Tag: 260115

Defending the indefensible

The Wrong Hill to Die On is right for laughs

On an upcoming evening at Shaskeen Pub in Manchester, The Wrong Hill To Die On will feature a group of local comedians engaging in a kind of extreme debate, as they defend ridiculous premises, such as “traffic lights are a form of communist mind control.”

The event is hosted by self-described “open mic level comics” Nick Sands and Alex LaChance, with a panel of contestants that includes comics Matt Barry, Mona Forgione, Zach Remi and Tristen Hoffler. Derek Zeiba will open the show with a set, and comedian Ken Murphy will serve as a guest host.

Sands and LaChance are both fans of Story Warz, a weekly game show-themed event in New York City hosted by Luis J. Gomez and Big Jay Oakerson. They wanted to do something similar, but different from that show’s “guess who’s telling this tale” format.

“If you go back to the ’80s, when I was growing up, there were a hundred game shows on TV and half of them were rip-offs of other game shows,” LaChance said by phone recently. “So Wrong Hill To Die On is a kind of homage to that era, but also influenced by current comedy.”

Though LaChance and Sands are relatively new to standup, they’re both comfortable in front of audiences. Sands has a background in theater, LaChance spent two decades fronting rock bands, a few of which appeared at the Shaskeen, and both host podcasts. It’s new territory, but the two believe they have the tools to make it work.

Choosing topics, though, was a tricky proposition.“We didn’t want to put any comic in a position where they were defending something truly reprehensible, especially where we’re going to record it and put it out as a podcast, [so] what topics can we approach?” LaChance said.

In his final podcast of 2025, Nick Sands offered one position, that a McDonald’s burger tops anything on a holiday table. LaChance suggested another two: the casino age should be lowered to 10, and ducks should be allowed to go to school. “They range from silly to sexual in nature,” LaChance said. “I just don’t want to give them away.”

None of those will be used in the game, which will start with solo rants from each of the four competing comics, Barry, Forgione, Remi and Hoffler, with the panel — LaChance, Sands and Murphy — arguing back after each. Audience cheers decide who did the best job of defending the indefensible, and one comic will be eliminated at the end.

Round 2 is Audience Firestorm, where audience submissions are pulled at random; each comic has 30 to 45 seconds to defend them, culminating with another comic eliminated by applause. Finally, in Round 3, the remaining two comics are paired with two crowd members for tag team arguing, punctuated by occasional panelist interruptions.

A Lightning Inferno final round happens after the top comic is crowned. The winner will receive five to six “hot takes” to defend for 20 to 30 seconds each. The night ends with the winner receiving what’s promised as “a super-secret but very enticing prize.”

LaChance and Sands hope for continued success with the format; that’s one of the reasons they chose Shaskeen Pub as a venue, even though they make the rounds at several area comedy spots. In fact, LaChance announced a few days ago that he’s launching a Tuesday night open mic at The Moka Pot Café in Manchester, beginning Feb. 3.

“Nick was just at my house, and we were talking about it, and he said, ‘Do we want to keep doing it every year?’ and ‘I’m like, ‘If it works, I say we keep doing it,’” LaChance said. “I think being able to just have the same environment, just keep dialing it in, is going to make it better and better.”

The Wrong Hill to Die On
When: Tuesday, Jan. 20, at 8 p.m.
Where: Shaskeen Pub, 909 Elm St., Manchester
Tickets: $7.18 at eventbrite.com

Featured photo: Matt Barry. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/01/15

• Fare thee well: With the passing of Bob Weir, the Grateful Dead is truly no longer. Dave Gerard and his band Truffle were longtime acolytes of the Dead.Gerard’s solo set should include songs from the San Francisco standard-bearers to help absorb the loss. Thursday, Jan. 15, at 5 p.m., Railpenny Tavern, 8 Exeter Road, Epping, gerardtruffle.com.

• Comic ability: Tyler Hittner tops a bill that includes veteran funny man Greg Boggis, Kathy Lynch and a three-comic lightning round showdown. Rick Gauthier, who produced the show, hosts. Friday, Jan. 16, at 8 p.m., Alan’s of Boscawen, 133 N. Main St., Boscawen, alansofboscawen.com.

• Youth force: Showcasing the region’s young talent, The Kids Are Alright offers nearly a dozen under-25 performers including 16-year-old country singer Olivia Conway, Danielle Azevedo, daughter of PCL owner Rob, Wolfgang Burger, Mason Cummings, Noah Cummings, Oliver Hannon with Florence, Alex Koletar, Tucker Reinhart, Jaelyn Rix, and Cameron Vose. Saturday, Jan. 17, at 2 p.m., Pembroke City Limits, 134 Main St., Suncook, pembrokecitylimits.com.

