Category Local Flavor: Home Brewed and Baked Goods
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 […]
TAILGATE BIRTHDAY SONGS: Wheat’s Raised Ranch Revolution Returns
“And suddenly after all this time, of waiting and wondering when and if they would return with their soft sparkle and gentle glamour intact, Wheat are back among us.” It is with much fuzzy-hearted happiness, optimism and okay, maybe even a dash of nostalgia, that I can report the following about one of my all-time favorite […]
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY: A Look Back At America’s Great Lost Band
Nothing quite makes you appreciate the timelessness and immortality of great music as the mortality of its makers. Only yesterday I was saying how fantastic and fresh the Remains’ self-titled 1966 debut LP sounds even now, nearly 50 years after its release. The Boston band made only one record during its original run before calling it quits […]
SWEETHEART OF THE RADIO: Sarah Borges, Northern Gal With The Southern Sound
Hello weekend warriors: As promised, here’s the second installment of this weekend’s edition of “RPM,” which showcases, and takes a look back at, two of Boston’s finest musical exports of the past decade, Sarah Borges and Girls Guns and Glory (see my previous post for the first feature on this superb band I wrote for […]
GIRLS GUNS AND GLORY: A Little Bit Country, A Little Bit Rock ‘N’ Roll (And Probably Not What Donny & Marie Intended)
When you think about country and roughed-up roots music, New England doesn’t exactly leap to mind. Of course, country music, like just about any other genre or type of music, can be found almost anywhere. For decades now (and certainly for the two that I’ve been living and writing in and around Boston), the country and roots music […]
RPM: Jonathan Perry's Life in Analog 