Posted by bananastasi - Thu, Feb 4, 2010, 3:03 A

Weekly Band E-Mail #113.0 NEWS February 4th, 2010

WEEKLY BAND E-MAIL #113.0 February 4th, 2010
By BRIAN ANASTASI bananastasi@comcast.net

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TOP 30 BOSTON AREA CD'S ACCORDING TO RADIO AIRPLAY
1. Manners - Passion Pit
2. Color Machine - The Lights Out
3. Your Secrets Are Mine Now - Ad Frank and the Fast Easy Women
4. Received Pronunciation - Pants Yell!
5. Colonial Drones - Hallelujah the Hills
6. Dead Cats Dead Rats - Dead Cats Dead Rats
7. The Sound The Speed The Light - Mission of Burma
8. Farm - Dinosaur Jr.
9. I Saw Across The Sound - The Points North
10. From The Inland Sea - Arms and Sleepers
11. Magic Magic - Magic Magic
12. I'll Be Out All Night - Choo Choo La Rouge
13. Stay Epic - Dear Leader
14. Paint the Fence Invisible - Drug Rug
15. Form Activity Motion EP - Freezepop
16. Hey Medusa - The Acro-Brats
17. Shake Down the Sun - Cassavettes
18. Seconds - Gary Higgins
19. The Martydom of a Catastrophist - Junius
20. In The Wake Of What Wouldn't Change - The Luxury
21. Monkey Mind - Reverse
22. Washingtons - South China
23. Late Season Kids - The Beatings
24. Tony the Bookie - The Tony the Bookie Orchestra
25. White Ink, Black Ink - Wheat
26. "Perfect Circle" - The Painted Lights
27. Tiny Fires - Tiny Fires
28. 072209 - Bacchus King
29. Back From Outer Space - The Bynars
30. The Sweet and The Brutal - Brendan Boogie and the Best Intention

This list is compiled by RadioTony for TheNoise-Boston, using playlists from the following radio stations:
WAAF 107.3FM Westborough/WKAF 97.7FM Brockton
WBRS 100.1FM Brandeis University Waltham
WCUW 91.3FM Worcester
WFNX 101.7FM Lynn
WHRB 95.3FM Harvard University Cambridge
WMBR 88.1FM MIT Cambridge
WMFO 91.5FM Tufts University Medford
WRBB 104.9FM Northeastern University Boston
WUML 91.5FM UMass Lowell
WTCC 90.7 Springfield Technical Community College Springfield
WZBC 90.3FM Boston College Newton
WZLX 100.7FM Boston

The Top 30 chart comes out monthly with the exception of January and August. To read The Noise-Boston online, go to http://www.thenoise-boston.com The Weekly Band E-Mail thanks RadioTony for his kind permission to reprint this list.

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Signature Sounds recording artists and special guests will perform a benefit concert to raise funds for those affected by the January 12th earthquake in Haiti. Performers include Eilen Jewell, Kris Delmhorst, Rani Arbo, Jeffrey Foucault, The Sweetback Sisters, Naia Kete, Erica Wheeler, Winterpills and Sonya Kitchell. Pulitizer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder will also speak about the current situation in Haiti and about the on-going work of the organization Partners In Health.

The event will be this coming Sunday, February 7th, at Memorial Hall on Bridge Street in Shelburne Falls. Doors are at 1:30pm, and the show begins at 2pm. A minimum suggested donation of $20 will be requested. All proceeds will go to Partners in Health for their work on the ground in Haiti.

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On August 1st, 1981 at 12:01am, MTV debuted a new concept in music: airing videos to go along with the songs. The first video to be aired was the super-appropriate "Video Killed The Radio Star" by The Buggles. At the moment of its launch, only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey could see it, although as the years went on, MTV became an important promotional tool for the recording industry. Nowadays, MTV has little to do with music, and as the network expanded, music videos were no longer the centerpiece of its programming. Conventional TV shows came to replace the VJ-guided music video programming. Today, MTV presents a wide variety of non-music related television shows aimed primarily at the 12 to 34 year old demographic. You can find a full account of MTV's 28 year history at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV

The first hour of MTV has moments where you can actually see a producer reaching down on camera to take out the VHS tape just played and put in the next one. Also, the ads and the hairstyles of the VJ's are a fascinating look into the beginning of the '80s, for better or worse.

