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...at Harvard’s Kennedy School, made to USA Today. Jones noted that in the Times’ self-examination, the family of former POW Jessica Lynch and others said they were well aware that Blair had falsely claimed to interview them...But they didn’t complain to the Times because they didn’t expect any better of the media. ‘They didn’t say, ‘Holy cow,’ this is somebody who is clearly unscrupulous.’ Instead, their response was to shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Hey, what did you expect?’ ’ Jones was quoted as saying.” Read Full Article

GOOD RIDDANCE
10 years ago
May 15, 1998 | Matt Ashare presented the 1998 BMP award for Best National Act to Radiohead.
“For a band whose career in the US was launched in 1993 with the kind of perilously catchy...single that can easily kill a band's career by marking them as a one-hit wonder, England's Radiohead have truly come a long way. Sure, ‘Creep’ was great the first dozen times you heard it, but you can't blame Thom Yorke for not wanting to sing it anymore...Johnny Greenwood hated the song so much from the get-go that he tried to muck it up with those cacophonous false starts on his guitar...But Yorke, Greenwood, and the rest of the band refused to be defeated by success, returning in '95 with The Bends (Capitol), a disc...with absolutely no ‘Creep,’ a disc as complex as ‘Creep’ was simple...

“The Bends in all its convoluted glory was really just a twisted prelude to OK Computer (Capitol), which arrived last summer with nothing resembling a workable single and very little in the way of a coherent lyric. Majestic probably doesn't begin to describe the operatic scope of the album, but it's not a bad place to start...So now some of the same critics who wrote the band off after ‘Creep’ hit the charts are holding Radiohead up as modern-rock saviors, which they probably are.” Read Full Article

SELECTIVE LISTENING
30 years ago
May 16, 1978 | After having had bad experiences with living arrangements due to his musical pursuits, pianist Paul Raeburn seemed to have found the perfect situation.
“Not too long ago, I thought I had solved all my problems. I had an apartment to myself (no roommates to worry about). It was on the second floor (not too difficult to get the piano in and out). And the downstairs neighbors never complained. I could never quite understand why they never complained, but I was happy to let the matter rest.

“In fact, so tolerant were the neighbors that they allowed several people to enter the apartment one weekend when I was away and help themselves. When I returned, I found that the burglars had chopped a large hole in the door, upended the dresser, pried into a locked metal file cabinet, strewn clothes and books everywhere, and the neighbors, bless their hearts, had never said a word. Stereo, television, tape recorder, typewriter, piano amplifier...had been removed. Miraculously, the piano stood in the center of the living room. (I don’t blame the thieves for not taking it—I know how difficult it is to get it down the stairs.)” Read Full Article

THE HAVES AND THE HAVE-SHOTS
35 years ago
May 15, 1973 | George Kimball pointed out the differences between those folks sitting in the grandstand and the clubhouse and those in the infield at the Kentucky Derby.

“If you are a Governor or a Mayor or a Newspaper Editor or a Kentucky Colonel or if you just happen to have a lot of money or happen to be on intimate terms with somebody who has a lot of money or even somebody whose family once had a lot of money then you will wind up in the grandstand, the clubhouse, or in one of those boxes near the finish line which run about $50,000 for Churchill Downs’ 50 yearly racing days but which are rarely used save on Derby Day...

“If, on the other hand, you (a) have developed a tolerance for claustrophobia, (b) loved Woodstock, (c) have an aberrant penchant for attending spectacles you are unable to see, (d) drink a lot, and (e) don’t have the money or the connections for a seat, you will end up in the infield.”

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.

Boston Phoenix editor Lance Gould announced today that Michael Brodeur would be joining the staff of the alt-weekly newspaper as the music editor on March 31.

Brodeur is a member of the Boston-based electronic-pop band Certainly, Sir; a published poet; and a part-time instructor at Emerson College. He previously served as editor-in-chief of the Weekly Dig.

In announcing Brodeur’s appointment Gould said: “Since Michael started writing for the Phoenix this past year, I have come to know him as someone who is tirelessly searching out new musical experiences, and someone who sees music as a vital place where pop culture defines itself.”

Brodeur fills the slot vacated by Matt Ashare. Earlier this month, Ashare announced his intention of stepping down from his editing position to resume full-time writing. Ashare, who spent 15 years on the paper’s staff, will continue to write for the Phoenix, and will take over the “Cellars by Starlight” local-music column, a Phoenix institution.

Peter Kadzis, Executive Editor of the Phoenix Media/Communications Group, said this: “In his fifteen years as a Phoenix writer and editor, Matt has conducted an important conversation with our readers: adjusting musical reputations in need of revision, alerting the public to important work by already established artists, and -- most important of all -- introducing and championing new music. It’s great news that Matt will continue to appear in the Phoenix, weekly, as the ‘Cellars by Starlight’ columnist, which is Boston’s longest-running newspaper column dedicated to local music.”

In other music-department news, the Phoenix last month added a new contributor, David Thorpe, to its lineup.

