Word: tarver
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Donal Logue '88 explains his roommate Tarver's modesty in terms of his local--as opposed to global--outlook. Tarver's identity has emerged simultaneously from three disparate cultures: the Boston underground music scene, his home town of San Antonio, Texas, and Harvard. Tarver's fascination with local communities appears in both his musical and academic interests. In the past few years, he has participated in the Boston music community's search for alternative forms of expression; and last year he observed and documented the struggle of a group of San Antonio parents fighting for their children's right...
Music provides Tarver with a way to express these contradictory backgrounds. Tarver describes Bullet LaVolta's music as somewhere between rock and punk, but "not hardcore"--somewhere between Boston underground music and the traditional rock music he listened to in high school. The five-person band avoids the standard Harvard band track of covers, playing only original compositions. Bullet LaVolta consists of a mix of Harvard students and local musicians. They may not make as much money as other Harvard bands, Tarver says, but they have developed their own style and gained a respected position in the Boston music world...
...band's first gig last year, in the Adams House dining hall, captured Tarver's Harvard student and Boston musician identities. Full-time punks, local musicans, and Harvard's own punks-by-night-history-majors-by-day stood side by side to listen to Bullet LaVolta. Hundreds of students, local skatepunks, and die-hard Boston scenesters slam-danced beneath the portraits of John Adams. Outside on Mt. Auburn Street, crowds of fans in combat boots gathered to cool off between sets...
...Half of the people at the Adams House show had never been to Harvard before," Tarver says. Watching 400 people dancing to his music in his house made Tarver "feel like a part of Harvard for the first time," he says. "If the walls could talk they'd have something interesting to say about my time at Harvard...
...Tarver's exposure to music began early, during his childhood in San Antonio, Texas. Coming from a long line of artists--his mother is a painter, and his father is a former artist who serves on the boards of several museums in the San Antonio area, Clay was encouraged to take up singing, violin and cello as a child. In high school he abandoned music for basketball, became MVP of the San Antonio area and played on one of the top All-State Texas teams. He returned to music, and the guitar, when he discovered alternative music in Boston...