You'll find the stage downstairs and the rib-roaring Hoo Doo Barbeque on the main floor.
A veritable army of Boston musicians--assorted
Del Fuegos,
Neats, and
Scruffy the Cats--have served time shucking and peeling in the kitchen, and your waitress most likely manages a band during her off-hours. Upstairs in the
balcony, the Rat lets various heroic home-boys jam with their buddies acoustically on the weekends. That's free--and a pleasant alternative when push comes to shove below decks.
-- Sally Cragin, Boston Phoenix, October 7, 1986
Never went to Cantone's but the Rat!! I remember driving alone
to the Rat on a Monday night in an over-heated car to see
Steve Earle (When
Guitar Town had just come out) and Peter Holsapple. The car was pinned in the red all the way there. I parked down by the Paradise and walked the rest of the way. Saw a great show then walked back to the car. It started right up but immediately pinned again to the
red. Made it all the way back home to Northampton. The car was still bucking as I made my way into my room and fell asleep. Next day the car was dead but I wouldn't have traded going to see that show for anything!
-- Ray Mason, e-mail message, August 4, 2002
Who has played the Rat through the years? A better question is, who hasn't? From the Cars to R.E.M., from Talking Heads to Metallica, from Joan Jett to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, from the Ramones to Thin Lizzy, they've all slashed through sets in this dark, subterranean cavern.
-- Steve Morse, Boston Globe, January 18, 1996
Down in Kenmore Square
All the bands play there
At the Rat...
-- "At the Rat" by Willie "Loco" Alexander
In a year or two, this will be the only club left in Kenmore Square. Constantly under surveillance by BU and the Kenmore Association (they lowered the boom on a sign that said The Rat years ago), don't expect too many 18-plus shows. Do expect the best local music and graffitti-covered bathrooms literally oozing tradition. The club features acoustic rock in the balcony, food and beverages on the ground floor and plain old rock and roll in what is probably the most famous basement in Boston, if not America. Almost entirely local music. -- Lisa Moore, Boston Rock, Issue 92 [early fall 1988]
The Rat is an underground institution, the place where the Talking Heads came to play in 1976 and where R.E.M. performed for a club crowd as recently as 1984. -- Tim Riley, Boston Phoenix, October 14, 1988
Mitch the tall, well-built, suit-clad, head Rat doorman, with a head of hair that looked more like pumice stone, was feared by all who passed though the heavy wooden Rat entrance. When I first wanted to create
Mitch T-shirts, I was afraid he wouldn't like me making money off his image, so I promised to make only 24 shirts. The first 24 sold as fast as I could collect the money people were shoving at me. Mitch saw this, put his arm around me, and walked me outside. He held his small microphone up to the hole in his neck and
his mechanical voice spoke the words, "I respect your business endeavors. Make more T-shirts."
-- TMax of The Noise and Boston Rock Opera
Source: E-mail message, August 13, 2002
Mitch Cerullo and Company
Photo copyright © 2002 by Blowfish.
All rights reserved. Used with permission.
[O]f course the club's
doorman and host, the late
Mitch,* set the tone with his black suit, incredible hair and voice-box. It was your basic black-box rock club, but with a
haunted-house vibe, as you no doubt remember. -- Jim Duffy of Rods and Cones, e-mail message, August 6, 2002
* On March 24, 1995, Steve Morse of the Boston Globe described the recently-departed Mitchell F. Cerullo (1932-1995) as a "longtime jazz performer, then famed doorman at the Rat in Kenmore Square (he was the dapper gentleman who used a voice box to speak)..." Social Security Administration records give his name as Michael F. Cerullo.