• Pop music: Enjoy a solo afternoon set mixing originals and covers from Brian Walker. Later in the evening, at 8 p.m., it’s Hell On Heels, a rocking five-piece band fronted by vocalists Isabelle Howe and Amanda Colburn. Saturday, Jan. 17, at 1 and 8 p.m., Stumble Inn, 20 Rockingham Road, Londonderry, stumbleinnnh.com.

• Serving help: A Pancake Benefit presented by New Hampshire Underground helps victims of the Ash/Vine Street fire in Nashua in December. Gary’s Sunday Jazz Band performs, along with a DJ spinning tunes. Saturday, Jan. 18, at 2 p.m., The Spot, 217 Main St., Nashua, $10 at newhampshireunderground.org.

Album Reviews 26/01/15

Bren Holmes, A Rush to the Start Lin (self-released)

Given that this guy is an original member of the Irish rock band The Young Dubliners, I was of course expecting to be deluged by tin whistles and fiddles and whatnot, but this has nothing of the sort. It’s more like something I’d expect from someone who’d eventually placed sixth in a season of The Voice, that sort of thing, evoking vanilla, dishwasher-safe songwriting hackery right off the bat with “Gloria,” which has a lot of Aughts-era echoes of Beach Boys and humdrum Bonnaroo bait. After that singularly unimpressive start we move on to “Don’t Say You Will,” which tacks in a pseudo-country Ryan Adams direction, a tune I suppose some would accept as semi-Irish-sounding only because the tempo would be fine for a jogging mix and the vocals are mildly uppity. “Ordinary World (for Sinéad)” is obviously a paean to Sinéad O’Connor, with lyrics checking off “defiance” and “sleeping eternally”; it’s a deeply pretty tune whose sentiments have aged enough for us to know that it’s a tune he squirreled away quite a long time ago. Aside from that highlight the songwriting is thuddingly average really. C+ —Eric W. Saeger

Crystal Lake, The Weight of Sound (Century Media Records)

This Tokyo, Japan-based metalcore outfit has been around since 2002, which is pretty amazing considering the supernova-level energy they bring to everything they do. They’re joined this time by a whole crowd of singers whose names are renowned in their bubble, leading off with Signs of the Swarm’s David Simonich, whose Chester Bennington precision takes some of the steam off album-opener “Everblack,” but it’s nevertheless a head-crusher, alternating between Dillinger Escape Plan-influenced math-metal and some guitar-sound experimentation that had me going “OK, that’s cool.” Jesse Leach from Killswitch Engage is here also, tasked with the boyband parts to balance out the room-temperature growling of John Robert Centorrino, the band’s full-time singer. At that point a picture emerges of a band that’s interested in expanding their range to symphonic metal or whatever (who isn’t?), but — and this is really my only problem with the album — Centorrino doesn’t possess that gear. That’s a shame. A —Eric W. Saeger

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Onward we press as one, an army of snark-meisters, to Friday, Jan. 16, another Friday dump of new albums! But first things first, I know a bunch of you little monsters have been laughing behind my back for being completely ignorant about the KPop Demon Hunters thing, and it won’t help that I have a written and signed note from my mom that says I’m deathly allergic to the very idea of a literal cartoon bubblegum band, so just to shut you guys up, I listened to some of their songs in direct violation of my doctor’s orders. As I predicted (what we call in the music journalism a “barely cursory review”), it’s catchy but derivative stuff, mostly because the art-hating cacodemons who threw the thing together just took a bunch of old Lorde and Britney Spears beats, hired the first girl singer who could pull off a really accurate Lady Gaga karaoke, and now there they sit, counting piles of money and laughing in their heated indoor swimming pools. As you know, none of that nonsense is my jam, and the only reason I bothered listening to that garbage was that I figured there was a one in a billion chance that there was something positive to be gotten from it, like maybe the “band” actually had an angle that might interest me, like maybe they used obscure vintage instruments, or drew upon influences like Siberian folk songs from the 10th century and simply jazzed them up or whatever. Of course, as always, it was a waste of my time; after 30 seconds of listening to microwaved Gaga tuneage I was like “OK, I know everything I’ll ever need to know about KPop Demon Hunters” and put on a Wire album to get the disgusting taste out of my ears. I plan never to listen to nor mention them again, but now you know how seriously I take my position as the state’s most highly decorated music journalist, that’s right, I do this for you, not to fatten my Patreon, which can be found in my socials. Anyway, subject change, what was I saying last week about old bands releasing eponymous albums, about how it’s a practice that was big during the Aughts and should have gone the way of Milli Vanilli and yet bands are still doing it, oh yes, I said that it was stupid, so, like clockwork, ’80s thrash-metal band Megadeth has decided to do just that with their new one, Megadeth! Now, the lead single, “I Don’t Care,” is something of a watershed moment, as it’s more Ramones-like than anything I’ve heard from them before, meaning it doesn’t have the same old “Metallica but with more Slayer” vibe that’s typified their oeuvre since the Ronald Reagan era, like, in the song’s video, their singer, Dave Mustaine, seriously doesn’t care if the world collapses, everyone should be skateboarding and smashing each other in the face with beer bottles. I concur.

