{"id":4865,"date":"2018-01-02T12:14:17","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T17:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=4865"},"modified":"2018-01-02T12:23:45","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T17:23:45","slug":"jay-hale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/01\/02\/jay-hale\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Boston Punk And Hardcore: Two Decades Of Photos From Cambridge\u2019s Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay Hale moved to Boston for college in 1995 at \u201cthe tail end of the alternative era.\u201d Bands like Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield, Lemonheads, Pixies were making way for punk, hardcore and ska acts like the Dropkick Murphys, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Bruisers, The Business, Rancid, The Ducky Boys.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a really small town, Georgetown, Massachusetts,\u201d Hale recalls.”My graduating class had 58 people. None of them came to Boston, especially none of my friends. I was alone in a new town looking for something to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he searched out rock concerts in The Boston Phoenix\u2019s listings and brought his Kodak Star 735 point-and-shoot camera along. He photographed his first gig\u2014The Upper Crust at Local 186\u2014shortly after his college move-in day that September. \u201cI never had any photography training. I didn\u2019t have any real equipment,\u201d Hale says. \u201cSo it just took off from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He went on to photograph Joe Strummer, the Bosstones, Peter Wolf, Dropkick Murphys, Darkbuster, Rancid, The Amazing Royal Crowns, Death, The Hives, The Bruisers, The Misfits. Highlights are on view in the exhibit \u201cGet Off the Ramp! 22 Years of Photography at The Middle East\u201d at the Cambridge nightclub through Jan. 31.<\/p>\n

\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Bobby Hackney and Bobbie Duncan of Death, May 31, 2015. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hale\u2014who is now 40 and living in Littleton\u2014studied public administration and journalism at Suffolk University. He worked on the college newspaper, The Suffolk Journal, becoming editor in his junior year. He proceeded to turn it into (in the words of a former editor) “a glorified punk zine.” The paper won The Rolling Stone magazine College Journalism Award for Feature Writing for Hale\u2019s interview of Bosstones sax player Tim “Johnny Vegas” Burton about the band\u2019s fourth annual \u201cHometown Throwdown\u201d at the Middle East. He went on to found the music magazines \u201cRUDE: International\u201d and \u201cFat City.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hale took his old Kodak with him to photograph the Ramones, Rancid and Screaming Trees at the \u201cLollapalooza\u201d tour when it arrived in Vermont in summer 1996.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a better camera, but I didn\u2019t know how to properly load the film. So I wore it around my neck to look cool,\u201d Hale says. \u201cThere was a Boston Globe photographer next to me. He said, \u2018You have that nice Nikon around your neck, why are you shooting with that little point-and-shoot?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Hale claimed the Nikon was broken, that film wouldn\u2019t load right. The Globe guy took a look and showed him how to load film into the thing. \u201cI was able to shoot the Ramones halfway decently with my good camera,\u201d Hale says, opening up better technical possibilities as he moved forward.<\/p>\n

\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, Aug. 2, 1997.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then Hale photographed Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray on August 2, 1997. \u201cIt was in the middle of the summer. The band that opened for Sugar Ray was Smash Mouth. They were right on the cusp of breaking big,\u201d Hale recalls. \u201cThe whole front row is all young girls. They were all grabbing and tugging at him. I\u2019d never seen that. Most of the shows I go to were big guys with tattoos. The girls would end up on stage, kiss him and hug him. \u2026 Sugar Ray ended up being one of the big bands of the summer. For that one week in time, they were at a real small club in Boston right before they broke big.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Boston, though, things were about to change. Hale says, \u201cThe scene in \u201997, \u201998 with local bands and national punk rock bands, it was a very strong scene. Then there were a couple incidents around town, so all-ages [shows] became less frequent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom what I heard there was a hardcore show,\u201d Hale says, \u201csomeone got up on stage, the guy was a 300-pound guy, and did a black flip off the stage and landed on a girl and broke her neck. \u2026 I think that was the incident that made them reassess all-ages shows. I think that lasted for five years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hale says, \u201cWhen the all-ages shows became less frequent the Boston scene started to dry up. \u2026 There wasn\u2019t a new crop of bands coming up because they didn\u2019t have a good place to play.\u201d And so ended an era.<\/p>\n

\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Mark Lind of the Ducky Boys, Sept. 12, 1999. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Mike McColgan and Ken Casey of Dropkick Murphys during the “Do or Die” record release show, Feb. 8, 1998. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Micky Fitz of The Business, April 26, 1998. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"=<\/a>
= Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Joe Strummer during the Mighty Mighty Bosstones “Live From The Middle East” record release party Upstairs, Oct. 20, 1998. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Hale\u2019s photo of Jerry Only of The Misfits, Oct. 24, 2001. (Courtesy)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Hale moved to Boston for college in 1995 at \u201cthe tail end of the alternative era.\u201d Bands like Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield, Lemonheads, Pixies were making way for punk, hardcore and ska acts like the Dropkick Murphys, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Bruisers, The Business, Rancid, The Ducky Boys. \u201cI come from a really […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4871,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,101],"tags":[42,152,193,153],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4865"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4876,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4865\/revisions\/4876"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}