If you would like to see the very first hour of MTV, go to


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw6xesXLIAA (part one)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trQebBym-eI (part two)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM2Omcr4UuQ (part three)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZAbtqZvcUo (part four)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dimsyla5htQ (part five)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7x6pY34TwY (part six)

In the late 1960s, John H. Garabedian was program director at the legendary WMEX in Boston, where he worked with legendary dee jay Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsberg. Four years after MTV's 1981 debut, John and his aforementioned fellow WMEX alumnus Arnie Ginsburg started a Boston-area 24-hour music video station, WVJV-TV on broadcast channel 66 in Marlborough. Their station, known by its nickname, "V-66", mirrored MTV's early all-video format and lasted until 1986, when WVJV phased out videos and was sold to the Home Shopping Network. But during the approximately two years that V-66 was airing music videos, it aired many by Boston bands and musicians.

There will be a V-66 reunion show at The House of Blues on Lansdowne Street in Boston on Thursday, February 11th. Doors are at 7pm, and the show begins at 8pm. Tickets are $20 and $30, and it is an all ages show. Tickets may be purchased online at http://bit.ly/9pTk8G

Performing will be Rods and Cones, The Fools, O Positive, and other special guests. And western Mass. group School for the Dead, one of several pop groups on the Rub Wrongways label, will be performing a one-song set at the show. They will be playing the song "V-66," which they wrote about WVJV ca. 1985.

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The Winter Campfire weekend, a festival of new and emerging folk music, will be held at Passim's in Harvard Square in Cambridge on Saturday, February 13th and Sunday, February 14th. Tickets are $15 per day, both shows begin at 4pm, and both shows are all ages. You may purchase tickets online at http://www.clubpassim.org (click on Club Passim calendar and tickets from the list on the left side of the page). Here is the schedule of performers in order of appearance:

Saturday, February 13th:
David Wax Museum
Rob Laurens, Joe Ninesling, Lloyd Thayer
Catherine MacLellan
Madison Violet
Maeve Gilchrist
We're About 9
Rose Polenzani, Margaret Glaspy, Chris O'Brien, Dinty Child

Sunday, February 14th:
Beth Colegrove, Danielle Doyle, and Hayley Reardon
The Bella Birds
John Shade
The Party Favors
Carsie Blanton
Catherine MacLellan, Jacqueline Francis, Margaret Glaspy, and Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
Zack Hickman and Barnstar

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It's an awful thing to discover you've been robbed, especially when what was stolen are all the tools of your trade, rendering the way you make your living wiped out in one swift and shady action. This is just what happened to Jeff Potter, local musician. Jeff has made music his livelihood for many decades, being a multi-instrumentalist, but is known to many in the Pioneer Valley as the rockin' boogie-woogie piano player in Clean Living, a band that was immensely popular in the 1970's, and who recorded on the Vanguard record label.

Before coming to the valley, Jeff was a native of Connecticut, having gone to high school with another Connecticut boy, Al Anderson and was a member of Anderson's band, The Wildweeds, from 1970 to 1971, playing piano and harmonica. Since those times he has continued playing full-time professionally. After Clean Living disbanded in 1979, Jeff put together his own combo with a sub-set of Clean Living members, one of them being guitarist Rick King. He fronted The Contenders and then Jeff Potter and The Rhythm Agents, and has released four CDs of original material, and recorded on Nervous Records (UK), Raucous Records (UK) and El Toro Records (Spain). Currently Jeff performs solo and as a member of Albany’s Lustre Kings. They tour and often back up Wanda Jackson, a 2009 inductee to The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame.

