Acclaimed mystery novelist, suspense genre authority, former newspaperguy (and O.G. original gangsta) WALLACE STROBY is the guest programmer for the first in a new series of Crane House Movie Club events, happening on Sunday, March 11 right here at the Stephen Crane House!

Over here at the Stephen Crane House — the historic and literarily legendary Asbury Park landmark that also serves as the home office of this bloviatin’ blog — the sluggish segue from mild winter into mucky Wet Side spring is charged with a certain Spring Cleaning energy that can’t wait for that narrow window between Too Cold to Work Around This Un-insulated House and Too Hot to Work Around this Un-insulated House.

We’ve been getting back into gear in recent days, scraping some of the accrued barnacles off this 19th century “cottage” that’s served as everything from a proper Christian lady’s parlour to a post-nuke Asbury flophouse (and almost-scuttled squat) and reorganizing some of those out-of-control rooms back into some semblance of a reclaimed public space — about which more in a moment.

We’ve also got some thoughts and plans regarding the Crane House theater and screening room, the downstairs    in-house venue that’s hosted all manner of quirky stage plays, readings, house-party concerts and a monthly words-and-movie series programmed by Crane House owner Frank D’Alessandro. It’s there that “Mr. D” presented a birthday salute to Charles Dickens this past Sunday (with featured film George Cukor’s sparkling MGM take on David Copperfield) — and it’s there that we’ll be introducing a new film-buff’s series that could ONLY be called The Crane House Movie Club.

Offered up free of charge and open to the public, The Crane House Movie Club is a not-so-secret society dedicated to the viewing, digestion, discussion (and, sometimes dissing) of Film — conceivably any kind of film, from Janus-collection French Nouvelle Vague and wartime Euro-exile Hollywood, to stuff that wouldn’t have been out of place at old-school Asbury grindhouses like the Park and Baronet. It’s a real-world place to gather, enjoy some refreshments and argue balls ‘n strikes with your fellow cinema enthusiasts — as well as meet and participate in a Q&A with a special invited guest programmer, and take in a roomful-of-people screening of a feature presentation that’s been personally selected by our guest.

We’re pleased and proud to announce the early evening of Sunday, March 11 as the first call-to-meetin’ of the Crane House Movie Club — and we’re just as pleased to announce that our guest programmer for that inaugural event will be the award-winning mystery novelist (and eminent authority on all things crimey and suspensey) Wallace Stroby.

Now open to public perusal for the first time in a dog’s age, the upstairs library at the Crane House is a work in progress that boasts one of the area’s most extensive collections of works by and about Stephen Crane — as well as works by his friends and contemporaries and a number of historically fascinating antique volumes.

A resident of Ocean Grove, Stroby used his background as a classic old-school newspaperman (breaking-news reporter for the Asbury Park Press; arts editor at the Star Ledger) — to say nothing of his life experience on the mean streets of O.G. and its “evil twin” A.P. — to craft his debut novel, The Barbed Wire Kiss, a thriller of misplaced loyalties and overdue paybacks that starred a former state trooper, and used the tired, peeling Tillie-face of our local seaside haunts as an effective backdrop. Asbury Park (and that same ex-cop) figured heavily in his followup effort The Heartbreak Lounge — and since taking the plunge into a full-time career as a working fiction master, Stroby’s traveled the country making personal appearances, and picked up massive raves for such recent-vintage hardboilers as Gone Til November (a book that The Huffington Post said “puts author Wallace Stroby in the company of noir masters like Dashiell Hammett and Elmore Leonard”) and Cold Shot to the Heart.  With his latest novel Kings of Midnight (in which a female thief who’s trying to go straight and a “retired” mobster cross paths with five million bucks in “buried” heist money at stake), Stroby has truly arrived: as witness his book’s recent plug in New York Magazine’s The Approval Matrix;  an appearance that positions Kings at pretty close to BRILLIANT (if just this side of LOWBROW).

Stroby, a genuine movie fan with whom we’ve had the pleasure of co-hosting a showing of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing at The Showroom a few years back, will be introducing a screening of one of his favorite suspensers on March 11 — and while we’re unable to announce the title right at this moment, chances are excellent that it’ll stand as a Stroby-stamped example of effective book-into-film translation (unless of course he opts for a newish find like The Man From Nowhere). We’ll have a pre-film talk with the author, with signing copies of his books available for purchase and complimentary ‘freshments + face time before and after the screening (feel free to contribute to the snackpile).

Again, that’s Sunday, March 11, with the Crane House door creaking open at 4:30pm; pre-show starts at 5, the film screens at 5:30 and it’s open-ended from there. Admission’s free as we mentioned, although it’s not a bad idea to give us a RSVP via the Facebook link at top of the page. Stay tuned for more details on this and future assemblies of The Crane House Movie Club, right here on the upperWETside!

In other Crane House news: the upstairs library “red room” is, as referenced in the photo caption above, once more open to the public after a fairly extensive tearing up/ hosing down/ putting back together again that involved what amounted to an archaeological dig through the boxes, grottoes and crannies of this circa 1878 structure. While it’s still a bit rough around the edges — books are not arranged to any approved librarian standard, and we promise to gradually replace all the Post-Its and Ziploc bags with classier versions of same — the room has an appropriately muted and musty vibe that frames one of the area’s finer collections of novels, stories, poems and nonfiction pieces by Stephen Crane, the American novelist and journalist best known for the Civil War tale The Red Badge of Courage. We’ve got first and early editions of his books, vintage magazines with his stories, a host of bios and critical studies, along with selected volumes by his major influences, friends and contemporaries (including Dickens, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, Oscar Wilde and Henry James) as well as those who were influenced in turn by Crane (Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather and more). Lots more where that came from, including some other vintage literary volumes and other fascinating printed artifacts of period life (some of them as old as 1818).

It’s on view in what’s officially branded “The Chris Hayes Room” (various rooms in the Crane House are named for members of the Hayes Family who purchased the home at 508 Fourth Avenue and rescued it from wrecking-ball oblivion) — and our plans for the coming months involve a freshening up of many of the other rooms at the Crane, with progress reports right here as things, uh, progress…

Dan Peterson reprises the PRODUCERS showstopper “I Want to Be a Producer,” when Phoenix Productions celebrates its 25th anniversary this Saturday at the Count Basie.

They come from all walks of life — suits and students; public servants and professionals; homemakers and hobbyists. Some have even made a go at show business as a career — but if the hundreds of actors, singers and dancers who have appeared with Phoenix Productions have one great thing in common, it’s that they get to strut their stuff on the same stage that’s hosted the likes of Tony Bennett, George Carlin, Al Pacino, Cary Grant, and a Boss named Bruce.

That stage is of course the Count Basie Theatre, where for eight weekends out of each year the folks at Red Bank’s resident community theater company offer up an array of musical favorites that have ranged from old favorites (Annie, Fiddler, The King and I) to new phenoms (High School Musical, Hairspray, Rent). It’s an affiliation that has spurred the borough-based Phoenix phalanx to artistic and technical heights undreamed of by church-basement troupers — and here in 2012, it’s a self-set standard that’s expected to be met and exceeded during the company’s milestone 25th season (the company has also done performances of select shows at Lakewood’s Strand for the past few seasons).

The 8 pm concert event is preceded by a 6 pm VIP Cocktail Party in the Basie’s Carlton Lounge, and followed by a 10 pm reception with the cast inside the Phoenix Rehearsal Center, the troupe’s HQ (and the one-time “other WaWa” for Red Bank old-timers) located right next door to the Count’s castle at 111 Monmouth Street.

Also on the agenda is the endearingly traditional raffle drawing, conducted by Phoenix founding father, board chairman and Red Bank resident Tom Martini. A silent auction boasts some fairly star-kissed items up on the block; fitting for a troupe of “weekend warriors” whose list of Honorary Trustees includes the likes of Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman and Olympia Dukakis. UpperWETside put in an early bid for an interview with the not-easily-shaken Mr. Martini.

By the time they get to Phoenix: David Weitzer (JEKYLL & HYDE, SWEENEY TODD) and former Miss NJ Amy Polumbo (CINDERELLA) are among the performers returning to Red Bank for “A Night of Music and Memories” from Phoenix Productions.

upperWETside: A little nuts ‘n bolts background if you please, Tom, on Phoenix. What was the very first show you staged, how many shows have you done all told, and have you been doing everything out of the Basie for all 25 of those years?

TOM MARTINI: We’ve done 112 different shows, a lot of them several times each— we’ve done West Side Story four times; more than any other show.

Our very first production was Jesus Christ Superstar, which we did at Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft — we also did Camelot that first season, with The Fantasticks in between because it was light on scenery and we were able to work the rehearsals around the other two shows.

Our first two years were at CBA, in the summertime, and when we moved to the Basie we just did summer shows at first, until someone came up with the idea of spreading them out into spring, summer, fall and late fall.

During those first years, we had no real home for our operation — we rehearsed our shows at St. John Vianney High School in Holmdel, performed them in Lincroft or Red Bank, and built our scenery at a place in Ocean Township. And we had no storage space for scenery and costumes when we weren’t using them.

What saved us, and what allowed us to be here celebrating our 25th anniversary, was that we were able to move into a property in Red Bank that had been a lumber yard over on Water Street. And then a little later on we somehow found a way to buy the building we’re in now, which you might remember was a WaWa many years ago. It’s a perfect location for us, right by the stage door of the theater, even though we’ve kind of outgrown it in some ways. But if we hadn’t found the WaWa, I don’t know if we’d still be in business.

I love it in Red Bank; I moved here because I’m in love with Phoenix and I get to pop on in to the theater and the Rehearsal Studio whenever I want. So you see there’s been a lot of history for us here…and a history of good things happening just when we needed them to happen.

For a year or two around the turn of the millennium, that Rehearsal Studio of yours was also the setting for some smaller, more experimental “black box” type of shows; you hosted some other events like Improv Jam comedy and an appearance by the great animator Bill Plympton. Any thoughts on getting the place up to speed once more as a public performance venue?

We haven’t forgotten about it, and we’ve taken some steps during the off season to get the necessary renovations in…hopefully sometime not too far from now we’ll be able to open it up to the public again.

Well, in the meantime you settle for making your home in one of the grandest and most gorgeous theaters in the region. This is something we’ve asked you before, but does being part of the Count Basie Theatre schedule, performing on the same stage where so many show business legends have done their thing, spur you on to greater heights than you’d ever dare aspire to if you working out of a school auditorium or church basement?

