Hometown throwdowns

Live Bosstones, Rick Berlin, and Tom Leach

Cellars by Starlight by Brett Milano

One of the things that first induced me to move to Boston was a long-gone double vinyl album called Live at the Rat. When that collection showed up at my college radio station, around 1980, it struck me as impressive that some little club I'd never heard of could warrant a two-record set -- at the time, only New York's CBGB had been accorded a similar honor. Some of the music was great and some was exuberantly awful (the Real Kids and DMZ were both on it, but so were the Boize doing "I Want Sex"). What grabbed me overall was the atmosphere of the album, from Oedipus's opening spiel ("Welcome to a den of subterranean iniquity and vice") to the equally juiced-up sounds of the bands and audiences. It was the sound of a great party waiting to be crashed.

That's also the effect that comes through on a trio of live albums released this month, though they're three very different parties. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones' Live from the Middle East (Mercury) is the big-time event, with a justifiably huge band strutting their stuff before a local audience at last year's five-night Hometown Throwdown, their annual end-of-the-year local blowout. Marking a 180-degree turn from the Bosstones' boy-band bluster, Rick Berlin's Live at Jacques (on his own GarageDog label) captures the boho-cabaret scene that Berlin has created at that downtown drag bar (and, more recently, once a week at the Lizard Lounge). And Tom Leach's Recorded Live in Person (Slow River) represents all the great little club shows that take place in town on any given night. It's the most obvious spiritual descendant of Live at the Rat.

The Bosstones did right by their home town in calling their album Live from the Middle East -- the club is even pictured on the front cover. This should give the Cambridge venue some national cachet at a time when it's being threatened by the mallification of Central Square. According to singer Dicky Barrett, choosing the title was a no-brainer. "We knew the Middle East people would get a kick out of it, but it also sounds cool -- like we pulled some live recordings out of the desert somewhere."

Barrett says they didn't record at home just to be nice but because they just do better shows at their annual Hometown Throwdowns. "On tour we do the same songs night after night, which makes for a good show but not necessarily a live album. The Throwdowns are probably the best and most special shows we do all year -- definitely the time we play songs we don't normally do out."

The live album also serves as a comprehensive Bosstones best-of, going back to the Taang! era for "Where'd You Go" and "Devil's Night Out." The one big number that nearly didn't make it to the disc was "The Impression That I Get." Barrett confirms that they originally delivered the live album to Mercury without their greatest hit, then relented and added it to the track list.

"At the time we decided to make the album, we were living in Impression-land -- here we were on five or six TV shows a week, doing 'Impression' every time. So this was our opportunity to say no to 'Impression.' But as we left Impression-land and moved on, we didn't have that feeling anymore. We still play it at every show and we enjoy doing it -- that's one of the skills we've developed from being a band for a while." By now it's a longstanding tradition for performers to lead a backlash against their own hit single -- whether that's R.E.M. dropping "Radio Free Europe" for keeps in 1985 or Elliott Smith not playing "Miss Misery" at the Paradise two weeks ago. "I can understand that if you're Elliott Smith or R.E.M. But if you can do a song with the passion and intention you wrote it with, you should do it. We don't do 'Impression' because we can't fail with it, we do it because we know we can play it well. If we didn't want to stand behind it, we wouldn't have put it on the record in the first place."

The live album's one stumbling block is a handful of audience sing-alongs, more a distraction on disc than they are live. But it does add to the sense of a real live show, as does Barrett's between-songs patter. "I wish I'd thought more about that when we recorded, so I could have done like Peter Wolf and been more clever with the between-song banter. That's probably as important as the songs, and I really wish I'd been snappier. But when you do the Throwdown, you get so excited and there's so much energy in the room that all you want to say is, 'Holy shit! Fuck, it's good to see you.' " Such utterances got edited out of the disc -- for the sake of their younger fans, Barrett says -- but you do get to hear him toss a fan off stage after the guy almost knocks into trombonist Dennis Brockenbrough. "I'm sure he stumbled over the floor monitors and nearly took Dennis out, but you know how small that stage is. No big deal, I usually take Dennis out myself."

Plans are underway for this December's Throwdown, the first without recently departed saxophonist Kevin Lenear (whose place will likely be taken by Dave Aaronoff, the Bosstones' auxiliary player, who's also the Shods' lead guitarist). Have the Bosstones become huge enough that club-level shows will be logistically impossible? "I hope not, but I don't see that time. We've grown in such a way that people don't mob us, they know how things work. We can be in the middle of all this national nonsense and it still feels like the Throwdown."

