Tag: 241121

Rock revolution

British Invasion Years revisits ’60s

When The Beatles debuted on American television in February 1964, it was a shot heard ’round the world, and the ensuing onslaught of artists from across the pond forever revolutionized music. At the same time, something else happened, as musicians on this side of the Atlantic traded their Martin acoustic guitars for Rickenbackers and responded in kind.

Roger McGuinn, for example, ditched folk music and formed The Byrds, redefining Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” as a jangly, electric rocker. All across the nation bands came together, and the landscape changed. This call and response social moment is captured by British Invasion Years, performing Nov. 23 at Tupelo Music Hall.

“We use the American Revolution as a metaphor … but instead of hurling ammunition back and forth, these bands were throwing hits,” Lee Howard, who plays guitar and sings, said during a recent phone interview that included bass player and vocalist Bob Murdock. “Their battle was for the top spot in the charts.”

Howard and Murdock, along with drummer Dave Hall and Jon Wolf, who plays keyboards and guitar, begin their show as an all-British affair, churning out hits by the Fab Four, Herman’s Hermits, The Who, Moody Blues, Rolling Stones, Kinks and others. Act 2 is the American musical response.

One element separating them from other tribute acts is the precision brought to their task. They’re focused on replicating the studio sound of the songs they play down to the tiniest element. For example, “Time of the Season” by the Zombies opens with a percussive sound that’s either a hand clap or a wood block; the band was equally divided on which.

To settle it, they messaged Zombies lead singer Colin Blunstone on Facebook, who confirmed it was a single hand clap. “It was a very fun but testy debate,” Murdock recalled. “We never really argue in the band, but in the end, it’s always the song that wins.”

Howard agreed. “It’s an example of how far we go to try and replicate as closely as possible the music that we’re doing,” he said. The group is equally exacting in its presentation, donning Beatles suits and other garb worn by bands during the transition from three-minute singles to concept albums like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

They also employ multimedia, like a photo of The Monkees’ Davy Jones alongside Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia on the sitcom The Brady Bunch. It always sparks a raucous audience reaction. Other nostalgia triggers include trolls, Twister boards and Peter Fonda on his Easy Rider Harley.

“We conceptualized this [with] a screen that would project images and bring back those feelings of the day … people do respond to it,” Howard said; he designed that part of the show. “It’s great because we get to tug on emotional heartstrings not only sonically, but visually too.”

It’s a big part of the show’s second half, which can include everything from Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” to “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies. The outfits for that section are, Murdock said, “very hippie-ish, headbands and vests,” reflecting a time that was “all about peace and love.”

Asked for a nugget from the era that they personally love playing, both of them demur. That’s like naming a favorite child, Murdock asserts. “You love them all for different reasons.” Howard likes the Moody Blues’ “Tuesday Afternoon” because it surprises most audiences.

There’s good news on that front for New England fans, however. Everyone in the band enjoys rolling out Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” so Red Sox fans can rejoice! “The audience reacts to that song amazingly, they sing along and wave their hands,” Murdock said. “You get a little glimpse into Neil Diamond’s concert life when he used to sing that.”

Howard believes that the band’s note for note fastidiousness has something to do with it. “Most bands don’t like to do it because it’s not a cool sounding song if you don’t do it right,” he said. “We do it like the record and people flip out. There is something psychological behind that … when people hear what they’re accustomed to hearing, they get a warm, fuzzy feeling.”

British Invasion Years
When: Saturday, Nov. 23, 8 p.m.
Where: Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St., Derry
Tickets: $39 at tupelohall.com

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 24/11/21

Local music news & events

• Denver-bound: Forget that it’s another week until Thanksgiving and just enjoy Rocky Mountain High Experience, a John Denver Christmas concert with singer/guitarist Rick Schuler serving as doppelgänger. His show intertwines hits like “Country Roads” and “Leaving On A Jet Plane” with standards including “Aspenglow,” “Joy to the World” and “Away in a Manger.” Thursday, Nov. 21, 7:30 p.m., Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, $64 and up at etix.com.