It’s a blessing and a curse…when you’re playing the Count Basie, you have to be THAT good. There’s no settling for just good enough, and that’s something that everyone in our company is aware of. And it’s a real thrill to step out on that stage, whether you’re one of the kids in the cast or an old veteran who’s been doing this for years.

We’ve been amazed at some of the audiences we’ve gotten in for our shows. It’s also great that we’ve been able to keep so many of the old favorites on the schedule while taking on a lot of newer musicals; getting whole new audiences and a new generation of actors trying out for the shows. They get excited when they see the Basie for the first time.

Well, it looks like you’ve assembled quite a lineup for the anniversary show. What can we expect to see onstage this Saturday? Will it be concert style, or will you have your performers in costume?

The men will be in tuxes and the women will be in gowns, and there are a couple of places where we may add an iconic prop or something that’s associated with the song. But this is as much a reunion for the performers as it is a gala. When we started planning this thing, we were a little worried about pulling it together because the date we got from the Basie was earlier than we wanted. We made a wish list of 27, 28 people to invite to perform, and within two hours we had 24 accept!

We’ve got people flying in from other parts of the country. We’ve got David Weitzer, Debbie Dutcher flying in; Amy Polumbo, who’s now in Memphis…we’ll even have all three of our Arthurs from our Camelot productions!

And we trust you’ll be doing your traditional raffle at intermission?

We’ve got a raffle, and a silent auction with some amazing gifts — we’ve got things for theater lovers like tickets to the Basie and Two River Theater; one of our people donated a poster for The Book of Mormon signed by the Broadway cast. And we’ve got some interesting non-theater stuff also, like a seat from Giants Stadium, autographed by Eli Manning!

What’s also interesting is that we did a big mailing to 50,000 people, and we’ve been selling a lot of tickets for the event to people who are new to our list; who never attended any of our shows before or even heard of us before. I think that for a lot of people, this event is a great way to see what we’re all about — and for our old friends, it’s something that’s relationship oriented. We have this one couple who met back when they played Lancelot and Guinevere in Camelot; they did Carousel together, fell in love, and now they have teenage daughters who are performers too.

It’s been an amazing 25 years. The thing about community theater is that you start out saying ‘let’s just do a season’ — and all of a sudden, my gosh, you’ve been at it for five, ten, fifteen years.

Tickets for Saturday’s 8 pm performance and pre/post-show receptions ($30 – $75) are still available from the Basie’s online box office, or directly from Phoenix Productions right here. Check the websites for advance orders and info on the 2012 Phoenix season at the Basie, beginning April 20 with The Wizard of Oz.

Everything old is new again — and so’s the Carolina Chocolate Drops, the new lineup of which (Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Hubby Jenkins, with guest cellist Leyla McCalla absent on picture day) visits the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth U on February 17. 

Carolina Chocolate Drops, you had us with the spoons. Or was it the bones? The jugs? The quills?

Whatever. Just because a band gets period-precise (or rummages the kitchen junk drawer) in pursuit of an authentic “old timey” sound doesn’t make them any less than hypercurrent — provided the music is purveyed in the raucous spirit of a fruitjar corn-squeezins barndance shivaree, rather than a sleepy sermon or a fusty lecture.

Rest assured that the Chocolate Drops are THAT old-timey, thanks to their collective scholarly specialty — the black string band/ jug band music that began to capture the nation’s fancy right around the time that scratchy radios and 78 rpm Victrola records started replacing battered pianos and sheet music in American homes. Call it “dirt floor music” — but reckon that a dirt floor can be a firm foundation on which to construct a happy house made up of field-recording folk, crossroads blues, hayride bluegrass and speakeasy jazz, with a permit posted for new additions like hipster alt-country and houseparty hip-hop.

And yeah, the Chocolate Drops are THAT new-fangled, thanks to a deft mastery of social media and post-musicbiz meltdown marketing — a DIY savvy that’s allowed the Piedmont-spawned combo to top the Billboards, play the Grand Old Opry (first black string band EVER to do so, if you can believe that) and win a Grammy for their 2010 major label debut Genuine Negro Jig, nary five years from the time that founders Dom Flemons, Rhiannon Giddens and Justin Robinson first made each other’s acquaintance via a Yahoo group.

They’ve even got a new lineup — with NYC-based multi-instrumentalizer Hubby Jenkins replacing Robinson in the core trio — and it’s this troupe of troubadors (augmented by cellist Leyla McCalla) that visits the Upper Wet Side for the first time on Friday night, February 17, for a concert at Monmouth University‘s Pollak Theatre.

The 8pm show — for which the opening act is the hot ‘n spicy bluegrass blueplate specialties of the Brooklyn-bred M Shanghai String Band (look here for our past interview with Monmouth County mandolin master Richard Morris)  — occurs just under two weeks in front of the “drop date” for Leaving Eden, the band’s followup release on the Nonesuch label and the first recorded evidence of the current CCD configuration.

Recorded in the home studio of lately legendary Americana-man Buddy Miller — producer of Solomon Burke’s Nashville and some seminal sessions by Patty Griffin, Emmylou Harris and Robert Plant — Leaving Eden finds the Carolina Chocolate Drops fortified by McCalla plus human beatbox (and occasional tourmate) Adam Matta for a set of fifteen chestnuts and original seedlings that run a gamut and a gauntlet between instrumental and a capella; mournful plaints of loss and gleeful declarations of independence; barndance breakdowns and rocking-chair reveries.

We got an advance listen to this warm and inviting (but still playfully boundary-busting) platter, and we dug especially the band’s driving rip through the high-mileage hillbilly chestnut “Ruby Are You Mad at Your Man;” the jaunty bee-sting twang of “Mahalla” (we swear it sounds like one of Jonathan Richman’s friendly folk instros) and the ominous back-country detour through “West End Blues.” Taking the majority of the vocal leads, singer-fiddler-banjobelle Rhiannon Giddens is in awesome form, as evidenced on the trilling Ethel Waters strutter “No Man’s Mama” and her self-penned “Country Girl,” a hiphop-infused spotlight track that stakes a claim to new corners of the band’s stylistic turf.

Flemons, the Arizona-born banjo expert and former National Poetry Slam competitor whose multi-faceted contributions also include vocals, African gourd and the aforementioned quills (think of an Irish tin whistle’s African cousin), stopped to chat for a spell somewhere on the road between the Piedmont and Eden.

upperWETside: So where are we finding you out there on the road? Are you headed to LA for the Grammys?

DOM FLEMONS: No, we’re taking two or three days off to make a music video for “Country Girl.” The album’s not officially out until the 28th, but we want to be ahead of the game with a finished video.

What can we expect to see and hear at Monmouth University on the 17th, with the four piece band? You’ve been quoted as saying that you do “stand-up” shows where you keep the talking down and get everybody dancing, and “sit-down” shows where you tell stories about the songs…

There are always stories going on; always some dancing…a LOT of dance music if the floor’s open. It’s all kind of the same thing; all good entertainment — people tend to forget that music should be entertaining.

I think that one of the really interesting things about you guys is that the so-called old timey music that you play was something that really took the country by storm because of technology; things like radio and records. And now you’re a band that really coalesced around things like social media; you’ve used these new tools to your advantage and you’ve been anything but a bunch of technophobe Luddites…

That’s really how it all started for us…we met and started our group through the Black Banjo  Yahoo mixer, with Tony Thomas. The internet made our group get out there so fast — we got bookings almost instantly; a lot of them in Southern schools. And YouTube helped us get ourselves known, much faster than the previous route.

So I have to give credit to certain things related to the internet, but I’m kind of in a halfway spot about it myself. I grew up going to stores, buying CDs. That’s where my heart remains. Back then you would order things from catalogs, send a check and hope for the best. Kids, people younger than us, have no concept of that — they can get anything they want now, through all sorts of means. It’s affected our group like it’s affected everyone; the CD sales are down.

But really, the social media thing was ultimately just a tool to facilitate the live performance thing…and it’s on the live stage that you’ve really made and maintained your fanbase.

The live thing has really helped us get along, given us a leg up. People see everything that we’re doing, can see how this music was created outside of a studio.

Well, your management was kind enough to pass along an advance listen to the new album, and I have to say that the teamup between the Chocolate Drops and Buddy Miller is everything that could be hoped for. I think he really got to your essence here; there’s a real musicology at work but it’s done without being all dry and scholarly about it…and it’s not so cornball retro that it has to sound like it’s coming out of an old Victrola horn.

We were looking to work with Buddy…we wanted to have recordings that were a lot more natural sounding; we wanted to have more of a sense of the room. And I think we have that on this album.

There’s been kind of a push and pull happening with production, ever since this transitional period in the 1970s and 80s and 90s — everything became more synthetic; there was a cleanliness, a sterility that made everything sound the same. Some producers — like Rick Rubin with the albums he did with Johnny Cash, have been able to manipulate their sound with the materials they have at hand.

Sometimes a really awesome demo has its own flair to it. Like the Bob Dylan song “Every Grain of Sand” — the Bootleg Series demo version is really beautiful, and the final version is still a good song, but there’s just more stuff happening.

Well, you had me at the spoons. The song “Ruby Are You Mad At Your Man” sounds amazing, and I swear I’ve heard it from all sorts of people in all sorts of permutations over the years. The 1960s New York psychedelic synthesizer band The Silver Apples had a song called “Ruby,” with a really primitive synth and drums and a banjo…you could hear them doing some half-remembered take on this old tune.

You’ve got me scrambling now to look up original versions and other stuff by the songwriters you cover, which I guess is part of the point. So much of your stuff sounds like it just explodes from you in one supremely confident take — another one that I especially love is that Ethel Waters song, “No Man’s Mama”…

“No Man’s Mama,” which was actually written by the guy who wrote “Alabama Jubilee,” really solidified when we were in the studio. We spent a good amount of time on that one, and we spent a lot of time on “Ruby,” “Country Girl,” “Mahalla,” and “Boodle-De-Bum-Bum.”

I think that if we had an infinite amount of time to make the record, we would have cut it again…we would have been nitpicking naysayers to ourselves. We would have concerned ourselves with how people handle the album on a broader scale; how the broader journalistic body handles it. Over in the UK, the reviewers either want us to be completely traditional, or be completely progressive.

Well, you’ll go nuts trying to please the UK press, but here in this country you’ve also got the Americana music establishment, a self-appointed body of people who spend a lot of time parsing just what is and ain’t “Americana,” not that anyone’s defined it to everyone’s satisfaction. There are some strong opinions there as to who’s deserving of a Grammy nomination.

