Colin L. Orchestra

The nineteen-nineties were not naturally inspiring years for young people; but we small bands of sisters and brothers in towns across the country made them so. Refugees from the suburbs, urban art assholes, and a few deep country hicks living together in makeshift hovels. I remember sitting upstairs in the living room at the Baldyga Funeral Home in Southie one summer evening.
Colin says to me, “I can’t believe my favorite band ever is playing in our basement and we’re just hanging out up here.” It was Harvey Milk thundering below. You see, we were gorging on such a steady, decadent diet of rock in those days that even our skinny young-twenties bodies needed a rest now and then. The first time I watched a Bullroarer practice I thought “Ouch, that really
fucking hurts!” but stayed on mesmerized and totally confused as to whatto do. The shows in those days followed a format of the bands starting out with a little bit of, “Is this it?” and the audience saying, “Uh . . . yeah, I think that’s it” and Dave Moody going, “Yes! This is most definitely it!” and then we’d all said “Yes!” as one. Dave was the only guy that even had a bit of an idea that we might not always be this free.

Well this music Colin is playing now is older than all that. Yes, yes - this is his freshest shit yet, a culmination of many years hard labor with no pay, many years of laying it out on every kind of line. Well done good and faithful servant. But trust me, he was making this music in his mind long
before those now legendary late twentieth-century gigs in the squalid holes that passed for venues in Boston and the follow-up decade-long glorious ride of the Monster all over USA. Listen back to his high school talent show Bad Company cover.1 I kinda don’t fault the snarky jocks you can hear standing next to the tape recorder for ridiculing him; but listen close and you might be
able to tell that, in his head, young Colin’s vocals were soaring exactly like they do now on “Best Thing.” And thank god he got over his fear of long songs! I realize how to some “leftit fantasy”2 -- a song I love with mother-crazy love -- may sound like a hoard of fools drowning in the bottom of a beer keg (that accurate, actually), but those feelings have been re-released on “Hold Tight,” only minus the mangle and the loneliness now, so pure. “You Need Sleep” is the No Peddlers reunion I’ve pined for, but those guys were never this good – were they? It is a little bit amazing how many of the people playing on this record were with Colin lo those many years ago when Infinite Dream was just a spark in his eye. One can only wonder what the next fifteen years will bring.

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