Live Reviews

Peaceful Easy Feeling

RICHARD BECK — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:01:18 GMT

Calexico at the Somerville Theatre, November 16, 2008
The members of Calexico look like dads. They play a little like dads too.

Billy, Don't Be a Hero

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:42:08 GMT

Smashing Pumpkins at the Wang Theatre, November 15, 2008
The second of a two-night stand in Boston, with no overlap from the previous night, the Saturday show started off with a few of Corgan's better-known tunes only to drift off into la-la land at around the halfway point.

Mixed Media at the Papercut

CAITLIN E. CURRAN — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:49:19 GMT

Cultural staples
Last Saturday's mixed-bill affair at the Papercut Zine Library was a strange hybrid of contemporary salon, multimedia talent show, and impromptu modern-dance class (with instructions to move our bodies "like fire").

Photos: Smashing Pumpkins at the Wang Theatre

CARINA MASTROCOLA — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:45:11 GMT

November 15, 2008

Smashing Pumpkins
Wang Theatre, Boston, MA
November 15, 2008
All photos by Carina Mastrocola

Photos: AC-DC at TD Banknorth Garden

JOE HARRINGTON — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 16:22:12 GMT

Photos of AC/DC at TD Banknorth Garden, November 9, 2008

AC/DC at TD Banknorth Garden, November 9, 2008
Photos by: Joe Harrington

Raising the Bar (Rock)

CHRISTOPHER GRAY — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:12:17 GMT

The Hold Steady + The Drive-By Truckers at the Orpheum, November 9, 2008
On the "Rock and Roll Means Well" tour, Drive-By Truckers and the Hold Steady upgraded their respective brands of quintessential American bar rock with a number of arena-rock trimmings.

Top grade Angus

Daniel Brockman — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:00:05 GMT

AC/DC at TD Banknorth Garden, November 9 , 2008
At 53, Young probably has a lock right now on the title of most successful stripper in America. He spared us the full moon, but he and his band delivered an absolute powerhouse set.

Photos: El Dia de los Muertos

KIMBERLY MOA — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:09:01 GMT

Photos from the Day of the Dead ceremony at Forest Hills Cemetery

Mairead Skehan Gillis, 9 ¾, and Laura Torres, 10, of La Piñata, talk as they set up for performances in the ceremony.

El Dia de los Muertos|The Day of the Dead
November 2, 2008 at Forest Hills Cemetery
Photos by: Kimberly Moa

Dead Alive

SHAULA CLARK — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:02:38 GMT

La Piñata bring the Day of the Dead to Forest Hills Cemetery
There's something surreal about following a trail of flickering lanterns into serene Forest Hills Cemetery, only to be greeted by a roaring bonfire, a gaudily shrouded ziggurat, and skull-masked children dancing in the twilight.

Severed Heads

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 15:17:32 GMT

David Byrne at the Wang Theatre, October 31, 2008
“This ain’t no CBGB,” David Byrne sang during his late-set dive bomb into “Life During Wartime,” and a glance around the immensely classy premises of the Wang Theatre verified it.

Monster Mosh

DAVID BOFFA — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:00:58 GMT

Bane at ICC, October 31, 2008
The intensity level may have been a hair tamer last Friday at the ICC in Allston — an unassuming DIY venue in a church's function hall — but Halloween gave the night a twist.

Simple gifts

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 21:54:31 GMT

Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI, Sanders Theatre, October 25, 2008
Friday I watched more musicians than even Gustav Mahler used to ask for assemble on stage at Symphony Hall to perform the 10 minutes of Pierre Boulez’s Notations I-IV .

HOW MUSIC IS MADE: Savall and his ensembles could improvise from the telephone book and still be fabulous.

Friday I watched more musicians than even Gustav Mahler used to ask for assemble on stage at Symphony Hall to perform the 10 minutes of Pierre Boulez’s Notations I-IV. Saturday I watched eight members of Catalan gambist Jordi Savall’s Hespèrion XXI assemble on stage at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre to perform “Music from the Time of Cervantes.” Bigger, I concluded, is not necessarily better. Besides, Hespèrion XXI’s music had a beat, and you could dance to it.

Given the title of the program (a Boston Early Music Festival presentation), I had expected the evening to distill Savall’s 2005 book/double-CD release Don Quijote de la Mancha: Romances y Músicas. That’s what Savall and company had presented at Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater the previous Monday. Instead, we got the “second” program they’d given at the Kaplan Penthouse the following night: dances from Italy, England, Spain, France, and Germany. The absence of Savall’s wife, soprano Montserrat Figueras (back home in Barcelona with a bad cold), caused some reshuffling in the first New York performance and might have contributed to what we got. It might also have explained the presence of the Boston Camerata’s Carol Lewis as an additional gambist in the line-up.

