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Mighty Mighty Bosstones one of headliners

Alan Sculley

Four years ago, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were riding high with a million-selling CD, Let"s Face It, and hit singles in "The Impression That I Get" and "The Rascal King." Today, the Bosstones find themselves off of a major label and recording for an independent, Side One Dummy Records, whose most famous previous signings have been the swing band Royal Crown Revue and Flogging Molly, a Celtic punk band that just now is beginning to bubble up from the rock underground. A Jacknife To A Swan, the Bosstones" debut on Side One Dummy, has just been released. It"s a swift reversal of fortune. But you won"t find Bosstones frontman Dicky Barrett complaining about his fate - even though it seems he would have a right to be bitter. Coming off the breakthrough success of Let"s Face It, the Bosstones made another strong CD, the 2000 release Pay Attention. Unfortunately, as Barrett now explains, that CD was released at a time when the band"s label, Island Records, was going through a huge restructuring and was not fully prepared to market the record to a rock audience. "It [the failure of Pay Attention] was self-admitted," Barrett said. "They were saying it the whole time. "We"re going to learn this one step at a time." I think part of the reason they let us go and everything was so amicable when we walked was that they were a little bit embarrassed. They said we took a band that came off a platinum record, gave us a tremendous [new] record and we weren"t up to speed and couldn"t get it to happen. "I hope I"m not coming off as bitter because I"m not toward anybody," Barrett added. "I still have a lot of good friends there and we"re happy to be on Side One Dummy." As Barrett"s comments indicate, the Bosstones weren"t kicked off of Island, and the decision to return to an independent label was largely the choice of the band. "They"ve been my buddies for years," Barrett said, explaining why the Bosstones chose to sign with Side One Dummy. "The guy who owns the thing [Joe Sib] was in a band originally called Wax. And then he was in a band called 22 Jacks, and he actually made those records himself, and I think that"s how he started the company. He"s like what I would consider to be a West Coast version of me. Instead of calling everybody a bastard, he calls everybody dude. "Other than that, he"s got the same kind of energy, the same kind of enthusiasm," Barrett said. "And he handles Side One Dummy like I handle the Bosstones, which is treat people right, treat people fairly. It just seemed like the right place to be. And I think the Bosstones" energy combined with their energy, it will be a force to be reckoned with. I think it will do well." The Bosstones - whose lineup today includes Barrett on vocals, Joe Gittleman (bass), Joe Sirois (drums), Tim "Johnny Vegas" Burton (saxophone), Chris Rhodes (trombone), Roman Fleysher (saxophone), Lawrence Katz (guitar) and Ben Carr (dancer/all-around onstage rabble-rouser) - came to the Island-owned Mercury Records label in 1993. By that time the Boston-based group had already made notable waves for their rowdy synthesis of punk rock and ska and had released two CDs on the independent label Taang! Records, their 1990 debut, Devils Night Out, and 1992"s More Noise and Other Disturbances, along with a 1991 EP, Where"d You Go? The first three Mercury releases, the EP Ska Core, The Devil and More and the full-length CDs Don"t Know How To Party and Questing The Answers, expanded the group"s following and helped the band gain some attention in the mainstream music media. But when Let"s Face It arrived in 1997, several factors - including the emerging popularity of ska and punk music - conspired to turn songs like "The Impression That I Get" into radio hits and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones into legitimate stars. "We made Let"s Face It, and that was the right place at the right time," Barrett said, offering his thoughts on the CD"s success. "It wasn"t like a lot of marketing, some part of a big corporate tool that [dictated] that"s what the record should sound like in order for it to be successful right then. We made it, and at that time No Doubt was huge and Green Day was all over the radio and [Marilyn] Manson had songs on the radio." Then came the disappointing sales for Pay Attention, a CD that seemingly had several potential hits (such as "So Sad To Say" and "Let Me Be") and remains a favorite of Barrett"s. "I thought that was a great record, maybe one of the great records that nobody heard," he said. Barrett realizes that without the marketing muscle of a major label, it will be more difficult for the Bosstones to get radio play for A Jacknife To A Swan, but he noted that record sales and popularity have never been as important as making music according to the band"s own desires and simply earning enough to make a living. "If I move that many records [as Pay Attention sold] on any indie, there are a lot less people cutting out of the [profit] pie," Barrett said. "I"m not trying to get rich on this, but they [Island] did major label spending without the [results], they didn"t really have their major label muscles yet." The Bosstones don"t seem to have suffered musically with the move to Side One Dummy. Barrett, who came into his own as a songwriter on Let"s Face It and Pay Attention, delivers another strong set of songs on A Jacknife To A Swan. On Thursday, July 25, the Bosstones will play the VANS WARPED TOUR at the Verizon Wireless Music Center. Call 239-5151 for ticket information.

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