Raised Joseph Alia Incagnoli, Jr. in working class Jeffries Point, East Boston, author Joe Harvard has lived in Asbury Park, NJ since 2001. As he was becoming an indie rock pioneer, Joe was also learning the craft of an Ivy-trained archaeologist, working briefly in the field before settling into a long career as a musician, producer-engineer, songwriter and promoter. His studies, work and travels brought him into close contact with the art and architecture of the ancient world, with an emphasis on the history and culture of the Islamic world. This influence can be heard in his music, and seen more clearly in his work as a visual artist.
VISUAL ARTIST
Creating mixed-media work evolved from a leisure activity in the late 80's to occupational therapy while recovering from an attack in 2008 to a full-time activity. In June, 2015 he began to pull all of these threads together, establishing a guerrilla, outdoor art gallery in a vacant lot for a one-day Asbury Underground event he was invited to curate. The gARTen @ 713 Cookman project persisted beyond the one-day event, and a year later opened to the public on weekends with the former community garden revived and the lot repurposed as a volunteer-run, outdoor black-light art gallery dedicated to "trash art" and found-object installations -- also known as "outsider art". From December 17, 2016 through January 15, 2017 Asbury Underground presented Joe's first gallery show with most of over 130 pieces of Day-glo, found-object art moving from the gARTen @ 713 Cookman to art629 Gallery. A catalogue of art629's "Beauty thru Radiation: the Black Light Art of Joe Harvard" show catalogue with 240 photos and descriptions of Joe's work is available for Kindle.
AUTHOR
Harvard honed his writing from 1996 through 2003 on his award-winning Boston Rock Storybook web site [defunct, perhaps it will one day be battered into publishable form] before authoring The Velvet Underground and Nico for Continuum editor David Barker’s 33-1/3 Series in 2004. Since then the book has seen four printings, as well as Japanese [P-vine / blues interaction] and Portuguese [Cobogo] editions. Joe appears in several books on indie and alternative rock, like Josh Frank’s excellent Pixies: Fool the World and video/film documentaries including Counting Backwards and The Velvet Underground, A Critical Analysis.
HIGHLIGHTS
Co-founder of Fort Apache Recording [1985], Helldorado Productions (originators of Music at the Middle East Restaurant, Cambridge) [1988] , NYC’s Tribal Soundz [1999], & Asbury’s Cranial Mass Productions [2008], winner of the WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Local Producer title [1989] and NYC’s prestigious Moth StorySLAM Championship [2001], his NJ accolades include Asbury Music Awards (AMA’s) for Top Americana Band [2009], Top Multi-Instrumentalist [2010] and Top Avant-Garde Act [2010]. Founder of Media Center @ Ballard [2013] in unused Church office to provide free music lessons, DIY production classes and instruments to youngsters in need. Founder of gARTen @ 713 Cookman [2015] in disused lot as volunteer-operated, outdoor "trash art" gallery. Opened gARTen to the public weekends, with full black-light capabilities [2016]. Critically acclaimed black-light show at art629 Gallery, Asbury Park [2016-17].
MUSIC TO HEAR
A self-reinvention in 2014 added visual art and transformed One Banned Man, Joe's foot-drums-and-guitar, acoustic one-man band, into the synths-and-samples "garage electronica" of Doctor Danger. The double LP "Hudgemabudge" [2016] is the most recent Doctor Danger LP, and can be found along with his entire musical output at Bandcamp.com/joeharvard.
Joe’s more traditional band recordings include a 2004 re-release of 1990's "Country Eastern", a meld of garage, alt-country and middle eastern sounds available at iTunes, CDBaby and other online vendors.
MUSICAL HISTORY
Joe’s list of session credits includes playing on LP’s with Dinosaur, Jr., Throwing Muses, the Pernice Brothers, and Grammy winning country artist James Otto, contributing any one of a host of instruments such as lap steel, timbura, tanbur, cumbus, bazouki, acoustic / electric guitar and bass. Joe has also contributed production and engineering for Treat Her Right, Morphine, Connells, Breeders, Tanya Donelly/Belly, Gwar, Neats, Turbines, Peter Halsapple & Syd Straw, Goober & the Peas, and Big Hunk O' Cheese among many others. Harvard’s 1985 – ’93 tenure as principal owner of Fort Apache was marked by countless pioneering indie and alternative releases, including the Pixies, Bosstones, Buffalo Tom, Lemonheads, Mission of Burma, Blake Babies/Julianna Hatfield, and numerous others. This is a good article on the Fort:
http://consequenceofsound.net/2016/07/how-bostons-fort-apache-studio-captured-the-sound-of-an-era/
In NJ Joe and Cranial Mass Productions partner Mallory Massara created Rock-N-Talk, a live music talk show which ran 13 monthly episodes. The 2-year, 113-show run of their Long Weekend Variety Show on Monday nights is now the stuff of Asbury Park legend, and along with Rock-N-Talk garnered an Asbury Music Award as Top Avant-garde Act [2010]. The show explored Andy Warhol’s idea of eliminating borders between audience and performer, and its popular Poetry Corner segment helped establish a local scene for spoken word backed by improvised musical backing.
Joe has provided musicianship for performances and/or recordings with prominent NJ songwriters such as Mark Prescott, Keith Monacchio, Rick Barry, Lauren Pennington, Geena, Greg Wilkens, Kenny “Stringbean” Sorensen and the Stalkers and the groups Agency, Keith Monacchio & the Dust-up Troubadours, and Last Perfect Thing. He continues to play regular live shows with Velveeta [the Velvet Underground tribute band], the Cockwalkers [Boston Garage at it’s best], and Dub Proof.
joeharvardnj@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/joeharvardartandmusic/
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