E-Mail This Article to a Friend Here’s Johnny (continued)

LILLI DENNISON is one of those people you can’t imagine the Boston scene’s being without. Since she moved here in the early ’80s (after college in Michigan) and started waitressing and booking at the Rat, she’s been where the action is — managing the Del Fuegos, the Turbines, and Scruffy the Cat, booking the Central Square street fair, running her own club Lilli’s in Somerville, and, most recently, making a hot spot out of Zuzu, the middle room at the Middle East. But after 24 years, she’s leaving town this week and heading to New Orleans.

She’s doing it for love, having maintained a long-distance relationship for the past year. And since she’s got friends in the Crescent City music world, it’s not hard to imagine that she’ll make a mark down there. Still, she admits to having mixed emotions as moving day draws near. "It’s been a really emotional time. There’s so many wonderful people here, and once you start leaving, you remember the good things you’d forgotten about. My only plan for now is to get some little job where I can leave in the morning, come home in the evening, and get my bearings. For all my adult life, my life and my work have been the same, so maybe I’m looking to have a few more boundaries."

Asked whether she feels the Boston scene is finally drying up, she points out, "I’ve been getting that question since 1985. People are still having their fun, but maybe not as much fun as we had. The thing is that when I moved to Boston, I was on my way to New York, but I stayed here because it was so cheap. There were a lot of musicians and artists who made the same decision. That’s not the same anymore: we live in the second-most-expensive city in the US, after San Francisco, and that’s changed the whole demographics of the city. People aren’t going out every night because they can’t afford it, and you aren’t going to make the money being in a band."

The music and art shows at Zuzu will continue as before, with Dennison’s long-time work partner Carly Weaver taking over the booking and management. Dennison will be leaving town without the expected blowout gig, but that will likely take place in September, when she comes back to pack up her belongings. "That gives me something to work on for the next couple months — I made the decision in a moment, so I’m doing a partial move now, then I’ll come back and we’ll do the old-school hootenanny." Although she’s got no immediate plans to re-enter the music biz, the phrase "never say never" would apply. "Who knows," she admits, "Maybe I’ll be booking tons of Boston bands in New Orleans."

THIS YEAR’S RUMBLE FINAL has to have been the first to include respectful covers of both Bob Dylan (the Brett Rosenberg Problem did "Queen Jane Approximately") and Chuck Berry (Jake Brennan & the Confidence Men did "I Wanna Be Your Driver"). And that was the 2004 Rumble in a nutshell. Whereas last year’s contest pointed to a new style of Boston music with the Dresden Dolls winning, this year’s was more about getting back to what always worked. A few metal and mainstream bands got weeded out along the way, but in the end, it came down to a contest among heartfelt pop rock (Rosenberg), heartfelt roots rock (Brennan), and heartfelt punk rock (the Dents) — a triple bill that could easily happen anytime at the Abbey or upstairs at the Middle East. Can’t be bad.

Odds are that the night’s winner, Brennan, will pick up some flack for doing covers — apart from the Berry tune, he closed with the Contours’ R&B classic "First I Look at the Purse," but he was doing the J. Geils Band version, right down to Peter Wolf’s ad-libs. And yes, it’s easy to hear echoes of everyone from Springsteen to Elvis Costello to Jake’s dad, Dennis Brennan (whose voice Jake’s resembles, and who played the Rumble with Push Push in 1985). But Brennan isn’t claiming to be any kind of new flavor; he’s a traditionally minded true believer. And by that standard, he came off well: his original numbers have strong hooks, the band could rock any roadhouse there is, and on the Contours/Geils finale, it was good to see a singer going for some old-fashioned soul. Brennan and the Confidence Men have been signed to Yep Roc, who will release the band’s first full-length, Heartbreak at a Fever Pitch (with accompanying DVD, Singer-Songriot) on September 21.

Of the three fine sets turned in by Thursday’s finalists, I would have given the Brett Rosenberg Problem a slight edge. Rosenberg himself has rightly been praised for his songwriting, which has developed quite a bit over the four albums he’s released. But the band have meanwhile turned into a scruffy Faces/Replacements outfit of the first order, and the mix of textured songs and scrappy playing put last week’s set over the top (the Problem’s stack of rockers made their one ballad, "Midnight Man," stand out all the more). The Dents followed with a ferocious punk set, each song heaping new abuse on the ex-boyfriends who’d done them wrong. Frontwomen Michelle Paulhus and Jen Rassler (who played the Rumble last year with, respectively, the Decals and Downbeat 5) proved well matched for vocal power and charisma, and Paulhus finally got the massive bass sound she’s always wanted. In the end, too, it was good to see the camaraderie among the three bands. It’s traditional for the finalists to give one another props on stage, but this time you could be fairly sure they’d be sharing drinks afterward as well.