Upper WET Side
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3/3: L!VE’s List: Dusty, Tommy, an Angry “
March 4, 2012
The creative cabal behind L!VE Asbury Park — Carlos Armesto, Alecia Brooks and Michael Thomas Murray — have announced their inaugural season, and it kicks off later this month with a special one-night show at The Press Room.
“We’re the Dream Team!” enthused Carlos Armesto from the stage of The Press Room, the Bruce-blessed, downtown AP destination rockbar co-owned by Alecia Brooks. “We know we’re gonna do this…we’re confident that we have the support and know-how to get it all done!”
That’s the sort of supercharged, uber-the-top language that begs backing up under most any circumstances — but when the speaker is the founder of NYC’s theatre C and the guy who’s directed several of the most dynamite professional stage productions ever seen round these parts, well, we’re listening; we’re listening.
The occasion was a little thing called IGNITION!, the official launch party for L!VE Asbury Park — the newly formed, not-for-profit theater and entertainment concern which, as reported back in January on upperWETside, is gearing up to present its inaugural slate of musically-minded stage shows here in various corners of the city Where Music Lives. Armesto (the troupe’s Artistic Director) and Brooks (Creative Producer) were joined last week at the Bangs Ave watering hole by fellow members of the L!VE Board of Directors (including board prexy Robert Weiner), as well as resident music impresario Michael Thomas Murray and a roomful of invited guests, dignitaries and wellwishers. When the fuse was lit, the crowd got a luminous look at the first of the events to sail under the L!VE banner.
1/23: Live, from Asbury Park, it’s…
January 23, 2012
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…
1/11: Strictly on the upperWETside
January 11, 2012
The announcement that fab favorite son James McCartney will be playing his first area gig at Asbury’s Wonder Bar has the place Where Music Lives all a-twitter over the possibility that Sir Mac might make it a knight on the town.
We’re back again, with the first in what’ll at the very least become a weekly roundup of artzen-entertainment news, reviews, abuse…and the steady, suppurating ooze of outlandish rumor and speculation; all of it centered around this nifty nexus we call the Upper Wet Side of NJ.
Here in a week when an expanded slate of Light of Day events (about which more to come) shines an unnatural but entirely welcome light upon January’s midwinter lulldrums, it kind of figures we’d be off looking underneath some darker rocks for our livelihood, but away we go…
I ‘BURY’D PAUL: Just announced for The Wonder Bar on the night of February 3 is what looks to be the NJ debut of James McCartney, the moonfaced Moptop scion (and hair apparent?) whose following in the fab footsteps of Zak Starkey, Dhani Harrison and Sean Lennon brings him to the Colonies for the first time as a headlining touring musician later this month — and to the same crossroads that’s hosted the likes of Nick Clemons, Bill Haley Jr. and John Carter Cash.
The rumor mill — which is already “Paul Is Dead” wrong as far as this being young Jimmy Mac’s US debut (he visits the Sundance Film Festival and gets in at least a couple of NYC appearances before 2/3) — has been abuzz ‘n a-Twitter over reports that patriarch Sir Paul McCartney has “been spotted in the area;” a slice of Shore in which the elder McCartney’s Jersey-born newlywife Nancy Shevell is said to own some property on the balmy Atlantic coast.
Talk of The Sir making like The Boss for the Friday night fracas at Der Vunderbar is just exactly that — but we continue to dig the reinvented, reinvigorated circuit signifier as the looser, friendlier, more playful alternative to the Stone Pony’s stultifying sense of self; not the least reason for which is the human/humane Tillie-face put upon the operation by longtime linchpins Lance and Debbie. It’s an attitude more corner bar than corporate branding, with a musical menu that ranges from oldschool reverent to ever so slightly experimental, plus a neighborhood touch that extends from the ever-popular Doggie Yappy Hour to our fave sidewalkside snack bar, and the fact that passersby can enjoy the featured acts gratis courtesy of the north-side windows and convenient smokers-deck loudspeaker — the very antithesis of the Stoney’s stonewall fortress feel.
More in store here — including some potential personnel shakeups at a high-profile local venue, a rumored game-changer arrival to downtown Asbury, and a plea from a hard-luck former figure on the Jersey Shore rockarena…
ReVision’s All About the SURVIVAL
December 14, 2011 — 1 Comment
Anthony Preuster, Samantha Croce, Julia Whary, Spiro Markos, Joe Ronga and Chuck Cataia show us all how it’s done in A CHRISTMAS SURVIVAL GUIDE, the ReVision Theatre production going up December 16-18 at the House of Jazz in Asbury town.
Yes, Virginia, there IS a ReVision Theatre Company — and they ARE putting on a show by the name of A Christmas Survival Guide.
Things, admittedly, were looking a Grinchly shade of grim for the Asbury-based stage troupe over the past several weeks — an interlude that saw the resignation of all three principal partners, the downsizing of its scheduled Xmastravaganza from the Paramount Theater, and the uncertainty surrounding the venue to which the production was relocated. It was enough to Krampus the style of the most devoted Xmas-Phile.
Call it a Christmas miracle if you will; chalk it up to good old “show must go on” gumption, but beginning Friday, December 16 and continuing for five performances through December 18, A Christmas Survival Guide makes its welcome debut on the subterranean stage of The House of Jazz on Lake Avenue — in a production that boasts the participation of several not-so-secret Santas.