THE RAT
I first went to The Rat in '82--for the Mad Violets and Plan 9, I think--but this story is from around '95. While the Elevator Drops were onstage, this semi-well-dressed guy asked me "Will you help me out with one of their stage gags?" We went into that little band room, where he proceeded to fill these aluminum pie-trays with whipped cream. "OK", he said, "right after this song ends, we'll run up to the stage with these; I'll get the guitar player, and you get the drummer." So at the appropriate time, we ran out and--splat!--hit our targets. The kicker, though, was that--after the set, when I mentioned the incident to the band--they told me that they had no idea who that guy was! -- Kris Thompson of The Lothars and Abunai! (and formerly of Nisi Period, Jasmine Love Bomb, and The Prefab Messiahs), e-mail message, August 8, 2002
Many a misspent youth has been misspent at the Rat, but it's an institution that has also provided many a night of vital music from bands that are still on the way up and that haven't yet become jaded.
Last Friday, the re-emerging
Stardarts played a driving set sparked by singer
David Minehan, formerly of the Neighborhoods. The band used the club's new English PA, and got better and better as the night went on. Minehan, who has seen a few glory years at the Rat, remains a
garage-rock genius. His new songs were well-received and his energy echoed many an intense night in this same,
back-to-basics room. The
Rat, despite some caked grime from years of hard use, has earned its reputation as an essential Boston club.
-- Steve Morse, Boston Globe, January 18, 1996
I saw some big rats out back, by the dumpsters, while loading out my drums one night ... I'll bet everybody who played there can say that! -- Kathy Burkly, e-mail message, August 5, 2002
Pitching rocks at the rats in the back parking lot on hot summer nights while the Red Sox were playing, the lights of Fenway illuminating the entire area. We would hang out, out back, between sets. There were usually two bands and they would do a set, we would do a set, then they would do another set and then we would play until closing. -- Stephen Gilligan of the Stompers, e-mail message, August 5, 2002
In the parking lot behind the club, even the rats in the dumpsters were "rock"--slicked-back and spiky. -- Jim Duffy of Rods and Cones, e-mail message, August 6, 2002
[I]n the physical plant of the place, above all, is a kind of monument to Punk and what it hoped to accomplish. The swiss cheese rug lies beneath the feet of the new audience just as it once lay beneath the feet of Patti Smith on her way to the boards. Real rats still peer out of corners at loading and unloading bands with eyes like broken green bottles. Once I saw a rat jump from a second-floor window into the parking lot, then pause for a second, give a shake and run off. Perhaps that is the sort of metaphor for rock and roll that only the Rat can provide. -- David Lenson, [Western Massachusetts] Valley Advocate, February 24, 1982
It's the
last Saturday night in Rat history. Tomorrow, the license lapses, and club owner
Jim Harold will never chase another scruffy rocker out of the rear stairwell. "Hey!" he yells at a girl heading down the back way to beat the cover. "Front stairs, dear. Let's go." About the
closing of the
landmark rock club, Harold says flatly, "What I do with my business is my business."
In the balcony, the house band takes a break before its final set. "We were hired to change the scene, because it was all just punk rockers," says Eric E-Z Jr., the harmonica player for the Skillet Liquors, a remarkably authentic roots-rock band that looks like something out of the club's late-'70s heyday, when Boston garage-rock legends and soon-to-be '80s superstars loaded their gear in here. "We got the crowds, but it didn't matter. We're talking about moving to the Linwood now," says the harp player.
Around the club, the Fenway's Linwood Grill is mentioned more than once as the Rat's heir apparent. At the front door, a leather-clad vet forks over the $10 cover with disgust. "One last gouge before you go, eh, Jimmy?"
Downstairs, Chris Doherty of Gang Green--tonight's old-school punk headliner--repeatedly tries to incite the crowd to riot. "Let's tear this place apart!" he rallies between such hops-and-hangover anthems as "See You on the Couch" (from the band's new CD, "Another Case of Brutality"). Beer-swilling townies sporting four-letter T-shirt logos slam and stumble on and off the stage, bellowing into microphones, knocking each other over. A garage-rock veteran comments sadly, "This was the last bastion of dumb."
