Downbeat Five

After three decades of rocking hard, living hard, and underachieving in three of the Bay State's greatest bands, J.J. Rassler's found redemption

by John O'Neill

The J.J. Rassler story is one made for cable TV. It starts with the requisite young, hungry guitarist seeking a break, and, for the next 20-odd years, follows him around the rock-and-roll map with such intensity (in a car-wreck kind of way) that to turn the channel to Dickie's forecast would be to miss some cataclysmic event.

Scene One: passionate fledgling band look to wed '70s punk to '60s garage rock while Boston grooves on Abba and on Starland Vocal Band. They form DMZ anyway. Fueled by big ideas, bigger egos, and by whatever else they find, they fight like a pack of rabid gibbons. Highlights include Rassler tossing the keyboardist down stairs, getting his teeth punched out at the Rat, and the band suddenly being hailed as savior-geniuses. They sign to Sire Records, release an album, then implode in a hail of fists and venom.

Scene Two: Rassler moves to Worcester to help spark the budding Wormtown scene by forming the Odds. For five years, the band are unparalleled in sheer grit, drawing power, and in substance abuse. They win the city's biggest band rumble, help erase the pervasive hippie/Southern rock scene here, cut several songs for national companies, get thrown off an East Coast tour with the Alarm, and even manage to continue the spiral toward a drug-induced oblivion.

Scene Three: as the Odds fade, the Queers add Rassler as a guitarist. What will become America's premiere punk band benefit from having Rassler, who has a great sense of knowing a good hook. But unable and unwilling to run with the band, Rassler slips out of sight for nearly a decade.

Cut to March 2000, at Ralph's Diner: Rassler's back at the scene of oh-so-many past crimes, but things are different. First, the once-Jaggeresque Rassler looks like a bona fide middle-age man complete with paunch and chicken legs. He's also married, sober, and, with his new combo the Downbeat Five (who appear this Friday at the Above Club), has never seemed happier.

"I'm getting really jazzed about what we're doing now," Rassler says from his home in Arlington, where he lives with his wife, Ronny, Downbeat's vocalist. "We started [the band] at home as a little project and got a rhythm section together to see how it would sound. There was no plan; I didn't even want to play out. It was playing for the fun of playing."

Each recruited a co-worker (bassist Brad San Martin from Jay's gig at Rounder Records, and drummer Dan McCarthy from Ronny's employ). Then the band hit rehearsals, went through a host of name changes, and worked on taking Rassler's passion for mid-'60s pop, soul and for garage rock to a national audience -- at least as "national" as an underground-genre can go. While DMZ could have, and the Odds should have, both were too self-destructive, narcissistic, and fucked-up to get anywhere. Keeping it together long enough to make an impact wasn't a serious option. But the Downbeat Five, with one gig under their belts, are getting somewhere. They have two cherry gigs lined up with Garageland heavies the Fleshtones and Swingin' Neckbreakers, and already have at least one 7" deal lined up.

"We wanted to put out a series of singles and maybe play a few gigs to hype them," says Rassler, who will also head into the studio soon to produce a second Queers album for Lookout! Records. "We figured we had the means to put them out ourselves but we've had people approach us. Which is great. We don't want to beg for a Tuesday night at the Middle East, and that type of bloodletting. All we're interested in is having fun playing and putting out a single when we can afford it."

Incidentally, fun is the official call of the Fivesome four. Leaning heavily on the spirit of pop-past (Kinks, Beau Brummels) and of the DIY low-fi slop of today's garage scene (Thee Headcoats, Trashwomen, and Prissteens), the Downbeat Five tie it together with a sly nod to the classic-girl groups. When Ronny Rassler sings the Zombies' "Can't Make Up My Mind," it sounds like the Ronettes might have camped over in the Downliners Sect's back yard. Raw yet cute, biting yet warm, Ronny's voice has an unjaded honesty. Even the tough growl of "Come on Now" has a sweet blush-ability to it. It's almost as if she, and the rest of the band, are first discovering music. The drumming is tribal-style simple; the bass is fluid but never out of line (a sign of a real bassist, not a guitarist playing bass); and, after years of playing second to aces like Peter Greenberg and to Preston Wayne, Rassler finally has a chance to prove he slings a mean guitar. Best of all, Rassler not only retains his ability to identify (and own) the choicest of covers to play, but also finds a capable writing foil in Ronny.

"I used to write a lot of bedroomy stuff, real moody, angsty stuff," Ronny relates. "[J.J.] helped me move to write more of what I'd like to listen to. He'll write a J.J.-type song and I'll fill in stuff. . . . The criteria is, `How would this sound as a 45?' "

So there's your happy ending. Like all good flicks, redemption is at hand. After three decades of rocking hard, living hard, and underachieving in three of the Bay State's all-time great bands, Rassler's found his. The dream of stardom long abandoned, his personal satisfaction has never seemed better. Roll the credits, strike the set. Rassler's off to write his own sequel.

"If you have low expectations, you have less to be disappointed by," he confesses. "We aren't primed to get in a van and sleep on floors for months. Some things that used to be a drag are much more of a drag. Who knows, in six months, that might change. I feel different about the band now than six months ago."

"The bottom line is the band isn't first priority," Ronny adds. "We have good jobs; I'm in school, and we have a cat! On the other sleeve, I'm having the biggest fuckin' blast of my life!"