Well, for years when people heard the kind of music that we’re into, the old stuff, they reacted like they didn’t want anything to do with it; you know, “these people can’t sing…”

We won our Grammy in the Traditional Folk category, and now I guess we’d compete in the Americana or Folk category…there’s been a lot of changes made recently in the categories; they took out traditional blues and folk; they took out Latin Jazz…and yet there are all these musicians who’ve been making a career out of playing these types of music.

What happens is that when somebody like Wynton Marsalis, Bruce Springsteen, BB King puts out a blues or a folk album, when Eric Clapton does another salute to Robert Johnson or something, those guys get the Grammy, and everybody else is completely fucked. The traditional guys are not gonna make it.

I’m referring to the case of a singer who lives around here in the area near Monmouth University — Linda Chorney, who used the Grammy 365 social media function to alert voters to her self-released indie album, and to actually score a nomination in the Americana category. She’s currently out there having the time of her life, doing press and defending her work against people who have actually suggested she should withdraw from the competition.

The industry can’t stand when an artist changes the rules— THEY’RE supposed to be the ones who make the rules. But it’s very liberating for a musician to take charge of things. The industry, the record labels, don’t have to stand with you — you have to figure out how to make it work for yourself.

The Glamour Girls canvases of Holly Suzanne Rader — exemplified here by a detail from DICK & CANDY — are on display during a reception for GLAMit, this Saturday evening at Glen Goldbaum’s two neighboring Bridge Avenue salons.

His parties, alive with art and music and anybody-who’s-anybody people, are precisely the sort of under-the-radar events that you’d spend all night seeking out if you were looking for that elusive “something completely different” — the kind of happenings that should by all rights be too-cool and impossibly exclusive, were it not for the fact that they’re fully free of charge and open to friends old and new.

Last we looked in on Glen Goldbaum, the superstar Manhattan stylist turned catalyst for a creative new vision on Red Bank’s west side was hosting an event branded as Bewitched, a “magical evening of fantasy, hair, art and more” that transformed his two neighboring Bridge Avenue hair/ eye/ makeups (Glen Goldbaum 72 and Lambs & Wolves Den of Beauty) into an environment populated by winged fantasy characters, live mannequins and guest conceptualizers from Asbury Park’s Cookman Avenue “Arts Bloc.”

This Saturday, Feb the 11, the “Left Bank” block opposite the NJ Transit station stop will be the scene for GLAMit, a solo art installation (keyed to New York Fashion Week 2012) that celebrates “old Hollywood glam with a modern feminine edge” through the paintings and three-dimensional work of Holly Suzanne Rader. The Tennessee-bred artist will be on hand for a reception that spotlights her unique miniature paper dresses (composed of paper mache, vintage book pages, clip art and assorted items) as well as her Glamour Girls paintings — a series of homages to “retro bombshells, lusty pin-ups and the timeless Hollywood divine” that are “candy coated” with the artist’s engagingly repurposed found objects.

“I feel that the dress is more than a garment…it tells a story,” says Rader of her magnificent minis. “This collection is inspired by nature, poetry, fairytales, historical heroines, daydreams and other romantic notions.”

The Saturday reception, too groovy to be contained within a single storefront space, runs from 7 to 10 pm  — with Rader’s art remaining on display through February and March — and we get off on telling you where else to go this weekend, beginning with a Friday fricasee that lies right around the clickable corner.

You know him as MUCUS in the Advil Congestion Relief commercials — and you may have seen him in A THOUSAND CLOWNS at Two River Theater  — now Michael Nathanson is on screen at The Showroom, in the Oscar nominated short TIME FREAK.

FRIDAY thru SUNDAY: Oscar Nominated Shorts at The Showroom. While your friends scramble to catch up with all of this year’s Oscar nominated features (including what too many people are mistakenly and congestedly misidentifying as “Albert Dobbs”), Asbury Park’s nifty neighborhood nickelodeon The ShowRoom offers up a too-rare chance to take in all of those live action, animated and documentary shorts that somewhow never seemed to get their time in the projector-bulb light. Thanks to  Shorts ^HD, Nancy and Mike’s downtown screening space has placed the most acclaimed works of succinct cinema for public perusal — and for the third consecutive year, the Showroom shamen will advance the Academy Awards superbowl with a weekend-long festival of Oscar Nominated Shorts, for which attendees at each of the screenings will be asked to vote on which of the featured filet-o’-films will win the Oscar (winners from the three categories will be announced the following week and prize packages will be distributed by The ShowRoom).

The ANIMATION program (Friday 5:30p; Saturday 6pm; Sunday 2:30pm) includes Dimanche/Sunday, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, La Luna, A Morning Stroll and Wild Life. The LIVE ACTION program (Friday 7:30pm; Saturday 8pm) spotlights Pentecost, Raju, The Shore, Time Freak and Tuba Atlantic — while Saturday’s 3:30pm DOCUMENTARY screening features four of the five nominees for 2012: The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom, Incident in New Baghdad, Saving Face, and The Barber of Birmingham:  Foot Soldier of the Civil Rights Movement. The Showroom, 708 Cookman Ave., Asbury Park • $9 per program

If you’re wondering what Rachael Ray, NY Giants RB Ahmad Bradshaw, Queen Latifah and Ralph Nader have in common…they’ve all decorated chairs in years past for the Monmouth Museum’s CHAIRISH THE MUSEUM promotion, the 2012 edition of which wraps up Friday in Lincroft.

FRIDAY: Chairish the Museum Silent Auction at Monmouth Museum. Are you sitting down? If proximity to famous folk causes you to be a bit unsteady on your feet, be advised to exercise caution when parking your carcass at the Monmouth Museum this Friday evening — you might just be parking it on one of their objets d’art.

Over at the Museum (on the Lincroft campus of Brookdale Community College), it’s the sixth annual appearance of Chairish The Museum, a fundraising vehicle in which dozens of artists and artisans are invited to design, decorate (or, in the case of some of the participating celebs, happily autograph) a chair, to be bid upon via silent auction on February 10. While the staff isn’t precisely promising a star-studded gala, the Museum has traditionally used this wintertime event to bring out the colorfully creative side of a wide range of people — including  occasional armchair artists from the worlds of sports, entertainment, broadcasting or politics.

The whimsical, wild and wacky chairs — all of them offered for sale as way of furnishing revenue for the ongoing programs at the museum — will be open for bids beginning at 6pm. Additional info on the Chairish promotion, the auction event or the Museum’s ongoing Juried Exhibition can be had by calling (732)747-2266. Monmouth Museum at Brookdale Community College, Newman Springs Rd., Lincroft • 6pm

FRIDAY: Masters of Music presents Darlene Love at McLoone’s Supper Club.  Sammy Boyd’s engaging series of intimate concerts and talks with the people who powered the pop music of the transistorized golden age (recent guests have included Lesley Gore, Gary US Bonds and Beatle-backer Sid Bernstein) continues at Tim McLoone’s Supper Club, with an appearance by the Spector studio session stalwart who subbed as the Crystals on the breathtaking breakthrough “He’s A Rebel”  — and who’s rescued the legacy of the greatest Christmas album of all time from the Bad Santa who’s now serving a 19-to-life sentence for second-degree murder (a fact apparently known to all but the author of his official bio). Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Darlene Love returns to the Upper Wet Side of NJ in a special Supperclub setting, for which general admission tix are still available as we speak. Masters of Music returns on March 2 with Shirley Alston Reeves, and on March 23 with one of our favorite conversationalists, Southside Johnny. Tim McLoone’s Supper Club, Ocean and Fifth Aves., Asbury Park • 6pm dinner; 8:30pm show/ $35

FRIDAY: Jersey Shore Rock ‘N Soul Revue presents a tribute to the BeeGees. In an interview we did with Bob Bandiera a couple of seasons back, the veteran musical go-to guy fessed up to the effect that “I’ve got about 95 guitars. My wife is not happy about it — she allotted me two rooms for my music. But you know it’s fun to have that arsenal.” What he also appears to have is a “little black book” of friends that must rival the Oxford Unabridged for sheer heft — that, or a Rolodex the size of the “Big Wheel” from The Price Is Right.

When he’s not touring with Bon Jovi, serving as Southside’s lieutenant in the Asbury Jukes, hopping the goodwill train of Holiday Express, or simply flying solo, this smoothest Cat on the Shore’s surface has been known to call upon many of those friends for the jumpin’ Justice League known as the Jersey Shore Rock ‘N Soul Revue — and on February 10, Bobby B and friends return to the boards of the Count Basie Theatre for the latest in the ongoing series of themed tribute concerts; this one a nod to the era-spanning hits of the BeeGees (and THIS not one week after the most recent area appearance of all-metal Gibb trib Tragedy). Here in the 35th anniversary year of Saturday Night Fever, the Revue band covers Gibby goodies ranging from the Beatlesque 60s chirp of “Lonely Days” and “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” to the disco falsetto of “How Deep Is Your Love” and “Nights on Broadway.”  Count Basie Theatre, 99 Monmouth St., Red Bank • 8pm/ $25 – $49.50

SATURDAY: John Eddie/ Michael Patrick at the Pony. In an interview we did a few months back with Jersey-fresh country music maven Michael Patrick, the singer-songwriter described his pal John Eddie as “a great influence — just a really good songwriter and an energetic performer with star quality. I’ve been going to see him for play for years and he’s just as great as ever — I remember seeing him at Birch Hill years ago, he had a fan blowin’ his hair onstage for extra rock star effect!”

Whereas once they wondered “Who the Hell is John Eddie?,” now the only question is whether the honorary Shoreguy fave brings his rocker game, his Nashville game or his superstar songwriter game (Kid Rock’s “Low Life”) to any of his many appearances in Asbury town. Tonight’s return to The Stone Pony marks a pretty momentous milestone — a CD release party for Eddie’s first disc drop in nine(!) years, and a night at the roadhouse that further features Mike Patrick and band, as well as Sonic Slave, Justin Learner and Bobby Mahoney. Stone Pony, Ocean and Second Aves., Asbury Park • 8pm/ $17 advance, $20 door

Julian Paul Keenan speaks at a past Red Bank Humanists Darwin Day event, at the Red Bank Charter School. (Photo by John Ward)

SUNDAY: Darwin Day in Red Bank. Yes Virginia, there is such a thing as Darwin Day — and it’s something of a tradition in Red Bank, thanks to the efforts of the nonprofit Red Bank Humanists org and its mission to “seek to understand the universe through science and critical thinking, and represent an overall objective of developing a more humane society.”

