Blues on line

Mai Cramer brings her own roots to the web

Michael Bolton has a Web site. Dan Quayle has a Web site. Last time I checked, the Unabomber had three Web sites, two pro and one con. Anyone who's browsed the World Wide Web lately knows how much information, useful and otherwise, is stashed in there. So you have to figure that anyone trying to stick a little more blues on the Web is striking a blow for music, good taste, and the American way.

Looks like a job for Mai Cramer, the WGBH (89.7 FM) DJ who's presided over the Friday- and Saturday-night show Blues After Hours from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. for the past 17 years. Two weeks ago, Cramer took her jump into the cyber world, launching her "Real Blues" Website with a party at Cybersmith in Harvard Square. Currently, it's one of roughly a dozen national sites devoted to blues. (The address is http://www.realblues.com.)

The site is still in development, and it looks that way: the club and record-label directories haven't been loaded up yet, and there are only a half-dozen photos in her gallery. There are also no music clips as yet, because Cramer wants to make sure that she licenses and pays royalties for anything she uses (most people who run Web sites don't bother with such things). What she has done so far is to establish a personality for the site and to make it feel like a digitalized radio show, with Cramer as a DJ-like presence. There's a soundclip of her announcing and photos of her with favorite bands -- even a comic strip about two rabid blues fans who bear a notable resemblance to Cramer and a fellow DJ Holly Harris, of WBOS. On line as on the radio, Cramer's voice is friendly, fannish, and slightly self-effacing, avoiding any risk of ego-tripping.

"I felt uncomfortable at first about putting myself in there," she admits. "But that's me, and you can hear a little of my voice as someone who loves the music. It's the same thing with reporters; there are some who always put themselves in the third person. I'm more like Peter Guralnick, someone who always puts his own voice in there."

What prompted Cramer to start her site? "Well, I love new toys. Not that I'm just playing, but it's finding a new way to be creative, another medium to tell the story. One thing I like about radio is that it's a small medium, very one-on-one, and you can get the same quality from a site."

Cramer has a few grand designs for "Real Blues." She'd like to bring in blues artists to help design their own pages, to sell choice CDs, and to pull in more bands to play live on line (she's currently laying the groundwork for a Christmas concert). She's also hoping to syndicate "Real Blues" into a national radio show. And maybe, perhaps, to make a full-time living doing music?

"God, that's a good question; it would be nice, I'll say that. But even if I can make a full-time living at this, I doubt I'll ever be a `professional.' "

Meanwhile there are more immediate paybacks. For the launch party she persuaded Luther "Guitar Jr." Johnson, the former Muddy Waters ax man and Lynn resident, to play a rare acoustic set, which was beamed out live over the site. She recalls that when the set was over she went up to Johnson and said, "That was great." The guitarist sagely nodded his head and replied, "Yes, it sure was." For Cramer, that was reward enough.

MILES DETHMUFFEN

The new six-song, homonymous CD (on the Summerville label, run by Gigolo Aunt Dave Gibbs) is where Miles Dethmuffen get it right. The pop appeal that's always been lurking in the band is finally brought to the fore. In fact they've overcompensated a wee bit, since their guitars have less bite than they do live. The songwriting's ace, however, and they've polished the vocals up considerably, exploring harmonies for the first time. Bassist Linda Bean P's sweeter singing voice gets equal footing with Ad Frank's more cynical one, as befits the band's two-sided personality.

"I'd say we're a lot better than we were two years ago," says Frank. "In some ways this is our first release, at least for the world outside Boston that hasn't heard of us. When we started out I was in Melrose High and the others were all in Malden High, and we were some of the only musicians in that part of the world who didn't want to be in Def Leppard cover bands." The band have existed with the same personnel for the past seven years, including a brief period when they dropped the Dethmuffen from their name. "We decided it wasn't any less stupid than the name we already had."

Frank insists that the words for his songs are usually an afterthought -- a surprise, since Miles's songs tend to sport the kind of lyrics that make one say, "Hey, I never heard that in a pop song before." Consider "Dying To Hear from You," which includes this dead-on description of a dead-end workplace: "I work with vermin who think that words like `faggot' are acceptable, and lunchtime is a festival of hate." And yes, that's in a love song (along with a tearjerker line that someone should've written years ago: "I've been crying, but that's a given"). Or "Big Neon W," whose chorus hook is the catchiest thing in the band's repertoire, though its subject matter doesn't necessarily lend itself to snappy tunes.

"The first verse is about two people of the same sex who get jumped on the way home for holding hands," Frank explains. "The second is about someone who's just come out of a bad-home situation; and the third is about someone turning tricks. The W stands for the thing that you want to repress, the word that you don't want to think about. At the end there's a lexicon of them all -- whore, worthless, waste, weakling."

So you might think that he set out to write a tough-love song with an uplift at the end, but you'd be wrong. "If you want to know the truth, the song happened because Linda wanted something where she could yell the word `W' over and over again."

LaVALLEY SIGNED

"I spent a few months showcasing out here and finally snagged me a deal," an upbeat LaValley reports from her midtown apartment. "It's going to be a whole different experience than I had with Tribe. For one thing there's a supportive A&R staff, and they treat me like an artist. It's great to have another go, and to feel like I really have a shot. I think we're going to make a great album."

LaValley and her band expect to be in the studio early in the new year. She's still working with the line-up that she put together for her first solo shows last year, leaning toward a more basic guitar-rock sound than Tribe had. Most of her locally aired demos will likely be recut for the album, though she says that she and the band have written another dozen songs since the move to New York.

COUNTRY BUMPKINS

Unfortunately they've crossed that line on their just-released CD (on their own Bumpco label); instead of a music disc they've tried to make a comedy album. The songs are linked by overlong, redneck-themed spoken bits that make Jeff Foxworthy sound like a master of subtlety. They also sound a lot like something being done by people from Cambridge. Only half the 29-minute CD has music on it, but that's where you'll find the smarts and the humor. A few songs are recognizable, like Buck Owens's "Mental Cruelty" and "Hog Tied over You," which isn't any sillier than Tennessee Ernie Ford's original. But there's no song credits given, so it's anyone's guess where they found the period-piece cautionary tale "LSD" or the cringeworthy truckin' double-entendre "The Bull & the Beaver." If the Bumpkins want laughs that badly, a few more songs of this sort should do the trick.

COMING UP

On Sunday, the still-wailin' Eric Burdon hits the same club; Mercury Rev play Mama Kin . . . One of the few Velvet Underground permutations that hasn't been seen before, John Cale and Moe Tucker, hits Mama Kin Tuesday; Laurie Geltman and Madam Zonk play Bill's Bar. And the House of Blues brings R&B great LaVern Baker to town . . . Grab the lubricant and run for cover, because the notorious Genitorturers hit Axis on Wednesday. The same night, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones begin their latest multi-night home invasion at the Middle East.