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New England Music News

Boston music news: December 8, 2006

Notes on Dagmar 2

By JIM SULLIVAN | December 4, 2006

Jim Bauer and Meghan McGeary

It’s not a Billboard or even a CMJ chart. But it is a Neil Young chart, or at least a subpage on his Web site, www.neilyoung.com/lwwtoday, where he (or someone working for him) tallies protest songs and videos that have been sent in. On the song chart at #18 as of this writing is DAGMAR 2’s “Give Me the Rifle,” and on the video chart at #3 is another Dagmar creation, “(To Hell With) The Commander-in-Chief.” (You can download both atwww.dagmartheband.com.) Dagmar 2 are JIM BAUER (vocals/guitar/songwriting) and MEGHAN MCGEARY (vocals/percussion), a stripped-down version of the Brooklyn/Boston-based art-rock band DAGMAR, who released the EP Door No. 1 (Breathing Room) earlier this year. On that EP, McGeary — who sports a colorful wig, aviator glasses, and dragon wings in concert — plays the role of an insect goddess whose task is to motivate depressed, world-weary musician Bauer. On an upcoming Door No. 2, we can expect Bauer to break into the real world — and to be pretty pissed off about what’s going on overseas. Hence the two protest songs. “People can read their own stories into the songs,” McGeary says. “Jim intended it as a dialogue between soldiers, one of whom was going to commit suicide” but it can also be heard “as a father talking to his son, and a call to disarm.” McGeary describes the six-year-old Dagmar as a band making “surreal dreamscapes”; in Dagmar 2, she says, they “re-orchestrate songs, practically and artistically. The sound and color Jim gets out of his guitar and my percussion, there’s a lot of texture. It’s a cool sound in a different way.” Dagmar 2 play the Squawk Coffeehouse in Cambridge this Tuesday, December 14.

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ARTICLES BY JIM SULLIVAN

INTERVIEW: CARL HIAASEN | July 22, 2010
Novelist Carl Hiaasen likes to create scenarios where very bad and tremendously satisfying things happen to despicable people: crooked politicians, real-estate scammers, environment despoilers, greedy bastards of all stripes.

AFTER IMAGES | May 28, 2010
Karen Finley won’t be naked, or covered in chocolate. Candied yams will not be involved. If there are neighborhood morality-watch squads in Salem, they’ll have the night off.

INTERVIEW: SARAH SILVERMAN | April 23, 2010
Recently, “Sarah” — the character played by Sarah Silverman on Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program — was upset because in today’s world it just wasn’t safe anymore for children to get into strangers’ vans.

TATTOO YOU | April 06, 2010
Dr. Lakra is no more a real doctor than is Dr. Dre or Dr. Demento. The 38-year-old Mexican tattoo artist’s real name is Jerónimo López Ramírez. As for “lakra,” it means “delinquent.” Or so I thought.