On February 12 — the 203rd birthday of Charles Darwin — Ron Steelman and the RBH welcome guest speaker Paul Bologna, for a talk on “Evolution: Myths and Misconceptions.” The Associate Professor at Montclair State University (where he’s director of the Aquatic and Coastal Sciences Program, Department of Biology and Molecular Biology) will address the question  “Is evolution in opposition to religion?,” with attendees invited to take part in a post-talk Q&A AND enjoy a complimentary Darwin Fish Cookie (fish shaped, we trust, not fish flavored). It’s a celebration that, in the words of the Institute for Humanist Studies, “expresses gratitude for the enormous benefit that scientific knowledge has contributed to the advancement of humanity” — and it happens at the Red Bank Charter School, with no charge for admission and all (Humanist? Freethinker? Agnostic? Atheist? Skeptic?) welcome. Call (908)675-6686 for more info. Red Bank Charter School, 58 Oakland St., Red Bank • 10:30am

TRAGEDY returns to Asbury Lanes, as the ONLY metal Bee Gees tribute you’ll need see this weekend puts on their bowling shoes for a bit of Saturday Night Kegler — while lensman Mike McLaughlin is among the vibey visionaries represented in PINK NOISE, the 3rd Anniversary group show opening at Parlor Gallery.

All in all, it wasn’t the best week in which to be PINK.

Between the Susan G. Komen Foundation’s face-reddening “Pink-Gate” PR debacle, and the viral backlash against the infamous McNuggets “Pink Slime” photo, the once-proud color of Barbie and Elvis and Quisp was looking a beat-up and pulpy shade of purple by Friday. Which is why Pink Noise, the official Third Anniversary group show installation at Asbury Park’s pop-art paradise Parlor Gallery, could not have arrived with better timing to pull the PINK back from the BRINK.

A chance to feel “In the Pink” is especially needed here in a week with the news that Asbury Lanes — that Cold War-era tenpins taproom turned kitschy-cool alterna-arts odditorium — had been sold by its longtime owner to local developers Pat Fasano and Vince Gifford. It’s a bit of news that set off brain-alarms in anyone for whom the Lanes has served as everything from Fellini-esque corner bar, to a destination worth crossing several state lines to reach — and, justified or not, it was a potential tragedy that put many of us on a reflexive “Save the Roller Disco” alert straight out of 80s movies like Xanadu and Lunch Wagon.

Of course, the Lanes is no stranger to Tragedy, having hosted this hemisphere’s premier all-metal tribute to the music of the BeeGees many times over the years. Tonight, February 4, the 2012 edition of the continent-crossing metalizers (brothers Barry Glibb, Mo’Royce Peterson, and Robin Gibbens, with little brother Andy Gibbous Waning on bass and family patriarch The Lord Gibbeth, on drums) retakes the center Lanes in a late-skewed setsnack for which your award-winning DJ Jack the Ripper will serve as “amuse bouche.”

Before that, however, the windows of the Cookman Avenue arts bloc’s Parlor Gallery will be steaming up like an electric casserole dish, as First Saturday rages in downtown Asbury and some dozen music-minded artists (including DEVO poindexter Mark Mothersbaugh) team up for a de-waxing blast of Pink Noise.

Among the artists bringing the PINK NOISE to the Parlor Gallery are (clockwise from top left) Robert Piersanti, Mark Mothersbaugh, Daniel Edlen and Thom Lessner.

Debuting with a reception between the hours of 7 and 10pm — and continuing, ‘case you miss it (we’ll be in Red Bank for opening night of August Wilson’s Jitney at Two River) through March 5 — Pink Noise takes its name from the soundtech process by which a room is “tuned” for best audio reproduction (ask your Norton), and it features a slew of music-inspired artworx that include the fluid moshpit seascapes of AP photog Mike McLaughlin, the almost folk-art painted wood 80s star figures of Thom Lessner, the vivid comix-inspired paintings of Robert Piersanti, the screenprint-on-vinyl-record portraits of Daniel Elden, and the postcard-print rug art of Mothersbaugh, subject of a past solo show and a guest (via Skype) to the Parlor of unearthly delights.

It’s a fun way to mark the third birthday of Parlor Gallery, which opened in early 2009 as the successor to Crybaby Gallery, with Crybaby’s “Juicy” Jenn Hampton partnering here with super artist Jill Ricci and Michael “Glamour Bomb” Walker in a busy operation that’s already outlasted many other entries in the mercurial local-artscape sweepstakes. Together with the ever-vivacious Sarah Potter, the Parlor mob has created a serious destination showcase for the kind of Pop Art that most other regional galleries won’t touch; spotlighting Ricci’s own work in addition to the sublime graffiti of Porkchop, the blood paintings of Jordan Eagles, as well as Bradley Hoffer, Lisa Brawn and others whose work is rarely seen on the walls around these parts. It’s a large, inviting, brightly lit venue where lovers of the truly outre can celebrate the ascendance of octopus-tentacle chandeliers, molded plastic robots and dyspeptic-looking ceramic cupcakes — a place whose annual Erotic Art exhibits still manage to get some folks’ Jockeys in a jumble even in 21st century Asbury Park.

The show’s also a reminder of the symbiosis between Parlor Gallery and Asbury Lanes, with Juicy Jenn and Sarah the (most uncommon) common denominators betwixt the two hipster haunts. Equal parts va-va-voomacious Buddhist blondeshell and tough-talking music biz “Sid Sidstein,” Jenn serves as de facto den mother to a Lanes team that boasts Layney Lanes, Jack the Ripper, Lori Hatred — inheritors of a revamped retro legacy that began under artist and auto customizer Meldon Van Riper Stultz and brought a wild new identity to the Atom Age alley. A peculiarly “punk” place even when it was trying to be anything but (its location next to the old Fast Lane meant you could find people like Wreckless Eric and David Johansen having a pre-show beer there), the latterday Lanes has hosted exploitation film kingpins and garage rock legends; United States congressmen and sex scandal Lolitas; drag queen superstars and even legendary pro bowlers. In addition to the amazing run of live music that began with a pioneering gig by the Ribeye Brothers, the Lanes has served as a a place for weddings, after-hours ghost investigations, sketching classes and pin-up makeovers, gay bowling and old-school burlesque, film festivals and live game shows, garage sales and at least one fancy quasi-formal benefit gala.

Upon announcement of the sale, the new owners (who’ve also bought the house next door to the Lanes) immediately got busy, removing the hedges that lined the front of the building, and initiating a long overdue replacement of the toilets — quite possibly displacing one of the resident ghosts in the process. As Jenn tells it, the activity is part of a big-plan freshening up of a 50 year old landmark which for too long had been operating in “maintenance mode.”

Jenn, whose wish list for the beloved Lanes has included such basics as a new roof, heating system and bigger bar, had much to offer — off the record, natch — on the new developments Laneside, when we spoke to the native daughter of Punxsatawney, PA at the gallery the day after Groundhog Day. More on all that as things coalesce around this transitional time over on Fourth Avenue (and yes, inside this little arts ‘n entertainment blog is a truly killer blog straining to get out).

We depend upon Sarah — club co-booker, hostess of Sex Toy Bingo and a person who’s positioned to trademark the word “YAY!” — to send us out on an upbeat note, going on record as seeing “a lot of positive things coming from it” when quizzed about all that’s new and exciting at the Lanes.

For now, the previously announced schedule of entertainments remains intact — with the exception of the March 10 concert by Anti-Flag; cancelled due to unrelated factors tied to the band’s participation in this spring’s big Bamboozle Festival in AP. And for First Saturday, the windows of the Parlor steam up in anticipation of another packed house, in a series of increasingly popular and de rigeur opening events.

We’ll cap this ongoing saga for the time being with some observations by All Tomorrow’s Parties festival founders Barry Hogan and Deborah Kee Higgins, who we interviewed this past October at the end of their inaugural event in Asbury — an occasion that saw Barry say of the Lanes, “when we saw that place for the first time, we fell in love with it. We thought it was the most fantastic venue to use; to build a whole event around.”

“If they ever tear down the Lanes, we wouldn’t want to come back,” declared Deborah. “It would be like tearing the heart out of the community!”

Carol Patricia Mas of Pearce, Arizona — better known as singer, songwriter and rockonteur CAROLYNE MAS of New York, Nashville, Asbury Park and many other coordinates on the GPS — has some songs for sale, a smile for her faithful fans, and a slew of stories for the asking.

A few weeks ago we let slip in this space the fact that Carolyne Mas had floated the idea to her Facebook friendbase that she was “looking to sell my portion of my publishing for all of my songs…all of them.”

“I am ready to walk away from music for good and get on with my life at this point,” said the singer best remembered for the rollicking, sax-driven minor hit “Stillsane” and the eponymous 1979 album it hailed from. “Perhaps my music can provide me with one last parting gift.”

It was a bolt from the blue as regards the veteran singer-songwriter (and onetime Jersey Shore resident) — one that elicited a strong “don’t do it” response from a lot of her musical brethren and sistren, and a report that left her “appalled” that we would share her public-forum post in such a fashion.

While we hadn’t spoken personally to the diminutive rock diva since her original, largely strugglesome tenure in and around Asbury Park in the 1980s, we reckoned it warranted a conversation — a chance to reboot and catch up; a forum in which the singer (who prefers to be called Carol Mas these days) could update everyone back here on the upperWETside as to her current whereabouts and activities, as well as her reasons for putting the fruits of her creative labors up on the block.

This is a woman who’s been dealt more than her share of adversity in a public life of more than 30 years. It’s a run of lousy luck that’s ranged from the standard music biz chew-ups and spit-outs (misbehaving management, radio playlist politics, piss-poor promotion) to protracted financial/ legal woes, health issues, busted relationships, family illnesses, crazy stalkers and a 2009 controversy that landed her in the headlines in Florida’s Hernando County, where she and her husband then operated an animal rescue operation known as Our Animal Haus (the couple’s disputes with county Animal Control resulted in the seizure of most of the animals in their care; Mas lays out her side of the story in detail here on her blog).

Then there was the 1986 incident in which she was attacked and stabbed nearly to death inside her home (by an assailant who remains unidentified and uncaught to this day) — an event that served as a bad bookend to a Shore area tenure during which ongoing legal hassles with management kept her from performing as a professional musician, forcing her to make the nut by doing everything from waiting tables and stocking shelves, to dancing in some of the many lovely go-go bars that dotted the Monmouth County coastline in those days.

