Memories of the Framingham/Natick rock scene of the 60s/70s

THESE PAGES WILL NEVER BE COMPLETED BECAUSE THERE WAS SO MUCH MORE GOING ON THAT I  COULD HAVE EVER KNOWN OF AND I WANT YOU TO HELP ME FILL IN THE BLANKS.

My Background: Ric Provost

 Many of you who grew up in this era and lived in what is now called Metro-West but in the 60s and 70s was called the Natick/Framingham area will see their name or their band's name mentioned. I urge everybody to get in touch and fill in some of the blanks of my recollections and knowledge. Our area was rich with rock and roll creativity and I feel we will never see this kind of musical explosion again.

 I was born in Hartford, Ct. in 1952, music never played a part in my family's early life. Survival seemed to be the main theme considering a very sick father and a registered nurse for a mother. My father was a machinist at the Pratt and Whitney aircraft engine factory and my mother was a registered nurse at the Hartford Hospital where I was born. By the time we moved from an apartment in Hartford, Ct. to our own little cape house in Thompsonville, Ct. the family began to grow from just my older brother Gene and myself to a new younger brother Phil and two sisters Marlene and finally Anne, my baby sister born in 1959. Of course Gene and I always had a children's record player and many of the children's yellow and red colored 78 rpms disks but that was it for music in the family. 

 I remember part way through my 2nd grade, out of the blue my family picked up and moved to my great uncle and aunt's dairy farm in Middlebury, Vt. after my great aunt's death. I had no understanding of that move. I didn't understand that move was to have my mother run the farm and eventually inherit the business and all the land associated with it including a large part of Snake Mountain. All I knew was Gene and I were attending a private Catholic School in Hartford Ct.[ST Joseph's School] where we had to dress in pressed black dress pants, shiny black shoes, pressed white shirt with the school logo and a black tie and now what's this?!

 Gene and I have just now entered a parallel universe. Is this our new reality? Dirt roads with piles of snow, cows, chickens, freezing weather, silos, tractors, baling hay, old run down houses, the workers up at 4:30 in the morning, mountains and walking up and over the mountain foothills to get to another farm just to get a ride to school. I remember how scary it was to hike back over the mountain in the winter time alone if Gene was sick. It would be so dark when I had to leave a snow covered field and approach the woods on a full moon night with long shadows on the snow and all the animals calling out that a human was approaching. Sometimes I could hear the thrashing through the brush of something hopefully running away from me. Sometimes I could hear the lonely cry of the bobcats and whatever else was out there knowing they were watching me. This is the time I would start singing out very loudly and making up songs and words while my rubber 6 buckle overshoes would crunch through the crust of the snow. I would sing louder and louder slowly approaching the trees on our dark path to the other side of the foothills just waiting to reach the road that would take me to our farm. Sometimes I would make up songs that I thought were really good and wish there was a way of keeping the melody and words, wishing I could play an instrument to retain my creations. Naturally I would never sing at the farm because I was too shy and didn't want to be teased by the people on the farm because they seemed to know no pleasure, just bull work. What a new existence! After living there for about a year, my family moved to an apartment in the town of Middlebury. All this change in such a short time created an everlasting bond of friendship and trust between Gene and I to last for the rest of our lives. This also proved to us as a team we could accomplish more than on our own. Gene was scholarly, creative and analytical while I was the dreamer with BIG plans and boundless energy. These are the two elements needed to create a balanced business if one doesn't over shadow the other. And that was our partnership approach to our plans over and over again even in our early days as we raked leaves in the fall and shoveled snow off driveways in the winter as little boys. We even went returnable soda bottle hunting on Saturday mornings and cashed in that afternoon.

 We were very poor but we were happy until my father had a heart attack when he was on the road repairing Coca Cola machines and he was whisked away to the Veteran's Hospital in White River Junction, Vt. This is when I began to get an appreciation of the actual sound of musical instruments and that was through stopping at diners with Seeburg juke boxes. As we would travel back and forth to visit my father on occasional Sundays and visit relatives in Burlington Vt. We would get the chance to listen to the juke box music. The first song that Gene and I really liked was called "Heart Aches by the Number, Heart Aches by the Score" by Ray Price. I remember the richness of the bass and drums and the vocals through those booming speakers and the song's melody was crystal clear.

