The Remains -

The Remains were an American garage-rock band from Boston that released a self-titled album on Epic and scored a 1966 regional hit with “Don’t Look Back,” later anthologized on the original Nuggets.

Members: Barry Tashian (lead vocals, guitar), Bill “Billy” Briggs (keyboards, harmonica, vocals), Vern Miller (bass, guitar, vocals), Rudolph “Chip” Damiani (drums, vocals, 1964–66; later reunions), N.D. Smart II (drums, vocals; 1966 Beatles tour)

Background

In fall 1963, guitarist–singer Barry Tashian met bassist Vern Miller and drummer Chip Damiani at Boston University’s Myles Standish Hall. Keyboardist Bill Briggs joined in September 1964 and completed the Remains.

Tashian returned from a 1963 trip to Britain with blues and R&B material plus recent British singles. The quartet established a weekly stand at T.J.’s in Kenmore Square, later renamed the Rathskeller, where Remains Night crowds extended from the club toward Fenway Park.

Boston promoter Don Law connected the band with Fred Taylor’s H.T. Productions agency. Epic signed the quartet after one audition in December 1964, and the members left Boston University for a New England club and college circuit the next year.

1965–66 Singles

Epic scheduled the Chuck Berry composition “Talkin’ ’Bout You” (b/w Bill Briggs original “Say You’re Sorry”) for March 1965 but quickly withdrew the pairing in favor of “Why Do I Cry.” The Remains released the Barry Tashian original later that month with Willie Dixon composition “My Babe” on the reverse. “Why Do I Cry” reached the Top 20 on Boston stations WMEX and WBZ and also drew airplay outside New England.

The group followed on November 24 with “I Can’t Get Away from You” (b/w “But I Ain’t Got You”), two Vern Miller originals. The Remains then appeared on the December 26 Christmas edition of The Ed Sullivan Show, where they performed “Let Me Through.” Sullivan invited the group after seeing a set at Trudy Heller’s Greenwich Village nightclub.

The Remains returned in March 1966 with the Bo Diddley–Willie Dixon composition “Diddy Wah Diddy” (b/w Damiani–Miller original “Once Before”). The single reached No. 129 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.

“Don’t Look Back”

On August 8, 1966, The Remains released “Don’t Look Back,” a strident, melodramatic rocker by New York songwriter Billy Vera. The single appeared with a Tashian original, “Me Right Now,” four days before the opening date of the final North American tour by The Beatles.

Vera, then an April-Blackwood staff writer, composed “Don’t Look Back” after the publishing office requested material for Chuck Jackson, who passed on the composition, which subsequently reached the Remains through the CBS publishing operation. Ted Cooper produced the New York recording with drummer N.D. Smart, an eighteen-year-old Ohio musician with prior work behind Lonnie Mack.

Damiani left shortly before the tour, and the Remains continued with Smart. The Remains opened the nineteen-date Beatles itinerary from the August 12 show at the Chicago International Amphitheatre through the August 29 date at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, where The Beatles made their last official concert appearance.

Within days of the Candlestick Park show, Tashian dissolved The Remains due to exhaustion and fractured band chemistry in light of Damiani’s departure. The decision stymied “Don’t Look Back,” a Boston-area hit that didn’t spread to other markets.

The Remains

The Remains released their self-titled debut album on September 26, 1966, through Epic.

The ten-track set combines six Remains originals with three covers drawn from Petula Clark (“Heart”), Charlie Rich (“Lonely Week-End”), and Bo Diddley (“Diddy Wah Diddy”), plus the Billy Vera composition “Don’t Look Back.” Epic assembled the sequence from masters recorded across the original Remains run. Damiani appears across the earlier recordings; Smart joins only on “Don’t Look Back.”

“Heart” smolders through soft opening chords before a taut double-time rave-up. “Lonely Weekend” surges on firm bass figures beneath emphatic lead singing. “Don’t Look Back” charges from three blunt opening figures into pumping piano, rapid declamation, a mid-song shout, and repeated closing lines.

“Why Do I Cry” coils around an elastic two-chord riff and close harmony. “Diddy Wah Diddy” races on a bracing beat as harmonica bursts punctuate hoarse lead singing. “You Got a Hard Time Comin’” jolts through stop-start breaks and hard accents. “Once Before” barrels from a razor-edged guitar slash through terse fills and a fast, straight run. “Time of Day” drives on fuzztone lead work.