Now relocated to rural Arizona with her husband and son, 56 year old Carol Mas is nothing if not a consummate survivor — this is no hermit in exile or broken shell of her old self, but an outgoing, active parent and community member who’s worked hard to achieve what is anymore the only real promise of American life: the chance to reinvent oneself, in as many ways and as many times as you damn well please. She’s someone who has no problem reminiscing, discussing and laughing about her life as a next-big-thing pop star — while making it evident that she’s able to do all this because she’s succeeded in taking the pressure off herself.

In there somewhere, of course, there still resides the ambitious, stage-savvy performer who emerged out of the same NYC troubador scene that gave us Steve Forbert, Willie Nile, Garland Jeffreys and Cyndi Lauper’s Blue Angel; a songsmith who could pen a radio-ready original like “Quote Goodbye Quote” or deal an authoritative cover of Forbert’s “You Can Not Win if You Do Not Play.”

There was “mucho mas” to Mas of course than those early Mercury LPs (finally released to a double CD set just last year). There were several well-received live recordings, fueled by a strong following in Germany (apparently, one does not Hassel the Hoff OR the Mas). There were self-released, Europe-only studio albums in the late 1980s and early 1990s (one of which, Action Pact, teams her with the greatest garage/barband in the observable universe, the Missouri combo known primarily as The Skeletons). And there was her participation in the JAM (Jersey Artists for Mankind) project, joining the likes of Bruce, Clarence, Max, Southside and Glen Burtnik on the Band Aid-style single “We Got the Love” (catch her solo spot at 4:12 in the clip).

Carol/ Carolyne isn’t at all shy about hooking old and new fans up with her recorded works (in a variety of formats, including flash stick) on her official website — and as we found out when we rang her up at her Grand Canyon State getaway, she’s got a story or two to tell. Read on…

Like some manner of jumpin’ Justice League, an elite corps of Jersey Artists united for Mankind with a 1986 benefit-single JAM. That’s Carolyne at front and far left, clutching the very large, very yellow shirt of Mr. Glen Burtnik.

upperWETside: I guess the first thing we need to sort out would be your name…do you prefer to go by Carol nowadays?

It’s Carol now, and has been for some time. Carolyne Mas is a name that belongs to another place and time…I’m not running away from who I am; I just don’t make a big deal of it and most people don’t know me as Carolyne Mas.

Well…my postman here knows who I am! I can’t wait ‘till I’m 80 years old and nobody bugs me, asking me if I am ever going to play again.

I became Carol in my life as a caregiver. I’ve been working with mentally handicapped people. I took care of my aunt, who had Alzheimer’s, for six years, and then I took care of my mother when she developed the same disease in 2007.

I’ve found caregiving much more rewarding. I really did want to get out of the music business entirely. I played as recently as 2006, in Italy, but since then my life has taken many different directions. I loved music; I was passionate about the business, but the music business was not so kind to me in return.

It’s not really what I value anymore. The things that I went through took away a lot of the joy that I had for music. I just want to have a regular life.

So tell me about the life you’re leading these days…I understand you’re living out in some remote little town that’s barely on the map…

I’m living in this small, remote, unincorporated town close to Mexico — Pearce, Arizona. Myself, my husband and my son, who was adopted from my brother’s daughter. He was born in Spain, and he’s been one of the first really rewarding things in my life.

Pearce has a small school with about 35 kids; a post office, a dollar store, an Asian/Mexican restaurant, a falafel truck, and a tiny store called The Produce Wagon — no supermarket. The closet place of any interest is Bisbee, about an hour away. It’s an eclectic old copper mining town where the hippies came and settled in the 60’s…there’s a bit of a gay and lesbian community; a main street that’s sort of East Villagey, like Cookman Avenue. Tombstone, which you know for the shootout at the OK Corral, is also about an hour away.

Pearce, and the surrounding area, is made up of mostly farmers, and a fairly large pocket of seniors — plus a little country club that time forgot, with a small golf course that’s almost like mini-golf!

There’s a woman here who make these soaps, creams and lotions from goat’s milk. They’re expensive, but there’s an audience for it, and she is quite legendary. She’s married to the postman.

I live a quiet life — I do a lot of reading, and I don’t watch TV, although I do spend time online. I have satellite, and when it goes out, it’s like you’re living in a hole. But really, there’s no such thing as ‘remote,’ when you’re aggressively seeking what you want out of life. I think of myself as a spiritual seeker.

We moved into a solar home on 40 acres, in a place with intense southern exposure —  we get 350 sunny days a year here. It can be very comfortable even when it’s a hundred degrees outside.

Of course four of my solar batteries just quit on me. They cost about a thousand bucks apiece, so we’ve also got a wood stove and propane heaters. I make do with just a few lights and my computer.

Thanks to the internet, looking for a new home was like opening up a map and pointing. My first instinct was to run away from Florida after all the things we went through there…I took everybody out here. It was a terrible gamble, but I thought it best to just move rather than stay and sue. I rented an RV for the people and the birds, and used transport companies to move the horse, dogs and cats.

The stuff that went down in Florida a couple of years ago, with the shuttering of your animal rescue operation, put you back in the public eye in a way that you never intended. When you contacted me recently, you referred to that whole chapter in terms of your having been the victim of a “scam” as you put it. Wondering if you could elaborate on that for us…

The thing that I was horrified to see when you wrote about me recently was that old article from the Tampa newspaper, and that courtroom photo from what was a very unhappy and devastating time. It was a kangaroo court…I wasn’t given the time to get an attorney for myself and still the whole thing continues to live online thanks to that reporter and the paper. With the internet, everything stays up there, whether it’s true or false.

I was basically framed by a corrupt county government. I don’t know if you’ve ever been down there, but it’s a real Deliverance area. I never did really make many friends there, not for lack of trying. Florida’s a cesspool.

But I like the people here in Pearce; it’s a beautiful place.

The whole thing in Florida started when they seized a horse that we were taking care of. They insisted that this old horse, who was 30, was really 18 and was being abused and neglected by us, even though I had vet records with his birth date. He was thin because of his age; anyone who knows horses will tell you the same.

They used the horse to build a case against us that we were neglecting all the animals in our care; not feeding them properly. The whole issue was driven by a very unscrupulous journalist who was trying to make a name for himself after he saw an article about me written by Holly Cara Price that had appeared in the Huffington Post.

Animal Control took me to court and never let me have the time to get a lawyer; it all happened inside of a week. There was a court hearing that was not even recorded, where they said whatever they wanted to say, and made up a case against me where there had been none. They said I owed them $6000 for an investigation that never happened, so they took it upon themselves to seize and sell my horses and parrots, of which there were 50, to pay this fictitious debt. Whatever they couldn’t profit from, they killed…all 80 cats and several elderly dogs.

They took all my cages, and kennels. They auctioned my animals online for thousands of dollars. I got an attorney afterwards, but what good could it do? I couldn’t file much of an appeal because the whole hearing was never recorded, so there was no way of proving what had happened at all. I didn’t have the money to sue, so I had to learn to put it behind me.

John Stossel did a report on this sort of thing for 20/20 in 2005, where he uncovered these animal rights driven, thug-like groups that don’t want to see anyone own animals. Animal Control is about people control, and about generating revenue; it is not about animal welfare. They would rather euthanize animals than help them.

Anyway, you could look at the complete story about what happened to me at www.ouranimalhaus.org, along with photos of many of the animals that were taken the night before they came and seized them from us. You can see what a beautiful facility we had.

That was another dark chapter for you…anyone who lived on the Jersey Shore when you were here back in the 80s remembers that rough time you were going through, topped off of course by very nearly getting killed in your home. Even though I didn’t really know you personally I remember feeling poorly about the whole thing, like this place where we live couldn’t possibly be THAT cruel to someone, could it?

I’m aware of maybe a half dozen other places that you’ve moved to over the years…Florida aside, where have you felt comfortable within the past 20 years or so? Where have you felt that things might be swinging your way?

I lived in Germany for about four years; I had a huge hit song in Germany called “Sittin’ in the Dark”, from a live record that came out there in 1981, so people wanted to hear my music there — but they wanted THAT music, and I wanted to write new stuff, more acoustic, more roots, less sax. It was still a very good time for me, I played a lot, even went to Russia, and I definitely felt as if things could be swinging my way for a while. Eventually, though, I came back to the states because I was getting frustrated not being able to evolve musically. I did leave behind some fine albums — some of my best studio work, I think.

I’m from Long Island, but I’ve lived lots of places. In 1982, I moved from Brooklyn to Long Branch, to a blue house on the corner of Atlantic and Ocean Avenue. It’s gone now.

I also lived in West Long Branch — right after I broke up with Michael Scialfa, who I was engaged to in 1985. I lived not far from the little health food store that was on the main street. I also worked at the NHN vitamin store in the Seaview Square Mall around that time.

I have lived in Bradley Beach; I have lived in Hoboken — and in the Village, where I started a songwriter night at The Cornelia Street Café not long before I was signed to Mercury. I have lived in California, Germany, Springfield Missouri, and Nashville.

While I was living in Florida caring for my aunt, I came back to Asbury Park and bought a house on Berg Street in 2006, but I didn’t move there; my old boyfriend Larry Blasco lived there til he passed away in 2008.

Getting back to your original stay in and around Asbury, this was a time that was just a year or so removed from your tenure as a major label recording artist…someone who didn’t know anybody in the actual music biz might have thought that an artist with three albums out would have been comfortably well off. Instead you found yourself in the middle of this busy scene full of musicians; unable to get gigs together with all these legal hangups and having to be a working stiff just to survive.

One of the things I need to correct about what you wrote was the restaurant in Asbury Park where I worked. It wasn’t the Adriatic, it was Net Lane’s Fisherman! Tell me you remember Net Lane’s.

When I signed to Warner Chappell Music in 1979, it was the sort of thing that many young artists have done…get themselves involved with people, with management who didn’t have their best interests at heart. I was having my royalty checks stolen while I was having to work at the Fisherman. I even worked as a go-go dancer in some dive on Ocean Avenue.

I did eventually have a song end up on Monster Garage. But I never saw a dime from it, of course.

The wand’ring troubador, as she appeared in the early Nineties and last summer, when it was ninety in the shade.

And of course Mercury Records wasn’t very much help either…something that Graham Parker addressed quite eloquently.

