Tag: 231207

Make music merry

A fan’s gift guide

It’s the holiday season and once again time to make a music fan’s eyes and ears light up like a Christmas tree. From modest to mammoth, and across a range of ways to access their passion, here are suggestions for your special someone.

If your giftee’s passion extends to creating music, check out Teenage Engineering, a Swedish company that makes the Pocket Operator, a line of mini synthesizers that resemble a calculator and sell for under a hundred bucks. If you’re feeling extravagant, the company has introduced the EP-133 KO II, a larger device with exponentially more groove and sequencing power; it’s $299 at teenage.engineering.

For the audiophile on your list, there’s the AudioQuest DragonFly Cobalt, a device that bypasses the crummy audio delivered on cell phones and laptop computers to truly leverage the enhanced sound offered by streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal, $199 at amazon.com, and for phones it’s a good idea to include an adapter in the gift box.

Or you can keep it simple while still turning it up to 11 with the Marshall Kilburn II Bluetooth Portable Speaker. Befitting its brand, the “stout-hearted hero” weighs in at five and half pounds and boasts the loudest output of anything in its class, while providing more than 20 hours of portable power with a single charge, $199.99 at marshallheadphones.com

Maybe your music maven is a purist with a throwback bent who loves only vinyl. Help them keep their prized albums clean with a Boundless Audio Record Cleaner Brush, perfect as a stocking stuffer at $15. But don’t give the leash without a puppy — there are many music box sets on offer this year.

Jason Isbell marked a decade since his breakthrough solo release Southeastern with a quadruple-vinyl, triple-CD edition that has the remastered studio LP along with a live version and demos of every song, with special packaging, $79.99 at amazon.com. The seemingly endless flow of Beatles music and the final drop of so-called new songs from the Fab Four continues with a repackaging of their Red 1962-1966 and Blue 1967-1970 albums, with a total of 21 previously unreleased tracks, $69.99 at amazon.com.

Wanna feel old? Green Day’s Dookie is turning 30 and the Berkeley punk stalwarts’ first big release has the deluxe treatment, with a six-LP (brown vinyl, natch) box set that includes a bevy of tchotchkes to go with outtakes, demos and live takes, including four songs from their notoriously mud-splattered Woodstock ’94 set, $121.32 at amazon.com.

Dolly Parton answered her induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by inviting a big chunk of its membership (and Kid Rock) to work on Rockstar, her first rock ’n’ roll record. She even reunited the remaining living Beatles, along with Peter Frampton and Mick Fleetwood, for a version of “Let It Be.” It’s available as a four-vinyl album box set for $59.98 at amazon.com.

There is no shortage of books for the music fan. For superfans of the aforementioned Ms. Parton, give Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, a fashion-focused autobiography that peeks into the singer’s closet and is packed with more than 450 color photos, $25 at amazon.com.

To (extravagantly) mark the 60th anniversary of Beatlemania for your favorite fan, give 1964: Eyes of the Storm, a collection of photos taken by Paul McCartney with his 35mm camera from the end of 1963 through early 1964, the years when The Beatles blew up into an international phenomenon and altered the course of music history. It’s $77.79 at popmarket.com.

For those growing misty-eyed for the early days of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and other flannel-shirted rockers, Mudhoney guitarist Steve Turner’s Mud Ride: A Messy Trip Through the Grunge Explosion covers the evolution and growth of Seattle’s music scene, from DIY club shows to its Big Bang, which removed most hair metal bands from the earth. $28.79 at popmarket.com.

One of the latest classic rock memoirs is My Effin’ Life, from Rush bassist, keyboard player and singer Geddy Lee. It’s filled with anecdotes of his time with the prog rock power trio, along with personal stories of growing during World War II, with a grandfather who was murdered during the Holocaust. Novelist Michael Chabon praised the “warmth, care, artfulness, hard-earned wisdom and … gently skewed humor” in his book. $24.99 at amazon.com.

It’s always a good idea to keep things local. Here’s a thought: The next time you attend a show at The Shaskeen, Penuche’s, the Press Room or Strange Brew, pick up a CD and pay it forward by giving it to a loved one who’s unfamiliar with the performer’s music. That’s the most effective way to put cash in an artist’s pocket.

Of course, there’s always merch. Roots of Creation, one of the busiest bands around, offers a huge selection of T-shirts, caps, pins and posters at their shoprootsofcreation.com website. Sepsiss, the female-fronted heavy metal band that just won another NEMA, has a line of T-shirts calling attention to the insidious practice of pay to play, where clubs force acts to buy tickets to their own shows and re-sell them for payment, along with other forms of financial exploitation. Available at sepsiss.com.

