Kind of a big deal about to happen in the Massachusetts Senate primary: Lynch and Markey will address the MA AFL-CIO this afternoon, and then the executive board will vote on endorsement.
Lynch is expected to be close to the 2/3 needed for endorsement; but Markey, with support from teachers and AFSCME, probably has enough to force a no-endorsement outcome from what I've been hearing.
Okay, so rushing from a show across town last night (Fred Hersch Trio at Scullers), I get to the Sinclair a good hour into the set by the REBIRTH BRASS BAND. What I see is everything I had expected, and in a good way: the crowd packed and dancing, the band and the crowd screaming together. What had I missed? Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin’,” Professor Longhair’s “Big Chief,” the Ellington band’s “Caravan.
Laissez les bons temps rouler! Bohemian hotspot the Beehive went all out for its sixth annual Mardi Gras party last month, drawing an international crowd of masked merrymakers to fete Fat Tuesday in true New Orleans style. Chef Rebecca Newell turned out Cajun-inspired dishes, bartenders kept up a steady stream of Bacardi Hurricanes, and the BT New Orleans 2nd Line Brass Band had diners moving in their seats and - once the dinner plates were cleared - on the dance floor.
Welcome to "Meet the Mayor," a segment in which we interview local Foursquare Mayors in their natural habitats.
The Publick HouseThe BOSTON ACCENTS Thursday fun ship special sailed the electronic seas of New England pop this afternoon as we welcomed Connecticut-based sometimes-duo/sometimes-trio CHILD ACTOR to our WFNX studio in Boston. Max Heath and Natalie Plaza dropped by before their gig with FM Belfast tonight at Great Scott in Allston, and we talked about their "super maximalist" bedroom pop, their inclusion in last month's Phoenix Class of 2013, and their upcoming SXSW and West Coast tour run.
There's nothing wrong with getting your daily music fix from Spotify, but if you're the kind of person who prefers dropping the needle on a vintage '45 and gets a special thrill when peeling the plastic wrapping off a digipak, finding a physical copy of that one perfect album can be frustrating. But Boston-based vinyl and tape junkies need not turn to Ebay or Craigslist in despair.
Booze, drugs, sex, and genius - the life of the late great auteur Nicholas Ray, director of Rebel Without a Cause, In a Lonely Place, and many other iconic masterpieces, had the stuff of several Hollywood legends, and his wife Susan shared a lot of it. She'll be a guest of Phoenix critic Gerald Peary at BU Cinémathèque's An Evening with Susan Ray
Remember those round things with the hole in the middle that played music? No, not vinyl; every serious audiophile and hipster worth their mustache tattooed index finger has a turntable these days. I’m talking compact discs -- yeah, those silver shiny things that look like Blu-rays but play music instead of, say, Sylvester Stallone’s epic 1986 masterpiece Cobra ($4.
I think Republican US Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez has gotten an unfair rap for avoiding the press and public -- it's normal for a candidate, especially an inexperienced one entering a high-profile campaign, to take a little prep time before throwing himself to the wolves. Normally, that's part of the pre-announcement phase, but in this case, thanks to Scott Brown's dithering, Gomez had no choice but to launch immediately and start gathering signatures.
When, almost halfway through his two-hour set at Bijou on Tuesday night, ROGER SANCHEZ tooled Ultra Nate's anthemic "Free" into his complex mix, he cycled the song's declarative "free to do what you want to do!" over and over. It was a message -- and more than a message. Given the rapid rush of his mixes, the quick changes from track to track, the hub-bub of riffs, beats, screaming noises, talk, and horns -- many different voices, pathways, destinations, and purposes -- Sanchez was demonstrating, musically, to the full floor of dancers at Bijou just what it sounds and looks like when everyone is free to do what he or she wants to do and doing it in the same life arena.
Japanese documentary filmmaker Masao Adachi not only preached revolution in his fiery agit-prop films, he practiced it too, following up his pro-Palestinian-resistance newsreel/screed Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971; 9 pm) by abandoning film to join the Japanese United Army in Lebanon, where he was arrested in 2002.
What with all the turmoil worth looking into in the world today, the Senate Intelligence Committee decided that they had better things to do than probe into the collusion between the CIA and the makers of "Zero Dark Thirty." They announced the end of the investigation on Monday. Say, wasn't that the day after the Academy Awards, in which "ZDT" ended up only getting a measly tie with "Skyfall" for Best Sound Editing after months of bogus persecution from politicos and pinheaded pundits? So I guess it was mission accompished for this crack group of legislators.
Next up in our recent string of awesome "Phoenix Presents" shows is this Sunday at the Middlesex with Emily Reo, Arvid Noe, and Ava Luna. Details above. Download songs by all artists on the bill, below. Emily Reo is new to Allston, but has been playing music for years. Her enlightened dream-pop is a staple amongst the socially-conscious arts collective FMLY; her ethereal voice and enveloping electronics are especially mesmerizing live.
Caspian are one of two Massachusetts bands on the 18-band Boston Calling lineup
The inaugural lineup for May's BOSTON CALLING — the first major indie rock/pop festival set to grace Suffolk County pretty much ever — was announced this morning, and homegrown musicians, understandably, were pissed.
My motto is: any excuse to visit a Brockton suburb, I take it. So I was in Abington this morning for the first open press availability of former US Attorney Michael Sullivan's US Senate campaign, as he dropped off signature sheets at his local town hall.
He looked very Senatorial, which has long been the case. He arrived with wife and daughter, but no entourage or handlers.
In a city where there are as many Dunkin' Donuts locations as there are pigeons looting through their discarded pastries in the parking lot, an actual bakery -- where somebody actually baked said pastries, and knows what's in them -- is a welcome thing. A homemade (or brewed) bakery treat is often the best part of the day, whether it's the cup of coffee you need to kick start your morning or a fresh, yummy scone to get you over the mid-day hump.
Hundred Waters are bringing their gorgeous voices and floating electronics to the Paradise this weekend for two shows on Saturday and Sunday night, opening for Alt-J. (You might remember last year when we wrote about the Florida 5-piece in "50 Bands 50 States," or our interview with them at Hopscotch Fest
So hey Boston, here’s that large-scale music festival we’ve all been talking about... oh, pretty much for forever now: Newly-minted Crash Line Productions is teaming up with Bowery Presents for BOSTON CALLING, a two-day, 18-band music festival on City Hall Plaza this Memorial Day weekend. Let’s get right into the lineup, because it’s an indie rock monster:
It is a well known fact that the invention of recorded sound hasquickly altered human perception; we hear a tune and tap our toes, oblivious to the fact that a vast work of audio collage, piecing different sounds captured at different times and places, obliterates our sense of place and space. Meaning that when a band of well-meaning Danes like EFTERKLANG embark on a project like the recording of their new album Piramida [4AD], wherein they traipsed off to an abandoned Arctic Circle mining town to capture the sound of despair and seclusion, it doesn't take long for your ears, upon hearing the resulting songs, to notice that something different is afoot.
Bittersweet show today on BOSTON ACCENTS as one of my favorite performers is set to get into his Prius with his ladyfriend and permanently head down to Nashville. It was a pleasure to have folk singer/guitarist CALEB GROH here in the WFNX studio with me, drinking whiskey, talking shop and playing tunes.