JimSullivanINK.com - a guide to Boston Arts & Events...with attitude http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:14:03 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/2107/38/ Sat. Feb. 11 You know how certain minor details stick in your head for years? Here's one of mine from the punk rock era: Johnny Rotten being photographed in a Pink Floyd t-shirt that had I HATE scrawled before Pink Floyd. I got it that Pink Floyd was not remotely punk, and ascended to that rock star peak that punks were trying to tear down, but I loved Pink Floyd - frankly, for its atmospheric textures, its brooding darkness and its continuing look into the nature of madness and isolation. Themes not outside the punk realm at all. Years later, like last year actually, I asked Johnny Rotten (John Lydon, helming the revamped PiL) about it. And he said, no, he didn't hate Pink Floyd then or now, rather liked them, in fact. It was just a t-shirt and an impulse. Now, of course, I or anyone doesn't need Rotten's approval on anything, but I somehow felt relieved. Not everything the Floyd has done is genius and there's the whole Syd Barrett issue which we needn't address here, but for a body of serious-minded art-rock, can any other band hit the mark for so long? Roger Waters keeps it going and scored big with his re-imagined The Wall last year. David Gilmour may or may not have a Pink Floyd working at the moment. Probably he's playing Floyd songs under his own name. So, what're you gonna do? Jim Sullivan http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/1864/38/ Sun. July 1 Roger Waters re-staged the grandest production he’s ever created, “The Wall,” a massive tour last year that stopped at TD Banknorth Garden in October, 2010. He's doing it again this time at - yes, on even a grander scale - Fenway Park, Sunday July 1, in front of, yes, our very own famous Wall. Tickets on sale Feb. 20. The conceptual double album came out in 1979 and it was one of the darkest extravaganzas, of then or now. All about alienation, smothering mothers, a bankrupt educational system, jingoism, war’s destructive power on all, rock star delusions, drug abuse, egotism and isolation. Fun stuff? You bet! Pink Floyd tried to stage this monster in 1980-81 and it sputtered. Very expensive to mount and people didn’t exactly like the idea that as the show went on this gigantic wall that separated the crowd from the band. Hey, it was symbolic, but, well, you know, all that distancing meant you were detached from the band, which was part of the point. That wall served multiple purposes. At any rate, Waters has decided that “The Wall” really is his major statement and he’s mounted it again, spending tons of money, yes, but with modern technology and much more flexibility. Waters, 67, has spent a good part of his post-Pink Floyd career suggesting (sometimes rather pointedly) that he was Pink Floyd’s main man and the band that sometimes records and ventures out on the road – guitarist David Gilmour and drummer Nick Mason plus whoever – was Floyd lite. Jim Sullivan http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/1236/38/ Sat. May 11There aren't that many CAN'T MISS events we stress here at JSink, because there really are so many viable options out there. But this is one: The return to Boston of the Feelies, the Haledon, NJ-band that made the late-1970s and 1980s so much more wonderful with its mix of jangly (pre-REM) guitar, nervous, twitchy rhythms, inspired covers (the Beatles' Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except for Me and My Monkey, Velvet Undeground), and a mix of resignation, bitterness, ennui and, yes, joy. They're playing the Paradise Saturday May 11. The crazy rhythms drove you one way, the intertwining guitar lines of Glenn Mercer and Bill Million another and despite the subtext of anxiety and angst, there was a palpable sense of excitement. The Feelies reunited for a show July 1, 2008 at their old stomping grounds of Maxwell's and have, tentatively, at least, kept it going. Here's the new news: The Feelies will break a 19-year stretch of non-recording by releasing the CD Here Before on Bar/None, with new songs Nobody Knows, Should be Gone, Where You Know, Time Is Right and Blue Skies. Having new music, makes a band that much, well, vital, knowing it's not just laurels and history they're resting on. Frankly, it never seemed that way with the Feelies but just the notion that they're creating new music brings a smile. Life changes; Feelies are still at it. Jim Sullivan http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/2106/38/ Tues. March 20 Soon, GWAR’s “Return of the World Maggot Tour,” will be in our environs, the Wilbur Theatre Tuesday March 20. “We are finishing this last spate of shows as a tribute to fallen Scumdog Flattus Maximus, and will be playing as a four piece behind the screaming assault of Balsac,” says GWAR singer Oderus Orungus on the band’s web page. Flattus, aka Cory Smoot, died last November (pre-existing coronary heart disease). Continues Oderous,” In this way we shall give all the US bohabs ample chance to fall to their knees in a sobbing heap when confronted with the reality of Flattus’ departure…and a chance to say farewell. Then GWAR can move forward, and we shall.”Reminds me a bit of when I saw Metallica, first US date after founding bassist Cliff Burton had been killed in a bus crash and the band played in front of a graveyard scrim strewen with crosses. The show must go on, and if the show had fake blood and gore and violence before the reality kicked in, well, so be it.Let me take you back a bit - a little more than two decades, to the now-defunct Channel club in South Boston. First time I’d seen GWAR. Some of my thoughts back when … Before the show, in the connecting Necco Place, the red-haired woman beside me at the bar took off her jacket and revealed a mostly bare and bloodstained back. Either she'd recently been in a horrible accident or she was . . . GWAR Woman!She was GWAR Woman. In less than an hour, she was onstage sporting a bustier that made