The earmarks of Thorpe’s column, “The Big Hurt,” are satire and a playful (some might say relentless) pessimism. Thorpe has previously written the “Your Band Sucks” column for somethingawful.com and “Burn Unit” for the Weekly Dig.

Grrrr, man

As usual, James Parker talks to FNX about just about everything; but also happens to mention his cheeky article, "Guitars are from Mars, Feist and Björk are from Venus," co-written by Sharon Steel.

MP3: James Parker on guitars and also an admission to FNX: yes, Parker does like Kelly Clarkson.

(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. I was disappointed—but not for long.

This also marked the BSO debut of the 69-year-old Kuerti, a masterful and elegant player who studied with Rudolf Serkin and Mieczyslaw Horszowski and at the Longy School, and played the first movement of the Grieg Piano Concerto at a morning children’s concert with the Esplanade Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler a week before his tenth birthday. Fleisher, at 79, and still in treatment for focal dystonia in his right hand, had to slow down the fast movements and still missed a few notes (he played “beyond the notes”). But Kuerti hit them all, jawdroppingly full speed ahead. His sound is softer-edged than Fleisher’s jewel-like pointedness, but it’s also crystalline, transparent, and so precise that every note is distinguishable, even as it’s flying by at hummingbird speed. The Emperor is full of trills, and Kuerti’s are virtually birdlike, rising in triumph then floating gracefully, magically downward.

Kuerti doesn’t have Fleisher’s muscularity or sense of drama, but he has, above all, an extraordinary sense of musical continuity. He seemed to play each movement, especially the slow, songful middle movement, in a single breath. His pacing was flawless, especially in Beethoven’s unbroken transition from the inward slow movement to the extroverted, dancing finale, which Kuerti plunged into with breathtaking daring.

This was the second consecutive BSO concert series during which a major soloist had to cancel (the week before, baritone Thomas Quasthoff sang a set of Schubert songs only at one concert before he came down with the flu and lost his voice—he was replaced with the Brahms Serenade the BSO played the week before that).

Meanwhile, Kuerti’s 31-year-old son, who provided such sympathetic and imaginative support for Fleisher, delivered more of the same for his father’s very different approach. This was a memorable pairing. Surely the BSO will find a time when they can do it again, and with some advance notice.

―Lloyd Schwartz

"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. Revisit the piece here.

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.’s (Nasdaq: ATVI) Guitar Hero®: Aerosmith®, the first game built around the legendary music of America’s Greatest Rock ‘N Roll Band: Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Brad Whitford, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer.  Slated for release this June, this latest installment from the franchise with the #1 best-selling video game in 2007, puts players in the shoes of Perry (guitar), Whitford (guitar) and Hamilton (bass), as they rock out alongside frontman Tyler and drummer Kramer.  Gamers will experience Aerosmith’s GRAMMY® winning career, from their first gig to becoming rock royalty, in a way that no other entertainment vehicle offers.

Steven Tyler says, “Any band that can go from ‘Don’t Want to Miss A Thing’ (Aerosmith’s #1 smash hit) to the ass-kicking ‘Sweet Emotion’ to the cheekiness of ‘Love in an Elevator,’ to the classic ballad ‘Dream On’ shows why Activision chose us to headline this game based on the diversity of the Aerosmith catalog. Not only is songwriting a bitch, but then it goes and has puppies.”

We've got three pairs of tickets to give away to the My Brightest Diamond Show at the Museum of Fine Arts on November 18 at 7:30 pm. Tickets go to the first three people who leave comments here on this post. You gotta be willing to swing by Phoenix HQ (near Fenway park), by Friday, November 16 at 4 pm to claim them.

Crank Dat Supernerd: MIT Does Soulja Boy

DJ Lonewolf aka Kevin Driscoll invited us to document the making of the MIT comparitive media studies dept's attempt to create the most-populated video of folks doing the Soulja Boy dance on the internet. Read Caitlin Curran's account, watch the making-of video above, and check out some of the results.

Start putting out heartland-ish rock and you're bound to attract an audience partially made up of drunken brodudes. That’s the lesson to take from former D Generation frontman-turned-roots-rocker Jesse Malin’s show last night at TT’s, during which it was hard to tell if the group in the center of the room yelling out over a few of the singer's acoustic numbers and his occasionally verbose song introductions were disciples or haters. Not that Malin, who often seems like he’s imagining himself playing to bigger venues, seemed to care. He was off in his own world for much of the affair. My friend who came along put it best when she said afterwards: “It’s hard to imagine him off the stage.”

