New England Music Scrapbook Newsletter
Alan Lewis, Editor

Our Corner of the Rock 'n' Roll Life

August 24, 2007
Issue 2007:237

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We've got Thrills, chills, Dirty Water
What more do you need?
When the big beat hits ya
Comin' from your transistor
Like the T at full speed
When the big beat hits ya...

-- "Boston Lullaby," Dudick/Naihersey.
Copyright c. 1980 by Camaraderie Music, BMI.
All rights reserved. Used with permission.


. . . . .


BRATTLEBORO, VT, August 25, - As of 5 p.m. Friday, we had received
exactly two local news items by e-mail, making this by far the slowest
week we have ever had. Ever. Hurrah, we set a new record! We did
receive a lot of "Out of the Office" type autoreply messages in
response to our own e-mails, and it seems highly likely there is a
connection to be made.

This week we received a good deal more e-mailed news items than
usual about national and international acts, though not a single
example was particularly up our line. And this was one of our biggest
weeks ever for receiving promotional copies of albums. So I guess I'd
have to say it has been a mixed week.

In this issue, we have a feature article about

NOAM WEINSTEIN.

So our shortage of other information ought to free up some time for
people to read this piece. Weinstein is a very talented rock
singer-songwriter out of New York City. But he went to college in the
Boston area, at North Shore Community College. Check that. I think
it may have been Harvard. His ties to Boston quite evidently remain
really strong, judging from the show listings in his mailings. He is
a musician well worth knowing about. The piece in this issue previews
Weinstein's performance at the fast-approaching Club Passim Cutting
Edge of the Campfire Festival. Some may recall that the Cutting Edge
fest had a Boston punk night maybe a couple years ago, including a
Willie Alexander booking. Less surprising maybe but still quite
interesting is this year's booking of

RICK BERLIN,

late of Orchestra Luna, Luna, Berlin Airlift, and numerous more recent
bands.

In our Noam Weinstein piece, readers will notice reference to the
sad demise of my old (and I do mean OLD!) CD player. I couldn't give
an exact year of purchase from memory, but 1989 could not be at all
far off, either way. I'm not certain whether age or a lightning
strike did it in. Age seems pretty obvious. But, though it was
unplugged at the time, I witnessed a lightning strike 50 feet from it
or less. And as I understand it, the magnetic field from a bolt of
lightning at such close range is easily powerful enough to kill
electronic equipment. So it seems to me that either cause of death -
age or lightning - is possible. Maybe it was some combination of the
two. Either way, though it had extreme quirks, they were quirks that
I understood from years of experience, and I am going to miss that
otherwise dependable machine. We have a loaner CD player; but beyond
pushing the play button and tracking forward and back one cut at a
time, I have no idea how it works. I can't get at the manual until
Tuesday of next week at the earliest.

We received a fine new album from

SARA COX

of a great Maine band, THE COMING GRASS. The latest The Coming Grass
album, "Beauty of a Heart," is the group's best-ever CD and one of my
favorite New England discs of the past several years. If I had a
direct e-mail address for EILEEN ROSE, I would recommend "Beauty of a
Heart" to her in a minute. But I only have an address which is
answered by her publicist, and this sort of suggestion does not go
really well through an intermediary. If you know Eileen Rose, please
pass along the tip.

As for the new SARA COX CD, "Crowded Is the New Lonely," this is
her best-ever solo album and it is a fitting followup to "Beauty of a
Heart" by TCG. It pleases me to no end that the opening and closing
tracks on "Crowded Is the New Lonely" are among my favorites. Too
many albums start out strong, only to then lose steam. "Crowded Is
the New Lonely" is solid to the end. I also really like the third
track, "The Fog." Other favorites are likely to emerge with
additional playings. I am hoping to pull together a feature article
about Sara Cox sometime soon. I am also hoping to bring in "Beauty of
a Heart," because I never got a chance to write up that CD though I
really love it.

I like to make note of local-music topics in pieces written by
area columnists

SHERYL HUNTER

and

DAVE MADELONI.

But I did not find Dave's column in its usual spot this week, and I am
temporarily locked out of the building where I get Sheryl's column.

The deaths of several musicians are noted in the OBITUARIES table
of contents of the Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/

though I am not personally familiar with the career of any of them.
There is the link, though, for the benefit of anyone who would like to
browse through.

On Friday, we received an unanticipated stack of promotional
copies of albums. I was already behind in my listening, partly from a
lot of lightning at my best listening times and partly because of the
death of my CD player possibly on account of lightning. So now I am
even behinder. Let's hope there are some great discs in the new stack.


