John P Strohm writing on the early Blake Babies days at The Talkhouse:
So when I moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music in the fall of 1985, I’d had a tiny taste of success in music, and that gave me some ambition — if not for school, at least for making a band. My girlfriend Freda moved out a few months into my first year, and together we very actively pursued our goals. Freda generously gives me credit in her recent Talkhouse piece for being the one with the confidence and relative musical expertise, but as ambitious as I may have been, Freda had the bigger vision. I wanted to crack the local scene and impress the local venues; Freda wanted to be up there with our heroes — even if our heroes (such as the Replacements and the Minutemen) were probably still touring in vans and crashing with friends and parents between tours. As proof of this, I will note that our famous first meeting with Juliana Hatfield — who we approached cold in the Berklee dorms to ask her to join our non-existent band — was all Freda’s idea. And she did all the talking. Neither of us thought of ourselves as potential stars — so we needed to find one. Freda spotted Juliana just as Juliana spotted us, and there was no question in any of our minds that we should make a band.
