Over the course of a 25-year career as a band you're going to draw a pretty broad spectrum of ages to your shows, especially if you've been churning out the type of eternally young and bummed fury that DEFTONES have perfected. The crowd at the House of Blues on Tuesday night was a mix of the young and the young at heart, if not necessarily the young at hair.
Many of you will get your first taste of the visionary, disturbing, and seductive cinema of Park Chan-wook with his first Hollywood film, Stoker, which opens Friday. For the full course, you should sample his Vengeance Trilogy, which will be screening as a triple bill at the Brattle Theatre on Wednesday, March 6.
All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. Of course, some men and women are better at it than others, and some of them happen to be here in Boston making great theater. From experimental theater to tried and true classics, our local theater companies consistently produce compelling entertainment for a diverse regional audience.
The Portland Phoenix's seven-years-and-counting series by Lance Tapley on torture in Maine's prison, most especially including conditions in solitary confinement, has gotten national recognition in an article that's part of the Columbia Journalism Review's most recent cover package on "race, class, and the media."
This scrappy iPhone video doesn't do it justice, but this new song Ava Luna played at Middlesex last night is too insanely excellent to not post. On a Phoenix-presented bill last night between locals Emily Reo and Arvid Noe, the Brooklyn band played with a different rhythm than usual. To start, Ava Luna now plays as a 5-piece; formerly, they were six.
As we told you in this week's Phoenix, Thalia Zedek will begin a weekly residency at TT The Bear's tonight, playing every Monday night in March. "Like the cool air and diffuse light surrounding the desolate, ramshackle boardwalk pictured on the cover of her new record, something dark looms in Thalia Zedek's music," wrote Jonathan Donaldson in this week's music section.
Middlesex County sheriff Peter Koutoujian has tipped his hand: an eagle-eyed friend of Talking Politics alerts me that the domain name Koutoujianforcongress.com was registered over the weekend, by the sheriff's committee director and campaign manager Tsoleen Sarian.
Koutoujian lives in Waltham, which is in Ed Markey's 5th congressional district.
Last week I received word that my dear friend and once greatly feared Boston rock scribe JOE COUGHLIN finally had enough of this place and went to that great Buck Dharma in the sky. Having beat the shit out of cancer once before, its fraternal twin brother come back for more, and this time, Joe didn’t win the match.
Can new kid in town the Sinclair beat out old standbys like TTs and the Middle East? You tell us- vote!
So you've just about worn out those vinyl LPs you picked up at our Best Record Store nominees. Time to check out those bands live, perhaps? We've lined up the best Boston-area rock venues to catch national acts on their stops in town and local rising stars alike.
The title The Bitter Buddha, a documentary about alt-comic Eddie Pepitone, sums up a certain style of standup comedy: a core of Zen calm surrounded by snide hilarity. This wacked-out, veteran comic's comic has not attained the marquee status of some of those he has inspired, many of whom, including Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis, and Patton Oswalt, are interviewed in the film to explain his impact and appeal.
"Into the Void" by Anthony Montuori, on display now at Boston Cyberarts Gallery
The Game's Afoot: Video Game Art | New exhibit just opened featuring the work of "three artists who make video games that investigate the nature of art: Rob Gonsalves, Victor Liu and Anthony Montuori | Boston Cyberarts Gallery, 141 Green St, Jamaica Plain | On view through April 14; reception March 8 from 6 to 9 pm | bostoncyberarts.
Photo for the Phoenix by Charlotte Zoller
For the past three years of our annual CLASS OF 2013 series we've frequently kicked around the idea of getting the bands together for one big live show blowout. The chatter for this year's sonic powwow reached the collective ears of Allston dance party machine COLOR CHANNEL and that same hood's always on-top event planning and video production crew EYE DESIGN, and before we even looked up Carl Lavin's new Bowery email address, a party was born.
This year’s ROCK AND ROLL RUMBLE field of 24 contestants has been announced, and it’s a pretty stellar collection of bands that runs a spectrum of sound from metal to synthpop to Americana to indie rock (and pretty much everything else). You want a New England specific music fest? Here it is, right here, spread out over nine drunken nights in April at T.
It's hard to believe, after Life Is Beautiful and all the other the unwatchable films he has made since that inexplicable Oscar winner, but Roberto Benigni used to be a funny guy. At least, he is in Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law (1986), where he, Tom Waits, and John Lurie play a trio of prison mates who escape and torment themselves as they slog through the Louisiana bayous in a hilarious search for some kind of redemption.
As a writer and someone who spends most of waking life cocooned in words, I find the notion of aphasia, the diminished ability to process language usually brought on by stroke or brain injury, incomprehensible, terrifying, and fascinating. Hence the great value of Vincent Stragas documentary "After Words," made with Boston area medical professionals and featuring interviews with such experts as Oliver Sacks and Jerome Kaplan.
I recently noted that I like pictures of Massachusetts politicians reading to kids in a classroom. Well, yesterday was some sort of Read Across America day (Springfield's own Dr. Seuss's birthday is today), and my the photos are so good, and so numerous, I've started a site: mapolireadingtoclass.tumblr.com/. (And BTW my other one, mapoliwithanimals.
Alt-J are at the Pavilion on September 13
On Sale Now
WFNX Boston Accents presents: Andre Obin + Stereo Telescope + Avox Blue + DJ Leah V | March 5 at Great Scott | $10 | boweryboston.com
Helen Money | March 19 at T.T. the Bear's Place | $10 | boweryboston.com
Clairy Browne & the Bangin' Rackettes | March 27 at T.
There's a story starting to spread that Stephen Lynch is the only member of the Massachusetts delegation who did not sign an amicus brief, from the lion's share of congressional Democrats, against the Defense of Marriage Act.
It's true. And the excuse given, that some e-mail glitch must have kept his staff from receiving the information, sure sounds a little fishy, right?
Last week we suggested listening to a new track by former Allston residents Celestial Shore, noting that the band includes vocals from Lorely Rodriguez a/k/a the vocalist and songwriter behind the Brooklyn-based Empress Of. Now Empress Of has a new track of their own: stream "Hat Trick" below, the first song from their forthcoming Systems EP out in April via Terrible Records.