Powered by Google
Home
Listings
Editors' Picks
News
Music
Movies
Food
Life
Arts + Books
Rec Room
Moonsigns
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Personals
Adult Personals
Classifieds
Adult Classifieds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
stuff@night
FNX Radio
Band Guide
MassWeb Printing
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About Us
Contact Us
Advertise With Us
Work For Us
Newsletter
RSS Feeds
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Webmaster
Archives



sponsored links
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
PassionShop.com
Sex Toys - Adult  DVDs - Sexy  Lingerie


   
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

So Blue
The House of Blues closes its doors, Blue Men hold an art contest, plus more

So long, HOB

After the Sensational Golden Hearts sing for the 10 a.m. and noon gospel brunches at Harvard Square’s House of Blues this Sunday, September 14, the 11-year-old club’s doors will close for good. It was announced last week that the national chain has sold its Cambridge location to New York City–based restaurant Brother Jimmy’s, which plans to operate a family eatery at the 96 Winthrop Street address.

Although the local House of Blues was the first in the corporation’s string of venues, it is also the smallest, with a capacity of less than 200. The chain’s seven other clubs can all accommodate 1000 or more patrons. That made talent buying a complex issue for the Cambridge room; as the chain grew and moved away from its blues roots, the Harvard Square club could not afford to book the same national rock and pop artists who played the other HOB rooms.

That’s one reason the original House continued to showcase many blues artists until 2002. The other was booking agent Teo Leyasmeyer, a veteran blues pianist and a respected member of the national blues business community — which expressed its dismay when he was dismissed from his position earlier this year, after a decade during which his support of blues artists won him the Blues Foundation’s Keeping the Blues Alive award and a place on its board of directors. After Leyasmeyer’s firing, the club increased its bookings of rock and jam bands; recently it even hosted a "speed dating" night.

Many of the local HOB employees were blindsided by the sale, though rumors of the corporation’s interest in divesting the Cambridge property had begun to circulate two years ago. Recent changes in the menu and the booking policy were seen as efforts to increase profit margins in a location limited by its size. According to Lisa Bellamore, publicist for the Cambridge House of Blues, employees were informed of the sale at a meeting on August 29. They have been offered transfers to other locations — the two closest are Chicago and Myrtle Beach — or severance packages.

The Los Angeles–based chain’s VP of marketing, Jack Gannon, told me that the House of Blues has plans to establish another Boston-area location, and that a committee has already been organized to find another property "more in line with the size of the other clubs in LA, New Orleans, or Chicago." That may prove a difficult task, with property values at an all-time high in the Boston metropolitan area’s urban center. In addition, one local promoter who requested anonymity offered the opinion that "Clear Channel [the national concert-promotion corporation] would never let them open a place that large right in the heart of this key market."

Gannon said that there’s no deadline for opening another local House of Blues; he added, "We’re very secure that we’ll be able to find a new property in the Boston area."

— Ted Drozdowski

The new ICA takes another step

When we last left the Institute of Contemporary Art, it had engaged the architectural firm of Diller + Scofidio to design its new museum in the Fan Pier waterfront development — a four-story edifice that would nearly triple the ICA’s current space and be the first art museum built in Boston in nearly 100 years. The ICA has now announced that it’s signed a 99-year lease with Hyatt Development Corporation — not an exciting-sounding development, but an essential step in the process. Hyatt, the group that set aside the land for the new ICA, has, it was also announced, agreed to assist with the costs of infrastructure needed for the site. Hyatt chairman Nicholas Pritzker predicted that "the ICA will be the cultural cornerstone of the city’s dynamic new waterfront for the 21st century." And ICA director Jill Medvedow pointed out that "the new ICA at Fan Pier will make possible expanded and diversified exhibitions of contemporary art" plus "a vibrant program of contemporary music, dance, film, and video" and "the creation of a permanent collection of the art of our time."

Groundbreaking for the new ICA is scheduled for next year. Completion of the museum is projected for spring 2006.

WGBH does it again

It’s no surprise that WGBH walked away with five news and documentary Emmys presented by the National Television Academy a week ago Wednesday at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Nova’s "Why the Towers Fell," which examines the American Society of Civil Engineers’ report into the root causes of the World Trade Center Towers’ collapse, was named Best Documentary. Nova also took "Outstanding Historical Programming: Long Form" awards for "Galileo’s Battle of the Heavens" and "Shackleton’s Voyage of Endurance," the latter of which explores Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic adventure. American Experience’s "Ansel Adams: A Documentary Film" was honored for "Outstanding Cultural and Artistic Programming: Long Form." And Frontline’s "An Ordinary Crime" received an Emmy in the category of "Outstanding Investigative Journalism: Long Form" for bringing to public attention the case Terence Garner, a North Carolina teenager sentenced to 32 to 43 years in prison for an armed robbery both he and the men who confessed to the crime said he did not commit.

PBS also won in the "Science, Technology and Nature Programming" category for The Secret Life of the Brain. And an award for Editing went to Beth Gallagher for The Living Edens episode "Big Sur: California’s Wild Coast."