• Speaking of couldn’t care less, Poppy is back to being Poppy after a brief period during which she tried to be Britney Spears or whatever. You may recall last year she did a collaboration with Babymetal for the handful of 13-year-old Snapchatters who hadn’t given up on her; she continues ripping off Meshuggah on her new album, Empty Hands! “Bruised Sky” is the single, and yup, there’s the Godzilla-bending-the-telephone-wires bassline and all the other essential nutrients, let’s move on.

• The title track from Lucinda Williams’ new LP World’s Gone Wrong rips off the beat from Don Henley’s “Heart Of The Matter,” but other than that it’s acceptable.
• Lastly, with their awkward singing, The Format is like a Loot Crate version of Hoobastank, but if you insist on listening to their music you may. Their newest album is Boycott Heaven, which will remind you of Weezer in case you just landed on this planet and have never heard of Weezer. Did I mention Weezer? —Eric W. Saeger

Featured Photo: Alter Bridge, Alter Bridge (Napalm Records) & Diane Coll, Strangely In Tune (self-released)

Cornmeal crepes with strawberries and mascarpone

Crepes

  • 1¼ cup (285 g) whole milk
  • 2 eggs
  • 3 Tablespoons butter, browned
  • ½ cup + 2 Tablespoons (80 g) flour
  • ½ + 2 Tablespoons (100 g) cornmeal
  • 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla

Mascarpone filling

  • 2 cups (1 16-oz container) mascarpone cheese
  • 4 Tablespoons sugar
  • Large pinch of fresh-grated nutmeg
  • Strawberry preserves, homemade or jarred
  • Finely minced basil for garnish

In your blender, mix the milk and eggs together. Add the browned butter and mix again. Add the dry ingredients — the flour, cornmeal and salt — and blend yet again. Add the vanilla and blend one last time. (Making crepe batter in a blender makes things go extremely smoothly — if you put the ingredients in in the right order. If you were to put the dry ingredients in first, with the wet ingredients on top, there is a good chance that the batter wouldn’t mix properly, and a gelatinized blob of flour would sit at the bottom of your blender jar, mocking you.)

Put your blender jar in the refrigerator and chill the batter for at least half an hour.

If you have a small, non-stick skillet, this is its big moment. Place it over medium heat, and melt a lump of butter in it.

Take your crepe batter from the refrigerator and give it another spin in the blender to make certain that everything is well mixed. Because the cornmeal is heavy and is prone to sinking to the bottom of the batter, you might want to reblend the batter after every two crepes.

Pour about a quarter of a cup into the hot melted butter, and swirl the pan around to spread the batter over the entire bottom of the pan. Return the pan to heat, and cook your crepe until the top surface isn’t shiny anymore and the edges start to brown just a tiny bit. Then lift a corner of the crepe with a spatula, and flip it over with your fingers. Cook the B-side of the crepe for another minute or so, then transfer it to a plate.

If you are using a non-stick pan, you will not have to rebutter it. If you are using a different species of frying pan, you will probably want to regrease it between crepes. Cook crepes until you have used up all your batter.

Separately, mash the mascarpone, sugar and nutmeg together, and stir until they combine into a very stiff mixture.

Now you have a choice. If you want sweet dessert crepes, fill them with strawberry preserves and top with the mascarpone topping. If you want a less sweet, slightly savory crepe, fill it with the mascarpone and top it with strawberry preserves. Either way, garnish with minced basil.

Serve with ice-cold milk or sparkling wine.

Featured photo: Cornmeal crepes. Photo by John Fladd.

Try the wine and meet the makers

New Hampshire wine week offers tasting and learning opportunities

The annual New Hampshire Wine Week features tastings including at New Hampshire Wine and Liquor Outlets, special wine dinners and culminates in the New England Winter Wine Spectacular, an expo featuring dozens of wine makers, importers, exporters and dealers.

This year’s Wine Week also features a new event.

