Punk rock would have come to Boston soon enough anyway, but maybe Peter Dayton gave it a head start. Dayton was a 20-year-old art student when he took the train to New York City in October 1975 to see a rock concert that got canceled at the last minute. He ended up on the Bowery instead, at CBGB, where the Ramones were wrapping up a three-night stand, six months before the release of their debut album. The Queens foursome made such an impression on Dayton that he returned to Boston and talked his roommates, Mark Andreasson and Roger Tripp, into starting a punk band they called La Peste.
Once the trio learned to play instruments—Dayton on guitar, Andreasson on bass, and Tripp on drums—La Peste became a fixture on the Boston music scene, where their influence exceeded their output. Without much more than the Ramones as a punk-rock reference point (and maybe a little Black Sabbath-style thunder), La Peste made their own way, figuring out how to structure and arrange songs as they went. They earned their place in the tight-knit local music community with live shows remembered for their intensity, and also a sense of shared fervor between the band and the audience.
No score yet, be the first to add.
Gigs were the only place to hear most of their music: The original incarnation released just one 7″ record, the 1978 single “Better Off Dead,” with “Black” on the B-side. Yet they had plenty more in reserve: I Don’t Know Right From Wrong: Lost La Peste 1976-1979 collects 23 tracks the band had stockpiled before a disillusioned Dayton left in 1980. (The group continued with a new guitarist until 1982 before calling it quits.) These songs come from sessions scattered over two years, including tracks that a friend captured in 1977 on a reel-to-reel machine in La Peste’s loft rehearsal space, four-track recordings, the stint in the studio that yielded “Better Off Dead,” and four songs—the best-sounding ones here—that they recorded in 1978 with Ric Ocasek, who was then on the cusp of stardom with the Cars.
The first dozen tracks, sequenced by Dayton and Andreasson, represent the La Peste album that never was. Some of them are as strong as anything else coming out at the time. The explosive opener “I Don’t Know Right From Wrong” is a lean blast of sawtoothed guitars and hurtling drums, with a subtle, eerie synth (Ocasek’s idea) floating at the back of the mix. Later, a hooky chorus and bright ringlets of guitar on “Kindness Invites Abuse” contrast with the lo-fi scrum of power chords, aggressive bass, and cymbal-heavy drums that propel the tune. Part of what made La Peste distinctive was the vocal balance Dayton struck, between disdain and an almost deadpan affect. He was comfortable with melodies not far distant from the bubblegum pop of his adolescence, but “Acid Test” shows he also wasn’t afraid to get weird by talk-singing his way to a cathartic moment and then letting rip with a knowing shriek.
