Music

Mixed grill

JON GARELICK — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:49:12 GMT

Scarecrow Mobius, Monique, and Morley
Dave Bryant stood among the folding chairs in the audience before Scarecrow Mobius's gig at Outpost 186 a week ago Monday night, looked at his two-deck keyboard rig, and mused, "Not pretty, but I guess it will do. I had more room at rehearsal."

BIG FOUR: The Outpost was just small enough for Bryant, Rivard, Merenda, and Jones.

WFNX Jazz Brunch Top Five
1. Will Bernard, Blue Plate Special [Palmetto]
2. Wave Mechanics Union, Second Season [HX Music]
3. Paul Shapiro, Essen [Tzadik]
4. Buena Vista Social Club, Live at Carnegie Hall [World Circuit]
5. Christian Scott, Live at Newport [Concord]

Dave Bryant stood among the folding chairs in the audience before Scarecrow Mobius's gig at Outpost 186 a week ago Monday night, looked at his two-deck keyboard rig, and mused, "Not pretty, but I guess it will do. I had more room at rehearsal."

The Outpost performance space, booked by indefatigable jazz-and-improv presenter Rob Chalfen, is too small and just about perfect for jazz — living-room-sized. Which means James Merenda, the band's saxophonist, can play unamplified against Bryant's electric keyboards, Mike Rivard's electric bass, and James Kamal Jones's uninhibited drums. Of course, Merenda is no shrinking violet. (Bearded, gregarious, exuberant — is he the Mandy Patinkin of Boston avant-jazz? Just a thought.)

Everyone in Bryant's band is a leader in his own right. He and Jones have logged serious time with Ornette Coleman, so there are some Ornette tunes and some Bryant originals, and when Bryant refers to "old standards," he's talking about a couple of late-'60s Miles Davis–associated electric numbers, "In a Silent Way" (which you can hear mod-thinking jazz bands play once in a blue moon) and A Tribute to Jack Johnson's "Right Off" — which no one plays, ever.

But first up is Ornette's "City Living," with the skittery-fast tight keyboard/sax line over funk bass-and-drums. It's a tune that accelerates quickly, then drifts into the kind of free-fourway collective improv that Ornette's music is designed for and that brings Rivard out of his seat. There's a round of solos, a quieting down to Jones's solo before he cues the theme back with his bass drum, a round of loose fours between Merenda and Bryant, and then the fast theme and a cold stop.

Bryant's tunes are as catchy as Ornette's. His "Lime Pickles" floats on a medium tempo that moves in and out of a swing groove, drifts in harmony and rhythm, comes back to cadence and time. Merenda takes the Ornette imperative to heart, playing not patterns or scales but pure melody or, when he works up a head of steam, broad rhythmic gestures. Throughout the set, he tends to stomp and dance and lift the bell of his horn toward the ceiling; at one point he seems about ready to jump up backwards on a folding chair before his leg thinks better of it and comes back down on the floor.

Upstate of mind

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:18:27 GMT

Mercury Rev dig out of Buffalo
Mercury Rev dig out of Buffalo

DIGITIZED: For Mackowiak, Donahue, and Mercel, it was “kind of cool to just put down the guitar and work . . .with a beginner’s mind.”

If music is a celebration of freedom, that's especially true of psychedelic music, where the artist longs to throw off the shackles of verses and choruses and expectations and just luxuriate in the challenges and emotions of sound. So what do you do when your successful psychedelic rock band have been at it for almost 20 years and you need inspiration and you already have every effects pedal known to man?

If you are Mercury Rev, and beginning to work on what would become 2008's double-album assault of the song-based Snowflake Midnight (Yep Roc) and the instrumental-wandering Strange Attractor — well, let multi-instrumentalist Sean Mackowiak a/k/a Grasshopper explain. "The three of us all got MacBooks when we were touring for our last [in 2005] record, Secret Migration. I had gone to this conference in Miami on electronic music, and I was really intrigued by some of these programs, like FM8, Absinthe, and Reactor, and Jonathan [Donahue, vocalist] and Jeff [Mercel, drummer] also started working on it. Sure, Reactor is easy to use and anybody can make music with it, but I think the beauty of it is that it shows your individuality and creativity. Because if you work with Reactor and I work with Reactor, they're the same program but we'd probably come up with two completely different types of music. It was kind of cool, for me, to just put down the guitar and work in a totally different way, like with a beginner's mind."