 As I progressed through my grades I continually had crushes on girls but I was too shy to ever approach or even say Hi . I remember being reprimanded by my mother while exiting church because a girl classmate of mine said, "Hi Richard" and I didn't respond and looked away. My mother said, "Richie, stop acting like a hi-hat" That was an old expression for somebody who thought they were superior to the other. My mother had it backwards but I couldn't tell her I had no confidence toward girls. Talk about a flop with chicks, I needed a gallon of Love Potion #9 but it still would not have worked! You now can begin to see what rock n' roll did for me.

 Finally my father came back to us still very sick but alive and my mother had applied to Boston College and was accepted. The G.I. bill kicked in for my mother's further education and veteran disability kicked in for my father. It had taken years for this to happen. During those years my father was in the hospital and my mother was working for chump change as an R.N., we were desperately poor. I would stand in line with my mother on Saturday mornings to pick up what they called Gov't rations. It was lard to substitute for corn oil and beans and some kind of corn beef all packaged in aluminum tin cans with no labels. I remember standing in line one morning waiting for our hand out rations when a classmate slowly drove by our long line at the little civic hall in his family's shiny new early 60s red Pontiac Bonneville convertible. He called out "Hi Richard" waving from the back seat with the top down as I stood in line. I just wanted to cover my face and disappear. To add insult to injury when we got to the front of the line, my mother was pulled aside by the state and local officials and she was told that they thought she was scamming the system and wasn't going to get away with it. It was stated she was stopped because she was wearing a clean dress, her fingernails were clean and her hair looked nice. My mother broke down in tears trying to explain she had a family to feed and her husband was in the V.A. hospital in White River Junction, Vt. and yes she was employed but made very little money. After all this in front of the audience of people in the long line, I remember thinking I will never be poor again, EVER!. I wanted to be so filthy f*ckin' rich so I could party with tons of chicks in my swimming pool in my expansive home, drive around in my convertible and travel the world. I would do as I please. Never to receive Gov't Surplus rations and eat the disgusting food [it was better than nothing].  All I had to do was find my path. 

 Life was changing for the better. My mother and father bought a new Chevy station wagon and also a new big Motorola top of the line stereo console and AM/FM radio enclosed in a beautiful wooden cabinet. I remember when it was delivered and my mother had selected several albums and the stereo place had thrown in a few extra albums. HOLY SH**, this new stereo sounds as rich, thick and booming as those juke boxes. The sounds were so distinct I can remember hearing the ting and the bell of cymbals. Gene and I weren't ever allowed to touch this new beautiful machine. Now the family plan was move to the suburbs of Boston where the kids could grow up in a nice neighborhood with good schools. We moved to West Natick, Ma. off Hartford St. near RT 9. My mother attended Boston College and the plan was to have her graduate as soon as possible, get employed immediately because we knew my father was really on his death bed. The plan worked. My father died the year after my mother completed her 4 year program in 3 years graduating cum laude. But before that, rock n' roll music had entered Gene's and my life. I thank my lucky stars for the rest of my life for the move to Natick, Ma.

 Early on Gene and my entrepreneurial skills had begun to develop. We lived next door to the Natick Lakewood Country Club. We tried caddying, what a bust. After going 18 holes with this golfer, he's about to leave for the clubhouse drinks with his buddies, he then turns to me and flips me a dime! I'm thinking I carried his stuff around for hours and I get a dime? Never again! Instead of slaving for these guys, we shagged balls in the evening, cleaned them up and resold them on the weekends. We also sold them cold drinks. Now we could make about $10-18 each for about 4 hours work as salesmen. We also sold our baby sitting skills by always being available on short notice. Busy neighborhood mother's with young children always need to go get something and need their children watched. The combination of these 2 efforts was beginning to pay off, good consistent cash. 

 Around '63 my aunt gave Gene and me our first record player. It was her old record player from the 50s, it was called the RCA 45. It was a heavy black box with a little front speaker, a real automatic tone arm and it could play at least 7 45 rpm records stacked. We went crazy for his machine. Upon receiving this gift after we begged and begged for my mother to go get it, Gene and I walked down to the ZAYRE DEPT STORE at the Natick's Sherwood Plaza on Route 9 and our first record purchase was the FOUR SEASONS "Rag Doll b/w /Silence is Golden" 45rpm for me, Gene purchased  Billy J Cramer's "Little Children b/w Bad to Me" 45 rpm. We played these records to death, over and over again.   

  To Be Cont. on Page 2