Madonna's look mild, swinging maces and axes, walloping and beheading various other GWAR members, all of it choreographed to a ferocious speed metal/punk rock soundtrack. Of course, she wasn't the only perpetrator; lead singer Orderus Urungus got in his share of hacks, too.It was an afternoon of blood 'n' gore 'n' a whole lot more: It was Alice Cooper times 10, your favorite splatter movie transposed to a rock 'n' roll setting, a sadomasochistic circus from hell, a decadent demi-monde populated by the same sort of amoral goon squad that ran wild in The Road Warrior. It was also a lot like professional wrestling. Totally, Completely over the top. A place where That's disgusting! is uttered by people with wide grins on their faces.GWAR -- a 14-person conglomeration of musicians, dancers and art-school refugees from Richmond, Va. -- is more elaborately costumed than the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It is, however, unlikely that GWAR will spin off a line of action toys. Too many spikes and chains. Too much hardware.You know how theater people say that if there's a gun on the wall in the first act, you can bet it will be fired by the third? Well, with GWAR you can bet that if a character wanders onstage -- the pro-censorship Granbo in a wheelchair, a 10-foot human-chomping dinosaur, a dazed hippie -- he or she is going to be bleeding profusely by the end of his or her stint. Various GWAR folks gushed quarts of fake blood allover the stage and into the front rows, composed of folks only too willing to enjoy the massacre. This was one long, wet job. Jim Sullivan http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/2105/46/ Monday March 5 On sale Thursday Feb. 9! Meryl Streep and Jonathan Demme have won ‘em, and on Monday March 5 actor Viggo Mortensen (“A Dangerous Method,” “The Road,” “Appaloosa,” “A History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises,” among others) makes his way to Brookline to accept the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s 9th annual Coolidge Award. Which, not to get all parochial about this, is a pretty big deal, to have internationally acclaimed film people come to our little burg – yes, we live in Coolidge Corner, too – to both be honored and honor the Coolidge for what it’s done over the years to keep indy cinema alive and vital, something even more vital as the age of videotape moved to videodisc and then downloads. Viggo, who stars in Walter Salles adaptation of Kerouac’s “On the Road” this summer, is going to have a busy day. There’s a TBA film screening at noon followed by a Q/A with the actor ($20). At 6 pm, there’s a VIP reception with Viggo and other special guests (another TBA situation, tickets $250) and at 8, it’s “An Evening with Viggo Mortensen,” meaning an in-depth conversation about his life and career ($50). Jim Sullivan http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/413/38/ Fri. March 9Saw Doctors, who play the House of Blues Friday March 9, are nothing if not Ireland's folk-rock-Celtic feelgood band of the era. We didn’t start out and say ‘Let’s make a band that makes people feel good when they leave’ the show,’’ says Saw Doctors guitarist Leo Moran. “I think we’re just lucky. Not all of our lyrics are completely upbeat, but the way we deliver them seem to be upbeat. They’re a strange mixture of light and dark.” They broke through in Ireland back in the late 1980s, with people singing along boisterously to a breakup song “I Useta Lover.” They’ve toured the US steadily over the years – five times in 2006 -and have built a strong base here. The quartet’s latest studio album is called “The Cure.” If that’s the case, what’s the disease? “I suppose the answer to that a bit of music is what you need now in then to get in a positive state of mind,” says Moran, on the phone from Galway. “There are little diseases on the album about relationships and in the way the country’s changing around us … little things you’re being philosophical about.” Indeed, the new album starts with “Out for a Smoke,” where singer-guitarist Davy Carton finds “The darkest clouds were on to me. Jim Sullivan http://www.JIMSULLIVANINK.COM/content/view/1427/38/ Wed. March 14 - Fri. March 16.Here's the backstory of it all. It's a St. Paddy's Day tradition: Dropkick Murphys play to packed houses on Lansdowne Street, once at Avalon now House of Blues, this year Wednesday March 14 - Friday March 16.. Maybe a dozen or so years ago, there was some skepticism about Dropkick Murphys. Ok, hometown Celtic/punk modeled on the Pogues, but concerning issues not of England or Ireland, but the local environs. Could work. But, derivative, you know. Well, any thoughts like that have been blown away partially because the Murphys have become huge locally and internationally and they so credit the Pogues. For their part, the Pogues return the favor by saying the Murphys constant name-dropping helped revive their band and helped them develop a new audience. Also: the Murphys are more of a punk band with a Celtic flavor and the Pogues tip the scales the other way. Plus the Pogues Shane MacGowan has sung with the Murphys on a record. I did an interview with Ken Casey for the Boston Phoenix and amended and added to it here. Review of 2010's show for the Herald: If Dennis Lehane has a rock ‘n’ roll equivalent, it’s Dropkick Murphys. And just as Lehane, author of “Mystic River” and “The Given Day.” deserves his props. Has there ever been a more parochial rock entity? Fronted by singer Al Barr and singer-bassist Ken Casey, the septet comes across both as an Irish-flavored Ramones and a more sledgehammer-like Pogues. They are, at the core, a punk band, one steeped in the sound and values of the late-‘70s, with fist-pumpers like “Do or Die” and “Time to Go.” But they’re a punk band that makes room for Scruffy Wallace’s bagpipes and tin whistle; Jeff DaRosa’s mandolin and Tim Brennan’s accordion. They’re a punk band that dedicates a touching ballad, “Forever,” to their families. And, if you listen close enough, you’ll find them staunchly pro-union. Jim Sullivan