This explains the overtly electronic pulse of their new album, but it also illustrates the attitude that has defined Mercury Rev since their inception in late-'80s Buffalo. Begun as a collaboration between Donahue and Mackowiak, undergrads who studied at SUNY-Buffalo under legendary minimalist composer and multimedia artist Tony Conrad (see "A different Empire," below), Mercury Rev initially existed as the soundtrack to student films. "We were definitely influenced by Conrad," says Mackowiak. "He had made these great soundtracks in the '60s with John Cale and La Monte Young for all these experimental films, and they were all sort of drone-based, a lot like Terry Riley."

The Big Hurt: The YouTube anime mystery

DAVID THORPE — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:03:34 GMT

What the hell is wrong with the Internet? Thorpe utterly fails to investigate . . .
YouTube is now so shockingly complete in its catalogue of illegally uploaded music that it's like a cheap jukebox that plays every song, ever.

VIDEO: Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" set to some sweet anime footage

YouTube is now so shockingly complete in its catalogue of illegally uploaded music that it's like a cheap jukebox that plays every song, ever. Sometimes I'll be writing this godawful column late at night and pause to hunt down a clip for reference — like, if I'm trying to find the right word to describe Chad Kroeger's surfmullet ("soggy") — and I'll keep clicking "related" until I'm three hours deep in an inescapable YouTube abyss. Just such a thing happened tonight, as I was halfway through writing the column that I would have turned in if I hadn't been too distracted by YouTube (a lil' poststructuralist treatise on Roland Barthes's "Death of the Author" vis-à-vis America's "Horse with No Name," no big deal): I hopped on YouTube for a sec to investigate some America beard details, and hours later I was gagging at the not-uncommon sight of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" set to some sweet anime footage by an utterly misguided human being. I suddenly realized that I've been taking for granted just how weird this shit is.

You've probably noticed, if you're the type who'll type the name of a song into YouTube whenever you have the urge to hear it, that a bunch of weird anime fan clips always show up in every search result. Look up any artist or song title on YouTube — anything that's been remotely popular in the last 40 years or so — and you'll find the inexplicable anime version. I'm not kidding about Leonard Cohen: if you're so inclined, you can watch "First We Take Manhattan" beautifully juxtaposed with a buxom lass in a giant robot suit blowing up helicopters. You can watch some kid with a tail dancing with half a dozen Pokemon-esque creatures to the tune of Tom Waits. Any artist. Any song. It's all been set to anime by the friendless teenage autists of America, for reasons inaccessible to neurotypical man.

How did it start? Was it Matthew Sweet's well-loved "Girlfriend" video, in which blistering Robert Quine solos were paired with images from a Japanese television series called, yes, Space Adventure Cobra? Wikipedia, which has an absurdly detailed article about "Anime Music Videos," provides little insight into the history of the form, though it does tell us more than we'd like to know about the editing methods and legal implications. Lucky for you, I'm a terrible journalist, and I feel no obligation to investigate. Let's just enjoy this for what it is: retarded.

Local influence

JIM SULLIVAN — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:37:58 GMT

WFNX is keeping it close to home
In a day when so much radio seems less and less local, WFNX remains in touch.

Mission of Burma

In August, the Luxury won a WFNX contest to open for Coldplay at TD Banknorth Garden. They went on to use the money from the gig to finance their first West Coast tour. Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, a Harvard grad, enlisted WFNX to hold a contest to find 24 local musicians to join his band on stage at the Tsongas Arena on September 23. WFNX has long had a local music show, now called New England Product and hosted by Dave Duncan, Sundays at 10 pm.

In a day when so much radio seems less and less local, WFNX remains in touch. It's been a major player in the local music scene throughout the past quarter-century. Here's what select WFNX staffers (past and present), musicians, and music-biz folks remember.