With forty years under his belt, and playing an average of 15 dates a month, Jeff is not yet ready to retire, so he must retool, once again. Almost everything he uses to earn his living was stolen from his locked and garaged car on Monday, November 30th, 2009. He lost his piano, amps, speakers, PA etc. in the blink of an eye. It should be noted that although Jeff lives in the Ward Three neighborhood of Northampton, police do not believe the break-in was related to the series of arson fires that has plagued that area for the last several years.

A benefit concert has been planned to help Jeff recover costs of the robbery. It willl be at the Black Moon Music Lounge in Belchertown on Sunday, February 14th, 2– 8pm. A donation of $15 will be requested. The concert will feature a multi-performer show, with many local musicians pitching in, as well as from afar. The line-up will include The Spampinato Brothers, formerly of NRBQ, Girl Howdy, The Reprobates, Slippery Sneakers Zydeco, Mary Witt and the Propellers, and the Jeff Potter Trio, which will include Rick King on guitar, also a former Clean Living band mate, and Brian Rost on upright bass.

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The fourth annual New England Americana Festival will be held at Church Boston for three nights beginning Thursday, February 25th. Doors are at 6pm, and all shows are 21+. Tickets are $8 on Thursday, and $10 on Friday and Saturday. Three-night passes are available for $20.
You can purchase tickets online at http://www.venuevents.net/event/813
More info about the festival is at http://www.newenglan...stival.com/home.html
Here is the schedule of performers in order of appearance:

Thursday 2/25
The Accident That Led Me To The World
Jeff Bird and the Dirty Finch
Odessa Rose
Bryan Pero and the Tired Horses
Brown Bird
Bean Pickers Union
Movers and Shakers
Kingsley Flood

Friday 2/26:
They Will Hate Us
Route .44
John Colvert
Golden West Motor Lodge
The Rationales
Coyote Kolb
Girls, Guns and Glory
Highway Ghosts.

Saturday 2/27:
Dave Sammarco Band
Bees Knees
That Old Feelin
Big East
Sam Reid and the Riot Act
Autumn Hollow
Jimmy Ryan and Hayride (featuring Duke Levine)
Three Day Threshold.

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Burlington-based Rounder Records took home three Grammy(c) Awards from this year's event, held in Los Angeles on Sunday, January 31st. The label won in the category of Best Pop Instrumental Performance for "Throw Down Your Heart" by Bela Flack, from her album "Throw Down Your Heart: Tales From the Acoustic Planet Vol. 3 - The Africa Sessions." The Bela Flack album also won in the category of Best Contemporary World Music Album. Rounder also won in the category of Best Bluegrass Album for "The Crow: New Songs for the Five String Banjo" by Steve Martin.

Rounder Records took home Grammy Awards last year for "Raising Sand" by Robert Plant and Alison Krause.

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The Rat reunion night will be held at The Cantab in Cambridge on Saturday, April 3rd. Bands include The Flashcubes; The Varmints; Fox Pass, The Classic Ruins, and The Last Ones. More details to come.

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The grand re-opening of Flywheel in Easthampton is tentatively set for the weekend of April 17th-19th. More details to follow.

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National Record Store Day will be on Saturday, April 17th.

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The "winner" of the Happy Valley Showdown Round Three on Sunday, January 17th was Bella's Bartok, Round Four on Sunday, January 24th was The Demographic, and Round Five on Sunday, January 31st was Graph.

Here is Bella's Bartok doing a cover of Electric Light Orchestra's "Turn to Stone" at Round Three:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-A3TpiSMeY

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Last week's edition of the Weekly Band E-Mail had the story that the Malarians, a garage band that was hugely popular in western Mass. back in the 1980s, was getting together for one show at The Elevens in Northampton on Thursday, June 10th. Since then, Mal Thursday tells me that The Immolators, a new band out of Northampton, will be opening the show.

Mal also tells me that The Malarians will also be playing Boston that weekend in June along with Lyres. The show will most likely be at either The Middle East or The Cantab, both in Cambridge. More info to follow.