• Funny femmes: Two comedians who took different paths to standup appear at Ladies of Laughter. Patty Rosborough is a veteran comic whose first professional credit was Jon Stewart’s pre-Daily Show effort Short Attention Span Theatre; Liz Glazer was a tenured law professor before ultra-pivoting into comedy. Glazer’s act draws on her life as a lesbian, a lawyer and a rabbi’s wife. Friday, Nov. 22, 7:30 p.m., Rex Theatre, 23 Amherst St., Manchester, $35 at palacetheatre.org.

• Turducken rock: A classic rock mashup is on the menu as Not Fade Away Band tops its usual Grateful Dead cover act with The Who and Led Zeppelin. The first run of what the group is calling Who’s Dead Zeppelin was a success in early October. Here’s a trivia question: Did all three of these tributed acts do the Buddy Holly song that gave NFA their name, or just The Dead? Saturday, Nov. 23, 9 p.m., Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket, $15 at stonechurchrocks.com.

• Blues afternoon: A fixture on the regional scene for more than five decades, Alan Roux brings his blues guitar to a favorite seafood place. Enjoy some lobster paired with tasty riffs, as The Roux Duo rolls out classics like “Folsom Prison Blues” and “Natural High” to provide a welcome respite from whatever the Patriots might be doing against the Dolphins. Sunday, Nov. 24, 2 p.m., Makris Lobster & Steak House, 354 Sheep Davis Road, Concord. Visit facebook.com/AlanRouxBand.

• Downtown jam: A weekly music meetup is hosted by One Dime Band, a much-lauded combo who recently released a new album, Live Hustle. Surprisingly, all but one of the LP’s 11 songs are originals; they cover Willie Dixon’s “Let Me Love You.” At this Stormy Monday jam, the band backs any instrumentalists or singers brave enough to get up and perform for the forgiving crowd. Monday, Nov. 25, 7 p.m., Keys Piano Bar, 1087 Elm St., Manchester, keysmanch.com.

Martha (R)

Martha Stewart is a hoot in Martha, the documentary from R.J. Cutler that she apparently has some issues with.

I’ve read that she thinks the documentary spends too much time on her legal woes, she felt some shots made her look old lady-ish, she wishes there was more hip-hop — which, delightful. But the sum total is that she comes off as someone who would be a blast to three-martini-lunch with, who could talk lousy relationships and Wall Street (where she briefly worked) and media and have some cutting remarks about everybody. Her complaints about the doc feel very on brand with the woman we meet in the film, someone who is exacting, who wants things done her way and is usually right about why and who had to fight through the 1980s and 1990s to get people (often men) to see her very successful vision. The doc gives her brand extensions (her Kmart line, for example), magazines and media empire in general as an example of Stewart understanding the marketplace and finding ways to capitalize on that understanding. I even think the section of the documentary that focuses on her prosecution puts the whole situation in a relatively positive light, highlighting the James Comey of it all, who was at the time the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the lead prosecutor of her case. The movie leaves it for you to make of all that what you will but Martha doesn’t shy away from giving her eyebrow-raised, unimpressed response to the whole ordeal and the people involved.

Martha is frank, frequently fun and a fascinating time capsule of a certain era of America, and New York City, that shows a woman continuing to roll on and have fun well past the age even famous and wealthy women are usually allowed to do that in public. B+ Streaming on Netflix.

The Apprentice (R)

At roughly the same time Martha was on the come-up, turning a catering business into cookbooks and wider fame, the son of a local landlord begins his quest to break free of his demanding father’s business shadow and make a name for himself in The Apprentice, a feature film that is basically the Donald Trump comic book character origin story.

