Noise

September 19 - 26, 1 9 9 6 [Music Reviews]

Happy B-daze

Fanzine the Noise celebrates its 15th anniversary -- twice
by Brett Milano
When the Noise first hit local clubs and newsstands in 1981, the cover story was about the opening of the Allston rock club Streets. It wasn't a very good sign. The club was history within two years (Marty's Liquors is there now), but the Noise itself is still going strong, and still at pretty much the same grassroots level at which it began.
If not quite the longest-running music 'zine in town (Boston Rock has been around a few months longer but has survived a number of shake-ups and incarnations), the black and white, locally focused Noise remains one of the constants of the local scene. The paper began a two-week anniversary celebration at Club Bohemia last weekend and will continue at the Middle East this Saturday with a show featuring current cover subject Jack Drag.
It takes a truly devoted local-music fan to run a 'zine for 15 years -- especially if it loses money for the first 14. And editor/publisher T. Max (real name: Timothy Maxwell) fits the bill. The last time he held a day job was in 1981, when he worked in a health-food store on Newbury Street. "I had no income other than the Noise for a long time, so I learned how to live off $50 a week. I went to a career counselor once, and she figured out that I was telling her I wanted to do the Noise for a living. I basically talked her into talking me into going for it."
Only in the past year has the Noise turned a profit, since he began offering ads to local bands at half-price. "A long time ago I was intending to marry a woman, and I went to visit her family out in Iowa," Max says. "Her father was asking me things like `What's the potential of your business; how long before you go national?' To end the story, I didn't get married."
Shoestring operation or not, the Noise remains a smart, readable 'zine with a core of good writers: Mikey Dee, Mary Ricciardi, Suzanne Thompson, and Francis DiMenno among the current batch. Ex-Bags member's Crispin Wood's comic strip "Rockschool" is reason enough to seek the 'zine out -- it may be the funniest and most on-target satire of the local scene that's yet been done. (On the other hand, the egalitarian slant means a certain number of album or concert reviews by folks who've never written a review before.) There's generally a booster-ish tone to the Noise, but it can surprise you. Max says he's seen some fallout over a trashing of Weeping in Fits & Starts in the current issue. "I've already had two people call me up over that one -- which is fine because the band will probably get some payback [from the debate]. We try to tell it like it is, but from the point of view of someone who cares about the local scene. If you look at our reviews, there's more mediocre ones than raves."
Even fatherhood didn't keep Max out of the clubs; for a time he'd often be seen at shows with his infant son, Izzy, in tow. Now that Izzy's in his early teens, they've become Boston's only cross-generational bandmates, playing together in the band Max (with T. on guitar and Izzy on bass). You'd expect that a kid who was literally raised on rock might have rebelled by now, especially after the time Mark Parenteau brought Izzy on stage to introduce a band at the Rumble (he reacted by crying, as most one-year-olds would).
"No, he just fell naturally into rock and roll, and he wound up rejecting a lot of things I tried to push on him, like baseball. I wanted him to be in the Little League, but he wouldn't have it."
The first Noise anniversary event at Club Bohemia last weekend was one of that club's more populated shows in months, the crowd being equal parts recognizable scenesters and new-in-town art students (or an incredible simulation). I arrived in time to catch the Ghost of Tony Gold, who got my attention through a strange-but-rocking demo tape a few months back. On stage they were stranger and more rocking, playing an art-roots brand of punk rock with instrumentation that included a banjo, a "Good Vibrations"-style theremin, and a bassist who played an acoustic stand-up model, all capped off with vocals that recalled the abandon of Willie Alexander's boom-boom days.
The Noise has always had a fondness for bands with a visual/theatrical bent. On Friday, Mick Mondo -- who is songwriter and Boston Rock Opera regular Mick Maldonado in his '70s UK glitter-rocker guise -- patrolled the room while T. and Izzy Max gave awards to the attendees who did the best Tarzan yell. Our night (and for the record, my birthday) was capped off appropriately by the Strangemen, the trash-surf band with mile-high hair and an apparent willingness to do anything for attention. On this night they introduced a new member, a six-foot-two dancer known as Amazona, who gyrated in a tiger-striped outfit while the band sang her praises ("Amazona, how you've grown-a"). Imagine Sleep Chamber with a sense of humor.

