THC: What was your major?

RG: Philosophy. Basically, studying philosophy is learning how to write clear sentences about nothing. [laughs] No-about something or nothing. And that's a skill that you can't have enough of. The ability to write clear expository prose is a skill that is useful in every walk of life. Today, you have to be a businessman, even as an artist, and you have to be able to get ideas across clearly. If I got nothing else out of college than to have spent four years writing expository prose, then it was worth it. That's something I really feel I got out of the education.

THC: So how did you move from journalist to musician through your years here?

RG: When I was a freshman, my first gig ever on saxophone was with as band called LavaLava on a stage outside Mather. Then sophomore year, a couple friends and I were standing on the corner in front of Tommy's at about three in the morning. We decided if we were going to stand on the street corner at three in the morning, we better become a blues band. We formed this band called the Barbarian Blues Band. Soon we began writing original material-which was coming out more as funky New-Wave type stuff-and that band became The Decoders.

We were part of this nascent Harvard band scene. There was a nice support system on campus, which kind of misled me into thinking I could be a rock star. [laughs] We'd have these gigs at Adams House parties, and the place would be packed, hundreds of people, dancing and making us think we were big shots. We started playing in clubs-The Rat, Cantone's, The Western Front-all these great old Boston clubs. Then we started playing in New York.

After our sophomore year, we took time off to focus on the band. One of our guys, Eric Pfeiffer '81, was from Montana and got us a tour there through an agent he knew. We did this totally absurd tour of roadhouses in Montana during the summer of '80. It was a real kick in the ass...a real Blues Brothers type of scenario: people throwing stuff, getting fired in the middle of gigs. I had an interesting conversation with a guy in Eureka, which is just ten miles from the Canadian border. It's the kind of place where bald eagles roost on trees.

This guy came up to me between sets and said, "Let me talk to you here, boy. I understand what you're doing. I'm an international man. I've traveled. I've been to Europe. I've heard the Rolling Stones play. But what you're playing up there is black music. Ain't two black people between here and Missoula. And they're only here because we let 'em stay. Out here, a man's been out hefting hay in the field all day, he comes to hear a band at night, and he wants to hold a woman. He wants something nice and easy." And I stuttered, "Uh...uh...okay..." I took the guys back to the band house during the break and told them what he had said. We learned two or three slow songs during that break. We started trying to figure out how to avoid getting killed. And we survived. It really made me appreciate Cambridge when we came back.

THC: By the time you finished school, did you know you were going to pursue music professionally?

RG: I knew that I was going to be a musician; that was it. But The Decoders broke up right after we graduated in 1982. I was immediately inducted into The Sex Execs; I was brought in to bolster up the horn section. And they knew I was a good hang for them: another over-educated dude out there drinking too much beer and trying to be in a rock band.

But by the spring of 1984, there was a lot of dissention within the band. I got fired from the Sex Execs. After that, I was depressed-I didn't want to be in bands anymore. So I went to Berklee College of Music for three semesters, one calendar year. After Berklee, I started the Either/Orchestra. From the beginning, it had a vibe. Because I'd been in rock bands, I knew what it meant to be a band. To be a team. A lot of jazz players, especially schooled ones, don't really get that. They're such individualists and free-lancers that they don't understand what all rock people understand: which is what it means to be in a band. That's what the Either/Orchestra had right from the very beginning, this notion that we're in this together to make music together. And that's how people hear music. They hear the sound of the ensemble. The first impression is "What does the music sound like?" not "What does the guy in the plaid pants sound like?" I think we had a leg up on a lot of jazz groups because we had that group mentality going.

THC: What advice would you give to Harvard students who are interested in pursuing an atypical track?

RG: Learn from everything that you do. Also, do what you can't help yourself from doing. If you like being in a band, that's great, but if you can think of something else, career-wise, that you find compelling, do that, because being in a band, or being a filmmaker, or being a dancer, or whatever-those are really stupid careers. They're idiotic careers. They're really hard [and] most people don't make any money doing them. You're in for nothing but trouble. But if you can't help it, if it's what you have to do, don't hold yourself back.