Ted Scourtis - Memories of the Third World Raspberry

Ted has done many things in the music world and at this time was actualy the manager of the Third World Raspberry for a while.
His memories parrallel and highten the points that Don makes.

I first saw the Raspberry in 1968 at a indoor 'Be In' held in a Church Hall . I was covering the event for New England Scene Magazine , A weekly news print magazine that I co-edited with a fellow named John Oliphant .
The two recordings you have on your website aside ( which I find embarassing) , they stood out to me with their unusual blend of Jazz and Rock , and their superior musicianship . They were definitely a work in progress , but , with their nonstop sets of segueing tunes , ala the Mothers , they were totally unique to this time period in Boston .
What they really lacked was good equipment , and I could help provide that through my job at E.U. Wurlitzer . WE shook hands and I was their manager , an unholy alliance as it turned out .

John Klingberg and Donny were THE professional musicians of the group , with great resumes and chops . Donny was , at the time , one of the few white drummers that had mastered "Fat Back" drumming , and I believe had played with some of the top R&B cats of the day. John's story was similar , and of course , he went on to played with Van Morrison on "Moondance and "Street Choir" .
Herbie was the musical and composing force of the band . He was a great guitar player with a tinny, irritating , guitar sound that he stubbornly refused to change . he played a Gibson hollow body archtop jazz guitar that just didn't fit with with the heavy low end power sound of the top English bands . He was one of the most impulsive, charming, and disarming rogues , that I have ever known .
SJ was from Springfield, and played a capable rhythm guitar.
Donny and John were the only band members that had last names. If I once knew the, they are lost to my memor .

The band all lived in a three story brownstone on Tremont St. in the South End . It had a full apartment on each floor , and the guys rented and occupied the entire building . I remember Bassist John Klingberg and his girlfriend Robin on the first floor , but am fuzzy on which floors the other Raspberries inhabited . Donny is so correct about being doped up all the time . I know that John , Robin and SJ were junkies at the time , and Herbie smoked a lot of weed , but had a high tolerance AND energy level .
As a result of their habits , they lived like animals in squalor and rarely seemed to practice . Each apartment had it's own bathroom and kitchen with an old fashioned deep soapstone sink . When John and Robin's kitchen sink stopped up they continued to fill it with dishes and food until fuzzy mold was growing like a planter on top . At this point the guys nailed the door shut and moved to the next kitchen !!!! This method of elimination was also used on one of the three bathrooms in the house, but I forget which one. Does it really Matter?

Herbie had done a lot of the booking before my tenure as manager, and for some odd reason many of the gigs were in Church Halls . The Raspberry were a performance band , and although there were some danceable tunes , the constant segueing of the songs often created a very confused dance floor. It was kind of like the scene in "Spinal Tap" when the band played the military base, and the audience milled about , trying to latch onto of a beat to which they could relate .
At it’s best, the music was an inventive and a cutting edge blend of Rock , Jazz , and R&B. Later this blending of forms would be given the name "Fusion" , but in those days, it was, shall we say, it was an acquired taste . The musicianship was certainly top notch , especially that great rhythm section . No one could say these cats couldn’t play, but their gigs could be excursions into chaos induced by chemical overload, and sometimes it was downright Surreal .

When I first took over , they played all indoor gigs and sang their vocals through their guitar amps . I was able to purchase a PA system and a couple of Fender amps using my discount at Wurlitzer , the deal being that I’d recoup the expense with the group’s future earnings (please don’t laugh , I was only 23) . With the upgraded equipment, I was able to book them into the Notorious George Papadapoulis’ Psychedelic Supermarket , Where , as a result of an intense advertising and full court media campaign , they played to an underflow crowd of @ 26 people .
Bolstered by this triumph , we started to play the for free , Sunday "Be In" circuit . At this time , weather permitting , there were free concerts almost every summer sunday on either the Boston or Cambridge Commons , folowed by a free vegetarian meal at the Hare Krishna temple in Brighton . Many Boston bands and even a few Nationally recognized acts performed for nada (a surly Van Morrison comes to mind). Actuall , it was at these appearances that the Raspberry got some understandably favorable attention from the mostly stoned out , heat stroked crowds .

Anyway, our professional relationship with each other ended after someone in the band (I really don’t know who) pawned the equipment that I still owed Wurlitzer’s $800.00 for , John and Robin slipped into drug induced lethargy , (they were so stoned out , that they alloted a corner of their rug for their cat to use as a depository) , the band was facing eviction , and Herbie up and announced that he was in love with a girl he had known for a minute or two , and was off to California .
Based on the resounding success of this foray into the management end of the business, I decided to rest on my laurels, and retire back to my previous life as a musician, writer and purveyor to the trade , a decision that I have never regretted . R.I P.: The Third World Raspberry .

Rick Hall- Founding Member of the Third World Raspberry

My name is Rick Hall and I was one of the founding members of the Band that would become, after a wild ride, the Third World Raspberry. The member line-up shown was after the bands departure from the show known as "After the Third World Raspberry" which encompassed the majority of the bands time and creative work. I can fill in much of the bands early history.