TOM LANE (DJ, 1983–1988) "We were a kind of 'Cellars by Starlight' on the air. We expanded exposure to local music that college stations had been doing. It put a brighter spotlight on the scene. Boston was a vital music city — scads of bands, lots of clubs, and we had club reports every hour, local music in the rotation."

DAVE DUNCAN (LOCAL-MUSIC DIRECTOR, HOST,NEW ENGLAND PRODUCT) "For a lot of bands, it's their first real exposure to radio. College radio plays a role, but this is the first time they're having their music heard by a wider audience."

MORNING GUY TAI (DJ, 1985–1997) "Why ignore something right under your nose if it's great? We loved doing our part to help launch groups upward, and we would out-hustle other stations. . . . but, oh, could we be wrong! I recall vividly having an argument with [fellow DJ] Angie C about the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. I introduced them onstage at the Orpheum and I thought they were unstoppable. However, I didn't have faith in the audience to catch on to it. Angie said, 'You watch, they are going to break,' to which I countered, 'in Boston, nowhere else.' Boy, was I a mook."

AMANDA PALMER (SOLO ARTIST, SINGER-PIANIST, THE DRESDEN DOLLS) "I was reared on 'FNX through my teen years. I used to tape Joanne Doody's show and listen to it on my Walkman. It was my mainline to finding new bands from my little hamlet in the suburbs."

HENRY SANTORO (NEWS DIRECTOR, 1983–PRESENT) "What we try to do is play everything we could that fit into our format. Our DJs are in the clubs constantly, out and about, scoping it out big time."

Live radio lives

JAYSON O'BRYAN — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 21:42:55 GMT

WFNX pumped to carry its strengths into the future
Radio, it's rumored, is a dying industry, falling behind the new-media Zeitgeist like an asthmatic jogger.

Radio, it's rumored, is a dying industry, falling behind the new-media Zeitgeist like an asthmatic jogger. It's not. Like print journalism, radio faces significant competition, and it may be hard to imagine that it can fight a three-front war against iPods, satellite radio, and the Internet. Asked about all the doomsaying, GARY KURTZ, General Manager of WFNX, grumbles.

"Reports of radio's death have been greatly exaggerated," he says, noting that radio listenership is actually increasing. According to Arbitron, the radio ratings service, 235 million people tune in to radio every week — that's more than 75 percent of the US population — up three million per week from last year.

People have been forecasting the death of radio since the invention of broadcast television. Eight-tracks and cassettes were also supposed to kill radio, as were CDs, so now that satellite radio and MySpace have stepped up to the plate, staffers at the WFNX offices in Lynn are wary, but not overly concerned.

"When you're in your car, you're not going on MySpace," says JULIE KRAMER, midday DJ and assistant music director. "You want someone you can have a coffee with, someone you can identify with, someone you can wake up with." SPECIAL ED, CHARLIE, FLETCHER, and HENRY SANTORO, hosts of the WFNX morning show The Sandbox, agree with Kramer, albeit in stronger terms.

"You can have a great voice," Charlie says, "but you can still either be an asshole or an idiot or have no personality. You can have any voice in the world, but unless people can identify with you and you can identify with them, you can be an absolute disaster."

One in 301
When WFNX went on the air in 1983, its purpose essentially was to put the Boston Phoenix on the air, to attract a young, educated crowd with new music both local and national. A quarter-century later, this foundation has remained largely unchanged. Music Director PAUL DRISCOLL, Kramer, and Fletcher, still listen to everything that comes into the station, looking for hidden gems. And they constantly comb the music blogs looking for meaningful hype — a search that requires a particular talent.

Radio has always been a kind of music filter, but in a world of more instantly available music than any human being could ever listen to in a single lifetime, the filter has had to become significantly more acute. "For every good band, you'll find 300 bad ones," says Program Director KEITH DAKIN. "Radio filters it out. Radio is a great way to introduce people to new bands, before you get it online."

Fast-breaking music

TED DROZDOWSKI — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:03:49 GMT

You heard it here first
WFNX has always been a maverick radio station.

