I feel very fortunate to have seen Jeff one last time in early September of 2020. I had released a record and I asked him if I could submit it to Pipeline! He ended up driving over to MIT to pick up the CD, so that he could listen to it in his car that day. Later that night he wrote me a great email and gave me praise, saying it sounded like Gary Numan had abducted a shoegaze singer, which made me laugh. Jeff’s opinion always meant a lot to me, because I knew how obsessed he was about music. He was open minded and would engage in any genre with equal fervor. I always felt that if I made something he liked or played on Pipeline! then I must have been doing something right.
He was always a kind person to me but not afraid to tell you like it is. I remember one time in the booth at WMBR I was playing acoustic and a bit too hot on the mic. He was very firm with me and said, “You need to back off the mic”, which I appreciated. He gave one of the first bands I ever played in, Eyes Like Knives, their start and a cover on the Northeast Performer, now over 20 years ago! He even let me write a few columns when he was the magazine editor, because of course he did that, too. Like so many others in the Boston music scene, I continually crossed paths with Jeff over multiple decades because of our mutual passion. I sincerely loved his eccentricity and honesty. His participation in the Typewriter Orchestra is so telling of the kind of vibrant musical soul he was and is still driving through the cosmos. He was so excited about that project for many years, and I know it brought him great joy. I feel so lucky that I got to thank him for everything that afternoon when he picked up my music, not realizing it would be the last time I would see him. I wish he was still here and cannot be replaced.
appearance: Jan. 31, 2017