I met "SJ" at the "Pesky Sarpent", a coffee house in Springfield, Ma. in 1966. Many folk music legends performed there, including Richie Havens, Jesse Colin Young, Judy Collins and many others. "SJ" was short for "Super Jew", the self proclaimed nickname of guitarist Bruce Burstein, and we hit it off immediately. SJ was the son of a big band era musician.

I was an acquaintance of Moulty of the band the "Barbarians" and I mentioned to him I was looking for musicians, and he put me in touch with guitarist Herbie Edwards and drummer Joey Vizzard, friends of his from Provincetown. Herbie was the oldest of 7 children as I recall, his Dad was a black career serviceman and his mom was a blond German woman. This allowed Herbie to grow one of the wildest heads of hair!......

When we located to Boston, Joey left the band and we picked up a bass player named Paul and a drummer named "Bat" and for the life of me, I can't remember Paul's last name or "Bats" real name. Moulty put us in touch with John Sdoucus of Music Productions, the premiere music booking agent in Boston at the time. John was looking for a band to write a musical score and perform with a lightshow production created by artist Al Rubin (now a well-known photographer) called "After the Third World Raspberry".

It was in this period that the music was written. Since the show was designed for one continuous performance, it was written as one continuous piece of music. This was the composition that encompassed the musical piece reference earlier.

Herbie and SJ did the majority of the composition although I added a couple of pieces. The shows backers rented a practice hall just off Harvard Square in Cambridge where we composed and practiced with the lightshow. Every day we would "commute" from our cold water flat in the Roxbury slums where we had rented two apartments in a condemned building next to the Boston City Hospital for the exorbitant sum of $40 a month, which was not bad considering our contract called for us to be paid $35 dollars a week per member while we were engaged in the creative effort.

In July of 1967, "After the Third World Raspberry" debuted at the Lido Beach Club on Long Island NY in a concert with The Young Rascals and Spanky and Our Gang (yea, we didn't exactly "pay our dues" in the traditional bar scene). The next week we opened a concert at the Village Theater in NYC (which would shortly thereafter become the Fillmore East) with the Who, Richie Havens, The Blues Project, and Chrysalis (poster attached).

The producers decided the future was in NYC, so for the rest of the summer, we played in a small concert venue on 42nd street just off Times Square.

During this time, we were living in the infamous Hotel Albert at 10th and University near the East Village. For those who probably don't know, the Albert was a roach infested habitation famous for housing musicians since most places would have nothing to do with them. The Alberts "guests" included the Lovin' Spoonful, the Mothers of Invention, Spanky, and it is rumored this is where the Mamas and the Papas wrote "California Dreaming. It was a dive, but the psychedelics flowed freely and the pot was plentiful, so no one seemed to care.

It soon became apparent that "After the Third World Raspberry" was not headed for financial success, so the producers decided to add a gimmick. They hired a groupie named Jenny Dean (who I know dated Jimmy Hendrix) to make a dance appearance during the performance. A dancer in and of itself in not noteworthy, but what made it unique was that the dancer was totally nude except for some fluorescent polka dots which it was part of my job to help apply before the show. Supposedly, you couldn't tell she was naked because of the lights she danced under. I found a photo on the web of Jenny, included with this memoir.

The show returned to Boston at the end of that summer, and for about a month, we had no shows and we were weeks if not months behind in our pay and literally starving. That's when we were booked into the Prudential Center to perform for a television networks season opening (I think it was ABC, but can't swear to that). The band arrived hungry and out of sorts (or out of drugs more likely) and we were shoved on stage without even time to tune up. This pissed off Herbie and SJ big time, and so for the next 35 minutes, instead of music, the poor network people were treated to a cacophony of high decibel noise interspersed with obscenities.

This caused a physical altercation backstage which pitted Bat, Paul, and Herbie fist fighting with the shows producers and John Sdoucus. (I'm a peace and love kind of guy who stayed on the sidelines and spent my time grabbing food off the plates of waiters passing through the backstage area). This was my last performance with the band, the writing was on the wall.

The show went on to do one more performance at UMass in Amherst. The concept of a totally nude dancer did not go well with the local constabulary, and everyone involved was arrested. That was the end for Bat and Paul, who joined me in "retirement". I knew the new bass player John, but I don't think I ever met Don Renfro. It was after the death of "After the Third World Raspberry" that the band appropriated the name Third World Raspberry to capitalize on the name recognition. I heard them play at the Psychedelic Supermarket a couple of times, and to the best of my knowledge, they created no new music after leaving the lightshow.

After my time in the band, as an artist, I created a lightshow of my own, inspired by the work of Al Rubin. The Psychedelic Supermarket was one of the first venues I worked. The Diogenes Light Show worked with many big name bands over the following years including such names as Santana, J. Geils Band, Rod Stewart, Allman Brothers, Eric Burden and many others. I eventually moved the Lightshow into a theater in Springfield Ma. where I promoted shows for over a year.

In the end, I went back to playing music, and lived the Jimmy Buffet lifestyle on a sailboat in the Caribbean, making a good part of my living playing beach bars and Tiki huts in the Florida Keys. I have worked both solo and as part of groups, and played rock, folk, reggae, country and bluegrass.