The movie’s whole arc shows Trump going from a young-ish man in the 1970s who is somewhat unformed but still with Easter eggs of future personality and appearance elements to the late 1980s when he is basically the guy who any one of us could sketch or impersonate with at least some recognizability. The movie has a very “hey it’s Arkham Asylum” and “look, an Infinity Stone” feel to scenes of Sebastian Stan, as Trump, learning from Roy Cohn (a no-effort-spared Jeremy Strong) how to sell something as the best in the world, like you’ve never seen before, or wave away a problem as being very unfair. It’s Strong whose performance really stands out whereas Stan’s Trump, while not an SNL impersonation per se, is probably not going to escape whatever you come to the movie with regarding Trump. Strong’s performance is not, like, a study in Cohn’s psychology or anything but the coiled rage he brings to Cohn does make for interesting watching.

Maria Bakalova as Ivana is a choice — perhaps it’s because the actress first emerged in a Borat movie but there is some kind of inherent comedy vibe she brings to this movie, which is very dark in its humor and in how it portrays the Trumps’ marriage. She works, on balance, but it’s never not odd.

“Never not odd” might be a good descriptor for the movie as a whole. This is a movie about a person and era in the past, true but also fictionalized (as title cards explain), but also the movie itself is only a movie anybody bothered making because it has so much connection to our real-world present. That may be a more immersive experience than you’re looking for in your relax-on-the-couch movie-watching, but with its interesting performances and point of view about this time and place, I wasn’t bored and wasn’t sorry I watched it. B- Available for rent or purchase.

Saturday Night (R)

The public personas of both Donald Trump and Martha Stewart are embedded in American culture in part because of Saturday Night Live, the first episode of which is the focus of Saturday Night.

Actually, the movie’s focus is the 90 minutes before that first showtime in 1975, when showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) attempts to pull together a mess of sketches, music and comedy that ran three hours (twice as long as it should) in rehearsal and all of its differently persnickety personalities into a live show that will be allowed back on air next week. The network — as personified by Dave Tebet (Willem Dafoe) — is perhaps actively rooting for him to fail, says Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), one of the few executives supporting the Saturday Night concept. John Belushi (Matt Wood) thinks he’s an artist. Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) is gunning for Johnny Carson’s job. Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) isn’t sure exactly why he’s there. The women — Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Laraine Newman (Emiky Fairn) and Jane Curtin (Kim Matula) — don’t seem to be given the same weight as the men (either on the show or in this movie). And Finn Wolfhard as an NBC page is just trying to get live humans in the building to be an audience for this whatever-it-is show.

I’ve seen this movie, which was directed by Jason Reitman and written by Reitman and Gil Kenan, called Aaron Sorkin-y and I see why. There is a little bit of the “my TV show will save America” vibe that Sorkin brought to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip here. And the movie allows Lorne Michaels to compare himself to Thomas Edison without giving it the eyeroll that I did. But there are also process elements here that I enjoyed, like their attempting to figure out the lighting and how to accomplish a five-second wardrobe change. Particularly if you have some kind of memory of those years, either live as they happened or in Comedy Central reruns decades later, Saturday Night is a slight but mostly fun look at a moment. B- Available for rent or purchase.

What I Ate in One Year, by Stanley Tucci

What I Ate in One Year, by Stanley Tucci (Gallery, 348 pages)

Fame enables so much. If you or I were to propose a book in which we jot notes about what we’ve eaten over the past year, along with occasional asides about what our kids will or won’t eat, and how an airline has once again made flying unbearable, and the friends we’ve had over recently, we’d be pitched in the slush pile. But then again, our friends probably aren’t Robert Downey Jr. and Colin Firth.

And so Stanley Tucci, whose list of credits in Hollywood over the past 40 years has made him more connections than even Kevin Bacon, does get to write such a book, even though it comes on the heels of one that was much more substantial: 2021’s Taste: My Life Through Food. That book was a memoir; his latest is more a journal, and, at first glance, seems kind of scammy. Here’s an actual excerpt from page 90: “I had oatmeal in the [airport] lounge and some orange juice and a croissant. I tried the tater tot things again and they were crisper this time. … Arriving at the hotel, I ordered poached eggs, toast, and sausage, and it was delicious.”

