E-Mail This Article to a Friend A great ride David Minehan reunites with the Neighborhoods BY TED DROZDOWSKI

It’s easy to find David Minehan. He typically spends six days a week behind the board at his Woolly Mammoth studio in the Fenway, where he’s produced and engineered recordings for a large cast of local and national musicians over the past decade, from hardcore politicos Tree to singer-songwriter Rick Berlin’s Shelley Winters Project.

But when I stop in on him, it’s to talk about the resparking of his previous musical life — as the firebreathing guitarist, frontman, and songwriter for the classic Boston rawk outfit the Neighborhoods. When they smashed onto the map in the late ’70s, they helped shape a style that’s since dominated much of Boston’s live-music club scene: a punk-fueled garage-rock sound with big hooks, melodies, and snarling six-strings.

A series of excellent albums, including 1987’s Reptile Men (Emergo) and their 1991 major-label swan song, The Neighborhoods (Third Stone), plus their non-stop touring made them the snotty favored sons of the Northeast and dark horses in much of the rest of the country. After they quit, in 1992, Minehan soldiered on as a sideman with Paul Westerberg and Aerosmith, and he led his own group Stardarts before establishing Woolly Mammoth.

Reports of brief Neighborhoods reunions at weddings and parties have been passed along like urban myths. But this year they’ve been doing it for real — most recently at October’s Boston Music Awards, where the line-up included charter bassist John Hartcorn and title holder Lee Harrington (who’s now a lawyer), and original ’Hoods drummer Mike Quaglia. Now they’re getting ready to play again — on a bill this Friday at the Middle East in Cambridge, sandwiched between Twinemen’s Dana Colley and hell-for-leather rock pagans Scissorfight.

For Minehan, the return of the ’Hoods comes at an interesting time. Woolly Mammoth is open but must find a new home, because gentrification nips at its heels. And he’s feeling the tug of songwriting again.

I catch up with him about an hour before his day’s session is scheduled to begin:

Q: Who’s in the Neighborhoods now?

A: It’s me, Lee, and a drummer named Johnny Lynch, who I recorded here with another band [Avoid One Thing] and thought, "He’s got a spark and he’s a wise-ass," so it seems an easy fit. He’s such a huge fan that I have to defer to him on lyrics I can’t remember. You also need a young whippersnapper to kick you in the ass and say, "This song rocks! We can do it." Because we’ve been revisiting a lot of songs that were only on live tapes or bootlegs. There’s quite a few. Plus, I’ve got dozens of ideas for unfinished songs in my head, so I figure why not use the band to finish those.

Q: So this is more than a one-shot reunion?

A: We don’t want to overstay our welcome or whore ourselves out too much, but if it seems appropriate, so be it. Kevin [Shurtleff] and Ironlung from Scissorfight have been poking me for a long time to do something, so this Middle East show seems like a natural.

A benefit for Randy Heine, who runs the Living Room in Providence and got hit by a car, is what started the whole thing. We didn’t even advertise it as the Neighborhoods, because there was too much baggage attached. We called ourselves Señor Citizen. We went down there after a couple rehearsals and kind of blew the fuckin’ doors off the place. I felt like we’d tapped into some crazy power source again, and 800 or 900 people showed up just on the hint of a Neighborhoods reunion.

The other excuse for performing again is that I’m finally gonna mix the tapes of the Neighborhoods’ very last show, at the Rat [former Kenmore Square rock mecca the Rathskeller], from October 1992. We had a real recording truck out back and it was a culmination of a year’s final tours. As a band we were hitting a super-hot stride, playing like motherfuckers. After all these years that’ll finally be available in 2006. That gives us an excuse to go out and hit some places in the Northeast and maybe that’ll be it.

Q: Are there any differences in how the Neighborhoods play today?

A: I can’t say there’s much of a difference. I’ve had a lot of experience apart from the Neighborhoods since then, whether backing Paul Westerberg or with my other band Stardarts. Also just playing on half the records made in this place. To me it’s rather uncanny how — as someone who has to sing, rock, play certain chords, and do the whole thing — there seems to be a muscle memory that kicks in. The only difference is that I favor using a Vox amp now instead of a Marshall.

Q: The Neighborhoods had an interesting run — opening for Bowie, recording for a host of major and independent labels, holding the home-town record for indie single sales: 1980’s "Prettiest Girl" on Ace of Hearts Records, 13,000 copies . . .

A: For us, growing up in the ’70s, touring with Cheap Trick was the bomb. We had dinner with Michael Douglas, who owned the Third Stone label. As the years went on, there were always new developments that kept the carrot on the stick just a little bit longer. We took the Del Fuegos’ place and did the Miller Genuine Draft Sponsorship a couple of years. We hated it and yet we were touring all over the country all the time, and these guys were paying for our drum heads and strings and amps and buying ads in the papers, so we said, "Fuck it." We got to hang with Les Paul and Willie Dixon and the Turtles through that sponsorship. I got to play 12-bar blues with Les Paul one morning on TV in Milwaukee because of Miller, so . . .

It was a great ride. We had a local hit single with "Prettiest Girl." Suddenly we were mini rock stars in this town at the age of 19, and that was amazing. And it’s important not to forget where the beginning was. In 1978 we started playing in this town, knowing about the Clash, the Police, the Pistols, and the Buzzcocks. When I saw the Clash’s first show in America at the Harvard Square Theatre, you could tell this was part of a cultural zeitgeist on both side of the Atlantic, and to be on board participating in it was a supercharged feeling.

Scissorfight + the Neighborhoods + Dana Colley | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | Nov 18 | 617.864.EAST