Punk rock would have come to Boston soon enough anyway, but maybe Peter Dayton gave it a head start. Dayton was a 20-year-old art student when he took the train to New York City in October 1975 to see a rock concert that got canceled at the last minute. He ended up on the Bowery instead, at CBGB, where the Ramones were wrapping up a three-night stand, six months before the release of their debut album. The Queens foursome made such an impression on Dayton that he returned to Boston and talked his roommates, Mark Andreasson and Roger Tripp, into starting a punk band they called La Peste . Once the trio learned to play instruments—Dayton on guitar, Andreasson on bass, and Tripp on drums—La Peste became a fixture on the Boston music scene, where their influence exceeded their output. Without much more than the Ramones as a punk-rock reference point (and maybe a little Black Sabbath -style thunder), La Peste made their own way, figuring out how to structure and arrange songs as they went.…