Turning up the volume
Harvard record label Veritas teams with the Rolling Stone Collection and embarks on a new mission
CAMBRIDGE - Pesticide Red, a thrash-punk band from MIT, is barely into its first song when the college kids crowding the stage start slam-dancing. What's most surprising isn't the instant mosh pit at the front of the room upstairs at Tommy Doyle's, the Harvard Square watering hole at the site of the old Cambridge House of Blues. It's that members of three other MIT rock outfits competing in the evening's school-wide battle of the bands are right in the thick of it too, cheering on their rivals and dancing their heads off, not to mention other assorted body parts.
It's all part of the first-ever Rockus college band competition being co-sponsored by the Rolling Stone Collection, a licensing arm of the company, and Veritas Records, a student-run record label at Harvard University. The label has been around for five years, primarily releasing compilation CDs of campus musicians, but this year it is embarking on a seismic shift in its mission - and a quantum leap forward in ambition and visibility. In addition to the battle of the bands, the label intends to start working with Harvard bands - and eventually, other local college groups - to record and release full albums, most likely in a digital download format.
The Rockus competition should be a good start. The event has attracted a slew of up-and-coming bands representing seven area colleges and universities. Boston College, Boston University, Emerson College, Berklee, and MIT each have picked a winning band already; Tufts and Harvard compete this weekend.
"As a rule, I don't really like the 'battle of the bands' format," says Will Bosworth, 22, a charismatic singer-guitarist for the nervy pop trio the Pears, which beat out three MIT bands Saturday night to compete in the finals April 14 at the Paradise. "But we like to play shows, and all of the bands know and like each other." Bosworth likes to play shows so much, in fact, that he's putting off graduate school in mechanical engineering to concentrate on the Pears.
"The best thing about doing Rockus shows," says Veritas CEO Caitlin Crump, 21, a mathematics major, "is that it allows Veritas Records to establish better relationships with other schools in Boston - particularly schools that are considered our enemy, like MIT." She laughs.
The Veritas "office" consists of little more than a mostly bare 12-by-12-foot room inside the Student Organization Center building - with just a lamp, a table, an empty bulletin board, and a few boxes of CDs stacked on the shelves - but that's bound to change as the label ramps up its operations. Veritas (Latin for "truth") previously funded its operation through student activities funds and sales of compilation CDs, but now it has the Rolling Stone Collection, which pumped roughly $25,000 into the label's budget this year to help advertise and promote the Boston-area Rockus series.
Getting ready for Rockus has required a ton of work by Veritas volunteers: putting up fliers and posters, confirming band booking schedules, and coordinating to-do lists - all of it squeezed in between classes, seminars, and studying. "I take it out of the sleep budget," says volunteer Caitria O'Neill. Inevitably, all the preparation has taken a toll: Crump had to visit the campus infirmary last week after running herself ragged.
The bands, for their part, are excited for the exposure. "I think it's great [Veritas] is getting a bunch of schools involved - it's such a hotbed of really great music," says Joe DeNatale, 20, a sophomore English major from Boston College whose melodic post-punk combo, Gerard Mellen, won its semifinal round. "Hopefully somebody will notice us, and it may get other people [outside BC] to listen to our music" says the singer-guitarist.
The Hollow Sound, an edgy modern rock band from Emerson that won its semifinal round, has already had a taste of success via exposure on mtvU, MTV's college-themed channel. The group's guitarist, Justin Poirier, a 24-year-old Emerson graduate student in visual media arts, points to the cross-pollination among schools that's already happening.
"Our drummer [Adam Gruss] is at Berklee right now," Poirier says. "And our singer [Maddie Herec] just graduated from Berklee."
The eight to 10 volunteer staffers and musicians who run Veritas hope to make that kind of cross-pollination the norm.
They also hope to produce a diverse array of music, such as O'Neill's acoustic folk trio, Shy October. "I started working with Veritas having had no experience other than playing my own music at small parties or family gatherings," says O'Neill, 20, a government major who grew up listening to folk, bluegrass, and Irish music.
For Chris Powers, a computer science major who works as the label's in-house recording engineer, it all goes back to singing and dancing to Michael Jackson's 1979 album "Off The Wall."
"When I was a kid, that was the only tape I wore out twice," recalls Powers. "Ever since, I've been enamored by sound: the screeching of the subway trains, a conversation on the sidewalk as you're walking down the street."
The fascination eventually led Powers, a 30-year-old singer-songwriter who plays drums and guitar, to front his own pop-rock outfit, Start, Go!, after he returned to Harvard to finish his undergraduate studies. His band is working on a debut album for Veritas.
Besides giving the label a boost, Powers says the Boston-area Rockus series is being considered a test case for what may eventually turn into an annual nationwide Rockus battle of the bands.
"You realize that there's so much music in this town," says singer-songwriter Benjamin Kultgen, a 22-year-old Harvard alum who has a degree in philosophy and an emo-tinged pop outfit that bears his name. "And you also realize that everyone is in the exact same position - insecure but with lots of ambition and talent."
Berklee, of course, is famous for the musical prowess of its students and staff, and the college has a pair of student-run record labels: Heavy Rotation and Jazz Revelation. But the pool of talent at neighboring schools (such as Emerson, whose students have started up their own Wax On Felt record label) has, until now, been somewhat invisible.
"One of the things I told [my band] was that we could search out an indie record label," says Kultgen. "Or, we can get smart students whom I went to school with, who I can assure you are some of the most ridiculously hard-working individuals you've ever met in your life. If they don't know how to do something, give them 36 minutes and they'll come back with a plan."
Know about something cool on the local music scene? E-mail Jonathan Perry at roughgems@aol.com. 