I got some press early on, some good airplay, although I had my troubles with that also…and after that you were kind of on your own; not getting distribution, not getting the music out to radio people; not having your record in the stores when you came to town to play a show.

As far as I’m concerned the only reason I have any kind of a fanbase is the fact that I played live. I worked it as hard as I could, and I did it at great personal sacrifice. My (first) marriage at that time was a joke…I don’t know how you could possibly stay married and live the life of a touring musician.

It’s a very seductive thing, the music business. They don’t see you as a human being; someone who’s tying to develop a career. Young people in that situation, living in the here and now, can really be taken advantage of. And you get spit out when they’re finished with you.

So in my case, you know, I had my shot as far as they were concerned. You can’t get ‘discovered’ again, and I was never famous enough to make a ‘comeback’ really. I believe that I would have been a happier person if I had never made a record; if I had just kept playing music locally.

I don’t mean to make this just a litany of bad breaks and personal tragedies, but you’ve also alluded to some health issues that have more or less made it difficult to continue on as a working musician…

One of the consequences of the bulimia that I had for many years was that I was misdiagnosed with a thyroid condition that I didn’t have. I’ve managed to turn my health around in recent years…although I have some arthritis in my hands. I’m stooped a little bit.

I look different than I did in 1979, but after all these years I’m comfortable with how I look. I put it out there for all to see.

For a while there was this woman named Caryn MacFayden going around claiming to be me…as if there’s fame and fortune in it! She would introduce herself to people she met as Carolyne Mas, impersonate me online, and it got so bad I had to put a warning about her up on my website — I had to put up a current picture of ME because she was trying to pass herself off as me when I had blonde hair, like on the cover of Modern Dreams. She fooled some people, too!

Well, you’ve got your reasons for wanting to close that whole chapter of your life, but when you put out the call for someone to purchase the publishing rights to your songs, it seems a lot of musicians came out of the woodwork saying no, don’t do it; never give up the ship. The ship being, you know, the control of your music.

I’ve found myself, at this point in my life, sitting on a catalogue of songs that I haven’t been doing anything with. The only way to breathe life into these songs is to find them a good home with someone who’s passionate and interested in them.

It’s like the songs are in jail…nobody’s going to help you if they can’t make any money off them.

Even so, as we’ve been talking it’s evident that you still have a lot of good memories of your music career; a genuine affection for a lot of the people you’ve worked with…I can’t help but think that you’ll never close that door completely no matter how much you say you want to walk away from it. And when I see some contemporary of yours around town like Willie Nile or Steve Forbert, both of whom have performed in Asbury Park recently, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine you being talked into sharing a stage with them at least one more time…

Willie I knew when he was just playing piano in a bar. And Steve and I were lovers on and off many years ago…I wrote half of those old songs for him.

Well, we’ve gotta wrap this up on a positive note. I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the other end of the line when I called, but I must say you’re sounding good and focused and together and all that groovy stuff. It’s been a pleasure!

I’m in a good position. Maybe I had to go through all the things I went through because destiny had something else in mind for me…maybe it’s not what we think we want. Life will show us what we need. That justifies it to me!

Tony winning actor-playwright Ruben Santiago-Hudson (pictured in his recent stint on TV’s CASTLE series) directs the Two River Theater Company staging of August Wilson’s JITNEY, going up in previews beginning January 29.

The scene is the storefront dispatch office of an unlicensed “gypsy” cab service in Pittsburgh’s Hill District — a neighborhood unserved by the city’s major taxi companies, and an unlikely setting for one of the truly game-changing works of the modern theater.

When he wrote Jitney in the late 1970s, August Wilson was a largely self-educated impresario who came from far outside the theatrical and academic establishments to found his own shoestring stage troupe in the Hill District. What he didn’t yet realize was that this (short on plot, long on vivid characters) ensemble drama would develop into the cornerstone of a project that would see its author hailed by many as the greatest American playwright of the last 50 years.

Before his 2005 death from liver cancer, Wilson managed to complete the ambitious work that would serve as his legacy: The Pittsburgh Cycle, a set of ten plays — each one set in a different decade — that encapsulate the African American experience in the 20th century in ways that are tragic, comic, mystical, musical, realistic, hardbitten, hopeful and, in the case of Jitney, maybe all of the above.

Beginning with a matinee preview on Sunday, January 29, Two River Theater Company makes its first foray into Wilson’s world as Jitney takes the stage for a three-week run. Heading a heavyweight ensemble of nine professional players is Tony winner (for The Life) Chuck Cooper as Becker, boss of the dispatch depot and a man whose relationship with his recently paroled son Booster (J. Bernard Calloway of Broadway’s Memphis) boils over into violence. Anthony Chisholm, who won an Obie as Fielding in the play’s original Off Broadway production, reprises the role of the alcoholic ex-tailor here — and the frankly awesome cast is rounded out by Harvy Blanks, Brandon J. Dirden, Roslyn Ruff, Ray Anthony Thomas, James A. Williams and Allie Woods Jr.

Most exciting of all is the identity of the director attached to this project — Ruben Santiago-Hudson, a longtime friend and professional associate of August Wilson who won a Tony for his acting in Wilson’s Seven Guitars (and who went on to co-star in Gem of the Ocean as well as direct numerous Wilson revivals). The busy stage and screen pro, who turned playwright for his autobiographical Lackawanna Blues (and who’s also familiar from three seasons of Castle, a TV series in which his character was rather disconcertingly bumped off), has been busily overseeing rehearsals in Red Bank even as he continues his current Broadway stint in the Alicia Keys-produced Stick Fly. UpperWETside managed to get in a few minutes with Santiago-Hudson as he jitney’d his way between two high profile projects.

Ruben Santiago-Hudson announces JITNEY in Red Bank last spring, as Greg Brown and Rona Figueroa (of TRTC’s production of JACQUES BREL) look on. (Photo by John Ward)

upperWETside: Flashing back to when you took part in the new season announcement at Two River Theater, it was very exciting to learn that they’d be taking on JITNEY, and that they’d be working with you — somebody who’s as much an authority on August Wilson as Michael Cumpsty is in the works of William Shakespeare.

RUBEN SANTIAGO-HUDSON: I’m glad to be coming here and working with John Dias, Michael Hurst and everyone, to be part of the new movement that they’re doing here.

One of the things that makes JITNEY so interesting is that it was written before Wilson’s whole grand concept of the ten-play cycle really came together…it has, I think, a looser sort of feel that allows it to be considered a standalone sort of work.

That’s true about all of the plays, really…Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Gem of the Ocean are singly great plays by themselves. What’s magnificent about the ten plays is the collective line that runs through them…the links to certain characters, certain businesses, places and events. When you see them all produced together you pick up on those things, see how one relates back to another. But I can put up any one of those plays by itself and blow your mind!

A few years back you took part in a TV show panel discussion where you said something to the effect that “August Wilson is the star” when it comes to putting together productions of his work — something that seems very much the case at Two River, with his name before the title and his picture on the ads. Would you agree that, now more than ever since his passing, the August Wilson brand is crucial to getting these plays in front of an audience…especially something like JITNEY, which calls for a lot more actors than most Broadway dramas these days?

Jitney is the only one of the ten plays that was not produced on Broadway, and even now…I don’t necessarily look at this as a plan to be bringing it to Broadway, but even if I brought them a dynamite production, the first thing the producers would ask would be ‘who’s starring?’ You know, is Denzel available?

But August Wilson IS the star. While he was living, he earned every kind of Broadway, Off Broadway accolade; every kind of national and international acclaim. His effect on the history of theater, the architecture of theater…really American anthropology over the past few decades…can’t be exaggerated.

You’re working with a really amazing cast in JITNEY, and I noticed right away that all nine of your actors have experience in at least one high profile production of a Wilson play. That’s certainly not uncommon for actors of this generation, but is it a factor that you were looking for when the show was being cast?

In this case, with not a lot of time to get this thing together, I wanted to work with actors whose work I knew, who were comfortable with this, who could handle the poetic nature, the melody of his language…straight off, I felt that the cast must have a feel for that language.

The version of JITNEY that we’ll be seeing onstage in Red Bank kind of evolved considerably since it was first written in the 1970s, correct?

When he submitted it in 1979, it got rejected because the play was less than 90 minutes. He added to it over the years, added a lot of the Booster and Becker stuff…and he rewrote it from different perspectives, with more of a focus on Becker, and then Booster later on.

Some of the things that wound up in Jitney later on were actually taken from some of his other plays…he took speeches from Seven Guitars, including things that my character said. I was there when he took them out! I was so angry at him, I didn’t speak to him for two whole weeks. But of course he did the right thing.

August did what he did not to satisfy Ruben, but to serve the play, and serve his vision. And our friendship lasted til his death.

And SEVEN GUITARS turned out to be a real career milestone for you.

After the Tony nominations were announced, I found myself sitting on a bus near some ladies, a couple of old white ladies talking about the nominees — they had no idea that one of the actors they were talking about was sitting right there.

One of them said about me that ‘he SHOULD win the Tony, but he won’t because he was just being himself.’

I had to speak up and say that the actor was NOT that character; that he wasn’t someone who knew how to play the harmonica, he wasn’t from ‘the country,’ he was from Lackawanna up near Buffalo. And I know these things because I am HE…I am the actor of which you speak.

When I auditioned for August Wilson, he didn’t ask me about my background doing Moliere or Shakespeare…he asked me for my roots, and I gave him everything I had.

I’m struck by how many people…including artists like yourself, producers, professors…have this common story where they felt compelled to be a part of this work that August Wilson was doing; they all wrote to him, approached him and established these long-term working relationships that were built on genuine respect and trust. Even after you got to know him well, did Wilson come across to you as this magnetic, larger than life figure?

August Wilson WAS life itself. There was a mysterious side to him, but if you opened up a dialogue with him, you found yourself trapped with him for two hours, just held captive by his storytelling; his passion for his people and his art.

This was a man who never stopped working, one that fought his whole life to ‘get from tit to tat’ as he said…he’s the only playwright I know who dropped out of high school and got his degree from a public library! The library in Pittsburgh where he got so much of his education, they presented him with his diploma. He’s a man who found his place among the storytellers, the men who kept the culture alive.

To my thinking he had this amazing eye and ear for detail; for things like regional dialect and folklore and history…

In one play there’s talk of one of the characters being brought up on charges of ‘worthlessness,’ which has gotten a laugh from some audiences — they assume that August was being creative about it, but for many years it was a very real thing for African American men to be charged with being ‘worthless.’ August Wilson understood this, and it’s those kind of details that make the play so powerful.