A1. “Heart” (2:36) – Aber, Hatch
A2. “Lonely Week-End” (3:20) – Rich
A3. “Don’t Look Back” (2:35) – Vera
A4. “Why Do I Cry” (2:45) – Tashian
A5. “Diddy Wah Diddy” (2:32) – McDaniel, Dixon

B1. “You Got a Hard Time Comin’” (2:04) – Tashian, Miller
B2. “Once Before” (2:07) – Miller, Damiani
B3. “Thank You” (3:14) – Tashian
B4. “Time of Day” (2:16) – Tashian
B5. “Say You’re Sorry” (2:17) – Briggs

Epic compiled masters recorded from January 1965 through August 1966 in Nashville and New York. Nashville work included sessions at the Quonset Hut, while New York dates included Columbia Studio A. Billy Sherrill produced four album masters, including “Diddy Wah Diddy” and “Time of Day,” amid contemporary Epic work with David Houston (Almost Persuaded). Ted Cooper produced most remaining titles. Epic A&R director Bob Morgan supervised “Lonely Week-End,” while Robin McBride produced “Why Do I Cry.”

The cover features four offset group portraits beneath oversized green lettering. Song titles run down the left margin in a compact block.

Spoonfed returned the album to vinyl with a 1978 pressing that added four extra recordings. Epic/Legacy expanded and remixed the material on the 1991 collection Barry & the Remains. Legacy restored the original ten-song sequence on a 2007 CD with ten bonus tracks. Sundazed followed with a 2008 mono double LP that coupled the original program to twelve single sides and McBride-produced recordings.

Postlude

The original quartet regrouped for a March 16, 1969, show at the Boston Tea Party. Six further performances followed in 1976 under the Remains name.

Tashian moved to Nashville and recorded with Gram Parsons. He joined Emmylou Harris’s Hot Band and later worked with Holly Tashian as a duo. Miller entered the Boston group Swallow, while Smart later played with Mountain and Parsons.

At the 1998 Cavestomp festival, the four founding members returned to New York. Rock-A-Lot issued the 2002 second studio album Movin’ On. The group toured Europe in 2006 and appeared in the 2008 Michael Stich documentary America’s Lost Band.

Sundazed issued the Capitol audition on the 1996 album A Session with the Remains. In 2018, the label released the Boston Tea Party tape under the title Live 1969 on vinyl. The group also recorded “Monbo Time,” a 2010 benefit single for cancer research.

Nuggets / Garage-Compilation Legacy

Lenny Kaye included “Don’t Look Back” on the 1972 Elektra double album Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968, where the Remains follow the Barbarians on side two and precede the Magicians. The placement introduced the Billy Vera composition to the collector audience that formed around Nuggets and the garage compilations that followed. Rhino compilers returned the recording to vinyl on Nuggets, Volume 12: Punk, Part Three in the label’s 1985 twelve-volume revival of the series.

The Remains original inspired two pre-Nuggets covers. The Rising Storm recorded “Don’t Look Back” for Calm Before…, the privately pressed album that the Phillips Academy group completed in Framingham and released in spring 1967, shortly before graduation. South Carolina group The Bojax recorded the song for Panther, paired with “Fast Life” on their November 1967 second single. Greenville airplay made their version a local hit.

British and European collectors carried the Rising Storm recording into the next phase of the garage-reissue market. Psycho Records placed “Don’t Look Back,” “Baby Please Don’t Go,” and “A Message to Pretty” on Endless Journey – Phase 1 in 1982, alongside recordings by the Moving Sidewalks, Oxford Circle, Finchley Boys, the Clique, and Mystic Tide. An unauthorized French reissue of Calm Before… appeared through Eva the same year, while collector interest brought the Rising Storm back together for Boston reunion dates. The collector route for “Don’t Look Back” therefore ran from the Remains on Nuggets to the Rising Storm through Endless Journey, a parallel series from the same archival garage-psych culture that produced Pebbles, Boulders, and related compilations.

The Bojax recording remained deeper in the collector network. Their other sides later reached garage anthologies, including “Go Ahead and Go” on Back from the Grave, Volume 8, while “Fast Life” surfaced on Quagmire, Volume 1. Misty Lane eventually collected “Don’t Look Back” with the remaining Bojax recordings on the ten-inch Don’t Look Back…It’s the Bojax in the early 2000s.

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