As the band finishes up with soggy refrains of "Na Na Na Na (Kiss Him Goodbye)," the crowd starts climbing the pipes to snag papier-mache rat souvenirs from the ceiling. The bouncers stand by, unfazed. Upstairs, people are walking out with bulletin boards, chairs, anything they can carry. One guy shows off the stall door he dragged up from the typically sewage-clogged women's toilet downstairs. "Check it out--'I love the Modifiers.' That was my old band! I didn't even see that when I was taking the thing down."
-- Robin Vaughan, Boston Herald, November 21, 1997
BOSTON AND NEW YORK have been very receptive to us, but
it's harder to get into clubs. There aren't as many around.
Who'd have thought the Rat would close? Now, it's mostly
smaller clubs that are more supportive because they don't need to bring in the money that larger venues do.
-- Lizzie Borden, Worcester Phoenix, March 13, 1998
Lizzie Borden of Lizzie Borden and the Axes
THE RAThSKeLLER
It was only part of the story that some eventual big names played the Rat--and most of them did, from the Cars, the Police, Talking Heads, and the Ramones to Sonic Youth, the Minutemen, and the Pixies (Nirvana never did, but this was where Kurt Cobain met Mary Lou Lord, at a Melvins show).
The Rat missed the chance to reunite the A-list of local bands for one last party. But then, most of the old-school Bostonians you'd expect to see at such an event--the Titanics, Willie Alexander, the Lyres, the Bristols, David Minehan, the spinoffs of Mission of Burma, the Neats, and Scruffy the Cat--played within a week of the Rat's closing. They just played at other clubs. That pretty much says it all. -- Brett Milano, Boston Phoenix, November 26, 1997
Other shows of note that I saw there were Suicide, Willie Loco and the Boom Boom Band, La Peste, Burma, Nervous Eaters, and the Lyres. It was sad to see it bulldozed and the location college-i-fied by BU but nothing except memories (and roaches) last forever. I always marveled at the sight of the omni-present Mitch, who was a true gentleman and integral part of the ambience that made the Rat what it was.
-- Erik Lindgren, e-mail message, August 6, 2002
Kenmore Square. How we miss the Rat, the pungent smell and philosophical musings of Mr. Butch (the unofficial mayor of the square), the Pizza Pad, the grit and grubbiness that made it the nexus of
Boston rock 'n' roll. Those days are long gone...
-- Jim Sullivan, Boston Globe, November 2, 2001
Before the Rat, There Was ... the Rat
Boston rock 'n' roll started right here with Barry and the Remains ... back in 1965. The stage used to be over there, but it's here now; and we're still here. So is rock 'n' roll in Boston. -- Willie "Loco" Alexander, Late September 1976, "At the Rat" intro, reissued on Willie Loco Boom Boom Ga Ga: 1975-1991 (CD, Northeastern, 1992)
By the spring of 1964, the band, the Remains, was playing once a week in the back room of a little Kenmore Square club, the Rathskeller. "We'd work for twenty-five bucks apiece," said bassist Vern Miller, "and all the beer we could drink." "It was just loud, raucous, savage, and fun."
[T]he band stood on a low stage built from planks and milk
crates. Then they "turned up their amps," said Miller, "pounded
the drums and played uncivilized Rock and Roll while the audience drank beer, danced, and perspired. It was dark, damp, noisy, smelly, and fun. No matter how wild the crowd got, the music never stopped." -- Passages from our Barry and the Remains profile
They were great, really tight and really powerful. The Remains were the most professional band I'd ever seen. You could tell they really cracked the whip at rehearsals. -- Willie Alexander, Boston Rock, November 1981, Issue 23
CLEARLY A LOT OF NEW ENGLANDERS love thinking back to their Rat days. Everyone should have a response rate like our Rathskeller query brought. This project has been so successful, in fact, that our file has grown way beyond the size-rating of the Geocities editor. So, I have divided this page into two halves. If you found this one first, please click on
Part One
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2002 by the New England Music Scrapbook.
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