Notes on Jim's Big Ego, Campaign for Real-Time, and, um, Mayor Menino
By JIM SULLIVAN | June 12, 2007
Jim's Big Ego |
Jim Infantino of JIM’S BIG EGO is describing The Ego & the Oracle, a show he’s been staging Sundays at Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway. “It’s an improvisational music theater piece where the magic eight-ball meets the iPod shuffle.” Sort of. What actually happens is that audience members submit questions on cards, one of 30 Jim’s Big Ego songs is randomly chosen from a spinning wheel, Jim’s Big Ego play the song, and then a medium explains how the song answers the question. “Some people take it seriously and ask real questions, and sometimes it’s ‘Butter or margarine?’ ” There’ll be 11 or so encounters over a 90-minute show. At the end, Infantino reads all the questions and the trio do a blues-jazz vamp over them. The tunes? “A lot of the songs are funny, ironic observances, kind of philosophical. About 15 percent are political, really angry.” The last show on the docket is June 17, but Infantino says he’d like to start up another run down the road.
If you’re at Faneuil Hall Marketplace July 2 at about 10 am, watch for an older guy in a suit smashing an electric guitar outside the new Hard Rock Café. Pete Townshend? Try MAYOR THOMAS M. MENINO. He’ll join 70 other axmen — some with more cred — in “The Smash Heard Around the World,” a guitar-destruction exhibit signaling the opening of the new restaurant/club at the old Rack/Pizzeria Uno space. BLUE MAN GROUP, various radio and sports jocks, and actual Boston guitarists are expected to join. The Hard Rock wants you to know that it’ll be donating a new guitar to music schools for each one that gets busted. The restaurant opens at noon. Look for 850 Zildjian cymbals behind the bar. Look for the “Boston Room,” where all the memorabilia will be local. And in time, at night, you’ll see bands playing the 500-capacity concert room . . . The CAMPAIGN FOR REAL-TIME’s Brendan Quigley reports that CRT are back from LA, where they “cranked out nine songs in 11 days at the Hobby Shop Studios with super-producer Mudrock” (Godsmack) and engineer Ai Fujisaki (Wu-Tang Clan). Playing what he calls “post-iPod playlist dance rock,” the band will support Robby Roadsteamer at the Paradise June 23.
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