A few musicians have side hustles as artists making very cool stuff. Singer-songwriter Dan Blakeslee, who played his first main stage set at the Newport Folk Festival this year, sells line drawings (also available as T-shirts) at etsy.com/shop/DanBlakeslee. Nick Lavallee, front man for Manchester power pop band Donaher, runs Wicked Joyful, making bespoke action figures and apparel like the Devil Church Explorer Club hoodie or a Taco Tour at Tender Town T-shirt, at shop.wickedjoyful.com.

Featured photo: Behind the Seams: My Life in Rinestones by Dolly Parton

’Tis the season

Holiday pops in Nashua, Concord

This year, Symphony NH will perform its Holiday Pops concert twice, at its home venue, Keefe Center for the Arts in Nashua, and at Concord City Auditorium. The evenings will include festive selections like “You’re a Mean One, Mister Grinch,” Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Christmas Overture,” music from “The Nutcracker,” a Hanukkah song and a sing-along to close things out.

It’s the sort of program pops orchestras have done for years, but in a recent interview, conductor Roger Kalia, now in his fifth year, spoke of his vision for widening Symphony NH’s reach. This includes taking it to places like Bollywood, inside a game console, and to a galaxy far, far away.

“Keeping things fresh and bringing a fresh view to this art form,” he said, indicating that his eyes are set firmly on shifting the demographic. “Some young people … may call [it] a little stuffy, but there’s really so much great music out there.”

Along with Symphony NH, Kalia conducts the Evansville Philharmonic, near his home in Bloomington, Indiana, and Orchestra Santa Monica in Southern California. He co-founded the Lake George Music Festival and is its Music Director. An existence filled with frequent flier miles “comes with the territory,” he said. “You kind of sign up for it when you’re a conductor.”

Coming to the Granite State was challenging beyond that. “I got the job at a difficult time, right when Covid started; my first season, three concerts in, we had to shut down everything,” he said, adding admiration for Symphony NH’s resilience during the pandemic. “We were one of the few orchestras in the country to actually give concerts, and we did a virtual livestream concert format for the majority of the 2020-21 season.”

2023 marked the 100th anniversary of Symphony NH and offered a landmark season. The Indian American Kalia was especially pleased with Symphony Masala last October. The Bollywood-themed show was “the first collaboration of its kind in history, as far as I know,” he said, noting similar efforts were done with Indian instruments. “This was purely 100 percent Western instruments, with a singer … we made history.”

Another innovative concert offered this season was Wynton Marsalis’s A Fiddler’s Tale at the Rex, which combined jazz and symphonic elements. Upcoming in 2024 is Penelope, a song cycle from Sarah Kirkland Snider inspired by The Odyssey first presented as a livestream during the pandemic. “It involves a lot of pop music influences,” Kalia said. “Think Radiohead meets Bjork meets classical. … That’s what you’re going to get with Penelope.”

Brass to the Max will be the first show of the new year and will feature the Nashua-based Spartans Drum Corps in an all-brass percussion music concert. Kalia considers the answer to the question “What is pops?” to be “music for films,” which makes the final concert of the season in June a natural — The Music of John Williams, with selections from Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park on tap.

Kalia is especially looking forward to another first-of-its-kind effort called Game Over(ture), set for March 23 at the Capitol Center’s Chubb Theatre in Concord. Led by guest conductor Austin Wintory, the first video game composer to be nominated for a Grammy, the program will feature music from Wintory’s Journey, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers, Final Fantasy, Prince of Persia, Halo and others.

“It’s a great opportunity to bring in new audiences,” enthused Kalia.

While in Los Angeles, Kalia worked with famous performers, including Jack Black and Randy Newman, and organized From Classical to Rock, with Johnny Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls and Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson. He hopes to do something similar in New Hampshire, like a Beatles evening that happened here before he arrived.

“We’ve been looking at the possibility of either bringing [that] show back for a future season, or even doing concerts with blues artists,” he said. “There’s a great singer I know who specializes in the blues and New Orleans Dixieland jazz, that sort of thing.”

Kalia feels like he’s hitting his target.

“The past couple of seasons, I’ve been introducing newer work to our audiences, and they’ve really latched on to them; they expect it, I think,” he said. “The programming we’re doing … is truly innovative and unique compared to a lot of other cities in this country that have small regional orchestras, and I’m proud of that.”

Symphony NH Holiday Pops
When: Saturday, Dec. 9, 7:30 p.m.
Where: Keefe Center for the Arts, 117 Elm St., Nashua
Tickets: $10 to $63 at symphonynh.org
Also Sunday, Dec. 10, 3 p.m., Concord City Auditorium, 2 Prince St., Concord

Featured photo: Holiday Pops. Photo by David Weiss.

