The Phantoms

Angelo had recently left New England School of Design to be more involved in music and learn by the seat of his pants to play drums. Carnelian had just finished recording a demo tape at Studio B in downtown Boston with two high school friends – bass player David Scaltreto and guitarist Bob Enik – both sitting in just for the session. The tape of six songs was so compelling that Clash and Angelo decided to seek a bass player and book some shows at local clubs. Micky had recently moved to Boston from Westport, CT and was riding on the Green Line subway one day with her bass guitar when a woman tapped her on the shoulder and handed her a phone number scribbled on a paper. She said she had found it posted in a pizza place in Waltham and it was from a band looking for a bass player… the woman turned out to be Micky’s neighbor Greta, the wife of the guitar player for the J. Geils Band when they were still called the Hallucinations. Micky soon moved to join Clash and Angelo in a large house with a rehearsal space in Newton. This version of Carnelian was together for almost a year and played the local club circuit for a few brief months. Many of those months were spent searching for a 4th member, but they never found the right lead guitar player and the band dissolved in early 1977.

One memorable Carnelian gig at the Rat was the night Clash impulsively threw his hat into the crowd, accidentally knocking over a full beer into the lap of a guy at the front table and nearly starting a bar fight (yes the Rat had lots of tables back then and we played a few gigs as the only band for a three night run)…another night a stranger jumped onto the stage in the middle of a song and picked up Clash’s spare guitar… the guitar had been loaned to him and was a rare Ibanez kind of a Louie the 14th-looking fragile thing with scrolling woodwork and fancy ivory inlays… Micky quickly leaned over and shut down the amplifier that the guitar was plugged in to, and put a foot in his ass to gently move him off the stage. Clash’s brother Chris saved the day by grabbing the guitar and escorting the wannabe rocker to his seat. The bouncers took it from there. *LOL!!

During a Carnelian rehearsal in the fall of 1977, the newest lead guitar player, got into a heated discussion with Clash over the direction of the music and stormed out of the room. Micky and Angelo picked up the guitars and thrashed away at them and the Phantoms were born out of their need to “just fuckin’ play”; – they never looked back. The Phantoms were on their way to a ten-year-long excursion from the fringe to right smack into the middle of the exploding Boston rock scene.Prolific writers, The Phantoms penned dozens of songs in the next few months while learning to play their instruments. Sometimes they would write many songs in one day – one day they wrote 10 songs in an hour… Shortly after the break up of Carnelian, Micky and Angelo moved out of the band-house in Newton Four Corners to a place in Allston (a section of Boston some refer to as Rock City, or Rat City) named after a largely forgotten Cambridge, MA artist, Washington Allston. They lived with roommates who were in a band named The Zoo Types. In the four bedroom ramshackle row-house apartment, the atmosphere was somewhat like a commune as musicians and artists gathered at all times of day and night, humming, strumming, smoking and joking around.

The members of The Zoo Types were actually accomplished musicians who could play King Crimson-type stuff and had come from progressive rock fusion type bands – they listened to Robert Fripp, Gentle Giant and Steely Dan!!! Ah, but the mind of an analytical intellectual can usually be logical enough to see the value of creativity and individuality. The Zoo Types, including Frank Gerace, a virtuoso guitarist (who now plays assorted stringed instruments and keyboards in the unique and ethereal band Dreamchild with his wife Cheryl Wanner on voice, bass and harp); Tas Calo, bass player extraordinaire with a precise and metallic style inspired by Chris Squire’s sound; and their amazing drummer Lenny Shea (later of The Stompers) practiced in the basement while Micky and Angelo feverishly hemorrhaged songs in a small loft bedroom, upstairs, recording them on their cheap cassette player – boom box.

These stand up dudes were kindred intellectual spirits and kind enough to encourage The Phantoms to grow and blossom in their own style. All of the roommates took an avid interest in what the Phantoms were doing, whether the song of the day was the electric “Red Hot Dollar” or the acoustic “Belch Canyon”; they reveled in the humor and sheer lack of genre that manifested in the band. They also had the patience of saints as they had to listen to insufferable hours of out-of-tune guitar thrashing and screeching vocals (or vo-casualties as we called them) through the thin walls of the apartment. Another room-mate, Don Garner, A.K.A. Screeg Neegis, would later become the founder of “Wasted Efforts Productions”. He is also a founding member and the inspiration behind the creation of the PunkTV.com record label. Screeg is responsible for taking on the project to catalog the whole discography of this incredibly unique band for all to see and hear. The whole neighborhood was filled with artists at this time. Block parties were a yearly summer tradition, and in the early eighties The Phantoms took on the task of organizing them. They would invite serveral Boston bands to play a set at a block party. The first party featured Paul Hartless complete with an awesome Alice Cooperesque stage show – a real coffin, live Boa Constrictor around his neck as he emerged from the coffin and lots of black lace. Typically a block party would start in the afternoon and end around 10 PM. Early in the afternoon, The Phantoms drummer would lead the road crew (usually Fish, Tony and an assortment of friends) on a scavenger hunt to scour the nearby streets for items that could be used to build a stage and backdrop. One year they found a huge barn door that served as a stage. The road crew had put together some funds and purchased some barillium green and red colored smoke bombs that looked awesome against the white sheet that was the stage backdrop. They set these on either side of the stage and lit them off at high points in The Phantoms set – much to the delight on the dozens of kids in attendance.One year 7 bands were scheduled to play – The Needles, ZodioDoze, The Puppet Rulers, Air Raid, The Mystery, an acoustic duo and The Phantoms. Each band chose a time to play for about an hour or more and the party rocked on til the cops shut it down around 11 PM. Meanwhile, life was pretty wonderful for The Phantoms at home. Micky and Angelo were deeply in love and their love knew no boundaries just like their music. They played together, worked at day jobs together and pretty much spent 24 hours a day together creating and existing in a blissful punk rock state – even though they were as poor as church mice, the staple diet of potatoes and popcorn was barely tolerable yet neither complained as long as they had a rehearsal space and could play music at any time of the day or night.

The First Bass Player – The summer of ’77 was alive with music as Micky and Angelo solidified the foundation of the union that would come to be known as the Phantoms for the next decade. After a few months they began the search for a bass player and local clubs to play in.One day while in the subway Micky spied a girl carrying a bass guitar (deja vu, Micky?)… Debbie Packard became the first Phantom bass player and subsequently moved in with Micky and Angelo as a room-mate when they moved out of the Zoo Type’s apartment and rented a flat down the block – with a basement rehearsal space! Debbie learned quickly and became a minimal yet solid bass player, holding down the bottom and writing her own lines. The rehearsal space turned out to be the perfect nurturing space to incubate a plethora of songs for all of

Micky and Angelo’s bands over the next few decades.

1978-1979