Notes
The Rising Storm has been a band for half a century, but it's path to cult stardom has less to do with ambition than with odd luck - and the murky economic world of record collecting. - "Calm Before...," which was limited to 500 copies, contained more original material than most albums by prep-school garage bands of the era, and the covers the group chose (including Love's "Message to Pretty" and Jimmy Reed's "Big Boss Man") were eccentric for the time. After graduation, the band members did what was expected of them: They went on to college, pursuing careers in law, medicine, education and journalism, and raised families. Rock stardom - any tenure as a band, really - was not the plan. - But by 1982, for reasons that no one in the band can really explain, "Calm Before..." had become highly coveted in the circle of garage-rock record collectors. An article that year in The Boston Phoenix, a local weekly, cited prices of $350 at a used record store; European collectors were paying even more for unopened copies. - In 1992, the band played it's 25th reunion at Phillips during a series of club gigs on the East Coast; a film treatment about the group was optioned by a classmate who was at the reunion, and it landed on the desk of Robert Zemeckis. (It later fizzled.) A book, "Unknown Legends of Rock 'n' Roll," placed the Rising Storm in the company of Nick Drake and Syd Barrett. The band opened for the Yardbirds in Rotterdam in 2007. A European collector recently paid $6,500 for an unopened copy of "Calm Before..." Improbably, the Rising Storm keeps carrying on. This fall 2017, Sundazed Records will reissue "Calm Before..." on vinyl - the third such reissue of the album. A documentary about the group is expected in 2018. And as the external forces continue to coalesce, bringing the band back together time and time again, it creates an opportunity beyond just reliving a dream. These men have known one another for most of their lives, in a uniquely complicated dynamic: a band.