RIP: SUNNY JOE WHITE
I only briefly met Sunny Joe White, the Boston radio personality and former WXKS program director who died last week at 42 of an apparent heart attack. But I felt as if I knew the guy. White had a talent that every DJ wants: the knack of being genuinely likable on the air. During his 'XKS heyday he was one of Boston's most listenable jocks, coming across more like a regular guy than a trendy insider or an obsequious nice guy.
He was also a programmer who took chances, particularly in the early '80s when "crossover" was a new idea. Most mainstream stations were still scared to play a revolutionary song like Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" when White programmed it soon after its 1981 release. He had a wide-ranging aesthetic that could mix Stevie Wonder's latest ballad with Peter Wolf's solo debut and pre-stardom singles by some kid named Prince. If you were listening to KISS back then you were hearing hit radio at its best; the airwaves nowadays could use more of White's open-mindedness.

COMING UP
One of the finest pop outfits around, the Loud Family, hit the Middle East tonight (Thursday). The Nixons and Imperial Drag are at Mama Kin, and the Strangemen headline T.T. the Bear's Place . . . Big bluesy fun with the Love Dogs at the Tam tomorrow (Friday); meanwhile Helium play their first local show in months at the Middle East, Happy Bunny rock at Finnegans Wake in Porter Square, Robyn Hitchcock violinist Deni Bonet opens for the Push Stars at Mama Kin, Rattle Heater and Nola Rose & the Thorns are at Club Bohemia, and Hamerd play T.T. the Bear's. There's also a choice of Lauries, with Laurie Geltman playing the Phoenix Landing and Laurie Sargent at Johnny D's . . . Slughog bring their grit to the Rat on Saturday, the Allstonians hop up the Phoenix Landing, Talking to Animals play T.T.'s, Groovasaurus are at the Middle East, and Bill Kirchen -- the guitarist who played with Commander Cody way back when, and was last seen backing Nick Lowe and making a solo album for Upstart -- will be at Johnny D's.
On Sunday the Middle East holds a "Glenefit" in memory of local ska fan Glen Sherriff, who died in a car crash last summer. One of his favorite bands, Steady Earnest, will be getting back together for the occasion; the Allstonians and the Loins (formerly Tenderloins) will also play, and the proceeds will go to a memorial scholarship fund . . . The man who hates alternative rock, Bob Mould, hits Avalon to play some on Tuesday. Meanwhile at Bill's Bar, Jamie Rubin's new band Tip open for Sugarspoon . . . And ska survivors the Selecter are back in town to play Mama Kin on Wednesday.

Bowie at Avalon
Obviously David Bowie playing a Boston club is a capital "E" event, yet the $300 price tag some scalpers were putting on tickets outside Avalon last Friday night was illuminating. Bowie may have lost some of his chart juice and arena-bursting clout in the alternative-rock era, but there are still fans who'll live or die -- or at least shell out big dollars -- for his art.
No wonder. With a stripped-down four-piece backing outfit, Bowie put on a show worthy of a true rock star: flamboyant, career-spanning, minimally but precisely staged, musically daring. In what looked like a tattered 18th-century British Army officer's uniform he was a mesmerizing presence -- yet he was in turn utterly engaged by the audience and his fellow players, who included Boston-based guitarist Reeves Gabrels. At times Bowie sat on the drum riser and passed the spotlight to Gabrels, who -- with few exceptions -- slew the conventions of guitar soloing with his sonic sculptures. Rather than playing licks he played tones -- stretching single notes down an octave, gently riding squiggles of feedback with his guitar whammy bar, pushing slurred piles of notes out of his speakers until they blended in a textural laser beam of sound.
Bowie reneged on his vow never to play his old hits, offering "Heroes" and "Under Pressure" and old album tracks like "Aladdin Sane," even "All the Young Dudes," which he'd written for Mott the Hoople, and a cover of the Velvet Underground's "White Light, White Heat." But the majority of the performance was new material drawn from recent albums and a techno-flavored release he's got slated for '97. "Telling Lies," a sample-heavy groover from that album that was released over the Internet last week (http://www.davidbowie.com), took on a hallucinogenic effect with Gabrels's squalling guitar and the hot pink and blue stagelights. Bowie was once "the man who sold the world"; with a performance like this, he now seems ready to take it back.
-- Ted Drozdowski