The Dee
Balter’s Essays of Mostly Acerbic Witticisms
Mikey Dee was both the heart and the soul of the 1990s Boston music scene.
Then, at the young age of thirty-seven, he elected to have open heart surgery.
"The Dee is getting surgery tomorrow," Mikey commented from his desk at 273 Summer Street in downtown Boston.
The Dee liked to refer to himself in third person, punctuated by a short sprint of air-drumming - Snare, hi-hat, bass, cymbal.
(crack tsk boom crash)
"It's a tune up, will be good as new," and then, crack tsk boom crash.
The Dee worked out of the offices of The Planetary Group, a primordial petri dish of Boston's 1990s music community. Among dozens of other music nuts, Aaron Belyea (aka ABC, aka Alphabet Arm) designed logos and album covers, Dan Smalls booked bands, and I ran a small merch agency, Retrofit.
All day, every day, musicians came and went: Aaron Perrino of The Sheila Divine, Peter Wolf of J. Geils, Kay Hanley from Letters to Cleo.
Adam Lewis, Planetary's cofounder (and early tour manager for the incredibly named Alien Sex Fiend), welcomed visitors via an office stroll. "Baaaaaaalllllltttteeeerr," Lewis would croon as he neared my desk, where we'd trade sarcastic barbs in a theatre of camaraderie. But it was The Dee - and his aforementioned heart and soul, not to mention his positivity for everything Boston music - that was the highlight for visitors.
The Dee was the real deal. The Dee was infectious. The Dee knew who was who - and who to know. The Dee wanted to talk. The Dee was always smiling.
The Dee was the host 91.5 FMs 'On the Town with Mikey Dee', which supported Boston's independent musicians, not to mention Mikey Dee's Clubhouse at the Kirkland plus the acoustic hour at the Middle East Bakery. He was an Associate Editor of local music rag The Noise. And he actually was a drummer - often with the likes of Butterscott or Star Crunch or The Willard Grant Conspiracy. Six nights a week you would find The Dee out and about the music scene. After sets he'd offer bands input, ideas, advice, inspiration: "You're almost there," he'd counsel, then crack tsk boom crash.
The Dee elected to have an operation for an irregular heartbeat. The surgery was supposed to be low risk and it went well, but, sadly, the aftermath not so much.
In the wee early morning hours after the surgery, his body was rattled by a series of mini strokes. With little family watching over him - and possibly a gap in coverage from the attendants -The Dee suffered vascular dysfunction and limited bloodflow to his brain. What conspired mostly paralyzed Mikey, and stalled his ability to communicate.
The Dee, "was the most genuine schmoozer I had ever met," gushed one local musician.
"I'm in a bad way," The Dee might genuinely share, to suggest he had gone too long without, well, without special relations, if you know what I mean.
Alphabet Arm and I visited The Dee at Spaulding Rehab, armed with a guitar and other musical instruments; we sang him songs and shared the latest local music gossip. The Dee was incoherent. His eyes darted left and right, lids fluttering like a bird which had fallen from its nest. His paralysis made it so he had trouble swallowing and so his body would spasm, the tube in his throat would whistle and he would cough uncontrollably to expectorate the fluid in his lungs.
The Dee wore a diaper and the nurses asked us to give him some privacy; they said he was conscious enough to be embarrassed by his helplessness.
In 2000, shortly after the mini strokes, over 200 local bands played a benefit in The Dee's honor, and raised nearly $100,000 to contribute to the Mikey Dee Musicians Benefit Trust. Mikey was awarded a Boston Music Hall of Fame Honor in 2001.
Local ska greats, the Allstonians, wrote a song named in his honor. The band Step Ladder wrote one titled, genuinely, Bad Way.
But the prognosis wasn't great, and Spaulding wasn't cheap and more funds were hard to come by, and so Mikey was moved to North Andover's out-of-the-way Greenery Extended Care Center.
A small group of supporters formed "Team Dee" and organized a trip for him to see Boston Rock Opera's Jesus Christ Superstar in which The Dee - with all his heart - had played the role of a policeman.
Annual fundraisers occurred for a few years until, at the unfair age of 40, Mikey Dee passed away in his sleep, on July 6th, 2003.
It's hard to remember, but I fear that I betrayed The Dee by skipping his funeral, distracted by other projects and of what life deemed to say was more important at the time. Sadly, now more than twenty years later, I don't hear The Dee's name nearly often enough. The music machine has moved on, and people have to remember to forget.
If The Dee were still on this astral plane, he'd remind you: "Go out and see just one local band a week. It will change your life."
And damnit he was right.
Everyone knows The Dee deserved a better stack of cards than the ones he was dealt. And, yeah, he certainly deserved a heart that beat with Ringo Starr's sense of time.
I guess in the click track of life it would seem that sometimes, well, sometimes the record skips, the CD gets scratched, and the tape gets twisted. And there isn't a rhyme nor a reason - or the snap of a hi-hat nor boom of a bass drum - that will explain exactly why.