Pigs fly farther

Lyric Stage Company of Boston honcho Spiro Veloudos knew what he was doing when he scheduled the most requested rerun in the venerable theater’s history to inaugurate its 30th season. When Pigs Fly, the late Howard Crabtree’s witty orgy of songs, sketches, and outrageous costume, has sold so many tickets already that the Lyric has extended its run by a week. The nonstop parade of sparkly gay sensibility (not to mention sparkly everything else), which begins performance tonight, will now run through October 18, in a production that features four of the original 1999 cast members, Dan Bolton, Peter A. Carey, Neil A. Casey, and Britton White, along with Brian R. Robinson, strutting their stuff in everything from feather boas to Coke cans. Conceived by genius-with-a-thimble Crabtree and Mark Waldrop and replicating the original direction and choreography of Rob Ruggiero, the revue also features music by Dick Gallagher, musical direction by Steven Bergman, musical staging and additional choreography by Ilyse Robbins, and the spectacularly droll fantasies of its creator, whose improbable dream of success in the theater was greeted by a disparaging high-school guidance counselor with the response "It might happen — when pigs fly." Eat your heart out, Miss Grundy.

There are a few other changes to the previously announced Lyric docket. When Pigs Fly will be followed, as scheduled, by the Boston premiere of Pulitzer winner Lanford Wilson’s Book of Days, a mystery fable set in a small Missouri town where the tyrannical proprietor of the local cheese factory has been offed just as the community theater gears up for George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan and the young woman taking the title role, emboldened by her character, starts asking questions. But Book of Days’ run has been postponed for one week; it’s now October 24 through November 22.

And the Lyric has scratched its planned holiday production, the area premiere of Christopher Durang’s Mrs. Bob Cratchit’s Wild Christmas Binge, in hopes of re-creating its 2001 Nuncrackers success with the latest entry in Don Goggin’s Nunsense sweepstakes, Meshuggah-Nuns, which will run November 28 through December 27. The plot revolves around a "Faith of All Nations" cruise taken by those punning, wimpled hoofers, the Little Sisters of Hoboken, on which a storm sidelines the ship’s scheduled entertainment, a production of Fiddler on the Roof. The entire cast, excepting Tevye, gets sick, and the Sisters have to take over, joining Tevye in an original revue that includes such songs as If I Were a Catholic and Matzoh Man. The Lyric’s 30th-anniversary season also includes a tribute to the company’s founders and leaders for 24 years, Ron Ritchell and Polly Hogan: one of their favorites, Noël Coward’s Private Lives, which plays January 2 through 31 in a production directed by Elliot Norton Award winner Scott Edmiston.

The Lyric says it will be contacting all Book of Days and Bob Cratchit ticketholders to offer exchanges or refunds. To order tickets for any Lyric production, call (617) 437-7172 or visit www.lyricstage.com.

Paint it blue

No slouches at art, those cobalt-craniumed kibitzers who’ve been holed up since 1995 in the Charles Playhouse have already vacuumed Christina out of Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World and extruded enough chewed-bubblegum genitals to wow Rodin. Now the Blue Men are going for grander stuff, launching "Vortex: A Juried Art Exhibition," which will culminate in the creation of a venue for local artists to exhibit their work in the lobby of the Charles (along with, we presume, the tangle of tubes put there to mark the Blue Man turf). Aspiring artists have until September 30 to enter the contest, whose jury will consist of "notable contributors to the Boston art world, as well as several representatives from the Blue Man Group community," and whose grand prize is $2500, with a $1000 second prize and two $500 awards. There’s no fee, but each artist is permitted just one entry. All mediums are welcome; the work must be no larger than 35 by 40 by 3 inches and must be mountable on a wall. And artists must reside in or currently attend school in Massachusetts. For additional submission criteria and an artist entry form, visit www.blueman.com/communitycontests/contests.shtml.

WTT Smash Hits update

The bad news regarding this September 25 FleetCenter charity event (see "Art News" in the August 22 Phoenix) is that the organizers have yet to announce who Billie Jean King and Elton John will be playing in the celebrity doubles match, and we’re afraid that if they wait too long, the team we’re hoping to see on the other side of the net, Mitt Romney and Tom Menino, will have made other commitments. The good news is that WTT Smash Hits has announced a match between Andre Agassi and John McEnroe. The latter’s famed ’80s temper tantrums were annoying in serious matches, but he’s mellowed since and learn to spoof his own bad behavior, and he’s been one of the most graceful (not to mention best) players in men’s tennis history. Besides, this could be your last chance to hear him yell at the umpire (we’d like to see Billie Jean in the chair), "You can not be serious!"

For those who care about that sort of thing, Anna Kournikova is also scheduled to play. Tickets for the evening, which benefits the Elton John AIDS Foundation and the Massachusetts Community AIDS Partnership, are $25, $50, $75, and $100 and may be purchased at the FleetCenter box office or at Ticketmaster locations or by calling Ticketmaster at (617) 931-2000 or by visiting www.ticketmaster.com.


Issue Date: September 12 - 18, 2003
Back to the Editor's Picks table of contents
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
 









about the phoenix |  advertising info |  Webmaster |  work for us
Copyright © 2005 Phoenix Media/Communications Group