WFNX has always been a maverick radio station, but its reputation was branded into its new-music-loving hide on September 9, 1994 — the night of the so-called Green Day "riot."

It was really more of a traffic jam, after up to 100,000 fans — easily more than double the amount expected — stopped by the Hatch Shell for a free WFNX-sponsored concert with the band, which was hot off its breakthrough album, Dookie (Reprise/WEA), and a legendary show at Woodstock. Pandemonium broke out as the crowd surged toward the stage. But when the police arrived to clear the grounds, it really erupted.

Many factors led to the chaotic show, which stopped just minutes after it began, including Green Day's explosion of popularity after the concert was booked and WFNX's ability to connect with music savvy listeners — a lot of music savvy listeners. But the real bottom line was WFNX's ongoing reign as Boston's new-music authority. WFNX was one of the first major radio stations in the nation to embrace Green Day, and the concert was the band's payback— albeit a little more than expected.

"The mission of 'FNX has always been to break new music," says Mike Boyle, alternative and active rock editor of the trade publication Radio and Records (R&R).

Always.

Twenty-five years ago, when the station first began broadcasting under its current call-letters, WFNX played new imports the Smiths and the Housemartins; emerging American artists Soul Asylum, They Might Be Giants, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers; and Boston bands the Pixies, Throwing Muses, and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. WFNX helped nurture all of them to international stardom.

Today, WFNX's tradition of finding and playing the best local and national music continues. Think of where you first heard Boston's own Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls, the Dropkick Murphys, and Guster — and, as often as you do, the new Kings of Leon single.

By phone from New York, R&R's Boyle ticked off the groups the station discovered and played before any other US radio outlets in recent years: the Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Snow Patrol, Keane, Arctic Monkeys, and the Bravery. WFNX music director Paul Driscoll started airing the Bravery when he got excited by an mp3 he heard on the band's Web site.

Add to that list Vampire Weekend, Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, Bloc Party, and Louis the XIV. The station was also among the first to play the White Stripes, Interpol, Dashboard Confessional, M.I.A., and many, many more.

The little station that could . . . and did

BRAD MINDICH — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:23:33 GMT

WFNX could have been a country station. A message from the kid who voted new wave.
I love WFNX. I suppose I might be expected to say that, but that is really how I feel.

I love WFNX. I suppose I might be expected to say that, but that is really how I feel. This little 6000-watt station (whose broadcast signal was only 3000 watts up until two years ago) that has been dismissed by the mainstream and corporate radio world too many times to note over the past 25 years has, literally, changed the face of music — not just locally but nationally and internationally. Think I'm embellishing here? I am not. From the bands to the managers to the listeners to the advertisers, WFNX matters — and it doesn't just matter a little, it matters a lot.

A little bit of insider history: I remember my father coming into my room back in 1983 (I was 15) and telling me he was buying a radio station and couldn't figure out what kind of music it should play, but there were two choices: country or new wave. At that time I was more of a metalhead than anything else, so I had no idea what "new wave" was, but I made it very clear that, from my perspective, country would be a really bad choice. So I said something to the effect of, "anything but country." Mind you, I take zero credit for WFNX's 25-year staying power, and I'm sure if we had gone country, we would have been a phenomenal country station. But my self-centered, narrow teenage mind called it as I saw it back then, so in my own little way, I am pleased that I contributed something to the station's success.

Although my contribution has been minimal, there are countless people, past and present, whose impact has been immeasurable. These 'FNXers — from all areas of the radio world — have brought their insight, commitment, and brilliance to truly make WFNX what it is today. Not only did they believe we were unique, they made sure everyone around them — from bands to labels to listeners — also believed in what we were doing and why we were doing it. And, most important, they were right.