Not that Savall’s various ensembles — La Capella Reial de Catalunya and Le Concert des Nations as well as this one — couldn’t improvise from the telephone book and still be fabulous. This line-up had Savall on soprano gamba (the viola da gamba is the less muscular and more intimate predecessor of the cello) at one end and Lewis on soprano and bass gamba at the other, with Sergi Casademut (tenor gamba), Arianna Savall (double harp), Xavier Puertas (violone), Pedro Estevan (percussion), Xavier Díaz-Latorre (lute, theorbo, guitar), and Fahmi Alqhai (bass gamba) in between. The dance pulse oscillated between the stately 4/4 pavane and the leaping 6/8 gavotte, between grave and grace.

San Francisco treat

CAITLIN E. CURRAN — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 18:41:47 GMT

Deerhoof at the Middle East Downstairs, October 23, 2008
The SF-based Deerhoof performed at the Middle East a week ago Thursday with the amusingly repetitive precision of a puppet show or an assembly of wind-up toys.

What Should Never Be

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:53:05 GMT

The Paul Green School Of Rock Boston Presents A Tribute To Led Zeppelin at the Middle East Upstairs, October 25, 2008
On this Saturday afternoon, the legions of the School of Rock (Boston branch) were pretty much indistinguishable from the real Led Zeppelin, who were themselves teenagers when they formed in the late ’60s.

They who smelt it, dealt it

SHAULA CLARK — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:21:20 GMT

Halloween Iron Pour sports all-star cast
Last Friday’s Iron Pour — a festival of fire and metal — felt like a giddy lab experiment cooked up by 12-year-old pyromaniacs who spent a week watching The Wicker Man .

CORRECTION: In this week’s print version of the Boston Phoenix and in an earlier version of this article published online, the Mass Art Iron Corps was incorrectly identified as the Iron Guild, a separate group of former Mass Art students who are no longer at the school. The Iron Corps and the Iron Guild are not affiliated, and the Iron Guild has its own Iron Pour scheduled for Friday, October 31 at the Steel Yard in Providence, Rhode Island. Also, the author misattributed a quote to the Iron Guild’s Matt Stone, who was not present at the event. The actual speaker was Iron Corps member Matthew Hincman, and the reporter neglected to mention that Hincman did in fact ask the audience to step back when the Iron Corps poured hot metal on the wet stump.

I used to picture the Iron Corps as troupe of ruddy blacksmiths, the kind you’d find forging horseshoes at a Renaissance fair. But last Friday’s Iron Pour — a festival of fire and metal — felt more like a giddy lab experiment cooked up by 12-year-old pyromaniacs who spent a week watching The Wicker Man on repeat.

By the time I arrived in the Mass Art courtyard, members of the Iron Corps were already busy lugging around enormous ladles of golden glowing liquid metal. They reminded me of beekeepers, and their furnace — belching out a five-foot-tall column of flame and swarms of sparks — of a very fearsome hive.

In the background, an assortment of bands provided a moody soundtrack of darkwave, goth rock, and demented ambient dronage. Someone on stage started yowling about the Apocalypse — a perfect accompaniment to the fiery carnage before us. The guild spent the evening immolating weird artifacts (among them a wooden dragon, a trio of button-eyed stuffed babies astride tiny rocking horses, a pumpkin-headed scarecrow, and something that resembled a huge dreadlock) and pouring squiggles of molten metal into the ground, where they lay flickering like hellish mouths.

Although the phrase “wet stump” might not conjure excitement, it turned out to be a crucial ingredient for the Iron Corps' grand finale. As he doused the wood with a garden hose, IC member Matthew Hincman yelled, “Back it up! It’s spark-shower time!” Then the IC drizzled molten ore all over the soggy stump, sending an explosion of embers corkscrewing out at the audience. One errant spark singed a hole in my tights. “It’s like being inside a firework!” squealed the girl next to me.

Photos: Billy Bragg

CHRISTOPHER KONTOES — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:35:21 GMT

Live at the Somerville Theatre, October 21, 2008

Billy Bragg live at the Somerville Theatre
October 21, 2008
Photos by Christopher Kontoes

Cellars by strobe light

BARRY THOMPSON — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:49:36 GMT

We Are The Seahorses, Killspree Burlesque, and Real Life Time Machines at an “undisclosed” basement location
The ensuing batshit hysteria of this gathering was probably as close as one can realistically and safely get to a temporary autonomous zone.

Adoring public

MEGAN V. BELL — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:59:29 GMT

CCTV 20TH Anniversary at the Middle East Upstairs, October 18, 2008
If the goal was to bring to life for a night the strange beast that is cable access, they nailed it.

She’s got legs

DANIEL BROCKMAN — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:40:53 GMT

Madonna at TD Banknorth Garden, October 15, 2008
Far from mellowing with age, Madonna hit us with wonderfully mean-spirited aggression wrapped up in a misleading sexual come-on.

Photos: Burlesque house party

DEREK KOUYOUMJIAN — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 13:53:10 GMT

Killspree Burlesque, an "undisclosed" basement, October 18, 2008

Killspree Burlesque, an "undisclosed" basement
October 18, 2008
Photo by Derek Kouyoumjian