Mixer! Moulty!?

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McHugh multitudes

It’s Friday, in the fall. That meant MIXER! in our days at BC.

Sub Turri photo

Remember dark, sweaty McHugh? Guys and girls dancing, maybe a few girls dancing together. Guys, mostly, standing on the sidelines. There were flings, romances, and marriages that probably started at one of these. And they featured many hours of blah, too.

There was a letter in the October 30, 1964, Heights signed by “School of Nursing Class of 1968” complaining about the presence of high school girls at mixers. “We strongly resent sharing our collegiate rights with high school students,” it said. “We cannot estimate the opinions of the male majority of the student body concerning this problem,” the letter added. “We can only observe that they appear to be as vexed as we are at the situation.”

 

BC was one of the college mixer stops for local bands. Among the “bigger” local bands was Barry and the Remains. Later known simply as The Remains, they were a BU band that played briefly, i.e., 1964-66 (they later reunited in the ’90s and are on a retro band circuit). Here’s a song we likely heard.

But the band I remember best, at least, was Moulty and the Barbarians, who started out in Provincetown. Moulty was the drummer and had a prosthetic hook replacing his missing left hand. Here’s a YouTube video. Only one I could find showing them “in action,” from the movie The T.A.M.I. Show. (Like The Remains, they later dropped the eponymous angle and were just The Barbarians.)

Their “big” hit was Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?

I believe I remember this song, too, and figure I must have heard it at a mixer. Where else would I have seen or heard Moulty?