Appendix IV: Harry’s History from Conceptual Irregularities.com
During the 1970's in Rowayton, CT a group of folk-rock musicians started playing together, culminating in the band, Noyes and the Boys. The band started as Airfix, four moppy haired suburban boys, the boys your mother told you to avoid. These boys were Dave Procter, Greg Smith, Tom May and Ed Flinn. Dave played guitar, sang and was the heartthrob of the group, Greg played guitar, harmonica, sang and was the dark intellectual. Tom played lead and was the funny one. Ed played the congas and was the computer genius behind it all. Before there were computers. In addition to playing songs by Dave and Greg, they would do material by Bob Dylan, It's a Beautiful Day and Fairport Convention.
At the same time, across town Harry Hussey met up with Mark Lebow and Bill Gailey from Stamford to play loud rock n' roll in his parents' basement. The band was called Blue Monday and the repertoire was Dead and Allman Brothers. Harry played guitar and bass, Mark played drums, and Bill played piano and guitar, really well.
They say nothing good comes from mucking about in boats and that proved particularly true when Harry and Mark joined Sea Explorers and met Dave Procter. Airfix was impressed that Blue Monday could play and Blue Monday was impressed that Airfix could sing and so there started to be some intermingling. This started with regular weekend parties at the Proctors during the fall of '74 where Harry and Mark would play folk rock on the basement stairs. When Greg and Dave would come home from college they would join in and songs were learned and exchanged. There were recording projects that came up, usually done at the Rowayton Community Center with a reel to reel and as many mics as could be begged, borrowed or stolen. The first one involved a version of Who Knows Where The Time Goes and was the genesis of the oft repeated Mark Lebow quote, "Who's been fucking with my drums?"
Blue Monday, having no bass player to speak of (having unceremoniously kicked out the founder of the band, Mike Webster) conscripted Dave Procter to play bass in the summer of '75. This was the first year both bands played at Pinckney Park. It was also the summer that the play "Stone Soup" was performed by various band members and their friends. It was around this time that Alan Freedman showed up on the doorstep. Alan played bass and guitar and was an all around good guy.
In the fall of '75 all the big kids went off to school again and a conglomeration of the two bands was formed called Broken Wind. This featured Harry on lead, Dave on rhythm, Alan on bass, Mark on drums, Ed on congas and Mike Burns on alto sax. During Christmas break of that year there was another recording session at the Community Center, the centerpiece of which was a song by Alan called Nature's Daughter. It was this session which had the famous summit in the caboose at Victoria Station on acceptable recording studio decorum.
In Boston, Greg met Josh Kramer whose silky baritone made the co-eds swoon up and down the eastern seaboard. They would play at various parties at Boston University and starred in the cutting edge independent film, "Commando Chef" by Adam Weisman. Greg brought Josh down to Rowayton on holidays and he started to play music with the rest of the gang.
In the summers of '76 and '77 Blue Monday played the local Fairfield County Bar scene but at that time there wasn't a lot of call for Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers in bars. Blue Monday did one recording session which featured Mike Burns and Chris Hussey on saxes on a rousing medley of the Zappa tunes, Son Of Orange County and More Trouble Every Day.
In the summer of '77, Harry, Tom and Josh formed a trio called Take Two They're Small. They played a bit in New York City and recorded a tape. It was their version of a super-group...
Scott Wyland, a dedicated Deadhead and housemate to Mark and Alan in South Norwalk was friends with Mike Noyes and Mike was cousin to Audrey Noyes a recent college graduate and pre-school teacher in New Canaan. Audrey came over to the house where Scott, Alan and Mark lived to hang out and visit and discovered that everybody played music as did she. She had a big bluesy voice and was a good guitarist (for a girl). Most of the female guitarists that the boys were used to playing with had wispy little finger-picking styles but Audrey had a bit more meat in her mambo.
In the summer of '78 Greg, Josh and Tom had graduated college and decided it was time to make a real album. It would be called Bridges and the band was called Tradewinds.