WEEKLY BAND E-MAIL

Over the course of our first several years of publication, our
subscription list, as far as I can tell, overlapped tremendously with
the subscription list of my e-friend

MARIA McLAUGHLIN's

WEEKLY BAND E-MAIL.

I would not be at all surprised if a majority of our subscribers were
also her subscribers.

Some time ago, Maria needed to suspend publication of her
show-listings newsletter. Since that time, the Weekly Band E-Mail has
been very much missed.

I may actually be the lucky one. Right along I have been a heavy user
of Maria's "Venue Menu" section, which I have been able to continue
using up to the present. For that reason, my Weekly Band E-Mail
T-shirt never went out of date.

Some of you already know the name of

BRIAN ANASTASI

(which I misspelled in this very spot last time - Sorry!) of western
Massachusetts. Lately we received an announcement from Brian that he
will be reviving the Weekly Band E-Mail. Here is the main part of his
original announcement:

WEEKLY BAND E-MAIL TO BE REVIVED

Maria McLaughlin's labor of love, the Weekly Band E-Mail, will be
revived! A "test copy" of the e-mail will go out to people's in boxes
on Monday morning, [August] 27th, and people's feedback will be
greatly appreciated. Then it will begin in earnest on Monday,
September 3rd.

Taking over for Maria will be Brian Anastasi of Amherst, Mass. Brian
did a radio show of all Massachusetts music for about a year on WMUA,
the radio station at UMass/Amherst.

Brian plans to keep the same format, a day-by-day listing for who is
playing at all the clubs in the area and will still keep the Monday
morning schedule. He also plans to expand the club listings to
include clubs in the other five New England states, such as Toad's
Place in New Haven CT; Ralph's Diner, the Palladium, and the Lucky Dog
Saloon in Worcester, Mass.; Black Eyed Sally's and the Webster in
Hartford, CT; the Middle Earth in Bradford, VT; and the Flynn Theatre
in Burlington, VT. He also plans to begin listing Massachusetts
bands' upcoming gigs.

To receive the weekly band e-mail once again, please send your e-mail
address to bananastasi@... Clubs and bands may also send their
listings to the same address.

[ ]

I HAVE SUBSCRIBED to Brian's newsletter, and I imagine a very large
percentage of our own READERS will want to do the same.

We have had mixed results as to whether Brian's e-mail address works
as a link from our Yahoo Groups home page version of this newsletter.
It most definitely did not work for me. Visitors to the Yahoo Groups
home page may need to copy and paste the address or even retype it. - Alan


NOAM WEINSTEIN
A Glimpse at the Campfire's
Cutting Edge

By Alan Lewis
New England Music Scrapbook Newsletter
August 24, 2007
Issue 237

Once, years ago, my mother - a dyed-in-the-wool jazz fan - sent a
Bangor Daily News clipping about a local Maine singer, Jess Tardy,
thinking I might be interested in Tardy's music. She got that right.
And by sending that Bangor Daily News notice, my mother set off a
complex chain of events that eventually launched a copy of "We're All
Going There" (CD, www.eNoam.com, 2006), the latest album by Tardy's
friend, Noam Weinstein, into my mailbox.

Weinstein is a capable singer-songwriter-guitarist whose greatest
strength may be as a writer with a surprisingly broad range. In a
charming turn in a September 2006 Vermont Guardian interview,
Weinstein's friend and fellow musician, Mieka Pauley, said, "As a
songwriter, the constant thought on all our minds is 'everything that
can be written has already been written.'" But then, she said, she
would give in to her "super-fan" side, when listening to one of
Weinstein's compositions alone in her car, and think, "Noam has found
THE very last good idea for a song."

There is no question about it, his subject matter can be inventive.

Asked about his musical inspirations, Weinstein said, "As a
singer-songwriter I've been deeply influenced both by many of the
giants - John Prine, Randy Newman, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Tom
Waits, Leonard Cohen, etc. - and by many of my peers and friends -
people like Jess [Tardy], Naomi Sommers, Frank Tedesso, Mieka Pauley,
Greta Gertler, Rose Polenzani, Richard Julian, Anita Suhanin, and lots
more! I've also had some amazing guitar teachers over the years. One
of my biggest influences has been my father, who doesn't write music
but has given me countless hours of listening and feedback on my songs
ever since I started writing."

To my mind, Randy Newman was the surest name to appear on
Weinstein's influences list, while some of Weinstein's own writing
recalls the work of Leonard Cohen.

