Upper WET Side
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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…
1/19: We Take Crumbs That We’re Thrown
January 19, 2012
So yesterday (January 18) the SOPA de la Dia down at the Farcebook luncheonette centered around the latest threat to our internet way of life, the often uneasy separation of Liberty and Piracy, and the take-THAT whammy of A Day Without BoingBoing.
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…
2001-2010: Some Vintage Years for Wien
May 24, 2011 — 1 Comment
Jukebox journalist (and sommelier of fine NJ music) Gary Wien has tasted and digested more than 2,000 CDs by Jersey-fresh artists — and the LEAST you could do in return is to pick up his brand new book, ARE YOU LISTENING?
Okay, we’ll bite: the first question has got to be WHO, as in who in their right mind would want to sit down and listen to more than 2,200 full-length compact discs — the vast majority of them independent releases by largely unknown, locally based artists — without being paid, forced at bayonet-point or given over to some sick fetishistic thrill?
Gary Wien, that’s who; the veteran chronicler of Garden State popular culture who founded the monthly Upstage Magazine around the turn of the millennium — and who subsequently zapped himself into the Tron-world of pixelated publishing, via his website New Jersey Stage and the online radio station The Penguin Rocks. As the sort of respected jukebox journalist who musicians gravitate to in hopes that he could maybe help them out, Wien managed to come into possession of many hundreds of self-released compact discs by hometown hopefuls. One day a few years back, he decided to do something about it — not a yard sale, nor a sculpture of “repurposed” objects, but a little endeavor called Are You Listening? The Top 100 Albums of 2001-2010 from New Jersey Artists.
As the Belmar-based author of Beyond The Palace makes abundantly clear, he was listening very intently indeed. The three time winner of the Asbury Music Awards “listened to the good, the bad, and the very ugly; yet somehow remained a music fan through it all.” He listened to major label releases from the likes of Bruce Springsteen, My Chemical Romance, and Fountains of Wayne, alongside concurrent output from regional cult heroes (Bouncing Souls, John Eddie), Shorecat favorites (George Wirth, Arlan Feiles, Jon Caspi) and some artists so obscure even Gary Wien had never heard of them. Then he crunched the data, reviewed his findings and voila — an illustrated, opinionated guide that succinctly summarizes and encapsulates an era in which “recording a professional album became affordable enough for artists,” even as it heralded “the end of the album as a concept.”
UpperWETside was pleased to be given a sneak peek at the new book (handsomely designed by the author), scheduled to be made available for purchase online and on shelves beginning June 1. In keeping with the changes that have transformed book publishing every bit as much as the recording industry, Are You Listening? will be issued as a full color print volume, scaled to the dimensions of an oversized CD case; as a bargain-priced black-and-white version of same — and as an e-book loaded with bonus audio and video extras. We caught up with Wien as he tweaked the finishing touches to the project; turn the record over for the interview on the flip.
A Leaner, Meaner Cut of Ribeye
May 23, 2011
Standing alone in an idealized Red Bank of the mind, Tim Cronin models a new look, and readies the new edition of The Ribeye Brothers for a Memorial Weekend wingding at The Dub.
It’s the first question on the mind of anyone who happens into the English Plaza entrance of Jack’s Music Shoppe, where Tim Cronin “steers the back of the firetruck” from his perch near the posters, the listening kiosk and the certified pre-owned vinyl.
The answer, of course, is NO — as in “no, this is NOT a register.” But if there’s time for a followup, the answer might be YES — as in why YES, I did lose a couple of DJ milk crates’ worth of weight, or as he puts it, “I’ve gone from morbidly obese, to not so morbid.”
Fans of the Ribeye Brothers will be relieved to know that the beloved frontman for the Red Bank-based swamp/ stomp/ “detached garage” band hasn’t shed more than 60 pounds out of any sickness, addiction to Enerjets or ill-advised hunger strike keyed to the Mets closing above .500 this season. Rather, it’s as simple and as effective as a dietary regimen that says nix to the butter, bacon and salt — with a big boost from “sugarless gum, black coffee and tons of hot sauce.”
This is all pertinent because, when the latest edition of the Brothers Ribeye returns to The Dublin House for a holiday-weekend hullabaloo on Sunday evening, May 29, the band will be serving up a sound and a set that’s as meaty and beaty as ever, while arguably just a healthy bit less big and bouncy.
Does Alejandro Escovedo KNOW Who We Are?
May 4, 2011
Literal survivor (and lifelong genre-buster) Alejandro Escovedo makes his debut visit to the Count’s court on May 4, in a performance designed to rally the faithful, and maybe even heal the sick.
He’s made a professed fan and big-scary-friend of Bruce Springsteen (who’s covered his songs and jammed with him onstage), as well as Stephen King (who’s selected his long-players for yearly Top Ten lists) and President George W. Bush (whose iPod inclusion of the song “Castanets” led to a self-imposed performance embargo by the artist).
Other diehard aficionados include everyone who ever called themselves a rock critic, most musicians currently active today, and for whatever reason, all of our friends who happen to live in Philadelphia.
We thought we were being real Sidney Falco when we contacted Alejandro Escovedo‘s people in advance of his last solo jaunt Shoreside, and casually dropped the names of a couple of those mutual friends in the city of Sunny. The answer that filtered back was something to the effect of “The artist is absolutely not interested in doing an interview with you” — leading us to reckon that an agonizing reappraisal of the Escovedo ouevre was in order; or at very least a better class of friends to namedrop.