I wish I could say that there were fascinating stories woven around those two meals, but there were not. And yet. The mind-numbing conceit of this book — a foodie records what he eats and doesn’t care whether you find it interesting or not — kind of, sort of, almost works. This is, after all, one of the most likable character actors in Hollywood, who has in recent years become associated with good eating by playing Julia Child’s husband in a film (Julie and Julia) and eating his way through Italy in a documentary (Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy). He has co-owned a restaurant and has written two other cookbooks (The Tucci Cookbook and The Tucci Table).

Maybe he’s just run out of foodie things to say, and the publisher said just keep a journal next year and we’ll buy that. And it isn’t terrible — in fact, in places, it is poignant and heartwarming, particularly when he talks about his interactions with his aging parents. And there are a couple of short, stand-alone essays that are memorable and perfectly timed, including one in which Tucci describes a fan coming up to him in a restaurant and telling him how he used to watch Searching for Italy with his wife, who had recently passed. Tucci, who lost his first wife to breast cancer, knows about grief, and uses the occasion to write beautifully about how is it absorbed:

“It would always be there. Always. But soon, it would become less prevalent. In time her presence would slip into his body, his heart, and his thoughts, sometimes gently, sometimes joltingly, but it would never last for as long as it would today. Eventually, years from now, it would alight on the tip of his soul for just a second or two, carrying with it a shiver of the past and a glimpse of a future that might have been. And then it would disappear again.”

Also, as someone who travels broadly (though tries never to be away from home for more than two weeks at a time), Tucci has a vast and alarming knowledge of things people eat outside of American food courts. The faint of heart may need to skip over the sections about the man who poached a bucket of snakes (“one of the best cooking videos I’ve ever seen,” Tucci says), and about the Italian dish he loves that features a sauce “made with the intestine of a baby calf that is slaughtered while the mother’s milk is still inside of it.” (The name, should you wish to make sure you never accidentally eat this while you are in Rome, is pasta con pajata di vitello a latte. Personally, I’m for making it illegal.)

And on it goes. We get to know Tucci’s wife and children, as well as his parents and some of his extended family, and learn that his daughter doesn’t eat much of anything other than pasta with butter and Parmigiano cheese, which doesn’t bother him because “It has pleased picky eaters and comforted the ailing and the anxious for as long as those three ingredients have been around, which is probably pretty f—ing long. Why? Perhaps because it’s so simple it helps us focus on what is necessary: comfort and health. Eating a simple dish gives one clarity. Pasta with butter and cheese laughs in the face of our complex lives.”

Many of the recipes that Tucci shares here are similarly simple: spaghetti con tonno (with tuna), minestrone soup, and rainbow chard, for example, then he smacks us upside the head with risotto with mushrooms and rabbit legs. All the while, as we read about his trip to Williams Sonoma and a bout with Covid-19 and how he first encountered wild garlic, we are never unaware of the fact that this is a journal — ABOUT WHAT SOMEBODY ATE:

8:30 a.m.: Star pasta with butter, Parmigiano and scrambled egg

10:30 a.m.: Leftover minestrone with a piece of toast

1:30 p.m.: Toasted pita bread stuffed with sheep’s cheese, tomato, and sauteed peppers and onions.

Also, the man never stops eating, and must have the metabolism of those unlucky rabbits.

There is, mercifully, some order to the year, which was, in fact, a complete year, running from Jan. 2, 2023, to Jan. 2, 2024. But it’s difficult to find the big, crinkly bow in which to tie this journal up neatly and to say, “ah, this is why I just read a journal about what a family ate.” I still don’t really know. I learned some things, such as that the British call ground beef mince, and that I will never eat a dish in Rome that ends with a latte. But beyond that, it’s a mystery why it was written, and why I read every word. And it’s a testament to Tucci’s utter likeability that I don’t want those hours of my life back. B-

Album Reviews 24/11/21

Peggy Lee and Cole Schmidt, Forever Stories of: Moving Parties (Earshift Music)

Meanwhile, out past Pluto into the Kuiper Belt, we arrive on the asteroid I usually don’t bring up in this space, experimental pan-jazz that no one knows about and mostly never will. For the most part, as you may know, jazz is at its heart a “conversational” art, which, in our capitalist context, usually involves one-upsmanship, but this sort of borderline-avant expressionism is a whole other duck, capturing the musicians’ moods at the time of recording. Peggy Lee (cello) and the hilariously overextended Cole Schmidt (Sick Boss’s guitarist) are from Vancouver, and this is their first effort as co-leaders. There are electronics afoot here, as well as guest contributors playing such instruments as bassoon, violin, trumpet and piano to various effects. “Blame” opens the record on a genial note, evoking not the rather dark titular subject but a friendly group walk to an urban coffee shop that’s preparing to close for the night. “It Will Come Back” has a lot of melodic appeal past its borderline dissonant intro; “Absences” offers more sonic schizophrenia, a mixture of afterparty steez and gaslit oddballness. Surprisingly listenable. A

DQFI, “Changes” (Nub Music)

This Saint Albans, U.K.-based band’s acronym signifies “Don’t Quite Fit In,” does that sound familiar to anyone who’s ever stanned a rock band before, anyone at all? I committed to giving this release a look-see before discovering it’s a single and not an LP, so I took it as an exercise in self-punishment and “at least you’ll learn something out of it,” like, I knew there wasn’t going to be much going on. And there isn’t. The band’s trip is sounding exactly like The Runaways did in the 1970s, but with a twist: They’re into positivity, man, because there’s so much, you know, negativity in the world! Have you heard about that? OK, OK, I’m not going to douse all you nice eyeball-equipped people in redundant nihilism; after all, the Brady Bunch band was singing “Sunshine Day” in 1972, the year the Watergate scandal broke and the Olympics were interrupted by a rather unsightly terrorist incident, so why not sing about “holding up a light” and building unity in a world where _____ and ____. I mean, why not, Ben Kweller’s a millionaire, so that old broken clock in the sky is completely right twice a day, you know? B

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Time to go buy your frozen turkey and hope it’ll be thawed within the next few days, folks, because this Friday, Nov. 22, is the last Friday before Thanksgiving, when you and your uncle will yell at each other about politics and your dog will amble over to the den to get away from it, because although Rover avoids reading any decent, informative political books just like you two do, he chooses not to start trouble over it! Awful, isn’t it, but the good news is that Ice T is back with his rap-metal band, Body Count, remember when their first album was the coolest thing in the world, before the ole Ice-man became a car insurance salesman on the teevee? Merciless is this album’s title, and — OMG, OMG, this is simply too awesome, it includes a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” but because the Ice Monster is awesome, it starts with the cool guitar solo instead of making us sit through any boring preliminary nonsense, and then he starts rapping low and menacingly about how tough it is in the hood, like, you know how it is when your local Whole Foods doesn’t have any [censored] organic avocados and you [censored] have to walk out empty-handed, with your teevee car salesman money still in your Gucci wallet, don’t you [censored] hate that [censored] [censored]!

• If you ever take a drive to Cancelville and take a walk downtown, mayhaps to stroll around the hilly, well-kept paths of Harvey Weinstein City Park or pop into Cosmo Kramer’s Tast-E Freeze to grab a yummy chocolate frappe, chances are good that you will run into one or more celebrities who can no longer show their faces in public or post things on social media without getting yelled at by everyone who sees them! Why? Because all those celebrities are canceled, like industrial-pop circus clown Marilyn Manson, who, all you ’90s kids will recall, (allegedly) stole his “monster-dude-on stilts” gimmick from Skinny Puppy, without ever asking permission. He was (allegedly) never sued for that, but it doesn’t matter because, as all you People magazine readers know, he eventually got his, but good: He got in so much trouble for all the stupid stuff he (allegedly) did to his former girlfriends that he had to move into the Motel 6 on Johnny Depp Boulevard until he could find new digs, in Cancelville’s tony upper east side! But the plight of celebrities who (allegedly) came out as morons and got mightily canceled by people on the internet is not why we’re here, we’re here to talk about Marilyn’s new album, One Assassination Under God – Chapter 1, please try to be civil! His big record contract was voided because, you know, obviously (allegedly!), so now he is on Nuclear Blast Records, an indie label that also puts out albums from, um, well, Green Lung and 100 other bands you’ve never heard of, it’s all so sad, fam. The single I’m listening to is “Sacrilegious,” a tune that tries to revive the glory days of “Beautiful People” but just sort of flops around, and he doesn’t sound very enthusiastic, but neither would you if your next-door neighbor was Kevin Spacey.

• Irish arena-pop band U2 has a new record, How To Re-Assemble An Atomic Bomb, which is a “shadow album” of 10 discarded songs from 2004’s How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. “Country Mile” is one of these new songs, a microwaved meatloaf of uninteresting ideas that only serves to prove that even the mighty U2 can write amazingly boring songs, as if we didn’t know.

• Lastly it’s Kim Deal’s new album, Nobody Loves You More, which features the single “Crystal Breath,” a perfectly fine no-wave grinder, do go listen to it.

One more pie

At its best, Thanksgiving is the most relaxing of holidays. You wake up, watch the parade, offer to help whoever is cooking the turkey — but only after you’re certain the actual work has been done — and then do some sort of football-related activity, before eating a truly unconscionable amount of food.

And then there’s the reality — political arguments, the rehashing of childhood grudges, dry turkey and judgmental relatives.

On the other hand, there is pie.

Before we talk about how excellent this pie is — and be under no illusions; it is truly outstanding — we need to talk about the pastry elephant in the room.

Pie crusts.

There is a certain type of baker — not you, of course, but somebody with unresolved pie issues from their childhood — who gets very judgmental about pie crusts. We both know who we’re talking about.

Here’s the thing: If you find yourself cowed by the idea of making pie dough from scratch, and are reluctant to make a pie because of it, there is no shame in buying premade pie dough from the grocery store. None.

Would you rather not have pie because it doesn’t pass some sort of virtue test, or would you like some pie? I put it to you that pie is better than no pie.

If you’re in charge of the pie this year and you buy a roll of frozen premade dough, all you have to do is let it thaw on the counter for a few minutes, unroll it into a pie pan, crimp the edges and get on with your life. If anyone asks what the secret of your consistently excellent pie crust is, you can either hold your head high, stare them down and tell the truth, or answer, “Ritual sacrifice.”

Don’t let your in-laws throw shade on your pie.

Sour Cream Pie with Chocolate

  • 2 large eggs
  • ½ cup (60 g) all-purpose flour
  • ½ cup (107 g) white sugar
  • ½ cup (107 g) brown sugar
  • ½ tsp kosher or coarse sea salt
  • 1 cup (227 g) full-fat sour cream
  • 4 ounces (114 g) chopped dark chocolate – the darker the better; 75-80 percent; you’ll want a little bitterness in the finished pie
  • 1 unbaked pie shell

Preheat oven to 325°F.

With a hand mixer, or in a stand mixer, beat the eggs until they are very foamy, two minutes or so.

Beat in the flour, sugars and salt.

Beat in the sour cream.

Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, and give the mixture a quick stir to make sure everything is mixed together.

Mix in the chopped chocolate, then pour into the pie shell.

Bake for 1 hour.

Serve with lightly sweetened whipped cream or ice cream.

When you slice this pie you’ll notice that it has separated into two layers, a top, cookie-like layer on top, with a melty chocolate layer underneath. The flavor has a lot in common with a chocolate-chip cookie, too, but the dark chocolate and the sour cream prevent its sweetness from being cloying. This is another “the-flavor-comes-at-you-in-stages” dessert. The chocolate seems very dominant at first, but then there are little pops of salt, and the sourness of the sour cream comes in at the end.

This is an easy sell to someone who is distrustful of new foods. “It’s like a chocolate chip cookie!” you’ll say. “But for grown-ups,” you’ll mutter under your breath, as you pass them their plate and the whipped cream.

Featured Photo: Sour Cream Pie with Chocolate. Photo by John Fladd.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!