“It’s called Sommelier Select,” said Justin Gunter, the Liquor Commission’s Wine Marketing Specialist. It will be a blind tasting event held on Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Concord, he said, and guests will taste a number of wines, guided by three professional sommeliers. “Our three somms will be leading a panel on that evening with 120 guests. And they will blind taste all nine wines, in three flights.”

Representatives of some of the makers of the wines tasted will be on hand, Gunter said. “They’re going to be there for a kind of a meet and greet at the end, to answer the questions that come up during the tastings.”

The goal of New Hampshire’s Wine Week overall, and of the Sommelier Select event in particular, Gunter said, is to help customers develop a personal relationship with the wines they buy.

“It’s a challenging time in the beverage industry,” he said. “We want to make sure that we have a strong footprint in the state of New Hampshire for wine and what it can bring and the social aspect of it. So we want to make it as interactive as possible.”

The following evening, Thursday, Jan. 22, the 20th Annual New England Winter Wine Spectacular will be held at the Doubletree Expo Center in Manchester.

“[I]t’s looking absolutely fantastic for this coming year,” Gunter said. “We have 154 tables for sampling [in the main exhibition space], plus we have another 24 tables in our Bellman Cellar Select Room, which is the higher-end, more exclusive lines.” One special aspect of the Wine Spectacular, he said, is the opportunity to meet wine makers and vineyard owners who produce the wines being sampled. “As of right now, we have around 40 wine personalities that are scheduled to be here, and that’s going to be owners, winemakers, just representatives of the wineries that are very near and dear with these offerings that we have.”

“One thing that we introduced this year is we’re introducing pavilions within the Expo,” Gunter said. “We’re trying to create a little bit of a wine tasting within the wine tasting, so that brokers can feature wines with a restaurant of their choice. They’re selecting the restaurant to participate in their pavilion, so they can pair the wines with the actual food served at the restaurants that feature them.”

New Hampshire Wine Week
The Sommelier Select event will take place Wednesday, Jan. 21, from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Grappone Conference Center (70 Constitution Ave., Concord, grapponeconferencecenter.com). Tickets are $65 each; see nhwineweek.com.

The 20th Annual New England Winter Wine Spectacular will take place Thursday, Jan. 22, at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester). General admission tickets are $75 each and have a 6 p.m. entry time; see nhwineweek.com.

La Sanse is a taste of Puerto Rico

Nashua event celebrates the San Sebastian Festival

If we were in Puerto Rico right now, the holiday festivities would not be over yet.

“The San Sebastian Festival is a street festival that started in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, in the 1950s as a celebration at the end of the holidays,” Brandon Caron said. Caron is the chief operating officer of Spectacle Live, the management company of the Nashua Center for the Arts. La Sanse, as it is more commonly known, “is a big street festival with lots of arts and music and food,” Caron said. “We’ve had the opportunity with some various people in the community to try to bring that inspiration back to the community in Nashua.”

To that end the Nashua Center will host a La Sanse celebration Saturday, Jan. 17, featuring Puerto Rican food, music and dance.

“We’re some of the first people in the Northeast to do this,” Caron said. We’re [holding] it the weekend that Puerto Rico celebrates. And one of the big components of that is trying to be as authentic as we could with the music and the food. You know, that is such a key part of the culture. And so we are working with Tony Elias and Rice and Beans 603, which is a Nashua-based restaurant catering business. They’re going to [make] authentic Puerto Rican plates for people. And then we’re also going to work with Empanellie’s and a few of the other restaurants in town to feature various street bites. So that way we can have a full, well-rounded, authentic Puerto Rican food offering.”

In addition to Puerto Rican food, La Sanse will feature music, dancing and visual arts.

“There’s going to be a few different forms of entertainment,” Caron said. “We’re going to have El Grupo Chevere, a Massachusetts-based salsa band. They’ll be coming to do authentic Puerto Rican music, as well as some DJs from Latino Vibe 94.9. And we have some authentic dance troupes as well to do some cultural dance displays. We’re still working with some various partners within the community to try to highlight various forms of art as well, within the theater. We’re just really excited to be a part of this event. Just to be able to really celebrate this culture and really feel the energy and vibrancy of the Puerto Rican culture is really special. And I also think, in a quieter time in the winter, having a big event like this that can draw people from a wider radius; that will help not only our business, but hopefully, you know, be able to spur some economic development within the community at other restaurants and establishments nearby as well.”

La Sanse Nashua
When: Saturday, Jan. 17, at 4 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua, 800-657-8774, nashuacenterforthearts.com)
Tickets: $25 through the Nashua Center’s website; kids under 12 free with purchase of an adult ticket.

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