Peter Dayton

Like former Hallucinations and J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf, guitarist-singer Peter Dayton moved to Boston to study painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. While there, he rode a rocket to local fame with La Peste, one of the most compelling punk groups to ever emerge from the city. As the hard-rockin’ act edged into pole position among the city’s volume dealers, however, he announced his decision to leave the band in 1979, shocking all those who’d heaped accolades upon the group and attached a certain grand destiny to its future.

Undeterred, Dayton followed his inner voice and formed a new group, The Peter Dayton Band, which also rocked but sidestepped the focused metallic drone that characterized La Peste. The group was keyboard-focused years before that became the new-wave standard and The Cars’ Ric Ocasek became a big fan and musical confidant, using his stature to boost Dayton’s stock considerably. Ocasek wasn’t afraid to back his enthusiasm with action, producing The Peter Dayton Band’s first single, “Last Supper,“ on a 1980 compilation of emerging American groups, Sharp Cuts. In 1981, Ocasek produced Dayton’s Love at First Sight, a four-song EP on which he and two other members of The Cars played.

With all that firepower and ammunition handy, it seemed that something should have exploded, but it never did. The Peter Dayton Band gigged in and around Boston for a time as local heroes, but never managed to kick down the door to a national audience. Dayton followed his inner voice once again, moving to France for several years and recording albums while there. When he came back to the US in 1989, he moved to the New York City area, working as a visual artist and playing in a punk band called xframes. What goes around….

(by Carter Alan)

Carter Alan is a former WBCN deejay now heard on WZLX-FM in Boston. He’s the author of Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN (University Press of New England, 2013).