Twenty-five years from now, who knows how people will explore and embrace music. Downloads directly to your brain based on your mood? Who knows? What we do know is that radio is changing very quickly, and being independently owned, we've always had the freedom to take chances and help drive the change. So whether you continue to hear us on 101.7 FM, listen online at wfnx.com, or get the brain download of the future, you can be certain we'll make sure that whenever anyone tunes to WFNX, they will be listening to "Boston's True Alternative" and, frankly, the best radio station in the world (yes, the world). So from me and on behalf of my father, Stephen Mindich (the guy who wisely chose new wave over country), I want to thank all of you — the staff, the bands, the labels, the listeners, and the advertisers who make this possible every day — for your 25 years of commitment to WFNX.

Photos: Peter Simon's new book

PETER SIMON — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:13:07 GMT

Images from Peter Simon's new collection Reggae Scrapbook

Photos from Peter Simon's new collection Reggae Scrapbook

Peter Simon presents a multimedia version of Reggae Scrapbook with performances by Dub Artists at Johnny D’s in Davis Square on Dec. 3rd

Radio days

CHRIS FARAONE — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:16:32 GMT

Will C.’s beyond-fresh Down the Dial comp
Will C was born 20 years too late and four skin tones too light.

Guitar heroine

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:10:38 GMT

The shreducation of Marnie Stern
The shreducation of Marnie Stern

VIDEO: Marnie Stern, "Ruler"

Marnie Stern, "Transformer" (mp3)

About that style: Great moments in two-handed finger-tapping. By Daniel Brockman.

There's Marnie Stern, the person, and then there's Marnie Stern, the rock band, and it's important to understand the difference. Marnie Stern the person is an unassuming woman who in her early 20s decided she'd start playing guitar. Marnie Stern the band, who come to Church on Monday, are the result, almost a decade later: an out-of-left-field fireball of guitar-and-drums insanity that pits the technical prowess of '70s and '80s guitar gods against the off-kilter oddness of '00s oddballs like Lightning Bolt and Deerhoof.

"I tried for a while to come up with a band name," the New Yorker tells me on the phone as she and her band comb Seattle for a parking spot, "but I just couldn't find one that I liked enough. It's like getting a tattoo, I needed to find something that I really loved. So I guess I just kind of stuck with my name."

Ms. Stern's journey of rock is an inspiring tale: while she was living in New York City, working an office job and trying to do music, a co-worker casually mentioned that she seemed to be becoming less of a musician with a day job and more of just a person with a dull office gig. Stern quit a week later and began practicing guitar eight hours a day and working up the material that would become her Kill Rock Stars debut, In Advance of the Broken Arm. (Take that, co-worker!) What was this force that altered her life?

"I don't know, there's no answer for that! Something did propel me, I just don't know what it was. I've always enjoyed music, but I think that when I was in school I just didn't think that it was an option. You know, you're told by your family that it's a hobby, but then once I graduated from school, something sort of hit me and I realized that I can do whatever I want to do, so I'm going to do this. And that's what propelled me most."

Going on sale: November 28, 2008

GOING ON SALE — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:14:21 GMT

Breaking news from the concert ticket trade
Rokia Traoré, Yo Majesty, Fluttr Effect, and more

Do video games promote violins?

DAVE BARKER — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:23:16 GMT

Video Games Live at the Wang Theatre, November 21, 2008
The lights go down, the audience hushes, and the orchestra plays the first notes of the evening: "Beep. Boop. Beep."

Starting from Scratch

CHRIS FARAONE — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:02:39 GMT

The Upsetter screens at the Coolidge
If the hip-hop generation ever calls for martial law, the revolution will be sponsored by Scion. The rectangularly adventurous car company is our closest corporate ally, bankrolling a large segment of the low-slung-pants community, and providing the rest of us with sweet events that rarely dent the pocket.

Harvard nips fun in the bud

RICHARD BECK — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:19:07 GMT

Girl Talk at Harvard Yard, November 20, 2008
Harvard is not a fun place. Girl Talk was going to change all that.

Over (and under) the top

LLOYD SCHWARTZ — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:32:55 GMT

Musical chairs at the BSO, the Pacifica at Longy, the Boston Philharmonic's three B's, and the Cecilia's Bach B-minor Mass
With only one rehearsal, 31-year-old BSO Assistant Conductor Julian Kuerti confronted a challenging two-and-a-half-hour program of not-quite-standard 19th- and 20th-century repertoire.