Weinstein's full-length releases, "Probably Human" and "We're All
Going There," feature studio bands with exceptional ability at
ensemble playing. Asked what he looks for in a band member, he
explained, "I've been extremely lucky to play almost exclusively with
people who not only support me, but inspire me - as musicians, and
often as human beings. I guess that's the biggest thing: an ability
to be simultaneously supportive and provocative, which is crucial to
me with my friends, too! (To love me but to challenge me.) At the
same time, if I had to choose between someone I admired as a musician,
and someone I admired as a person, I'd probably pick the latter. But
thankfully the two have generally gone together!"

Since in the recording studio at least the emphasis of the
instrumentation seems to be on the band as a whole, not on individual
soloists, one might wonder about the role of his own guitar playing in
a Noam Weinstein band. "Guitar's my first instrument and my first
love," he said. "On good days it helps me sing in a way I can't with
my voice."

A lot of Weinstein's music could fit into a triangle with corners
represented by Tom Waits, Randy Newman, and Leonard Cohen, with a Rose
Polenzani niche in there somewhere. But since Jess Tardy first
recommended Weinstein years ago, I have noticed that an occasional
original song is more in keeping with pre-rock era "standards": a body
of classic work often collectively called the American Songbook. A
couple opportunities have presented themselves to inquire whether
Weinstein has this music in his background - in his education and
personal listening - and it is perfectly astonishing that mostly he
does not. In our recent interview, for instance, when asked whether
he had a listening or performing history with this sort of material,
he answered, "Unfortunately not enough! It's something I need to do
more of; when I have, I've been floored."

Weinstein is a talented songwriter who no doubt has the ability
to add a song or two to the standards repertoire.

Could Weinstein think of a song - famous or obscure - from
someone else's pen that he really wishes he could have written? "So
many!" he enthused. "An example of an older one would be Bill
Withers' 'Lean on Me.' An example of a newer one - to which I was
turned on by my high-school friend Mike Levenson - is a song Evan
Dando of the Lemonheads recorded called 'Hard Drive,' which was
written by the young Australian songwriter Ben Lee."

Oftentimes whether or not a new album is promoted with the
physical product known as a "single," there will still be one cut or
more which gets suggested as a strong introduction. Asked if "We're
All Going There" comes with such a recommendation, Weinstein answered,
"Hmm... I'm not sure! The title track? 'Too Small'?" I definitely
agree with those choices and take the liberty of adding "Green to
Yellow," "Other People's Hearts," and "Sail On." There is a lot to
like on other tracks as well, and close listeners will pick up some
very funny lines sprinkled here and there across the disc.

A passage from one Weinstein song brought about a memorable
moment. "One of my favorite gigs," he recalled, "was an acoustic set
in April 2005 at the New York International Auto Show, where among the
other acts was a woman on stilts dressed as a tree, who turned to me
with a confused expression whenever I sang the line 'I'm sorry,
oceans, I'm sorry, trees.'"

People on stilts dressed as trees, on average, take song lyrics
too personally, don't you think?

It is often intriguing to learn who a performing musician has
been listening to who he or she thinks popular music fans would want
to be hearing and hearing about.

"Over the last couple of years, Greta Gertler has pointed me in
the direction of a few relatively low-profile artists who became quick
favorites of mine, including Lee Feldman (http://LeeFeldman.com), Dan
Bryk (http://Bryk.com), and Pete Galub (http://PeteGalub.com). And
there's no subsitute for CindyCast (http://www.cindyhowes.net/) as a
way to find new artists."

Asked if he has played Club Passim's Cutting Edge of the Campfire
festival before, Weinstein said, "Yes. I love how unpredictable each
of the sets is: sometimes the combinations of performers and styles
works great, and sometimes not, but that's the fun of it!"

As for his own upcoming performance, Weinstein said, "I'll be
playing solo, but doing a round with two super-talented friends - Jess
Tardy and Matt Kanelos - and hopefully we'll join each other on a
couple of songs."

Much of the fun of a Cutting Edge of the Campfire festival
involves getting acquainted with unfamiliar acts. I don't recall ever
seeing the names of many of the artists booked into this year's fest.
Some of the artists, not already named in this article, who I have
heard and enjoyed include Lisa Bastoni, Rick Berlin, Gregory Douglass,
Jennifer Kimball (my harmony heroine), Rachel McCartney, Rose
Polenzani, and Naomi Sommers.

For a few laughs along with a glimpse as to why this Club Passim
festival is called Cutting Edge, cut a path to Noam Weinstein's
Campfire set.

* Personal note: My CD player of nearly 20 years lately suffered an
untimely death - untimely, at least, from my point of view. I was
able to hear Weinstein's "We're All Going There" enough times to
confirm my high regard for this recording but not enough times to take
much in the way of notes nor to select and quote some of his most
choice lyrics.

