The Remains

During the mid-1960s the Remains failed to score even a modest chart success, dissolved before issuing their first album, and stayed virtually invisible beyond New England. Nevertheless, devotees of the era’s garage rock later ranked them among the finest American bands of their generation. While most contemporaries drew primarily from the British Invasion, the Remains wove in far heavier strands of classic blues and R&B, delivering a tight, forceful sound. The sides they cut exuded assurance and sophistication, and eyewitnesses still speak reverently of their electrifying stage performances.

Formed in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1964 and occasionally billed as Barry & the Remains, the quartet came together while its members were students at Boston University and living in the same dormitory. Guitarist and lead singer Barry Tashian and keyboardist Bill Briggs both came from Westport, Connecticut; bassist Vern Miller grew up in Livingston, New Jersey; and drummer Chip Damiani hailed from Wolcott, Connecticut. Sharing a taste for tough rock & roll and R&B, they began performing regularly at local bars near campus. Once Tashian and Miller introduced original material, the group quickly became a Boston favorite, attracting the attention of Epic Records, which offered them a contract. Sent to Nashville to work with producer Billy Sherrill, the band watched as Sherrill selected the atypically somber “I Can’t Get Away from You” and “But I Ain’t Got You” for their 1965 debut single. Epic fared better with the follow-up “Why Do I Cry,” backed by “My Babe,” yet the record made little impression outside New England; two further 1965 releases, “Talkin’ About You” and “Diddy Wah Diddy,” likewise failed to register nationally.

Nineteen sixty-six appeared promising. Epic issued the dynamic “Don’t Look Back” as a single, the Remains performed on major television programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show and Hullabaloo, Capitol Records invited them to cut a live-in-the-studio audition, and they secured an opening slot on the Beatles’ final American tour. None of these opportunities unfolded as hoped: the single stalled on the charts, Capitol declined to sign them, and Chip Damiani left shortly before the trek. N.D. Smart stepped in as drummer, the band earned favorable reviews supporting the Beatles, yet the members grew weary on the road and lamented the absence of Damiani’s distinctive feel. Weeks before the September 1966 release of their self-titled album, the Remains disbanded.

Tashian moved to Nashville, spent the 1970s and 1980s in Emmylou Harris’s band, and later recorded several duet albums with his wife, Holly Tashian. Miller joined Swallow, which issued two Warner Bros. albums in the early 1970s, before becoming a music educator. Briggs entered the automobile business, while Damiani founded a construction company. Smart performed with Kangaroo, Mountain, Gram Parsons & the Fallen Angels, and Great Speckled Bird. A one-off reunion concert in 1969 yielded Live 1969, issued in 2018. Lenny Kaye’s inclusion of “Don’t Look Back” on the 1972 anthology Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 sparked renewed interest among 1960s-rock collectors. Epic/Legacy compiled the band’s recordings on the 1991 CD Barry & the Remains, and the 1966 Capitol demo finally appeared in 1996 as A Session with the Remains. The original lineup reunited for a Cavestomp Festival appearance in New York City in 1998 and continued occasional performances, releasing the album Movin’ On in 2002. Chip Damiani died of a cerebral hemorrhage on February 23, 2014.