Category Boston Rock City
LOVE, LIFE, & LIT: Ted Drozdowski’s Scissormen Cut Deep To The Blues And Beyond
If it’s a bit hard to believe that my friend and colleague Ted Drozdowski is “only” celebrating the tenth anniversary of his lava-hot, molten blues trio, it may be because the veteran bandleader and award-winning music journalist has spent close to a lifetime listening to, and writing about, the very music he’s always treasured and revered. Playing it […]
RPM (Special Hump Day Designation: Radio Perry Music) Goes Live On Boston Free Radio!
Hey everybody! Just a quick head’s up for anyone bored outta their skulls at school, home, or work (but with earbuds/headphones or out of earshot of their bosses) that Wednesday, March 25, between 3-5:30 p.m. “RPM”‘s Yours Truly will be returning as special guest on Host Alan Patterson’s “Voices Of Time” radio show, comin’ atcha and […]
Absolutely Pre-Fabulous! The Messiahs Trip Back To The Future in Bobb’s Psychedelic Car
Back in 1981, when a phone call brought four kids at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts together to form a peculiar psych-pop outfit called The Prefab Messiahs, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” was topping the charts, and REO Speedwagon’s “Hi Infidelity” was one of the biggest albums of the year. Closer to home, Ed King […]
HEROIN AT ALL TOMORROW’S (BOSTON) TEA PARTIES: White Light & Heat From The Velvet Underground
Here’s my latest review for the Collectors Music Reviews website and blog, of a new, unofficially released rare recording of the great Velvet Underground at their old Boston Tea Party stomping grounds, ringing out the old year of 1968 (a very hard year on a number of home fronts). The Velvet Underground – The Boston Tea […]
A SANCTIFIED RACKET REVISITED: Mr. Airplane Man Gets Set To Fly, Strafe and Stun Again
Before blues-punk deconstructionist duos like the White Stripes and Black Keys hit the big time, Cambridge Massachusetts’ Mr. Airplane Man had built a beautiful little buzz-bomb of a flying machine for two. The garage-blooze twosome comprised of singer-guitarist Margaret Garrett and drummer Tara McManus may have named themselves after a Howlin’ Wolf song during their bleary, brilliant, and all-too […]
HEART TO HARTE (RETURN OF THE REAL KIDS PART III): Legendary Producer Rick Harte On Coming Up Aces
Rick Harte has seen, heard, and made a lot of rock & roll. As the founder, producer, chief cook and bottle washer at Ace of Hearts Records, Boston’s independent entry into the punk and post-punk rock uprising of the late 1970’s and early ‘80’s, Harte brought the music of bands like Mission of Burma, Lyres, Classic Ruins, […]
RETURN OF THE REAL KIDS PART II: John Felice On Rock & Roll Resurrections (Don’t Call It Punk!), Shaking Outta Control, And Living Past Thirty
Real Kids frontman John Felice didn’t think he’d live to see thirty. Now professing astonishment at having nearly doubled his predicted life expectancy, Felice and the latest, formidable incarnation of his equally improbably long-running outfit have just released a new album, “Shake … Outta Control.” It’s a snarling, strutting, soulful little record that for all […]
RETURN OF THE REAL KIDS PART I: Solid Gold (Thru and Thru)
“Well, I was driving ’round Boston / Looking for a place just to shake my ass/ Don’t wanna hear no disco / Gotta hear something outta my past” — The Real Kids, “Do The Boob” One way or another, Boston singer-songwriter John Felice has been cranking out gritty, from the guts, heart-on-sleeve rock & roll longer than some […]
SOUNDS OF THE CITY: 50 Years & 80 Bands Mark ‘Pipeline!’ Radio Turning 25
Back in the 1950’s, skeptics, cynics, and general party poopers predicted that this new-fangled “jungle” music called rock & roll was a fad that might last a few months, maybe a year. And then it would be done and everybody would go back to swiveling their hula-hoops, playing games of Parcheesi, and wearing their “I Like Ike” […]
SCRUFFY THE CAT SCRATCH FEVER: New Album, Anthology Due from Beloved ’80s Boston Combo
If there’s one karmic upside to late Scruffy The Cat frontman Charlie Chesterman’s battle with the cancer that claimed him in November of last year at the too-young age of 53, it’s that the music and catalog of his best-known, roots-rocking Boston outfit received new attention and a long-overdue reappraisal (via the benefit reunion show Scruffy performed to raise funds […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 