The Music Roundup 23/12/07

Local music news & events

• Old souls: A throwback blend of old-school jazz and contemporary hits, Postmodern Jukebox returns for a New England run that’s already sold out two of three venues, but good seats remain in the Lakes Region. Putting a new twist on the expression “everything old is new again,” the group recasts Radiohead’s “Creep” as a Dinah Washington turn and transforms the Spice Girls “Wannabe” into something else. Thursday, Dec. 7, 9 p.m., Colonial Theatre, 609 Main St., Laconia, $59 and up at etix.com.

• Channeler: The world will never replace Robin Williams, but Roger Kabler brings him to life in an anything but ordinary show. Kabler’s 2022 film Being Robin describes the chain of events that led him to create the tribute, starting with believing that he was possessed by the comic’s spirit. Friday, Dec. 8, 8 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $25 at palacetheatre.org.

• In state: It’s opening night in Rochester, as Joshua Guptel’s movie The Battle for Granite Records premieres. Filmed entirely in New Hampshire, it’s the story of a father and daughter trying to save a business and of the uphill battle faced by hip-hop artists in its early days. Guptel, also known as standup comic Jay Grove, launched Olive Tree Films a few years ago. Saturday, Dec. 9, 7 pm., Rochester Performance & Arts Center, 32 N. Main St., Rochester, $10 and up at eventbrite.com.

• Holiday rock: Born from a Trans-Siberian Orchestra covers show intended as a one-off, Wizards of Winter evolved into the first indie band in a genre that blends Christmas music and grandeur. Fifteen years later they’re a top concert draw. Sunday, Dec. 10, 3 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry, $40 and up at tupelohall.com.

• Helping out: A weekly blues jam expands to benefit longtime New England performer Arthur James and his wife during a time of health and financial struggle. Hosted by Craig Thomas and Bluestopia, the event brings together the regional blues community and includes a raffle of a John Mayer-designed PRS Silver Sky guitar, donated by John Mann’s Guitar Vault, along with a 50/50 raffle. Sunday, Dec. 10, 6 p.m., Riley’s Place, 29 Mont Vernon St., Milford, $10; see facebook.com/events/560806412890214.

The Little Liar, by Mitch Albom

The Little Liar, by Mitch Albom (Harper, 333 pages)

There’s a downside to being the author of a runaway bestseller like Tuesdays With Morrie. It’s that every book you write from that point on will be compared to the most successful one.

In Mitch Albom’s case, the success of his 1997 memoir about conversations he had with his former professor, who was dying of ALS, made him turn to fiction. While his subsequent books haven’t enjoyed the popularity of Tuesdays, which is among the best-selling memoirs of all time, Albom has a loyal following and continues to write columns and books. His latest, The Little Liar, is an imaginative and often troubling story that is part historical fiction and part morality play.

The titular character is an 11-year-old boy named Nico who, at the start of the novel, lives with his family in 1943 in Salonika, a city that at the time had the largest Jewish population in Greece. The Nazis have invaded and are driving Jewish families from their homes and into ghettos with the intent of sending them to concentration camps.

A Nazi officer recruits Nico to assure the families that they are merely being “resettled” and will have jobs and new homes in Poland. Nico is the ideal child for this job, as he is “a boy to be believed,” having no experience with lying; he is so honest naturally that he doesn’t fib even a little bit when asked, for example, if he has done the required reading in school, or if he was tagged in a game of chase. Nico’s believability is enhanced by his good looks: He is an extraordinarily beautiful child, so much so that strangers on the street stop to comment on his appearance.

And because he is so honest, Nico does not doubt the lies fed to him by a young Nazi officer named Udo, who promises Nico that his own family will be safe. Because he does not lie, he can’t envision that others do. So he willingly goes up and down the train platforms telling the anxious waiting families that he has heard that all will be well.

Things fall apart when Nico sees his own family loaded onto a train, and he finds out they are going not to new homes but to Auschwitz. Among them is Nico’s oldest brother, Sebastian, and a family friend, the same age as Nico, named Fannie.

The rest of the novel follows each of those characters — Nico, Sebastian, Fannie and Udo — throughout their lives, showing how Nico’s unintentional deceit affected all of them, even as adults.

These characters were invented by Albom, who said he got the idea for the novel after visiting a museum and learning that Jews were used to convince others to board the trains bound for death camps. “That perversion of truth, with life and death on the line, stayed with me for months and even years later,” Albom wrote in an author’s note.