It was thanks to this detachment that last night turned out to be pretty enjoyable, despite the vibe emanating from a portion of the crowd. Malin and his crew (which included Dresden Doll Brian Viglione, lipstick-less and looking like he was enjoying himself immensely on drums) stuck mostly to his excellent first record, The Fine Art of Self Destruction (my review! of the album here) and his more radio-ready, recent release, Glitter in the Gutter. From the former: the slow-building “Brooklyn” thrilled whenever it picked up and Viglione sprung into action, his long black hair shooting about wildly. From the latter: the touching tribute to Malin's deceased mom, "Broken Radio" -- a duet with Bruce Springsteen on the album -- sounded just fine without the boss. And you gotta love a guy who’ll do a stripped-down, keyboard-accompanied “Bastards of Young” cover and amble around the stage like he’s karoake-ing to his favorite song.

Unfortunately, it was a short while after Viglione’s other half, Amanda Palmer, showed up to TT's that the performance stalled for me. It wasn’t her puffy, dyed hair obstructing my view that was the problem. Rather, it was Malin’s sudden self-indulgent turn, telling us about how he ran into Yoko Ono on the street in New York and then turning it into an opportunity to comment on the Sixties in general. “They really tried hard,” I think he said of that era at one point.

sure would've been nice if I took some pictures, huh?

We’ve got 4 pairs of tickets to give away to see the Sea & Cake on Sunday night at the Museum of Fine Arts. They’ll go to the first four people who post a comment on this post saying they’re interested. Hitch: you gotta be willing to swing by Phoenix headquarters (near Fenway) by 6 pm this evening to pick ‘em up.

Yesterday was a day of triumph for Tom Lehrer. "It just takes a smidgen’ to poison a pigeon," the Harvard-educated comedian gleefully sang in 1959. "When they see us coming, the pigeons all try an’ hide, but they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide." In his strained rhyme, Lehrer satirically worried about the response of the Audubon Society, but, as it turns out, his methods have finally earned the approval of animal-rights activists. Sort of.

In Lehrer’s home state of California, PETA and the Argyle Civic Association have conspired to dispose of the pestilent pigeon population by no less insidious means. "Citizen Pigeon," a rooftop operation launched yesterday in Hollywood, aims to cull flock growth by "humanely" lacing the birds’ food with an oral contraceptive called OvoControl.

According to a recent BBC article, the pigeon population there could dive-bomb to 50% by 2012.

"Citizen Pigeon is a win-win project," said PETA wildlife biologist Stephanie Boyles, in a press release: "Businesses get fewer pigeons roosting on their buildings, and pigeons are spared cruel deaths."

Yes, perhaps: replacing strychnine with birth control may take better care of the birds. But Lehrer (now a renowned lecturer at UC Santa Cruz) might say they were missing the point.

--Caroline Perry

I for a second thought the very talented local singer/songwriter Jeffrey Simmons was that lanky Inman Square man who stands in a suit under an umbrella, rain or shine, quietly hawking his self-made publication, Geograflight (sp?), from the sidewalk. It's the MySpace photos he has posted of himself that did it. In them, Simmons, another tallish skinny marink, is dressed dapper (admittedly, though, he's snazzier than Geograflight man who looks like a funeral attendant in that dire suit of his) in a blazer. Like Geograflight man, he is standing under an umbrella on what appears to be a rainless day. And again, like Geograflight man, he is daintily holding this umbrella.

I was wrong, of course. They are not the same person. But all of this got me thinking about the difference between a man who wears an umbrella on a dry day and a man who poses for a photograph under an umbrella in that kind of weather. This is what I came up with.

The man wearing the umbrella is most likely wearing it for any one of these reasons or combinations thereof:

1. he wears it for protection from the sun  2. he wears it as an accessory, he enjoys the way it looks on him. 3. he’s extremely neurotic and always worries that he will be caught in the rain without some covering.  

The man posing with the umbrella does it for any one of these reasons or combinations thereof:

1. an accessory. 2. a way to convey that he is a tragic sort of figure who is always expecting rain. 3. a way to convey that some kind of tragedy is approaching.

No disrespect to the esteemed Boston Pops, but it’s been a while since one of their performances really got my heart racing.

Until last night.

Midway through a musical tribute to Oscar and Tony winners at Wednesday’s Opening Night at Pops — an event which, it should be noted, draws the coiffed and coutured benefactor set — a scream from the balcony brought Keith Lockhart’s baton to an unexpected halt.

In an age of terrorism and Virginia Tech, a woman’s scream inside hallowed Symphony Hall, followed by scuffles and gasps, turned my blood cold. For the 15 seconds that it took to figure out where the disturbance was coming from, panic rose in my throat. Was someone sick? Had an audience member pulled a gun? Was someone falling from the balcony? A decade ago, my pulse might’ve remained steady; last night it did not.

When it all came into focus, necks craned towards the third balcony, where two men were throwing wild punches as their seat mates tried to pull them apart — ripping off one of the combatant’s shirts in the process. It was no less odd than if a mosh pit had developed at a Boston Ballet performance at the Wang Theatre.

And then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The brawling pair was ushered out. Keith Lockhart nodded and lifted his baton. The music resumed.

— Tamara Wieder

(Look for expanded coverage -- including interviews with Keith Lockhart as well as two New England Patriots who happened to be in attendance -- tomorrow.)