Back in 2007 I saw a band named Antiques play P.A.’s Lounge in Somerville. At that show, the only people to show up were me, my four friends, and maybe two other people. It’s not exactly an anomaly for a band to find themselves playing to an empty room at that place. But in this situation it was so painfully obvious to everyone in attendance that this band clearly should have been playing to a packed club and not six clowns such as ourselves. They were that good. So then and there I decided that I had to write an article about them, one that would put these boys into the spotlight they so richly deserved. And I did. The article was called “Dynamic Duo” and it was in the “Music and Clubs” section of the paper. It, of course, made the band stars, just as Jon Landau’s piece in The Real Paper (!) catapulted Bruce Springsteen to stardom back in ‘74. Now the Antiques name is familiar in every living room across this fine nation. And as a result, the two main members of the band, drummer Tim Griffiths and singer/guitarist Steve Vallarelli, have a huge house out in Northern California right next to Tom Waits’s abode, where they have since taken to filming a reality show, about what it’s like for two bandmates to live and make music together, with Tom Waits as their neighbor. The conceit is not all that interesting right off. The juicy bit is this: Steve is married and his wife lives with them! It’s really kooky, take my word. Sometimes they invite me out to Cali to have a smoke and a chat. They of course pay for my plane ticket. It’s very nice, indeed.

Everything that comes after the word “It” in the eighth sentence of that last graph is false. But in a decent world, it would all be true, except for the reality show part, which was me going a little overboard. What happened after the article ran is much more mundane, but that’s okay. The bandmembers are still in Massachusetts, living in the same houses they were living when I met them, as far as I know. Steve is still in law school, as far as I know. There is no reality show, as far as I know. And the band is still killing it in the same clubs they were killing it in last year, that much I know for sure.

We recently chatted with Tim Griffiths by phone, who was in Michigan visiting his dad, about a show the band is playing on Monday night at Charlie's Kitchen and a new album coming out called No Fortune.

Greil Marcus, the legendary music writer and cultural thinker (with whom Chris Gray had an interesting e-mail correspondence) showed up in Portland Monday to give the Bernard A. Osher annual lecture for the Portland Museum of Art. He based his talk on the museum's show "Backstage Pass: Rock & Roll Photography," which is up through March 22. The 250+ images in the show are selected from a private collection of more than 500 photos of rock stars - most of which were taken behind the scenes, rather than on stage.

But from his jumping-off point of the images in the show, Marcus quickly broadened his scope to images that were not included in the show, as evidence partly of what the collector himself choosing to leave out, but also to demonstrate a larger point about the cultural position of photography of musicians. What Marcus himself left out of his talk was the explicit statement that a great deal of today's photography of musicians is about stolen moments - or bizarre documentation of largely meaningless moments (like Britney's flash or Katie Holmes's various hairstyles).

Rather, by showing and discussing images whose photographers and subjects imbued the moment with lasting power, Marcus's talk was both a celebration of the cultivated permanence of the rock-and-roll era and a lament for its passing.

-- Jeff Inglis

LISTEN: Greil Marcus at Portland Museum of Art (mp3)

Photos are after the jump.

A couple weeks ago, I heard tell of www.flightlipdub.com, which was basically a contest to see who could best lip-synch the Flight of the Conchords song “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros.” I decided to do it because (a) I have recently aquired a retardedly-expensive video-camera and some editing software, (b) I needed an excuse to learn how to better use them, and (c) I have a friend with a chicken suit.

The short film that just induced fits of uncontrollable laughter and disbelief was made sometime in the late 1950s or early '60s. The singer was the late Joi Lansing (39 - 23 - 35), a stereotypical '50s blonde bombshell, who appears in quite a few little pre-MTV music productions such as this. Her supporting players were, presumably, random members of the catering staff and a couple of extras waiting around for their walk-on in a Roger Corman movie.

BAD TIMES
5 years ago
May 16, 2003 | Dan Kennedy called for “tougher standards” in journalism in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal.
“Yet by purging Blair, it would be wrong to think that all is now well at the Times, or in journalism. Tougher standards are needed. We all deserve better. I was struck by a comment that Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center.

This is a guitar

Phoenix Music Editor Michael Brodeur talks to FNX about the Best Music Poll and really, who should win and who should NOT. There is a lot of nervous giggling and TRUTH. Read Brodeur's latest review "Czech, Please" and listen to him talk below.

MP3: Brodeur talks to FNX about the good, the bad, and the Jack-Johnson nightmares.

Hobbits love FILK

More on FILK, after Georgiana Cohen's mind-opening article "What is Filk? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the DIURNAL atmospheric DISEQUILIBRIUM."

MP3: Georgiana Cohen talks to FNX about Bilbo Baggins and jams, man.

(Photograph by Michael Lutch)

Is there a pianist in the house?

Moved and excited by pianist Leon Fleisher’s performance of Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto with the Boston Symphony, I wanted to hear it again. But when I returned to Symphony Hall, I learned that around 6:00 PM that evening, a stomach flu had forced Fleisher to cancel, and that the distinguished Austrian/Canadian pianist Anton Kuerti, in town to hear his son Julian (one of the BSO’s two new assistant conductors) in his BSO conducting debut, agreed to go on, without any rehearsal, in Fleisher’s place.

"Mangum's Opus: Neutral Milk Hotel's epic Aeroplane" by Carly Carioli

A decade ago, Carly Carioli interviewed Neutral Milk Hotel's frontman Jeff Mangum about the band's then-just-released, larger-than-life second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. The piece captures the sorrow, spiritualism, and lyricism of the man and the album, and exactly predicts what everyone would be saying 10 years later.

WORLD RENOWNED RECORDING GROUP AEROSMITH ROCKS THIS WAY TO GUITAR HERO®: AEROSMITH®
Epic Collaboration Creates First Music-Based Game to Feature One Band

Santa Monica, CA – February 15, 2008 – Fire up the fret board, crank the amp to 11 and get ready to rock this way with Activision, Inc.