Some of the characters in The Little Liar, however, were real people, including Katalin Karady, a Hungarian actress who used her fame and money to rescue 20 Jewish children who were about to be murdered by the Nazis.

The main conceit of the novel is that the story is told in first person by a mythological being: the Angel of Truth. This character comes from an ancient parable about how, when God was creating the Earth, he consulted angels with names like Mercy, Righteousness and Truth, and Truth was the only one who advised God not to create humans, because, as Truth said, they would tell lies.

“So what did the Lord do? He considered all that was said. Then He cast Truth out of heaven and threw him to the depths of the earth,” Albom writes.

This parable is not Albom’s creation but part of the Jewish tradition. But Albom makes Truth the storyteller, which allows for occasional soliloquies into the nature of truth and lies, e.g., “Truth is universal. You often hear that expression. Nonsense. Were I truly universal, there would be no disagreement over right and wrong, who deserves what, or what happiness means.” And, “Of all the lies you tell yourself, perhaps the most common is that, if you only do this or that, you will be accepted.”

As the novel went on, this narration started to feel a little contrived, but it all comes together with a clever ending that is surprising and satisfying. This is no small feat, given the dark subject matter that comprises most of the book, during the events of World War II and in the anger, bitterness and resentment that festers in later years.

As the characters travel different paths — Nico turning into another person altogether in an attempt to atone for his past — Albom explores moral questions such as whether there are sins that can’t be forgiven no matter what we do later in life, and whether any amount of atonement can release us from the torment of our own conscience. These are complex questions for the simple language used in this book, but Albom, like his teacher before him, has proven himself to be an exemplary storyteller. B+

Album Reviews 23/12/07

KO Mini, Chef’s Kiss (self-released)

We’re seriously just about at the point where there’s almost no need to list a music release’s record label when writing about its merits or lack thereof, given that so many artists are completely independent (if the vampires at Ticketmaster and such could be prevented from buying up concert tickets and scalping them we’d be even better off). Anyway, what drew me to this little X-rated bubblegum EP was its tease that the single, “stoptryingtohavesexwithme,” “pushes the boundary of how much blunt humor and simultaneous sex appeal you should put into a song.” In a word, I was anticipating something funny, which it isn’t; it’s more about cruel rejection, not that most leering, overstepping incels don’t deserve anything better, but the beat is cool enough, a lot of earthquakey Ed Banger booms going on underneath. It’s a club-banging, Lolita-voiced break from the usual trap oatmeal, which, I’m sure you know by now, I absolutely cannot stand. The playful, fluttering/soaring “Sorry In Advance” is definitely worth checking into if you have some spare Spotify space. A

Escuela Grind, DDEEAATHHMMEETTAALL (MNRK Heavy Records)

I didn’t mean to riff on yet another metal release this quarter, but seriously, folks, this time of year I get sent like 50 of them every five minutes, and as well in my defense, at least this one’s from a New England-based band, well, half of it’s from Pittsfield, Mass., anyhow, go Patriots, amirite fam? The roster is three boys and two girls, one of the latter being singer Katerina Economou, who sounds like the dude from Cannibal Corpse, sort of, but more like Quorthon, like one of those raspy mini-sized cave-monster guys from the Hobbit movie, and the music is, as promised, very grindcore, like the sort of music you picture your pet tarantula humming to itself while it walks across the table to surprise your mom. It’s pretty epic for what it is, I suppose, not that I’d ever want these people to get mad at me, and thus I may be lying. A

Playlist

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Hello, everyone, how was your late/second Thanksgiving, mine was fine except for when I completely ruined the turkey gravy by following a recipe I found online, at the Betty Crocker website, believe it or not, and it basically said I should combine equal parts flour and butter/turkey/whatever slime, but I took the recipe seriously and basically ended up with a cake that tasted like turkey; I’ve decided to cut this horrible disaster into a bunch of small compact cakes and sell them as “Gobbler Twinkies,” watch this space for my initial public stock offering and get a prime seat on the victory train! In the meantime, Friday, Dec. 8, is the next date for new CD releases, and look at that, there are actual albums listed on my private, secret metacritic.com web page, a source that only professional music journalists like me are allowed to access unless you have a web browser! I’ll stick to tradition and get the album I don’t really want to even talk about out of the way first, that being Before And After, the ninety-bazillionth album from horrible-voiced Woodstock charlatan Neil Young! No, I’m kidding, you guys, his song “Ohio” was OK, I thought, and it’s still OK even though it came out before SnapChat or the macarena or even electricity for that matter, and “Rockin’ In The Free World” is pretty epic, despite the fact that his guitar solo, as always, sounded like a duck trying to imitate the Storage Wars auctioneer dude (hey, let me have a little fun while I still can, I’ll be spending the next two or three columns complaining about the fact that there are no new albums coming out aside from box sets and hamster-wheel-metal albums from Finland)! OK, let’s see if my stomach can even deal with this new album, which is composed of acoustic versions of his old songs, like “Burned” from when he was in Buffalo Springfield during the days of the Thomas Jefferson administration, and “Mother Earth” from his 1990 album, Ragged Glory. Here, let me check out his re-rub of his famous song “Birds” and give you my expert analysis: Ah, I’ve got it, it’s an acoustic version of it and is absolutely no better than the original. Aaand moving on.

