Okay, it’s plenty cool that 19 albums mastered at Gateway Mastering are nominated for 32 Grammy Awards (even if the Grammys are a little lusterless nowadays). But it’s very cool that the two master masterers at Gateway, owner Bob Ludwig and protégé Adam Ayan, are both themselves actually up for Grammys. According to the Gateway Mastering site, "For years, mastering engineers were only eligible for certificates if they were involved in a recording. Several years ago, mastering engineers on historical reissues were awarded physical Grammy statuettes and more recently mastering engineers can win with the "Album of the Year" and "Surround Sound" categories." Thus, Ayan is nominated for his work on the The Complete Library of Congress Recordings Jelly Roll Morton disc under the Best Historical Album category, along with Steve Rosenthal; Ludwig is nominated for work on the 20th anniversary edition of Brothers in Arms (the "Sibilance" staff have it on LP, it’s retrospectively not as cool as you might think) and the Foo Fighters’ In Your Honor in the Best Surround Sound category. Grammys lack significantly less luster when they’re sitting on your mantle. Then they’re lustrous, indeed.
Speaking of honors, Jon Nolan’s When the Summers Lasted Long made one of the Boston Herald’s nationally focused best of 2006 lists, as one of the year’s best alt-country albums, which it clearly is.
Certain Sibilance staff members attended, judged, and got a bit tipsy at the battle of the bands held at the White Cap Lounge at Sunday River in Bethel last week. Too Late the Hero, hailing from the great burg of Berwick, beat out Too Bad for You (nope, there are no current trends in band naming), the Pete Kilpatrick Supergroup, Landsdowne (Boston types, who played acoustic), and the Bay State, featuring a gal guitarist with whom certain staffers were unimpressed. Though all the bands acquitted themselves well, we’ve got a tickle spot for Too Bad for You, who charmed us with their Weezerishness and sweet Les Paul.
A press release is making the rounds of us music writer types, promoting auditions for the 2nd Annual New England Punk, Goth, and Metal Fest, to be held September 30 and October 1 in a location that will likely be the Palladium and somewhere else, in Worcester, where these kinds of festivals seem to happen. Anyone who wants to play, says the release, should play Slaughter House Saturday, at Reflections Lounge in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, January 21 through July 1. Bands, we’re told, can sign up at www.nepgmfest.com. Though we consider ourselves veteran Web surfers, we confess we could not find the manner of signing up on the site, however, and it doesn’t seem to have been updated since September. Thus, is seems some cart was put before some horse by someone. Still, it might be worth waiting for if you want to be part of a big metal fest in Worcester this coming fall.
Tidbit picked up while talking with Boreal Tordu’s Rob Sylvain, who’s also in the Douce, another Franco band: Haakon Kallweit, former Piner, is back in town, returned from trying to make a go of it in Nashville with Shanna Underwood as part of Shanna & the Hawk. He’s playing bass with the Douce now.