And each of the plays has something different to offer; he had many ways of telling a story. Broadway producers like plays that are linear in their storytelling, but when you think about it Fences, which is the most linear, the most sound in its structure, is not one of the most liked of the ten plays. And Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which is probably the least linear, is also probably the most liked.

Being involved with the work of August Wilson changes people. People of all colors, all religions, all backgrounds…he brings them into an arena and sends them out changed. When you study his work, produce his work, you understand things just a little bit more. I consider myself a disciple of August Wilson…a colleague, a mentee, a brother of August Wilson.

And from the looks of things, a man who carries on Wilson’s staggering work ethic!

I’m still on Broadway, you know, so yes, it’s a hectic schedule. But it’s worth it…I get to dance with August Wilson!

Jitney presents the first of five previews on Sunday, January 29 (3 pm) and Tuesday, January 31 (8 pm); opens Saturday, February 4 (that performance is SOLD OUT), and runs a schedule of evening and matinee performances, Wednesdays through Sundays until February 19. Tickets are $37 – $57 (with a new discounted price of $24 for anyone 30 years and younger) and are available by calling the TRTC Box Office at 732.345.1400, or visiting the TRTC website for schedule details and availability — as well as info on dinner/show packages and other special-event performances.

Carlos Armesto, Alecia Brooks and Michael Thomas Murray are the trez-savvy triumvirate behind Live! Asbury Park, the theatrical entity about which you’ll be hearing much in the near future.

It was a seasonably frigid but frightfully eventful week down at The Press Room, the downtown destination rockbar launched just a week or so ago (by Alecia and Trip Brooks with Tim Donnelly) in the Bangs Avenue bailiwick most recently occupied by Asbury Blues — and, another lifetime ago, by the Asbury Park Press (which reminds us: what the hell is a press room?).

First they packed the place for a first-nighter on a dreadful Jerseyshore January night better suited to Scrabble, Snuggies and Sunny marathons. They brought in migrating Shore songbird Nicole Atkins for an official kickoff that caught a healthy amount of solar wind from the concurrent Light of Day hullabaloo going on about town. They introduced a staff that boasted every unimpeachably accredited music heavy from Hinge to (program director of the much-missed Modern Rock FM 106.3 back in th’ day) Rich Robinson.

Oh, and they accommodated a daytime walk-in customer by the name of Bruce Springsteen, who lensed part of his new video in and around the bar — although we’re told that this well-circulated clip (an effort that’s copyrighted to the Boss himself rather than to Sony) is a “place holder” for a forthcoming, formalized vid that’s expected to feature more than a glimpse of the Press Room.

We’ve had our say on the new Bosssong in this forum, of course, and we could surely be babbling over any one of a number of Brooks-based excitements in the works (including a new Italian ristorante, the ongoing restoration of the Savoy Theatre, and another development so brain-tilting that we’re not sure we hallucinated it all). Still, the next time we ventured over to the Press (as the kids are most surely not calling it), we had an altogether different reason for being there — and a meeting about a pretty intriguing new project that involves Our Mrs. Brooks with two of the more dynamic personalities we’ve encountered on the regional theater scene.

If you’ve come across mention of something called Live! Asbury Park in regard to The Press Room, let it be known that the name connotes a professional company for the presentation of theatrical and performing arts productions at venues around town — with the accent on the ever-morphing sonic legacy of the seaside city Where Music Lives (and laughs, and loves).

The endeavor reunites three creative people who were involved to various degrees with ReVision Theatre —  former ReVision producing partner Alecia Brooks as Creative Producer, Carlos Armesto (director of several of the most acclaimed ReVision offerings — including a Spring Awakening that we described as the show in which the troupe had “truly hit its mark”) as Artistic Director, and Michael Thomas Murray (music director for the majority of the company’s rock-infused musicals) as what could ONLY be called music impresario.

Together they’re teaming up to fight crime — or at least the criminal lack of live professional theatrical productions in an arts-charged city that by all rights should be dripping with dramaturgs — with The Press Room as headquarters for the initial phase of the project.

While we’re confident that you’ll be hearing a lot from the Live! Asbury Park triumvirate in the coming weeks, no specific events have been announced or scheduled just yet — that said, upperWETside was pleased and proud to be the first boutique media outlet to introduce you to this crew, and for the deep-dish detail we respectfully turn the floor over to Carlos, Alecia and Mike…

Scenes from the acclaimed ReVision Theatre productions of THE WHO’S TOMMY and SPRING AWAKENING — two of the successful past collaborations between the partners in Live! Asbury Park.

ALECIA: We expect to be up and running within the year…this year is our intro to the audience. Things are becoming very aligned for us now. I’m not used to this much positive all at once! We have the Press Room to work with for our first events, and we’re close to lining up a regular venue for larger scale events.

We’ve also got a board of hungry individuals who have a stake in this community, and who are ready to get things accomplished. Apart from Carlos and myself and Trip, we have Robert and Anita Weiner, along with Robert and Roberta Obler.

MIKE: We’ll be starting with some concert-based sort of presentations here at The Press Room, maybe in March — and we’ll have a bit of nostalgia in the beginning, with a show that I’ve been involved with for about four years in various incarnations. It’s a tribute to a musical figure from years back, along the lines of Jersey Boys. We’ll be programming other concert-based events, as theatrical as we can make them in this space…think Joe’s Pub.

CARLOS: All of the programming is rooted in the musical history of the city.

ALECIA: We love music way too much…we take it very seriously. The music’s really got to be up to par, with anything that we do.

MIKE:  I’ve always been committed to a certain level of quality in the projects that I take on…that’s why I still wanted to continue working with Carlos and Alecia when I got the opportunity. We like the idea of immersing the audience in the time and the place that’s represented by the music in a show.

ALECIA: We’re proud of the work we did for ReVision. It brought us together as a team, and we’re committed to maintaining that same level of quality with our new projects. We were always interested in the process of how the three of us worked together…the infrastructure was already in place for us to continue to do quality work, and we took away a tremendous amount of positive experiences and support from what we did in the past.

ALECIA: And people are going to see Tommy again from us!

MIKE: Tommy to me was a moment of real clarity, collaborative purity, when you find the right people to make it happen. There have been many versions of Tommy, but what we did was our own thing. And we can do it again.

CARLOS: It’s all part of a six-year plan…down the road we’d like to do a season of four mainstage productions and a concert series, along with a workshop program and an education program. There’s this wonderful synergy at work. It’s about the business mind, as well as the artistic mind. Eventually I could see us presenting dance, puppetry…anything LIVE!

ALECIA: It’s kind of like what we’re doing with the music here at The Press Room. There was a whole hippie world that was not being catered to…all these artists who deserve to be recognized.

CARLOS: We want to speak to all the diverse communities here.

MIKE: Those moments when you can bring those communities together, as we did with Kingdom, Tommy and Rocky Horror, are some of the most exciting things you can experience. There’s this energy of acceptance; a big part of the spirit of what we love about Asbury Park.

All this with an underlying note of buzz in anticipation of “We Take Care of Our Own,” the new track from Bruce Springsteen — and a first whack from Wrecking Ball, the long player now taking pre-orders in advance of an early March blitzkrieg.

Comes January 19, however, and the Friendscape is strangely subdued regarding the newly free-range tune, an arena-scale rallystarter with just enough button-pushing repetition of the title to suggest that the author means it to be taken at face value — and just enough spaces between the buttons to suggest that Boss is being just a gentle bit ironic here.

Our pal John Ward put it best, we think: “More product from the anthem factory. I have deep respect for the towering artistry of Springsteen’s youth, but for years he’s been thematically, melodically and rhythmically unimaginative and cliched, playing to the crowd and curating his legacy. What are we supposed to do with this other than punch the air? ‘Yeah! We take care of OUR OWN! Unlike those OTHER guys!’ I’m bored already.”

Dustin Racioppi, a young old-school journalist whose spot-on work generally runs rings around the rest of us mired in the mangroves of the local media, had this to say: “It’s been comedic to watch the proportionate growth of stagnant, hackneyed songwriting and cloying reverence from media and soccer moms from Colts Neck to Belmar. It’s hard to be a fan anymore.” And Sledger-spawned sleuth Wally Stroby correctly points out a distinct note of “Always Something There to Remind Me” (maybe the Naked Eyes version)

Of course, just because these guys sum things up so succinctly doesn’t mean that we could resist chiming in with another 20,000 or so words of our own…

In an image widely disseminated by Facebook group Bruce Springsteen News, the man who makes the News is visible filming a video around Asbury Park, one day prior to his January 15 appearance at the annual Light of Day fundraiser concert.

Clocking in at just under four minutes — a pretty economical running time in a value-menu climate — “We Take Care of Our Own” seems at first spin to be a wayback-machine nod to the Gloriest Days of the 1980s; a thing cut from the amazing technicolor dreamcloth of “We Built This City,” awash with keyboards and punctuated by salvos from the synth-drums we’ve all got shoved back behind the Bowflex in the garage.

Unlike the much-misundersood 80s anthem “Born in the USA” — a cut whose cheery-aid thump trumped its own downbeat themes; transforming it (to the Boss’s chagrin) into a Lee Greenwood-style soundtrack to Reagan era rallies — this one doesn’t seem to us a “character” song in which Bruce steps into the bloody boots of a disillusioned vet or plant-closing casualty.

A lot of time could be spent parsing the identity of “We” or “Our Own” here, but we’re willing to accept the lyrical voice as that of Springsteen his self — nevermind the “work wanted” plea at around 2:20 in the song — a deeply caring guy whose own herculean efforts to save mankind are somehow still never enough in an atmosphere where “the road of good intentions has gone dry as a bone” and “there ain’t no help, the Calvary (sic?) stayed home.”

It’s all driven home with that plain-spoke language that the formerly word-drunk bard of the boardwalk has increasingly adopted with his fanbase in recent years — the patiently patriarchal tone of pre-Homer TV dads that imparts soundbite lessons of genuine value to young Cindy or The Beaver, even as it makes abundantly clear that the wisdom and the authority trickle down in a single direction (parents just love this stuff!).

While we like to think the song is sufficiently Romney-proofed to avoid this sort of kampaign-trail karaoke, there is the sense that the record — neither as “angry” nor as “wild” as pre-release press would have it — arrives crafted to order for an adoring public that skews older, and more upscale suburban, and probably way more conservative than all involved would readily cop to (there is absolutely NO truth to the rumor that the original lyric read “Wheat Cakes Care of Arbonne”).

