless managed to remain on the radio station and play in bands. In 1979, my nice buddy Vahe Katros satisfied his brother-in-law to present him $6,000 to ship me to a recording studio in Vermont, so we recorded this punk tune known as “I Don’t Know How one can Act.” I dropped the tune off at WBCN and went proper into regulation college.
Then one Sunday night time in December, I’m driving residence at 2 a.m. and Jerry Goodwin, the “Duke of Insanity” on BCN, performs “I Don’t Know How one can Act.” I’m like, what? It was getting every kind of requests for airplay—no pretend requests, both!
So now I’m actually bummed out, as a result of I may have pursued a music profession, however I’m in regulation college. However I caught with it and graduated, and I acquired a job at a white collar crime agency. The purchasers have been simply revolting, and after a short while, I noticed that I didn’t need to get up at 65 years outdated having wasted my heartbeats saving scumbags from their simply desserts. So I stop being a lawyer to pursue singing.
I began O Constructive as a result of I used to be following my bliss. We rehearsed 4 nights per week, wrote like 20 songs and ultimately acquired a gig on the (former) Channel (nightclub). I used to be nonetheless pondering being a lawyer, however I liked the gig a lot that I made a decision that I couldn’t cease doing this.
We started getting common gigs and a few of my BC mates, lots of whom have gone on to unimaginable careers, primarily grew to become volunteer marketing campaign workers for O Constructive. They might get collectively and have conferences and make T-shirts—we had lots of people serving to us out.
So then this file label known as Throbbing Lobster put out our first EP, which we recorded at Synchro Sound, the Automobiles’ outdated studio on Newbury Avenue. One tune from that known as “With You” grew to become an enormous native hit and offered like 40,000 copies, so rapidly we had some native mojo. We additionally acquired some music movies on an area video channel known as V66, and mainly each bar in Boston would have V66 on on the bar. Quickly after that, we may do like two exhibits on the Paradise Rock Membership in someday, each offered out.
We put out a second EP, and that had an enormous tune known as “Speaking About Love.” It offered extra data on the Harvard Sq. Newbury Comics in December of 1987 than every other file—greater than REM, greater than U2.
We signed to Epic in 1989 and we put out a reasonably good file, however general it was a fiasco. It was simply the flawed time. It was pre-Nirvana—not that we gave the impression of Nirvana, however various rock wasn’t even a radio format in these days. We got here out alongside Warrant, Winger and all these hair steel bands. There was no nationwide outlet for us besides for school radio. Additionally, a brand new president got here to the label and tabled all movies for small bands. From a publicity standpoint, in case your band didn’t have a video, you have been useless on arrival.
So we left Epic as a result of they didn’t need to do a second file. We offered a good quantity of copies but it surely wasn’t something that merited a follow-up file. We ultimately did another file known as “Dwelling Candy Head,” and we did our final present in January 1995. However being a part of the Boston scene—all these golf equipment, all these bands, the place music was the one sport for individuals—it was actually a renaissance interval, and it was unbelievable to be a part of.
David Crosby just lately mentioned in an interview with Stereogum, when requested about recommendation he had for aspiring musicians, “Don’t develop into a musician.” As somebody who has been on each the artist and enterprise sides of the business, what would you inform aspiring musicians?
Should you find it irresistible, do it. Encompass your self with mates and make a music scene. The extra you encompass your self with supportive individuals, the extra you brainstorm and percolate and make stuff, after which a few of you may ultimately do one thing.
After all, typically betting the farm is a foul thought. The professionals who’re actually doing it, that’s a single digit share of individuals, proper? You’re not gonna get 50% of the individuals on this planet paying their mortgage with their guitar. However you gotta pay the lease. You possibly can nonetheless make music, like what you do, and also you encompass your self with those who prefer it, too. The tax collector isn’t concerned with poetry, but it surely doesn’t imply that it’s a must to put your guitar in a coffin and bury it. It’s necessary to maintain music in your life.
Should you suppose you possibly can attain an enormous viewers, then you definitely’ve acquired to have a technique and have a look at the place the communities are. You want individuals in your crew who’re going to work simply as onerous on the “receives a commission” aspect as you’re engaged on the “be nice” aspect. However I at all times inform my music business college students that it’s a must to have enjoyable, as a result of this enterprise doesn’t pay effectively sufficient for you to not have a superb time when you’re doing it.
What’s the Northeastern music business program’s present pitch to potential college students—each on this system itself and the business at massive?
There’s a bunch of professors within the music division, and I regard every as a spoke in a wheel. Every of them brings their totally different passions and backgrounds to it, and because of this, you might have a wheel that truly spins and carries weight. You’ve gotten all of those professors who’re very totally different from me, however we’re nonetheless all into music and I’m wowed by what they do. I’m fairly good at bringing my authorized, entrepreneurial, and artistic abilities to a wide range of contexts, whereas somebody like Andrew Mall brings his analytical, musicological and ethnomusicological abilities to the desk.
I’m now educating “intro to music business,” which I haven’t taught in a very long time however I started educating once more since I grew to become the coordinator of the focus. Within the first-class, I ask the scholars, who right here has cried listening to music? And after like 10 seconds of trying round, mainly everyone raises their hand. So then I say, who right here has cried listening to music within the final month? Arms go up once more.
I inform them to stay a pin in that for a second and take on this phenomenon, that music can carry you to tears. I additionally was a political science main, however there’s by no means a peer reviewed political science article I ever learn that introduced me to tears. There’s one thing about music that simply conjures up, and that’s why it’s value doing.
How do you suppose the music business panorama goes to look sooner or later, given what you’re seeing proper now on campus?
The music business focus desires to provide thought leaders; individuals who need to make the music business higher—much less misogynistic, extra inclusive, and extra clear. So we ask the scholars, how do you effectuate change as a person, as an worker, as a startup, as a promoter? What are the alternatives you can also make? And I discover that the present college students are very involved about making the way forward for the business extra inclusive, and extra clear, much less discriminatory, and kinder general. I’ve nice religion within the college students and nice religion in music.
For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]