A few subway stops and a world away from those Bosstones shows sits Jacques, the Theater District bar that's become Rick Berlin's home base. The club's setting -- beaded curtain and dim red lights on stage, drag queens crowded around the pool tables -- provides a fitting backdrop for Berlin's torchy piano ballads. Like many cabaret singers, he barely skirts schmaltz at times. But the material on Live at Jacques is touching more often than not. Occasional string players augment his piano and voice, which is oddly reminiscent of Harry Chapin's more dramatic moments. The songs deal with failed love affairs and the loss of parents and friends (plus light relief in the funny "Straight Guys"). It's the sound of someone wearing both his heart and his life experiences on his sleeve

Seems strange now that Berlin was in a rock band when he last recorded. His various '70s and '80s groups -- Orchestra Luna, Luna, Berlin Airlift -- were an odd combination of Broadway and metal, the closest thing Boston had to Queen. "In some ways it was more homo than what I do now," he notes. "But I was less willing to make the songs gender-specific. At the time, coming out of the closet was a big statement rather than a matter of stating a fact. Now it's not like I feel 'I'm out and I'm proud,' it's more like 'What the fuck difference does it make?' What a lot of my songs say now is that love hurts. And people on both sides of the aisle can relate to that."

Lately Berlin's done as much as anyone to create his own niche. Along with the Jacques shows, he's masterminded "Marlene Loses It" on Wednesdays at the Lizard Lounge, blending oddball rock, performance art, and decadent glamor into one of the city's more entertaining weekly events. "That tradition goes back to Germany before the Nazis took over. For a time it was safe for people to say what they were thinking, and that's when the romantic side of performance came out in earnest. I've always thought that people don't get into bands just to get laid -- they're more in it for the romance. Anais Nin said that she never lifted a pen but to make people fall in love with her, and I can relate to that."

Tom Leach's live disc is the real ringer of this batch, since it wasn't really recorded live -- at least, not in a club. Although the cover shows him on stage at T.T. the Bear's Place and the disc label reproduces a flyer from the Plough & Stars, the performance was actually cut, for convenience' sake, before an invited audience at New Alliance Studio. Still, it turned out more like a loose club gig than anybody expected. After Leach and band went through a tight set and prepared to call it a night, producer Todd Perlmutter realized that the vocals hadn't all been recorded. "It took an hour to remedy the situation, and then we were faced with doing another set," Leach recalls. "So we had no choice but to get really drunk. We were amazed we got 11 songs that were relatively listenable. It was like a Fellini movie, we messed up a lot of songs with laughing and shouting. People were calling me and apologizing for five days afterward. George Howard [Slow River owner and band mandolinist] was horrified."

Hence the band whipping through all 11 songs in 25 minutes. Hence the heartfelt version of "I Like Booze," and Leach's admission, after the first tune, that he's drunk. ("I really wish that wasn't on the record, because I don't want my mother to hear it.") The circumstances helped coax a batch of blazing rockabilly solos from guitarist Dave Steele (of Cherry 2000). And Leach is in good-time mode here, playing obvious-but-great covers like Merle Haggard's "Working Man's Blues" and Rick Nelson's "Hello Mary Lou."

Recorded Live in Person may come as a shock to those mainly familiar with Leach through his downbeat debut CD. But he points out that he hasn't made a real album yet. The first was culled from home-cassette demos, and the second is available only through the Slow River Web site (www.slowriver.com) and at Leach's gigs. The "real" album is currently in progress, with Leach planning to record half in Boston and half in Nashville. One recent Nashville session was graced by Merle Haggard's lead guitarist, Red Bolkhart, who spent 30 minutes in the studio and guested on two tunes ("It was great -- he played every Merle Haggard lick in the book").

Leach says the new album will reflect the fact that his life is less disordered than it was last year. "There's still some moody stuff, but it's more straightforward pop. I never played out before last year, and now it's my favorite thing to do. I'm still poor, but I've never been so happy in my life. But as far as my personal life goes, I'm not running out of inspiration."

COMING UP

Tonight (Thursday) Cheap Trick begin a three-night stand at the Paradise, Jennifer Kimball plays Johnny D's, New Orleans funksters Galactic are at the Middle East, and Mary Lou Lord is at Mama Kin Playhouse . . . Tomorrow it's Merrie Amsterburg at the Lizard Lounge, Talking to Animals with Laurie Geltman and Charlie Chesterman at T.T.'s, Combustible Edison celebrating their CD-release party at Chau Chow City in Chinatown, Martin Sexton and Serum at Mama Kin, Orbit upstairs at the Middle East, and Firewater and Fuck downstairs . . . On Saturday the Gravel Pit, Nada Surf, and Clayton Scoble's new band Francine play T.T.'s, Royal Trux are at the Middle East, Half Cocked, Roadsaw, and Chelsea on Fire team up at the Linwood, the Sheila Divine and Ray Corvair are at the Attic, and Star Ghost Dog, Flexie, and Señor Happy are at the Lizard Lounge . . . Sunday brings the Lilys to the Middle East . . . And on Wednesday it's Kelly Willis and Richard Buckner at Johnny D's and the Hangovers with Lisa "Suckdog" Carver at the Middle East.