It’s a trend that really began to accelerate with The Rising‘s rise to meet a post-9/11 demand for some largely noncontroversial words of healing and you-are-there heroism — a diffusion of the anger that was present just a year earlier in “American Skin” and a medicinal work performed with the sense that it was summoned into being by popular demand.

There’s the notion of the E Street Band, in whatever form it now exists (the forthcoming album is credited just to Bruce) as some sort of Justice League, charged with responding to whatever national crisis of conscience or giant starfish attack currently threatens our American way of life. With Springsteen an increasingly soured Superman, still trying to keep us puny earthlings from nuking ourselves into oblivion even as he ponders his reasons for ever presuming to walk among us in the first place.

Shit, we don’t doubt the man’s aforementioned good intentions for a moment. In an age when it’s as easy to become a celebrity as it is to build faux-finished Fortresses of Solitude monuments around one’s ego, Bruce Springsteen remains remarkably approachable, refreshingly centered, and committed to an idealistic code that’s arguably upped the ante for every public figure who dares pitch their two cents in on any pressing issue of the day.

His very presence at a benefit show catapults said event into a serious stratosphere of awareness and excitement — and the genuine sweat equity that he puts into these endeavors has challenged performers of all makes and models to a friendly race toward pop-cultural canonization; a phenomenon that’s found its most fruitful flowering in the Mantle-’n-Maris competition with Jon Bon “Soul Kitchen” Jovi.

All of us in this neck of the weeds feel possessive of this artist who has defined us more than we’ve defined him. Many of us would likely take a bullet for him, or push him from the path of that rogue Weezers Italian Ice truck. Few of us wish to contemplate a Jersey Shore without his approving Tillie-head shining in the skies above.

One can even make the case that this correspondent can literally thank Mr. Springsteen for the roof over his own head. The historic 19th century Asbury Park house that we rented living space in as of a few months ago — a place that nearly met its own wrecking ball in the dismal days of the mid 1990s — once received a cash gift from Bruce toward much-needed restoration of the roof, thanks to the efforts of (since departed from Asbury) Kate Mellina. So thank you, The Boss — and if you’re reading this, we seem to have sprung a little leak in the ceiling of the upstairs back bathroom.

That said, we’re getting the feeling that Bruce is getting as frustrated playing squarely to the stadium throngs as we are having to listen to it, and that we — an actual Asbury Park person whose further frustrations have involved things like food stamps, bankruptcy, underemployment and an ongoing inability to be accepted into the contestant pool for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire — have pretty much nothing in common with the man’s fans.

We feel this frustration because we know that there’s a brilliant, creative, even dangerous artist at work in there. The guy who ventured far from E Street to record the stark weather report that was Nebraska. The guy who’s curveballed concert audiences with covers of songs by Suicide and an occasionally scratched itch for distorto guitar solos. The guy who rather shockingly pink-slipped the E Streeters and left Monmouth County for the badlands of LA some years back; ditching the working-dog look for some sharp-dressed duds and writing songs that looked at modern life from the sexual-politics side of the bed (before apparently coming to the realization that he was NOT the biggest fish in the Hollywood firmament).

We cling to these flashes of fuck-you incandescence, and we pine for the next time that the man flips off the fanfair barnacles who continue to confine his career course to the most well traveled, clearly marked and dredged-out channels. With the lumbering, expensive E Street Band having fallen out of warranty — and the wobbling ice floes of the music-biz meltdown fairly crying out for a different approach than special-edition box sets and supersized stadium shows — maybe the time is coming to lead and see who’s got the guts to follow; to REALLY take care of your own. Us, we’ll take whatever crumbs we’re thrown.

UPDATE! STOP THE PRESSES! No sooner did we “30″ this epic rant than we received a text from The Press Room, that welcome new addition to downtown Asbury’s live music clubscape (and the partial scene of Springsteen’s January 14 vidshoot in and around the bistros, boards and boulevards of the place Where Music Lives, Laughs and Loves). SO…NEW BOSS VIDEO, SHOTS IN THE PRESS ROOM, read the senses-shattering cell-o-gram. FEEL LIKE DOING A WRITE UP ON THE HOTTEST SPOT IN TOWN? Aye, that we might just do, mateys, because it’s nice to stay busy, and to feel wanted, and like we sez…

Live actors, musicians and sound effect artists perform beneath the projected art of Tim Doyle, as the 21st century retro radio play THE INTERGALACTIC NEMESIS makes its maiden voyage to Red Bank.

It was almost 75 years ago that a young guy named Orson Welles drove thousands of New Jerseyans into Martian-fueled panic, courtesy of a little radio play called War of the Worlds — using little more than a handful of actors, a live microphone and a busy-box of sound effects.

Here in the jet-pack and moving-sidewalk world of 2012, we like to think we’re a little more sophisticated than that — but when the phenomenon known as The Intergalactic Nemesis touches down in New Jersey (at Red Bank’s own Count Basie Theatre) for the first time on January 28, it will represent the leading edge of what may prove to be an ongoing invasion.

Foley sound effects artist Buzz Moran accompanies a live performance of THE INTERGALACTIC NEMESIS, Book One of which invades the Count Basie on January 28.

Described as a “live action graphic novel,” Nemesis is a theatrical experience that traces its alien DNA to Flash Gordon comic strips, Victorian “magic lantern” shows — and the lost art of the radio play, under which form the project took shape among a group of friends in Austin, TX more than a dozen years ago.

As conceptualized by co-writer, producer and director Jason Neulander, Book One of the story (subtitled Target Earth) takes place in the pulp-magazine world of the 1930s, where an intrepid newspaper reporter — remember those? — by the name of Molly Sloan joins her assistant Timmy in a battle against the Zygon sludge monster invasion force. As detailed in the show that will appear at the Basie, our heroes wage an epic but lonely fight that places them in encounters with an enigmatic hypnotist and a gallant, time-traveling librarian — bringing them from Earthly ports of call to the Robot Planet and Imperial Zygon itself.

Through constant workshopping and fine-tuning, the slambang sci-fi story expanded into a serial stage presentation. With the addition of a companion book featuring sequential art by Tim Doyle, Nemesis mutated into a crowd-pleasing production that boasts over 1200 projected illustrations, an original score by acclaimed composer Graham Reynolds, TWO touring units of actors, musicians and Foley sound effects artists — and a couple of sequels waiting in the wings.

A native Jersey guy by way of Montvale, Neulander will NOT be making the trip to the Count’s court, but is scheduled to perform in New Orleans with a different Nemesis troupe at the same time as the Red Bank performance. UpperWETside managed to contact him in his warp-speed travels along the interstates of the northeast.

upperWETside: A quick look at your itinerary suggests that the show is scheduled to be taking place in New Orleans at the same time as it unfolds in Red Bank. Is that a scheduling glitch, or have you somehow tapped into Zygonian technology to appear in two places at once?

JASON NEULANDER: We actually have two touring companies of eight people — on the 28th, I’m going to be one of the actors in ‘Cast B’ for the show that we’re doing down in New Orleans — so, even though I’m looking forward to coming home to New Jersey at some point, it’ll have to be at a later date. We have a talented cast coming to the Count Basie Theatre, so the show’s in good hands — and there’s no reason for me to be there at every performance by this point in the show’s evolution!

Speaking of the evolutionary process, how are things progressing with Book Two of the INTERGALACTIC saga? I’m aware that you have a big premiere coming up in Austin this summer, but will it be ready to take out on the road at any point during 2012?

We did a workshop of the second part in February…I’m a huge believer in audience feedback and the development process, and I’m hopeful that we’re in a place where we’ll get into final polishing of the script.

Since you’re working with these synchronized, projected images, is the script pretty much locked into place by the time you take these shows to the theaters? Or are you able to allow your actors a little bit of wiggle room?

You can actually have the option of changing dialogue when you’re speaking over still images of the characters’ faces, so there’s a little bit of flexibility there. But our actors have fully memorized their lines, which allows them to work off one another more effectively, and helps them to connect with the audience in a way that they wouldn’t do if they were holding a script in front of their faces. One actor gets to play a total of nine different characters — at one point he’s playing three of them at once; talking to himself in these distinct character voices.

You know, when we started doing these radio plays at a coffeehouse in downtown Austin, we were doing it as a lark — but the show has really taken off since we added the comic art projections in the last year. So we had many years in which to hone the script before we worked with Tim Doyle — we knew what was working by that point.

So even though there’s still a slightly campy, playful edge to the material, adding the live comic book aspect really helped this thing get taken seriously…

We got together with Tim to produce a comic book series from the original story, and we started presenting performances of it around Austin. When we added the artwork, it opened us up to a whole new level of press attention, new venues, new audiences…and a whole different level of technical issues. There are 1,250 slides in the show that we’re doing now; all of them hand-cued…we have to be mindful now of things like how to transition between the individual images.

At heart it’s still a willfully retro piece of entertainment, which you’ve even set in the 1930s. Do you find it resonating with the modern mainstream audience, particularly kids who’ve grown up with flashier stuff at their fingertips than a live radio play?

We’re a bunch of fanboys and fangirls who grew up on things like Star Wars and Raiders. The energy of the old serials and science fiction is something that’s still very contemporary…we wanted to create something that works cross-generationally.

It’s a totally family friendly show. The younger audience members might miss a few of the period references — we mention the Hindenburgh, and Mae West makes an appearance — but we’ve seen the show win over crowds who started off with the attitude that they weren’t going to be impressed.

A lot of what makes it work is the writing, and the way that the actors perform the script. It’s full of surprises, funny, and something that the audience can really connect with. When we first started writing, we took a lot of our inspiration not from science fiction, but from old movies like His Girl Friday and It Happened One Night. That kind of fast-paced, wisecracking dialogue that was so great.

Something that was lacking in, say, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow..

Yeah, you know, when I first learned about that Jude Law movie, not only was I bothered that they stole our basic idea, but I was convinced that it would be the death of our project. But I had to go see it, and when I did it turned out to be executed so terribly that there was no reason for us to worry. Intergalactic Nemesis has only gotten stronger, and we’re loving what we’re doing — in some cases even making a living out of what we love.

Tickets ($19.50 – $29.50) for the 8 pm performance of The Intergalactic Nemesis Book One: Target Earth can be purchased from the Basie box office right  — and keep watching the skies for updates on the impending arrival of Book Two: Robot Planet Rising.