Have We Seen the Last of Harvard's Big Rock Bands?

Bullet LaVolta's Last Concert

At T.T. the Bear's

After five years of rocking Boston, Bullet Lavolta bowed out of the music world with style and sweat, playing a packed T.T. the Bear's Saturday night.

The band formed in 1987 and featured Yukki Gipe on vocals; Corey Loog Brennan, Kenny Chambers and Clay Tarver '88 on guitars; Bill Whelan '88 on bass and Chris Cougar on drums. Saturday night's line up was considerably different--Gipe and Tarver are the only original members left in the band.

But their hour-plus set still featured their pioneering fusion of hardcore and metal--a hard, guitar-driven sound that has reached mainstream with such hands as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The audience responded to the music and Gipe's distinctive growl and wagging tongue with appropriate moshing and stage-diving in a bruising display of fan appreciation. At various times, band members jumped into the crowd and floated atop a sea of large, sweaty, tatooed arms.

Towards the end of their set, Brennan joined them on stage to play "Circuits." The former guitarist, who received his doctorate at Harvard and now teaches classics at Bryn Mawr, looked scholarly but showed he hasn't lost his edge. They ended their set with a raucous rendition of "Dead Wrong," with audience members shouting the chorus. Spraying the audience with champagne during an encore, the bandmembers walked off the stage and into the (post-punk) history books.

Seeing the band off into rock-group valhalla were seven other bands, each offering a short set in tribute to Bullet Lavolta. Among the more notable opening acts, Legendary Lunch featured a buffed drummer, and Chloe put on a wild show. When they played "Lost Cause" by the Australian band, the Cosmic Psychos, Gipe jumped on stage to perform the vocals.

Two bands showed considerable pop potential. Juliana Hatfield played three songs in Billy-Bragg-singer-with-electric-guitar fashion. Her guitar-playing was accomplished and her sugary soprano appealing. But her lyrics failed to achieve the emotional power of the music. "My Sister" and "Ugly" revealed glimmers of a sarcastic edge to her writing, but they still seemed unbelievably shallow. In any case, look for Hatfield on MTV--before midnight--in the near future.

Green Magnet School, now signed on sub Pop, also graced T.T.'s with their presence. Their hard rock grooves and melodic vocals may bring them mass success given the current rage for various former labelmates. Regardless, they gave the audience 15 minutes of pleasure. On the down side of things, Meltdown featured absurd, pretentious vocals and silly heavy-metal lead guitar. And the Vancouver duo Mecca Normal's set was too long. The guitarist did evoke some interesting sounds from his guitar with his rapid, jerky arm movements, but his partner did not add much with her less accomplished guitar playing and vocal style. All in all, a tad self-indulgent.

As musically and psychologically satisfying as the show was, it was cause for reflection about the sorry state of the current Harvard rock scene. The alma mater of members of such alternative fixtures as Bullet Lavolta, the Lemonheads and Galaxy 500 seems to have a starting paucity of good rock bands at the moment. Only time will tell whether Harvard students will stop blasting "One" by U2 and "November Rain" by Guns 'n' Roses and start playing the interesting, innovative music that put Harvard on the map.