Who: Noam Weinstein, With Jess Tardy
and Matt Kanelos
Where: Cutting Edge of the Campfire Festival,
Club Passim, Cambridge, Massachusetts
When: Saturday, September 1
For more information: http://www.enoam.com/playtimes.shtml

Noam Weinstein is also at New York's Broome Street Fair (an outdoors
festival) on Sunday, September 9; and at the Brooklyn Songwriter's
Exchange, with Lee Feldman and Rebecca Pronsky, in the lovely suburb
of Brooklyn, New York, on Sunday, September 30.


= = = = =


BRIEF ITEMS :


HIGH RANGE
Shoulder to the Wheel" CD

The New Hampshire bluegrass and old-timey band

HIGH RANGE

had scheduled a release event for the group's new CD, "Shoulder to the
Wheel." Evidently, though, they have not yet received the anticipated
shipment from the pressing plant. So we are simply mentioning that
the album is on its way. The latest High Range mailing says that a
special notice will be sent when the disc is available. We will
gladly pass along the news.

-- High Range Mailing, August 21, 2007


DROPKICK MURPHYS
"The Meanest of Times" CD

"The new Dropkick Murphys album, 'The Meanest of Times,' will be in
stores on September 18th."

-- Dropkick Murphys, "The Meanest of Times
Update," August 23, 2007


NANCY NEON
Happy Birthday!

The current news on the BOSTON GROUPIE NEWS home page is dominated by
the big birthday party at the Abbey Lounge of

NANCY NEON.

http://www.bostongroupienews.com/

For an account of the event, which was marked by good music and good
company, and for a couple up-to-date photos of NN herself, be sure to
visit Boston Group News today.

I have an uncommonly dark computer screen and I can't make out the
photo of

BLOWFISH,

though I understand there is one. (I am temporarily locked out of the
building where I normally check out on-screen this, that, and the
other things which require a brighter image. New carpet and new
lighting are coming in, while people have been sent out.)


ROCK NOTES

Though it is, as I still understand it, a Friday feature, as of 5:30
p.m. this Friday there was no "Rock Notes" column by Jonathan Perry
posted on the Living/Arts table of contents of Friday's Boston Globe.

I remember a time when I would have gone way, way, way out of my way
to get a copy of the "Rock Notes" column each week, and it is sad
seeing it become as scarce as it has lately.


end BRIEF ITEMS


= = = = =


Radio Tracks

'The River' runs green -- and it's not alone
WXRV operations manager Ron Bowen stands beside the new solar panels
on the station's roof. The panels provide roughly enough energy to
power 'XRV's main studio.

By Clea Simon, Globe Correspondent | August 24, 2007

http://www.boston.com/ae/tv/articles/2007/08/24/the_river_runs_green____and_its_\
not_alone/

IN THE OVERNIGHT HOURS, I often get commercials for solar powered
radios from the C. Crane company. So an article about radio stations
that are going partly solar-powered seems like a nice complement.


NEMSnews

New England Music Scrapbook
Brattleboro, Vermont

E-MAIL US via:
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Please do NOT click the Reply button. Clicking Reply sends your
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. . . . .


IF YOU HAVE FRIENDS WHO WOULD BE interested in any of the items in
this issue, please forward this newsletter to them. Thanks! We
believe this is one of the main ways we pick up readers.


As a rule, we do not post SHOW LISTINGS. The reason is quite
simple. Though our name is the NEW ENGLAND Music Scrapbook, probably
an easy majority of our readers are based outside the six New England
states. The great majority of show listings would be of no interest
at all to the great majority of our readers.

We make exceptions when show listings are part of an item of more
general interest. CD-release events are great examples. For us, the
main point of an item of this sort is that an act has a new record.
The show being announced is of secondary interest to us - if that - as
far as the contents of our newsletter goes.

In the very few, truly exceptional instances where we post show
listings...


... Shows can be canceled, sold out, or even moved to another
date or location. We recommend checking the Web, calling ahead or
otherwise confirming details.


To SUBSCRIBE to this newsletter:
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E-MAIL via:
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(Please do NOT click the Reply button.)

NEWSLETTER's Yahoo Groups Home Page:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/uridfm/

General CONTACT Information:
http://www.geocities.com/uridfm/contact.htm


Issue 2007:237

Published no less often than monthly.
We're guessing eventually we'll settle
into an every-other-week schedule.

Copyright © 2007 by the New England Music Scrapbook. All rights reserved.

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