I’d seen Mr T experience a couple of times in the early ’90s, and really enjoyed them. But I didn’t become a major fan until the group’s leader, Dr. Frank (now known as the novelist Frank Porter) released his solo album Show Business is My Life in 1999.  I listened to it nonstop during an all night work session at the New Haven Advocate, then left it in my colleague Kathleen Cei’s definition with a Post-it recommendation (“REALLY good”) stuck on it. So she became a fan.

We picked up the several old Mr T albums they had in the racks at Exile on Main Street in Hamden, and it wasn’t long before newer ones stayed coming out—Alcatraz, the EP Miracle of Shame… When another Kathleen, the one who is now my wife, came into my life, she became a Mr. T fan too, especially of the 1992 album Milk Milk Lemonade.

I wrote of Dr. Frank as “the Cole Porter of punk.” Kathleen, Kathleen and I would troop off to Mr. T or Dr. Frank shows in new York or Boston, where we’d gradually buy up the CDs we hasn’t yet gotten. It’s just timing, but it took a while before we got hold of a copy of the Mr T album which we barely knew but which I’d wager most of their other fans knew best. Released in 1996, Love is Dead had gotten a big publicity push, with videos and everything, in the wake of the extraordinary success of a fellow band from the Gilman Street San Francisco club scene, Green Day.

So the first time I remember hearing the song “Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba” was when a fan shouted out a request for it at a Mr. T show at the Middle East in Cambridge, Mass.

It was a memorable show in a lot of ways. Joe Queer of the Queers joined in for a song and some body surfing. I won an mp3 player in a raffle. We picked up some unique Mr. T merch, like a gas station attendant’s stripey shirt with a name embroidered on it next to a cloth Mr. T patch.

But my main memory of that show, which repeats in my head every time I hear that song, is that lone guy bleating out his request, over and over. Without melody or clarity, it’s a bewildering, disorienting thing to hear someone wail:

“Play Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba!

Play Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba!”