User:Rory1262/Joe Harvard

Joe Harvard (1959-2019, born Joseph Incagnoli) was a musician, producer, and writer who played a key role in developing the alternative rock scene in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1980s. He founded Fort Apache Studios, along with Sean Slade, Paul Q. Kolderie, and Jim Fitting.

Incagnoli was born in East Boston and grew up in the Jeffries Point neighborhood. He earned a scholarship to Harvard University, which became the source of his alias. He got the nickname while working in a Cambridge record store.

Incagnoli studied Archaeological Anthropology and graduated cum laude. He worked as assistant to the director of the Peabody Museum and took part in a comprehensive survey of Saudi Arabia. However, he decided that his true calling lay in playing and recording music. By establishing Fort Apache in the mid-1980s (he later briefly became sole owner), Harvard helped lay the foundation for the success of bands such as The Pixies, The Lemonheads, Dinosaur Jr., Morphine, Buffalo Tom, and Throwing Muses. Harvard won the WFNX/Boston Phoenix Best Local Producer award in 1989.

Incagnoli moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey in 2001 and became an important part of the town's cultural scene and revival. In 2004, he authored the book The Velvet Underground & Nico for the 33⅓ series focusing on seminal albums.

Under his Joe Harvard alias, Incagnoli established an encyclopedic website, Rock in Boston, in 1998. It contained a trove of information and photographs of Boston bands, in particular from the punk and new wave scene. The site came down in 2004 but was relaunched in 2014 as Boston Rock Storybook. However, Incagnoli was not able to rebuild it fully before his death from liver cancer in March 2019.