Before the Big Dig

Youth. A tough act to follow.

You might have heard that Van Halen gave a show for music insiders and celebrities--if John McEnroe is really a celebrity--at Cafe Wha? in the Village last week. Well, good for them. The big excitement for survivors of the 80s like me is that the Del Fuegos are back together--at least for a 12-city tour. 12! And yes, Brooklyn is one of them (March 3 at the Bell House in Gowanus).

The Del Fuegos, in case you need a refresher, were a band formed in 1981 by Dan Zanes and Tom Lloyd. They developed a good rockin' reputation in the then vibrant Boston music scene and scored big with a record contract from Slash Records in 1984. Slash even bought them a 12-seater van for their first tour, which Warren Zanes promptly totaled--a story told well here by Warren himself. (I went to a fundraiser for the band at my college disco, the same college Dan and Tom had  attended briefly, dropping out of to form the band.)

The Del Fuegos achieved rock infamy by making a TV commercial for Miller Beer. At the time, it seemed like artistic heresy. Now, with a Pogues song used to hawk minivans, it seems kind of a quaint and "folky." Check it out below. Dan Zanes went on to make clever songs for clever children and Warren is the VP for Education of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I guess we're all growed up now.

Sadly, we can't bring back the Dogmatics. Younger and funnier than their Kenmore Square Rat-mates, the Del Fuegos, the Dogmatics lived and played at a loft on Thayer Street in the (then unfashionable) South End, in the shadow of the old Southeast Expressway, aka, Boston's answer to the BQE.  Bassist and lead singer Paul O'Halloran died in a motorcycle accident in 1986. A couple of weeks earlier, I'd seen them at Maxwells opening for the Reducers. Here's a very low-tech video of the Dogmatics doing "Thayer Street":