Comeback band rises and shines in a spirited salute to '60s rock

Friday, December 29, 2006

John Soeder

Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic

Like a lot of guys, the members of the Alarm Clocks were inspired by the British Invasion to start a band of their own. And like a lot of groups, the Alarm Clocks never made it to the big time, at least not the first time around. Forty years later, however, the band is getting its due. "It's a lot of fun," said singer-bassist Mike Pierce.

Pierce and his old pals are set to headline a New Year's Eve concert at the Beachland Ballroom and Tavern to mark the release of "The Time Has Come," a new Alarm Clocks album on the indie label Norton Records.

Just don't ask Pierce what year it is. He's permanently and unapologetically stuck in the 1960s, at least musically. Miriam Linna, co-owner of Norton, referred to Pierce as "a perfect specimen" from a bygone era. "He came up with these incredible originals, one after another," Linna said.

"The Time Has Come" is a spirited throwback to the glory days of garage rock, with a dozen three-chord charmers penned by Pierce and raw updates of "Like a Rolling Stone" and "I'm a Man." Pierce, guitarist Bruce Boehm and drummer Bill Schwark were students at Parma Senior High School when they started playing together as the Alarm Clocks in 1965. The following year, they pressed up 200 copies of a single featuring the original tunes "No Reason to Complain" and "Yeah," although they were essentially a cover band with soft spots for the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. "We played high schools and battles of the bands, all over the city," Pierce said. "We always had the mind-set we didn't want people to dance. We wanted them to watch us. So we were very animated."

By 1967, the group was history. Its members eventually went their separate ways and lost touch. But a funny thing happened on the way to oblivion. The Alarm Clocks' single became a hot collector's item among garage-rock aficionados.

A copy of the hard-to-find record recently fetched $2,000 on eBay, said Tom Fallon, a record collector from Euclid and longtime Alarm Clocks devotee who joined the band this year.

"Most comebacks are nostalgic, with no sense of danger, but these guys still play like they played way back when," said Fallon, whose wife is a secretary at The Plain Dealer.

Pierce and Boehm, a merchant mariner, still live in the area, in North Royalton and Roaming Shores, respectively. Schwark lives in Houston, where he's a special-education elementary school teacher. They're all well into their 50s; Fallon is 46.

The Alarm Clocks played together again for the first time since the Johnson administration in March 2006, when they opened for the Choir at the Beachland. Since then, the Alarm Clocks have performed in New York City and Memphis, Tenn., where a fan who flew in from England for the gig asked to have his picture taken with Pierce.

"I'm like, You've got to be kidding me!' " Pierce said.

Momentum for a reunion began to build in 2000, when Norton put out an album titled "Yeah!" It featured both sides of the Alarm Clocks' 1966 single as well as a handful of previously unreleased recordings by the band from the same era.

The Alarm Clocks have a deal with Norton for two more albums, said Pierce, who has dashed off more than 40 new tunes in recent months.

"Everybody tells me it doesn't happen this way," he says. "A band doesn't get popular after nobody ever heard of it to begin with, after it never even got one second of airplay.

"To come back at our age -- it's unbelievable!"

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

jsoeder@plaind.com, 216-999-4562