“I remember at least two or three distributors going out of business, and our money went bye-bye,” he says. The members of Miles Dethmuffen recently taped a brief set for JJ Gonson’s ONCE Virtual Venue, which will present a Presto Records Relaunch event on May 8.įor Porter, running a record label was not exactly lucrative. “I’ve never felt like my job was more essential than in the last year,” he says. These days, Frank works by day in the state’s Executive Office of Elder Affairs. His newest group, the Daylilies, are preparing an album for the new local label Red on Red, which recently released a single by Linda Bean’s latest band, the Chelsea Curve. I think we were on a bunch of people’s list of 30.”įor years Frank led the band Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women. Every A&R person at the time had a list of 30 bands they wanted to sign, but they only got to sign two or three a year. “We had a bunch of showcases in New York. “Chris did a great job as our manager,” says Frank. But Miles Dethmuffen - later known as PermaFrost - had a nice run. In hindsight, Frank thinks that his band’s “arty, jangly, poppy” sound may have been a step behind the times, more in tune with ’80s Boston bands like the Neats and Dumptruck than their ’90s peers. I was a little bit starstruck.”įrom there he went on to run the concert schedule at the Middle East Downstairs and at Mama Kin, the short-lived club on Lansdowne Street co-owned by Aerosmith and the Lyons Group. Melrose native Ad Frank was an underclassman there to him, Porter was “an enigma. To finish his degree, Porter transferred to Brandeis University. “My mother, God bless her, gave me a few thousand bucks to start it,” he recalls. That’s when he decided to start his own label, with the 1989 release of “Ruins Cafe.” When Throbbing Lobster went under, Porter tried in vain to find the band a new deal.

“I was probably the only underage manager in Boston in 1986,” he says.Ĭlassic Ruins’ debut album, “Lassie Eats Chickens,” came out that year on the local Throbbing Lobster label. At WJUL Porter met the members of the Classic Ruins, and he started managing them soon thereafter. Weston would later join the bands the Volcano Suns and Shellac and make his name as a noted recording engineer. Porter’s first exposure to the music world came on the air at WJUL, the student-run station at the University of Lowell (now known as WUML), where he co-created the program “Live from the Fallout Shelter” with Bob Weston.

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