ROMANCE AT SHORT NOTICE: Rozhdestvensky’s withdrawal gave BSO assistant conductor Julian Kuerti a chance to show his stuff.

"Maestro Gennady Rozhdestvensky is unable to conduct this performance as planned. BSO Assistant Conductor Julian Kuerti will lead this concert." Signs with this message greeted the BSO audience last Thursday, and an identically worded insert was stuffed into all the programs. What, people were asking, did "unable" mean? One rumor, confirmed two days later by Jeremy Eichler's front-page Boston Globe story, was that the 77-year-old Russian maestro, who last led the BSO four years ago, had discovered during a rehearsal break that BSO marketing was giving him smaller print on a poster than guest cello soloist Lynn Harrell, and that he had not been included on the list of "distinguished conductors" in the BSO season brochure. Mortally insulted, and ignoring apologies from the BSO, he cancelled all four of his scheduled performances. Before he returned to Moscow, he told Eichler, "I must say that I was able to conduct. And how."

So with only one rehearsal, the 31-year-old Kuerti confronted a challenging two-and-a-half-hour program of not-quite-standard 19th- and 20th-century repertoire: Edward Rubbra's fancy orchestration of Brahms's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel (a Romantic's take on the Baroque), Elgar's Cello Concerto, and Tchaikovsky's ManfredSymphony, the trio surely chosen by Rozhdestvensky to show off his mastery of a variety of styles. In his absence, perhaps the half-hour Brahms could have been cut, though the still-rough performance nevertheless treated us to some sprightly wind and luscious cello solos.

A friend of mine loves the Elgar because the cello comes so close to the sound of human speech. Which is just what Harrell's understated, unrhetorical approach so beautifully captures. Confident and pointed as Kuerti's conducting was, the orchestra played with neither complete polish nor complete urgency. At the first performance, Elgar's most intimate and moving moments seemed the least focused or compelling. Kuerti seemed to be following Harrell rather than collaborating with him.

Kuerti's best work was in fact in the Russian piece. Tchaikovsky called Manfred a "symphony in four scenes after the dramatic poem by Byron," an expressionistic autobiographical verse play about a solitary and desolate wanderer overwhelmed by unexplained feelings of guilt. It's not Tchaikovsky's most popular symphony (the BSO last played it in 1997), and it has at least one embarrassing patch (the final music of "redemption," with organ, sentimentalizes Byron's despair), but it pours out its heart in passionate melody and brims with marvels of orchestral wizardry (especially the way the Scherzo's twinkling supernatural harps and flutes suggest the rainbow spray of a waterfall). By the end of the first movement, Kuerti ignited the orchestra, and what had seemed merely expert took on vibrant life.

Photos: Possible kill screen

MELISSA OSTROW — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:35:33 GMT

Video Games Live at the Wang Theater, November 21, 2008

Video Games Live
Wang Theater
November 21, 2008
Photos by Melissa Ostrow

Psych out

BARRY THOMPSON — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:12:17 GMT

The depunking of Darker My Love
Conversations about music can easily turn into conversations about geography.

POWER TRIP: “There’s music that’s way more psychedelic than what we’re doing,” says Rob Barbato (far right). “We’re just a rock band.”

Conversations about music can easily turn into conversations about geography. Where you are affects who you are, and that affects the music you're listening to and/or playing. Touring means adjusting to a gypsy's lifestyle, and Boston indeed looks like a city of gypsies. It's a handy place to come for school and then move to, let's say, Los Angeles and start an awesome band. This was the case with Rob Barbato, Will Canzoneri, and Jared Everett, three-fifths of Darker My Love, who come to the Middle East this Wednesday.

"LA's hot, the air quality's really bad, and I have really bad allergies, but the people are nice for the most part," Barbato — who sings and plays bass and has an epic beard — tells me from his bungalow-style home. "I think people from the East Coast have this askew idea of Los Angeles because of films and stuff. It's not really like that. But it's a very strange place to live. There are no seasons, and it's so vast, it's hard for it not to affect you."

