HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Hot New Band Calls Harvard Home

The up-and-coming musical group Baby Ray boasts a web of connections to the University

By Lee Simmons
Special to the Gazette

Baby Ray members (left to right) Erich Groat, Paul Simonoff, Ken Lafler, and Nathan Logus have just released a new CD, Monkeypuzzle, nationally. Three of the four -- Groat, Lafler, and Logus -- have Harvard connections. Most of the pieces on the new disc were written by Groat, who teaches at the Extension School. At their best, the songs combine startling and often darkly surreal lyrics with irresistible, hook-laden pop melodies.

Stand back, everybody - Baby Ray is about to happen. This Cambridge-based rock band is one of the most exciting and original groups to emerge from the lively local music scene in recent years. Baby Ray's debut CD, Monkeypuzzle (Thirsty Ear Records), has just been released nationally, and from the evidence on record, Baby Ray is on its way.

The Harvard community can be forgiven a little familial pride. Erich Groat, singer and guitarist for Baby Ray, teaches at the Extension School and earned his Ph.D. in linguistics from Harvard in 1997. Ken Lafler, who also sings and plays guitar, is a systems coordinator in financial aid at the Law School. Nathan Logus, the drummer, is the Webmaster for the University's Division of Continuing Education. The bass player, Paul Simonoff, has worked for several high-tech firms in the area.

Baby Ray Is Born

Every Ph.D. student knows the sudden paralysis that can set in once qualifying exams are over and it's time to write a dissertation. Some doctoral candidates discover a previously unsuspected desire to acquaint themselves with the Great Books or take up contra dancing; many become rigorous newspaper readers. Erich Groat discovered an exceptional talent for songwriting.

As a graduate student at Harvard, Groat played guitar with several local rock bands, performing in such Boston-area clubs as the Middle East, Bunratty's, T.T. the Bear's, and the Rat. Music was something he had always done on the side, but he had never tried writing his own material.

"It was an act of desperation at first," says Groat. "I went through a period of seven or eight months when I just couldn't double-click on that thesis icon." He found refuge in the rehearsal studio, where he and former bandmate Ken Lafler began to experiment with creating their own music. To Groat's surprise, he found that he enjoyed writing songs and had plenty to say.

Like many graduate students, Groat spent hours hunched over his research in the coffee shops around Harvard Square, but the muse of songwriting, once aroused, often tracked him down there. His favorite haunt was the subterranean Cafe Pamplona on Bow Street - "a good place to write lyrics because they don't impose any atmosphere on you."

One of the best local bands at the time was a group called The Barnies. According to Lafler, "We used to watch their drummer, Nathan Logus, and say, 'Man, we wish we could play with someone like that!'" When the Barnies split, Groat and Lafler promptly proposed and Logus accepted.

By the summer of 1997, the three had recorded a demo tape and mailed it to everyone they could think of. On the cover was a help-wanted ad, listing all the things the band needed, including a recording contract and a bass player. It wasn't very professional, but the music sold itself. Thirsty Ear Records in New York called with a multi-record contract, and the band found their perfect complement in bassist Paul Simonoff.

Monkeypuzzle

Critics have likened Baby Ray's music to that of XTC, Talking Heads, Guided by Voices, Brian Eno, and King Crimson - some of the most intelligent and innovative voices in popular music. Even the later Beatles have been mentioned as a point of reference.

Most of the pieces on the new disc were written by Groat. At their best, the songs combine startling and often darkly surreal lyrics with irresistible, hook-laden pop melodies. Not surprisingly, coming from someone so keenly attuned to language, the words themselves are full of delights. Groat has a poet's ear.

The fractured, elusive lyrics rarely tell a story or outline a simple emotion, but function more like Boston traffic, with seemingly simple phrases floating ambiguously or merging unexpectedly with other phrases only to veer off down different avenues.

That penchant for sudden lyrical left turns is mirrored in the music. Rhythms and tempos often shift abruptly. On a fast piece like "Buster Pig Man," with its leaping melody, the experience is like a hurtling, white-knuckle ride down a mountain road. The band, anchored by the rock-solid rhythm section of Logus and Simonoff, deftly negotiates every twist and turn without touching the brakes, and the effect is exhilarating.

Other Puzzles

Along the way, Erich Groat did manage to finish his thesis in linguistics. After spending a year commuting to New York as an assistant professor at CUNY, he's now back at Harvard, where he teaches a course at the Extension School called Language and Cognitive Science.

Standing at the blackboard with chalk in hand, the clean-cut, lanky Groat looks every inch the young academic. He clearly enjoys teaching and his enthusiasm is catching. Linguistics is a formidably abstract discipline, but Groat brings it to life with creative and often amusing examples. He illustrates the idea of "performance errors" with an anecdote of his own flustered spoonerism concerning some Pop Tarts belonging to a female acquaintance.

Groat's specialty is the theory of syntax. His thesis advisers were Noam Chomsky of M.I.T. and Samuel Epstein, then teaching at Harvard and now at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Epstein had presented a seminal paper at a Linguistics Department forum in 1994, suggesting a new approach to understanding syntactic relations. The idea struck Groat as so profound that he changed his thesis topic to pursue it.

Groat's thesis work was subsequently incorporated into a provocative new book just published by Oxford University Press entitled A Derivational Approach to Syntactic Relations.

No Contradictions

Groat says he feels no contradiction between his daytime image as a scholar and his decidedly more glamorous night job. He views both teaching and performing as ways of reaching people.

Likewise, other band members seem to feel comfortable with one foot in the University and the other in the nightclub. Logus says he's found Harvard to be very open and accommodating with creative people, and Lafler agrees, noting that in his 11 years at Harvard, his co-workers have been "amazingly supportive."

Lafler is the only one who seems to undergo some kind of personality transformation when he steps from one role to the other. Normally mild- mannered, "he's a real 'outie' on stage," says Logus. "A menace," adds Simonoff.

The only thing missing now is time. Dues must be paid, and the members of Baby Ray are paying theirs in lost sleep. The week they launched their new CD they also played five concerts in Cambridge, New York City, and Connecticut, returning home Sunday night to be up for work on Monday. Says Simonoff, "You get pretty good at loading the van as quickly as possible."

Harvard folks can catch Groat and Lafler live this Thursday, Dec. 10, when they will perform Baby Ray songs unplugged in a free concert at Loker Commons.