“We actually made such a good team. Being completely different, we equaled a whole in a math equation,” says Richard Manitoba, better known to the world as Handsome Dick Manitoba, once the front man for the Dictators, now the same for the close cousin called Dictators NYC, which plays ONCE …
I’ve been a fan of Boston Rock Opera – long on hiatus – for many years. Ambitious beyond belief and a bit crazy – is there an audience that really wants to see long-form rock operas in a short-attention span age? – they’ve brought back, in live form, and with …
I’ve never not had a pleasant chat with Michael Gira, leader of Swans, the New York band that emerged from the New York no-wave noise scene. And I have loved and hated his band. I was pinned to the rear wall of the Rat years ago, fascinated and appalled to watch …
Tribute bands have sprouted like dandelions in the ‘00s. But The Machine – a Pink Floyd tribute band at the Cabot Theatre Friday Feb. 5 – was formed more than a quarter-century ago. “We were in it before there was a genre called tribute bands,” says co-founder/drummer Tahrah Cohen. “There …
There was the year Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon took the Paradise stage, ripped off his shirt, tossed it to the rafters, and dove into the crowd as 20-plus musicians rocked through Cheap Trick’s “Surrender.” Terry Francona and Kevin Millar stood side-stage, shaking their heads. And the time Jonathan Papelbon …
Oddly enough, in one way Talking Heads (never “The”) resemble The Beatles: Each band has distinct phases where their music takes them to an unexpected realm and people who declare themselves fans of either band usually express a strong preference for their favorite phase. The Beatles went from exuberant rock …
There was a time when I got turned on to new rock ‘n’ roll bands by cool magazines like Creem, Rock Scene, Trouser Press, Circus, Fusion and Crawdaddy. Radio was crap where I was growing up, just top 40 really, and these mags, and the great critics there exposed me …
In the same way that Stephane Grappelli brought the violin to Jazz, Jean-Luc Ponty pioneered the instrument in the world for Rock. Though he originally studied classical violin (as it was the only option at the time) in Paris, Ponty quickly began to partner with such progressives as John Lewis, …
Say this about the Zombies: They were ahead of the curve. We live in a world where you can’t turn on the TV or go to a multiplex without running into a zombie. Back in 1961, keyboardist-songwriter Rod Argent and singer Colin Blunstone and their mates proved a pretty prescient …