The Neighborhoods feature, Providence Journal, July 7, 2013

The Neighborhoods to perform at Ocean Mist in Wakefield

July 07, 2013 12:01 AM 

The Neighborhoods, from left, Lee Harrington, Dave Minehan, and Johnny Lynch

By Scott McLennan

Special to The Journal

When the Neighborhoods called it quits after 14 years in 1992, Johnny Lynch was a sophomore in high school, unaware of the Boston band and its wild ride from the local-music underground to nationally released album, tour with the Ramones, and gig opening for David Bowie at Sullivan Stadium in Foxboro.

But today, Lynch, in the estimation of Neighborhoods founder David Minehan, is the band’s whip-cracker. In 2004, guitarist Minehan and bassist Lee Harrington, who joined the Neighborhoods in 1982 and remained in the lineup until the “farewell show,” revived the band with Lynch on drums. By that point, Lynch was not only an accomplished player but also a ’Hoods obsessive.

“He’s the Neighborhoods historian. If I flub a line, he’ll shout it out from behind the kit,” Minehan says of Lynch. “He’s like one of those baseball stats freaks, but for rock ’n’ roll.”

With Minehan busy at the helm of Woolly Mammoth recording studio in Waltham, Mass., and Harrington now a lawyer having returned to school after the band’s initial breakup, the Neighborhoods play only about a half-dozen shows a year, and the next one happens Saturday at the Ocean Mist in Wakefield.

Lynch was playing drums in the band Naked Sams when he first met Minehan in 2000.

“I told an older friend that I was recording with Dave Minehan, and he asked me what I thought of the Neighborhoods. I knew the name, but didn’t own anything or know the music, so he gave me a couple of tapes,” Lynch recalls.

That lit a fuse for Lynch who started gathering all of the Neighborhoods music he could find, enamored by the band’s blend of classic-rock reach, punk attitude, and power-pop catchiness. He studied bootleg concert recordings and listened to all of the official releases, a string that began with the 1980 single “Prettiest Girl,” which remains a signature tune for the band.

Minehan and Lynch stayed friendly, having not only a musical bond but a shared love of the movies “Spinal Tap” and “The Exorcist.” In 2002, Minehan wanted Lynch to join him at a party where Harrington was going to be.

“It was birthday party for a friend of theirs. Lee had moved back to Boston,” says Lynch, who ended up jamming with the ’Hoods that night. “The first time I met Lee, I played music with him.”
Minehan says that he will keep playing ’Hoods’ gigs as long as the band can meet the standard it set with its original incarnation (and if you need a reminder of just how good the Neighborhoods were live, grab “The Last Rat,” a recording of the band’s 1992 farewell concert at the Rat in Boston). So far, he’s been pleased.

“It defies expectations,” Minehan says. “We live in a society where there’s a lot of pressure to say, ‘You’re past your prime.’ And I get it. I remember being 18 and watching musicians who were 27 and thinking to myself, ‘Oh, please.’ But I feel that what we’re doing is a very real thing.”

Minehan also marvels at the fans who may not be as driven as Lynch but are still hungry for the ’Hoods catalog which runs from the happy-go-lucky “Pure and Easy” to the barbed “King of Rats.”

And that catalog is destined to expand with the release of a new album next year as well as the official release of “Last of the Mohicans,” which consists of songs the Neighborhoods worked on as a follow-up to its self-titled major-label debut produced by Aerosmith’s Brad Whitford and put out in 1991 on Third Stone Records, an imprint started by actor Michael Douglas for Atlantic Records.

Minehan takes the blame for delays in getting out new ’Hoods music, explaining that he ends up working on everyone else’s music at Woolly Mammoth before thinking of his own.
“I’m the cobbler whose child has no shoes,” Minehan says.

Lynch, who was interviewed separately, phrased it differently: “He’s the carpenter who can’t work on his own house.”

But Lynch is confident the new album will get done, and it’s important to him that it does for two reasons.

“I love this band,” he says. “Yeah I’m the drummer, but I’m also a big fan.”

Scott McLennan can be reached at smclennan1010@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottMcLennan1