Tag: 250724

Yachtley crew

Toto, Christopher Cross and Men At Work hit Gilford

Yacht Rock, the genre that was another genre when it was popular, got a big boost last year with an HBO documentary that featured interviews with the musicians behind songs like “What A Fool Believes,” “Baby Come Back” and “Ride Like the Wind.” It also had Donald Fagen offering an unprintable response to the notion that his band belonged in the film.

A few months later, two of the sound’s stalwarts announced a summer tour: Toto and Christopher Cross, along with Men At Work, an Australian band that broke on MTV but whose hits nonetheless were probably in rotation on more than a few sailboats and cabin cruisers.

The well-timed showcase stops at BankNH Pavilion on July 28. In a June phone interview Toto lead singer Joseph Williams had some thoughts on the retroactively applied moniker once loosely referred to as West Coast Style until someone spotting a skipper’s hat on a ’70s album cover led to a rebrand.

“Some of the guys in Toto didn’t really consider it much of anything other than a parody, possibly an insult,” he said. But the name stuck, and bands like Weezer elevated it. “What it did do is help bring younger generations to the table with this music, and you can’t fault that. So everybody has sort of embraced it at this point.”

Williams joined in the mid-1980s, following a career that included jingle work, a Las Vegas tribute revue and the proto-American Idol show Star Search. His connection to the band that produced hits like “Africa,” “Hold the Line” and “99” began before that, however, even though he was 17 when the first Toto album was released.

Growing up in Los Angeles, Williams met Toto guitarist Steve Lukather in high school. His dad, movie and television composer John Williams, worked with the fathers of both David Paich and Jeff Porcaro. “I knew these guys, they knew who I was; I was a friend and a fan,” he said. “It was very exciting to watch the big success that they had.”

With an Oscar-winning dad behind the soundtracks of Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Williams’ career path was inevitable. “I don’t remember a time that music wasn’t sort of a language for me,” he said, “I learned [it] before I learned the English language, or how to speak.”

There are two parts to Williams’ tenure with Toto. From 1986 to 1988 he toured and helped the band make a pair of LPs. The second, The Seventh Album, had massive success overseas. “A few of those songs were huge … bigger than they were here,” he said, “One of them was a No. 1 hit and the others were top 10 and top five.”

He then left due to a cocaine addiction, as recounted in a 2022 interview with MEL Magazine. “Nothing abnormal,” he’s quoted as saying at the time. “But as a singer, that’s the one substance you can’t do. It freezes your throat.” Williams returned permanently in 2010. In the interim, he also contributed to a song on Toto’s 2006 album, Falling in Between.

His rehabilitative comeback included a role in Disney’s 1994 animated movie The Lion King, as the singing voice of Adult Simba on “Hakuna Matata” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” Williams was hired to record demos of the songs with singer Saida Garrett a year before production began, and came back to record some final parts in Hans Zimmer’s studio.

“They hadn’t figured out exactly how they were going to pull off ‘Hakuna Matata’ and I just happened to be in the booth,” he recalled. “They said, ‘Why don’t you give this a try? No guarantees but maybe we’ll come up with something.’ So I sang my part and the animation happened after that. I think Nathan Lane and those guys did their singing later, because it didn’t exist on the version I did.”

Toto, Christopher Cross and Men At Work
When: Monday, July 28, 6:45 p.m.
Where: BankNH Pavilion, 72 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford
Tickets: $44 and up at ticketmaster.com

Featured photo: Toto. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 25/07/24

Local music news & events

• Funny ladies: The first in a summer series, Mother of a Comedy Show is a long-running showcase of New England’s top female standups. Kathe Farris, Kelly MacFarland and Kerri Louise tell jokes about family life and relationships, and keeping marriage blissful through humor and levity. The evening of comedy is “a celebration of life as a mom, daughter and spouse, in all its messy glory.” Thursday, July 24, 7:30 p.m., 38 Ladds Lane, Epping, $35 at eppingtheatre.org.

• New place: Enjoy originals and covers from singer-songwriter George Isley at a restaurant/bar in the former location of Chuck’s Barber Shop and N’awlins Grille. There’s an open mic each Thursday and live music Fridays, organized by local favorite Hank Osborne. Upcoming are Olivia Conway (8/1), Mike Barger (8/8), The Dusty Duo (8/15), Gary Smith (8/22) and Chris Salemme (8/29). Friday, July 25, 8 p.m., 90 Low, 90 Low Ave., Concord, htosborne@finesituation.com.

• Song man: Singer-songwriter Jon Pond, who performs under the moniker Spare Souls, plays a solo show at a Milford craft beer bar. Pond’s song “Provisions” is a bracing gem in its rocked up original version, and a few months back Pond re-recorded an acoustic take that’s as haunting as the first one is jumping. 2023’s “Dreams and Gold” is another standout, bluesy and upbeat. Saturday, July 26, 2:30 p.m., Station 101, 193 Union Square, Milford, facebook.com/sparesouls.

• Good brand: Guitarist Andy Scott is the closest thing to an original member left in Sweet, the British glam rock band that blew up with songs like “Little Willy,” “Love Is Like Oxygen” and “Ballroom Blitz,” but that’s the story with more than a few classic acts. “Keeping the legacy alive” is how this ensemble is advertised. At one point, multiple versions were touring, but Scott’s is the last. Sunday, July 27, 8 p.m., Tupelo Music Hall, 10 A St,, Derry, $45 at tupelohall.com.

• Brotherly love: Bargain seats under the roof remain for the Black Crowes show in the Lakes Region, with a “Ticket to Summer” going for 30 bucks. For years, it looked like the blues rock stars whose biggest hit was an Otis Redding cover would go the way of Oasis and their warring brothers, but now both bands are reunited and on the road. Dreams do come true. Wednesday, July 30, 7:30 p.m., BankNH Pavilion, 82 Meadowbrook Lane, Gilford, $30 and up at ticketmaster.com..

Class Clown, by Dave Barry

Class Clown, by Dave Barry (Simon & Schuster, 244 pages)

One thing that has been lost with the decline of newspapers is the syndicated humor columnist that most everyone knew of and read. For three decades, one of those was Dave Barry, whose home base was, and still is, the Miami Herald.

For many people, reading Barry’s “year in review” columns was a December tradition. He’s still writing them; it’s just that with paywalls and such, they seem harder to come by. (“Some readers look forward to it; others view it as an opportunity to inform me that I used to be funnier,” Barry says of the column now.)

At 77, somehow still possessed of a twenty-something head of hair, Barry has written a memoir to add to his oeuvre, which is populated with titles like Dave Barry Turns 40, Dave Barry Turns 50 and I’ll Mature When I’m Dead. It’s hard to imagine that there are any stories he hasn’t told, and sure enough, many make encores here. (Stop him if you already know he’s been in a rock band with Stephen King, but he’ll probably keep going.)

As someone who was reading Barry in the 1980s, when he was new to the Herald and newspapers were still a big deal, I feared this new book would feel overly familiar, like so much tired schtick turned out by long-in-the-tooth authors unwilling to hang up the typewriter. But he surprised me.

Not that there isn’t a certain predictability about Barry’s style and delivery; the surprise was in what he was willing to reveal when he wasn’t working to be funny.

He wallops us in the beginning with a story that promises to be boring — the title is simply “Mom and Dad” and he begins it, “Like so many members of the Baby Boom generation, I started out as a baby.”

Barry recounts his formative years in affluent Armonk, New York, where his own sense of humor was cultivated with decidedly quirky parents. Just when we think this is an idyllic story of shiny happy people having more fun than us, Barry reveals the problems his parents struggled with as they grew older. Juxtaposed with the wholesome upbringing the Barry children were given, the end of the parents’ stories is jarring and deeply poignant, reminiscent of some of the darker family stories told by the humorist David Sedaris. It’s unexpected, and reminds us that so often there is sadness behind the veil that funny people have to try to overcome.

After high school, he studied English at a (then) all-male college founded by Quakers, Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where he says he “read roughly a third of the way through many great literary works.” (When he later escaped the draft during the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector, he says that Society of Friends connection may have benefited his case.) It was at Haverford where he was first published, assigned to write an article about the opening of a Nixon for President office. “As a long-haired, pot-smoking hippie,” he had no interest in the subject and submitted a humor column, which may or may not have been published (he doesn’t remember).

Not knowing what else to do with an English degree, he flirted with straight-up journalism, even working as an intern with Congressional Quarterly, got hired as a reporter for a daily newspaper, and went on to work for the Associated Press, all the while writing humor columns when he could. Unhappy with the constraints of the AP, he quit that job to work at one of the most humorless writing jobs out there: that of a business-writing consultant, but he continued to work as a freelancer, and when a humorous piece he wrote on natural childbirth, focusing on the birth of his son, ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer, his humor writing career really took off. Barry no longer had to pitch his columns; editors were asking him to write for them.

Barry sails through the rest of his career with stories studded with famous people and irate readers and snippets of his columns and articles. There have been so many that unless you’re a 30-year subscriber to theHerald, many are fresh and riotously funny, despite their age. There is, for example, an excerpt of an “interview” Barry did with then Florida Gov. Bob Graham, in which the governor, as Barry puts it, “flipped a switch and went into Zany Mode,” and the two bantered as if they were on a late-night show.
“Barry: What can the state do about harmonica safety? I don’t know if you have any idea how many Floridians die every year in harmonica accidents….

Graham: Well last year we actually made some substantial improvement. In 1981, there were four people who died of harmonica accidents. Now actually, I think it’s only fair to count three of them, because the fourth one was actually, I would say it was more of a swimming pool accident.”

It goes on, gloriously, and it makes you long for the day — of what, I’m not sure. Newspapers? Politicians taking themselves less seriously? There is something in Barry’s career that hasn’t been replaced by a newcomer, let’s just say. The same when we lost Erma Bombeck, Lewis Grizzard, Art Buchwald and so many others.

Barry subtitles this book “the memoirs of a professional wiseass,” drawing on his mission in high school, which he says was wiseassery. He had a friend with whom he basically pranked his way through school without serious consequence. He recalls life events with the nostalgia of the Boomer he is, and sometimes he almost seems Forrest Gump-like as he romps his way through historic events, growing ever more famous, writing screenplays and novels, and even winning a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Class Clown is unlikely to win any elite literary prizes, but Barry proves that on the cusp of 80 he can still make America laugh. B

Featured Photo: Class Clown by Dave Barry

Album Reviews 25/07/24

Jens Kuross, Crooked Songs (Woodsist Records)

The first time musician/politician Hayden Pedigo heard this folkie’s music he pronounced it a cross between Arthur Russell and Harry Nilsson, but that was before Kuross, a Los Angeles-to-Idaho refugee, put aside his synthesizer and followed Pedigo’s advice to make this minimalist, ambient half-plugged-guitar record. The short description of this one is Jeff Buckley with Chris Martin’s Marvin The Martian-esque voice, unhurried slices of life that’ll be perfect for sipping scotch in quietude by your end-of-summer campfire. What’s great about this is that Kuross had all but given up on ever making any splash in the music business prior to running into Pedigo; he’d retreated to Boise and become a cabinet maker. Ironically enough, that’s precisely the sort of authenticity any L.A. music scout would max out a few AmExes to find, so one can’t help wishing this guy the best when this record streets at the end of August. I mean, Bonnaroo types who are always bemoaning Buckley’s loss really need to put this on their radar. A+

Gayle Young and Robert Wheeler, From Grimsby To Milan (Farpoint Recordings)

Pardon the setup, there’s some unpacking to do here before we drill too deep into this experimental album. First item to note with regard to this duo is the presence of Robert Wheeler, the great-great-grandnephew of Thomas Alva Edison, as well as a member of 50-year-old Cleveland-based art-punk band Pere Ubu since 1994 (that band has been somewhat obscure through the decades, only charting once with 1989’s “Waiting For Mary,” a Joy Division-meets-Captain Beefheart-sounding tune). Meanwhile, in her spare time, Canadian concert musician Gayle Young builds her own instruments, including the “amaranth,” a complicated-looking stringed instrument that vaguely resembles a bongo drum that’s been sawed in half; that’s the thing she noodles around with here whilst Wheeler makes a bunch of flatulent noises with a vintage ElectroComp 101 (made by EML during the late 1960s). The twosome probably got some therapy out of making this record; most of it is like ASMR for mud-dwelling snapping turtles, as in one can practically smell the skunk cabbage. A curiosity for noise wonks. B

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, July 25, will see a jumble of new music releases dumped upon humanity, not that we aren’t still traumatized by the last jumble, you folks had better toughen up, let me see your war face! Now surely all you older Americans reading this remember Madonna, but for those of you who are younger, just think of Lady Gaga wearing stripper outfits from the 1930s, or if you don’t even know who Lady Gaga is because you’re really young, maybe just imagine a cross between a non-funny Chappell Roan and Cardi B. Are you with me so far, good, I’d hoped not, but anyway, in the ’90s, Madonna stopped doing normal 1980s techno-pop songs in order to become a trance-techno diva, which resulted in the album Ray Of Light, cementing her as, you know, the next Cher. Now, if you’ve never heard of Cher, ask your grandmother, because like all boomers, she owned a copy of Cher’s early-1970s vinyl single “Gypsies Tramps And Thieves” and she’ll be glad to explain Cher to all you young 4channers, since I don’t want to. I apologize for that, since I know for a fact that people get a kick out of my reporting on the doings of really super-old pop stars. How do I know that? Because a local-to-Manchester Jehovah’s Witness pastor showed up at my house to give me pamphlets and tell me about the fast-approaching Apocalypse (which, duh, it’s already here isn’t it) but anyway — and this is a true story — he asked me excitedly if I was indeed “that Eric Saeger,” and when I told him I was, he started giggling schoolgirlishly and telling me how much he loved this column because it cracks him up when I make fun of prehistoric arena bands and mummified pop stars who are somehow still around despite spending most of their days bathing in formaldehyde. And so this section of this week’s multiple-award-winning column is dedicated to that pastor, let’s go see what on Earth Madonna is even doing on her brand new album, Veronica Electronica! By the title I assumed it’s got AutoTune on it, but nope, it’s composed of previously unreleased remixes from Ray Of Light, doesn’t that sound unnecessary? I have to pick a tune; how about Johnny Madder’s “Oriental Hindu Mix” of “Shanti/Ashtangi,” since I haven’t been to a yoga class in forever and kind of miss it (I’m lying of course). Yes, it’s even more yogic than the original, but the vibe is ruined; it sounds like there’s a sample of a jaw harp in the beginning. In the trash it goes.

• My new pastor bro will also be delighted to know that famous performing Halloween clown Alice Cooper has a new album coming out this week, The Revenge Of Alice Cooper, I assume this’ll be absolutely dreadful, except maybe during some of the parts where Alice isn’t singing. But wait, this is the first album in 51 years from the original Alice Cooper band (the four who are still alive I mean)! Features the tune “Black Mamba,” wherein Alice does his creepy guy shtick and the band sounds like 1960s-era Traffic with a wah wah pedal. Apocalypse, take me away!

• Chicago-based psychedelic rockers Post Animal’s fourth LP, IRON, includes the tune “What’s A Good Life.” This doesn’t sound psychedelic at all, more like a throwaway demo from José González singing over a 1982 Casio keyboard. Hitting “Delete” now before I forget.

• We’ll wrap up this apocalyptic week in music with underrated folk-rocker Patty Griffin, whom some of you know as “Not Shawn Colvin, The Other One, Whatsername.” Crown Of Roses is her new album; its single is “Back at the Start,” a KT Tunstall-ish number that’s very nice but packs all the excitement of a Home Depot paint-swatch book.

Almond Blueberry Swirl Sorbet

The world of frozen desserts has gotten less straightforward recently.

There’s ice cream, of course, and there’s always been sherbet. But now, we find ourselves in a frozen jungle of sorbets, sorbettos, gelatos, granitas, and palettas — though not, tragically, the greatly missed Choco Tacos. **Bumps chest twice, and raises fist to the sky**.

What does it all mean? Here’s a short, mostly accurate breakdown:

Gelato – This Italian-style ice cream is made mostly from milk, with very little cream.

Sherbet – (Please note that there is no second “r.” I know! It came as a shock to me, too.) This is made usually using fruit flavors, and a very small amount of milk.

Sorbet – This refers to any churned frozen dessert product that doesn’t contain any dairy at all. It might seem super creamy from ingredients like coconut milk, but it never has any milk-milk in it.

That’s what we’re making today:

  • ¾ cup (180 g) unsweetened almond butter
  • ¾ cup + 2 Tablespoons (180 g) granulated sugar
  • 2¾ cups (660 g) unsweetened almond milk
  • ¼ cup (72 g) orgeat – an almond syrup, often used in tiki drinks
  • blueberry jam

In a blender, combine all the sorbet base ingredients (everything except the jam). Maybe add the almond butter last, so it doesn’t gum up the blades of your blender. Blend — slowly at first, then more vigorously — for several minutes. Put the blender jar in your refrigerator to chill for several hours or overnight. (If you don’t have an ice cream maker, pour the base into a zip-close bag, and lay it flat in your freezer to freeze solid.)

Reblend your cold sorbet base, then pour it into your ice cream maker, and churn it according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, cut your frozen sorbet base into ice-cube-sized chunks, and break them down in your blender or food processor. You will end up with soft-serve consistency ice cream.

Spoon the ice cream into freezing containers, alternating layers with blueberry jam. You’re looking for a ratio of about 60 percent sorbet to 40 percent jam. Store in your freezer for several hours to harden up. You can buy cardboard ice cream containers online, but one-pint, plastic takeout containers work well, too; just keep in mind that they crack easily when frozen, so you might only get one use out of each one. This recipe will make about a quart of sorbet.

There are some foods that don’t work with others. But then there are others — citrus fruits for instance, or almonds — that are the Miss Congenialitys of the food world. Almonds work especially well with blueberries.

Cold and almondy, with fruity overtones is a winning combination. And, not for nothin’, it’s very pretty.

Featured photo: Almond Blueberry Swirl Sorbet. Photo by John Fladd.

A gathering with bite

New England Hot Sauce Festival brings the heat — and ocean support

Gabe DiSaverio feels very strongly about sharks and about hot sauce.

DiSaverio is the owner of Spicy Shark Hot Sauce and the main organizer of this weekend’s Hot Sauce Festival, which will be held Saturday, July 26, at Smuttynose Brewery in Hampton. He is also a huge fan of sharks.

“I’m very passionate about shark conservation,” he said. “I’m a scuba diver. Aside from being a Jaws fanatic, I’m kind of obsessed with sharks. I’m very into shark conservation. As a company, we work with and donate to a lot of nonprofits in the shark conservation world. So that’s the reason for the name of our company. I wanted to keep that same spirit alive for the hot sauce festival.” Last year’s Festival raised almost $20,000 for shark and ocean conservation.

The Hot Sauce Festival, which focuses on hot sauces made in New England and the Northeast, has attracted a truly surprising amount of interest, DiSaverio said.

“We have around 60 vendors total,” he said. “So we have 30 hot sauce vendors, and I’m not exaggerating when I say the wait list is over 30. It’s crazy the interest we’ve gotten from the hot sauce community. We’re a New Hampshire company, but I consider New England to be our home state, our home region. And there’s nothing else like this here. The thing about all the hot sauce festivals [I’ve been to] were they were all totally different except for the fact that they were all super well-attended and everyone was happy.”

DiSaverio said one of the guiding principles of the New England Hot Sauce Festival is that it should be a family-friendly, inclusive event.

“I wanted to have a real community feel and my spin on it is the whole-family aspect,” he said. “A lot of hot sauce festivals have become drinking festivals. There’s no liquor, there’s no wine, and there’s no outside beer other than the Smuttynose beer on site. It’s totally intended for … families. So we have bouncy houses, we have face painting, and we have a kids’ magic show.”

“There are four official eating contest events,” DiSaverio said. “Three of them are amateur-level and one of them is professional. So the amateur ones are a Jalapeño Speed Contest, to see who can eat a pound of jalapenos the fastest. Then we’ve got our Hot Wing Contest, which is five different rounds of progressively hotter chicken wings. And then we have the Super Hot Competition and that is hot peppers straight from Ed Curry’s farm in South Carolina. Ed Curry is the owner of Pucker-Butt Pepper Co., which is such a great name. And he is the creator of the Carolina Reaper pepper and more recently Pepper X, which beat the Carolina Reaper as the hottest pepper in the world. So all of these peppers are coming straight from his farm.”

To compete in the Super Hot Competition, contestants need to submit an application, including a resume to prove their bona fides.

“I’m someone who’s got a crazy high tolerance,” DiSaverio said, “but if I had a bite of a Carolina Reaper — which I have — a bite of one will knock you out for at least a day. You will be dealing with that for a long time. So the fact that some of these people can eat over 50 of them is just a whole another level of insanity.”

That said, DiSaverio made it clear that the Festival is not just for chili-head thrill-seekers.

“You don’t even, like, have to like spicy things to have a good time,” he said. “There are so many contests to watch, there’s beer to drink, and of the actual food vendors — the nine food trucks we have — none are spicy or hot-themed. They’re all very different. You can come to a hot sauce festival, have no hot sauce, and still have an amazing, amazing time.”

4th Annual New England Hot Sauce Festival
When: Saturday, July 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Smuttynose Brewery, 105 Towle Farm Road, Hampton, 601-8200, smuttynose.com
Tickets: General admission tickets are $15; VIP tickets are $20. Visit newenglandhotsaucefest.com.

Featured photo: Competition. Courtesy photo.

Stay in the loop!

Get FREE weekly briefs on local food, music,

arts, and more across southern New Hampshire!