Given that Barbato grew up in Holliston, you can understand why he'd still be feeling culture shock five years after departing the Bay State. What's harder to figure is how a guy with his pedigree in jazz guitar moves to LA and winds up with members of the now defunct Distillers and together they make music that isn't punk or jazz. It's not really psych-rock, either. Call it a velvet haze of potentially narcotic pop rock.

Barbato: "It happened really naturally. We would take something like heavy riffing stuff from the punk aspects and do the repetition stuff that's sort of a jam-type thing over it."

Pretty much every band who ever formed will tell you how "organically" their sound came into being, and just thinking about writing "Darker My Love defy genre classification" makes me want to smash my fingers with a hammer. But on DML's second disc, 2 (Dangerbird), something elemental is happening. "Northern Soul" reminds me of the title track from Perfect Strangers, even though DML have zilch to do with Deep Purple. "Talking Words" reminds me, for no reason I can explain, of Orange Julius. "Two Ways Out" reminds me of bopping around on Adderall while listening to the Beach Boys.

Deck Demons

CHRIS FARAONE — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:08:33 GMT

Slipwax, Illogix, Eliot Ness, and Emoh spin the night fantastic
Now that every annoyingly extroverted hipster dude and chick with implants, long legs, and Serato has a club residency downtown, it's become increasingly important for real hip-hop DJs to mix together.

LIVING HISTORY: It all started back in 2000, when Slipwax (right, with Ness and Emoh) was working with Sav the Illfinga at a debt-collection agency.

Now that every annoyingly extroverted hipster dude and chick with implants, long legs, and Serato has a club residency downtown, it's become increasingly important for real hip-hop DJs to mix together. For that reason, and because they're a bunch of junkies who can't kick the needle, New England's premier DJ squad, the Deck Demons, are getting themselves back in gear.

Currently comprising Slipwax, Illogix, Eliot Ness, and newcomer Emoh, the crew have catching up to do. After the departure of JayCeeOh for New York this past year, they lost considerable steam, rarely practicing and only sometimes rocking gigs together. But this setback is hardly unprecedented — the Deck Demons franchise has for years kept the revolving door open for top local talent.

"This all started back in 2000, when I was working with Sav the Illfinga at a debt-collection agency," Slipwax says over the phone from Beverly. "He was on 88.9@Night [on Emerson's WERS] at the time, and we just started scratching together after work for fun. Then Sav introduced me to JayCeeOh, and from there we started calling ourselves the Deck Demons. DJ Lazyboy was with us back then too."

Even though Ness and Illogix hail from New Hampshire and Slipwax has Beverly roots, the Deck Demons have long been the most feared DJ crew in Boston, and in the past few years they've also splashed heavy on the national circuit. As solo battle contestants, they're known to advance through brackets until, inevitably, they face one another. Most memorably at Roc Raida's First Annual Gong DJ Battle for World Supremacy in 2006, where Slipwax and Illogix sparred in the quarterfinals.

"It was weird because he won, but we kind of planned it that way backstage," says Slipwax. "By the time I made it that far, I was pretty much out of routines, but Illogix still had a lot more to deliver in the next round. I wouldn't say that I threw it, but I definitely didn't come with the thunder."

Although they're all aggressive individuals, the Deck Demons have clocked their biggest props together. In 2006 they placed second at the DMC World DJ Championship in Chicago, where they lost the crew competition to Cincinnati's Animal Crackers by one point. "They were good and all, but it was still bullshit that we lost," says Slipwax. "Those guys are from out there — the whole crowd was filled with their fans."

Scott Weiland | “Happy” in Galoshes

MIKAEL WOOD — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:38:54 GMT

Softdrive/New West (2008)
It might be one of the year’s worst albums, an underwritten, overarranged mess of factory-floor guitar fuzz, go-nowhere vocal melodies, limp electronic beats, and lyrical clunkers

The Fireman | Electric Arguments

GUSTAVO TURNER — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:51:30 GMT

MPL/ATO (2008)
This peculiar collaboration between Paul McCartney and electronic producer Youth has now lasted some five years longer than his decade each with the Beatles and Wings.