• Oh, great, time again for me to pretend I know anything about modern bubble-pop or divas or gigantic twerking butts or whatever the 11-year-olds listen to when they troll each other on SnapChat, because look folks, Nicki Minaj is back with a new album, called Pink Friday 2! There’s an advance single here, called “For All The Barbz,” and it features Drake and Chief Keef! The rhymes Nicki contributes are mindlessly pornographic, which adds to the je ne sais quoi, you feel me, and one of the dudes is using Auto-Tune, because it’s still 2002, right? So glad I’m living in a timeline that favors quality over redundant quantity, I have to say.

• Just a second now, this might be OK, the new LP from Alison Goldfrapp, The Love Reinvention! You might know that she got her start by being featured on the 1994 Orbital album Snivilisation, meaning she was one of the first electronic guest-princesses; I have to hand it to her. The new single, “Every Little Drop,” is understated warehouse-rave fodder, which I’m always glad to hear, just prettiness and sexytime romping, but there are no gigantic twerking butts and porn lyrics, what’s a critic supposed to do with this.

• And finally it’s California metalcore band Atreyu, with their new full-length, The Beautiful Dark Of Life! Wow, I have no idea what they’re even doing on the new tune, “[i],” it’s like some sort of Echosmith chillwave thing, I don’t mind it.

Gingerbread

Gingerbread is strange.

Not the actual gingerbread itself but what people do with it. I can’t think of any baked good that people insist on making other things out of. We don’t make little eclair men with mischievous smiles, or build chocolate chip houses or hang brownies on trees as ornaments.

A number of people claim that they don’t like gingerbread when they’ve mostly had it as a flavor of tea, or an ingredient in ice cream, or baked hard and served as a cookie. I won’t say that everybody loves warm, moist gingerbread fresh from the oven, because we all know that there are people in the world with questionable taste, but I do question whether people who don’t like proper gingerbread are entirely trustworthy.

Here is a recipe adapted from King Arthur (kingarthurbaking.com).

Gingerbread

Dry ingredients:

  • 2 cups (240 grams) whole-wheat flour
  • ¼ cup (50 grams) sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda – this will react with the acidic molasses and buttermilk
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 1½ teaspoons ground ginger
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • ¼ teaspoon nutmeg – it’s much better if you grind your own
  • ½ teaspoon ground cloves
  • ½ teaspoon black or cayenne pepper – Penzeys makes a blend called Black & Red that I like
  • ¾ cup (138 g) diced crystalized ginger

Wet ingredients:

  • 8 Tablespoons (one stick) butter, melted
  • ¾ cup (113 g) molasses
  • ¼ ginger beer – many recipes will call for cold, black coffee, but the extra kick of ginger brings more zing to the party
  • 1 egg
  • 1 cup (227) buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 350º. Line either a 9×9” or a 9×13” baking pan with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, combine all the dry ingredients.

In another bowl, combine all the wet ingredients.

Mix the contents of the two bowls together.

Pour into the prepped baking pan, then bake. If you are using a square baking pan, it will probably take 50 minutes or so to bake to the point where a toothpick comes out clean. The larger pan will probably take 30 to 35 minutes.

Let the gingerbread cool for half an hour before cutting and serving. It is excellent with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or butter. If you are adventurous, try it smashed up in a bowl, topped with eggnog; you won’t be sorry.

Gingerbread is a cake that you don’t want to be too sweet. This version gets a little sweetness from the sugar, the crystalized ginger and the ginger beer, but mostly from the molasses. That adds a dark muskiness and a slightly bitter quality that complements the spices. This isn’t a celebration cake. It is a comfort cake to eat late in the afternoon, in the gathering dark, as the snow starts to fall. Eating it will bring a cat to sit in your lap, even if you don’t own a cat.

Featured photo: Gingerbread. Photo by John Fladd.

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