Boy From Nowhere Reunion Gig....3/25/11

First off, most of you probably have no clue who Boy From Nowhere was/is. There was a song by DMZ called Boy From Nowhere on one of the first punk rock compilation records out of Boston around 1976. DMZ were led by Monoman and morphed into The Lyres a coupla years after this record came out, but DMZ were one of the first bands to actually get it. It being that 70's punk came from 60's punk and 50's rock'n'roll...loud guitars, snotty vocals, in your face attitude etc...

Well Boy From Nowhere took that name from the above song and were the first band in London Ontario to actually play a mixture of 60's punk, 70's punk and toss some blues tunes in between the punkers to catch their breath. They came out of another London band called The Hippies (Nuclear Disaster/How You Gonna Live 7" on Kampf Records) who kinda evolved into The Blood Brothers (only 2 gigs, late 1984) and from there settled on the name Boy From Nowhere.
They played all of the usual clubs around London (Call The Office, Victoria Tavern, Bullwinkles, Brunswick, Key West, Civitan, Langarth Bar and Grill and others) back in their prime, that being early 85 to about 88 or so...they morphed into B5 Blues sometime after that...and members went on to Young Fast And Scientific, Evil Hoodoos and various other short lived combos. But let's get back to the subject at hand, that being Boy From Nowhere as here's a promo type shot from somewhere...anyone know?

Standing L to R is Lindsay Young guitar, Henry Cox drums, Brian Young bass, all of whom were in The Hippies and Blood Brothers and sitting and scratching is vocalist Jon Traut from some farm north of London.
Live they were always a lot of fun, covering everyone from The Dictators to The Flamin' Groovies, to the Standells, to Radio Birdman, to Elvis Presley to The Kinks, to The Yardbirds and pretty well everything in between. They were strictly a cover band and that suited them just fine. 
Here they are covering The MC5's Ramblin' Rose from a cassette we released many years ago called Live In London (how fucking original can you get?)...

http://chrwradio.com/lma/1987/What%20Wave%20-%20Live%20In%20London/The%20Boy%20From%20Nowhere%20-%20Ramblin'%20Rose.mp3

Most of the home recordings (for some reason, these guys did everything themselves as they learned a lesson when they were The Hippies) were more blues oriented. Here they are from another cassette we released way back when called Wave From The Grave (artist Dave Clarke takes credit for the name of this one) doing a cover of Mr Slim Harpo's Dynamite...

http://chrwradio.com/lma/1986/What%20Wave%20-%20Wave%20From%20The%20Grave/Boy%20From%20Nowhere%20-%20Dynamite.mp3

And finally the last thing we released by them, this time a cover of The Yardbirds Heart Full Of Soul....

http://chrwradio.com/lma/1996/What%20Wave%20-%20London%20Crawling/Boy%20From%20Nowhere%20-%20Heart%20Full%20Of%20Soul.mp3

This was on the last cassette that we released called London Crawling (again, Dave Clarke gets credit for the name) and this one was more of an overview of some of the cooler bands from London as the issue of What Wave  this came with, was a history of the local indy combos from London. We tried many times to get the Boy From Nowhere on vinyl (ie the It Came From Canada compilation LP's that OG Records put out) but never succeeded as they were happy doing what they were doing. But in 2004 we finally got them on vinyl as they were on the Action Records compilation called Thee Cave Comes Alive LP...a compilation of the more 60's punk oriented bands that were on the What Wave compilation tapes. And this version of Heart Full Of Soul was on this LP.

http://webspace.webring.com/people/vt/theecave/WHATWAVE/WHATWAVE.htm

It only took us 20 years, but it was worth the wait. Anyways, here's some more pics of Boy From Nowhere in action back in their prime.

 This one looks like it might be from Bullwinkles, a long extinct (and stinky) club here in London Ontario. They played this club a fair bit judging by the number of live recordings we did here. Some of the other bands that played this club back in the day include Plan 9, Chesterfield Kings, Vipers, The Cheepskates, Band 19, Raunch Hands, DOA, Forgotten Rebels, Deja Voodoo, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Purple Toads to name a few.

This one is from Langarth Bar and Grill as we had a couple of basement parties there. The bass that Brian is playing is my old Vox Constellation Mark 4 that he was trying out that night. We had Boy From Nowhere play there at least twice...and oddly we never had noise complaints from the neighbours.

                                  
                                    
Another shot of a show at Langarth Bar and Grill as Boy From Nowhere are joined by a couple of Legend Killers, Earle Rutherford (second from left) and Bryan Macdonald (far right, he was in B5 Blues and the reunited Boy From Nowhere). It looks like this must have been some super jam session as there's another guitar player hidden behind Earle.

Another promo shot from somewhere....any guesses? Maybe The Albatross in Centralia Ontario?

The Boy From Nowhere did a reunion show at The Orange Hall here in London about 5 or 6 years ago, anyone got any pictures from that gig? I remember it being a lot of fun but we had to leave early as we had brought our youngest, Roxanne to that show and she was burnt out before the band finished.

Ok, so on to the reunion show at The Town and Country here in London on 3/25/11...think i was in this place well over 30 years ago, but nothing prepared me for this inside of this place. There was free parking right in front of the club on the street as well as free parking behind. You walk in and are instantly transformed onto another planet. From the front door, there's a small hall, laundramat off to the left (guess that's in case you have a drink accident), pool tavbles and pinball off to the right, then a really long bar and the entrance to the rear room. This is where the bands play  and there's a slightly elevated seating area off to the left with literally tons of tables and chairs. Almost perfect line of sight no matter where you plant  yourself. Way off to the right at the rear of the place is a slightly risen stage with wood fencing in front with saddles mounted on top. Dunno the purpose of the saddles, but as you can see in the picture below, Jon tried out the saddle. There's also a decent sized standup bar between the dance floor and the stage where you can plant your drink while your feet take you on a journey around the dance floor. Great setup! Not only that, but they had this amazing pizza for only $2.50 a slice! Musta weighed near a  pound as my slice was loaded with pepperoni, shrooms and some kinda sausage that gave me great farts the next day...or maybe it was the 50 i was testing.
Boy From Nowhere started with a bang as they whipped out a killer version of DMZ's (there's that name again, stands for Dig My Zipper) Lift Up Your Hood. From there they did what musta been almost their entire lifespans repertoire as they covered The Yardbirds (Heart Full Of Soul, Rack My Mind, Train Kept A Rollin'), Standells (Sometimes Good Guys), Guess Who (It's My Pride), Teenage Head (Top Down and Picture My Face), Radio Birdman (Aloha Steve and Danno, Hand Of Law), Kinks (Victoria, I Need You), Dictators (Minnesota Strip, What It Is), Elvis (Hunk Of Burning Love), Flamin' Groovies (Teenage Head, Slow Death) and a kick ass version of Heart Of The City to celebrate Nick Lowe's birthday. If Nick was there he would have been smiling!

Jon Traut riding the saddle at the reunion gig 3/25/11 at The Town and Country here in London Ontario.

Yep, Jon's got his glasses on and can't find his drink in this one, Lindsay and Henry are trying to help out while Bryan laughs at the rest of them.

Yep, a great night was had by all in attendance, the band musta played almost 2 hours!! And they finished the show with a dual guitar attack of The Flamin' Groovies Slow Death that blew my mind!! Let's do it all again in another coupla years!!