Upper WET Side
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1/31: It’s a Regular Life, for Carol(yne) Mas
January 30, 2012
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…
1/12: Lighting Up January’s Lulldrums
January 12, 2012
Light of Day luminary Bob Benjamin — pictured with beaming Boss at a way-long ago benefit show at Starland Ballroom — is the subject of JUST AROUND THE CORNER, the doc feature that screens at Asbury’s Showroom this Thursday through Sunday (and goes on sale at select events in the extended LOD weekend).
“Michael J. Fox has no Elvis in him.”
That was punk folkie Mojo Nixon in his 1987 hit “Elvis is everywhere,” citing the clean-cut young star of TV’s Family Ties as “the evil opposite of Elvis, the Anti-Elvis” — even though Fox as Marty McFly had technically already invented rock and roll in the first Back to the Future movie.
Michael J. Fox had also by that time starred (with Joan Jett!) in the film Light of Day, a story about an un-Partridgelike musical family with a title song penned by Bruce Springsteen. That film has gone on to lend its name to an annual series of benefit concerts dedicated to Parkinson’s Disease research, while Fox — who of course since that time has become one of the most publicly profiled victims of the disease, in addition to the most dynamic advocate for its cure — joined Jakob Dylan, Southside Johnny, Lucinda Williams, Gary US Bonds, Goo Goo Doll John Rzeznik, Live-wire Ed Kowalczyk, Smithereen Pat DiNizio, basso Soprano Vincent Pastore and Th’ Boss in the parade of performers who’ve stepped on stage in support of the Light of Day Foundation.
Somewhere, Mojo Nixon is sorry; as sorry as he is for inferring that Debbie Gibson was pregnant with his two-headed love child.
If anybody paces Michael J. Fox in the drive toward a Parkinson’s cure, it’s NJ music promoter, artist manager (and fellow Parkinson’s patient) Bob Benjamin, who teamed with Tony Pallagrosi of Concerts East to assemble the first Light of Day event in 2000 — itself a more organized version of a loose jam session birthday party/ fundraiser for Benjamin at Red Bank’s Downtown Cafe in 1998.
And, if anyone can lay claim to representing the public face of the concerts, it would hands-down have to be Joe Grushecky, the original Iron City Houserocker (and honorary Shoreguy) whose friendship and intermittent professional partnership with Springsteen has been the real deal for a generation. The Pittsburgh-based client of Benjamin’s hasn’t missed a Light of Day benefit in Jersey since its inception — and as the 12th annual edition of LOD returns to Asbury Park beginning today, January 12, it’ll take the form of an ever-expanding, de facto festival that encompasses some 20 separate events over 95 hours, ten varied venues, one big sold-out flagship fundraiser, a country ramble, a Boardwalk Crawl trifecta, a morning-after brunch, a kiddie koncert, and, right TONIGHT, a way-out Rock ‘N Bowl-a-Thon that promises the participation of everyone from WCW champ Diamond Dallas Page to political scandal celeb Ashley Dupre.