There is a nice write-up about the history of The Malarians at eBandaGoGo(tm). To read it, go to:
http://www.ebandagogo.com/The_Malarians/

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Brooks Williams' 17th CD, Baby O!, has just been delivered to the western Mass. singer-songwriter. For the next couple of weeks, you can purchase a copy at one of his gigs, or through his secure website,
http://www.brookswilliams.com/ci/23/Store/

Brooks will be at Rick's Music World in Raynham on Friday, February 12th, the Linden Tree Coffeehouse in Haverhill on Saturday, February 13th, and the Town Green Coffeehouse in Princeton on Friday, March 5th. He will also be having a CD release party at the Iron Horse in Northampton on Sunday, March 7th.

Brooks will also be doing a four-week guitar workshop at the Club Passim School of Music in Harvard Square, Cambridge.. He will be doing Intro to Fingerstyle Guitar and Intro to Blues Guitar. For more information, call Sarah at (617) 491-2382.

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Even though WBCN in Boston signed off the air after more than 41 years as a rock station back on August 11th, the station has been split up into two stations and operating on HD radios in Boston, online, and on smart phones ever since. WBCN has been split into two stations in this digital age. The first, which celebrates the station's early days from when it first changed over to rock on March 15th, 1968 up to roughly 1980 when MTV came onto the scene, is called FreeFormBCN and is available over-the-air at 100.7FM HD-3. The modern day WBCN is available over-the-air at 98.5FM HD-2. Both stations may be listened to online at http://www.wbcn.com (FreeFormBCN is the box on the left; the modern-day WBCN is on the right).

Ever since the early days of WBCN turned into FreeFormBCN, it has been all computerized, spearheaded by Sam Kopper. About six people from the early days have set up a Facebook page for fans of the station's early days, which is at http://www.facebook.com/freeformbcn Sam is quick to point out that FreeFormBCN "is not a nostalgia trip, [but] a past, present, and future electric Rock-centric music, a free life outlook, and attitude." FFBCN is putting together music from the birth of rock and roll ca. 1955 to the new music of today to create a unique blend of music that is just not found on the radio any more.

Even though FFBCN has been computerized up untill now, Sam, Lisa Traxler, and Albert O (and anybody else who happens to be around) have tested live programming twice now for one hour at a time. The next one hour live test from the studio set up in Sam Kopper's home in Hingham will be this coming Friday, February 5th, at noon eastern time. These live program tests are announced on the Facebook page and the plan is to have live programming on a regular basis in about two months Once FFBCN goes live on a regular basis, it will be announced here in the Weekly Band E-Mail.

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A new version of "We Are the World," which was originally recorded by 46 recording stars to bring aid to famine-stricken Africa back in 1985, was recorded the day after this year's Grammy(c) Awards ceremony on Monday, February 1st. This time, 100 extremely diverse recording artists gathered, once again under the direction of Quincy Jones, to re-record the song to raise money for the people of Haiti in the wake of the January 12th earthquake.

Artists participating in this new version included Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, Gladys Knight, Dion, Carlos Santana, Justin Bieber, Zac Brown (who won he Best New Artist Grammy), Pink, Jeff Bridges, Vince Vaughan, Usher, T-Pain, Akon, Lil Wayne, Toni Braxton, Snoop Dogg, Josh Groban, Kanye West, will.i.am, (of the Black Eyed Peas), two Beach Boys (Brian Wilson and Al Jardine), three Jonas Brothers (Nick, Joe, and Kevin), and Wyclef Jean, former singer for The Fugees, whose Yele Foundation has been raising money for the relief effort ever since the quake hit. The song was originally written by Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson.

The plan is to debut the video during the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which will be televised on NBC on Friday, February 12th, and have it available for sale on ITunes, with proceeds going to the Haiti relief effort..

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Information for the Weekly Band E-Mail is taken directly from venue,
band, and musician web sites and MySpace pages, as well as blogs,
posters, flyers, and e-mails.. Brian Anastasi assumes no responsibility
for errors on these sources.