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'HOT STOVE, COOL MUSIC'
A MAJOR-LEAGUE PARTY



It’s hard to imagine anything in the Boston sports world’s overshadowing the Patriots’ playoff triumph over the Tennessee Titans in frozen Foxboro last Saturday. But it was the Red Sox and baseball in general that took center stage for several action-packed hours the following night at the Paradise Rock Club. The occasion was the fourth annual installment of the "Hot Stove, Cool Music" Jimmy Fund benefit, a concert originally conceived by ESPN senior baseball analyst and Brookline resident Peter Gammons as a less stuffy unofficial adjunct to a baseball-writers’-awards dinner that takes place every January in Boston. The event has grown in size and stature, and it took a big step forward this year by bringing together Mike Denneen from the Q-Division studio and label, local band manager Michael Creamer, and Fenway Records founder Mark Kates and turning the concert into an evening that included a silent and live auction of everything from having your incoming voice-mail/answering-machine message recorded by one of the Sox’ play-by-play radio announcers to a part in the next Farrelly Brothers film; a comic mock interview of sorts conducted by Saturday Night Live cast member Seth Meyers with Gammons and Sox general manager Theo Epstein (whose band, Trauser, also played a short set); and a celebration marking the release of the compilation Hot Stove, Cool Music Volume 1 (Fenway/Q-Division), a CD featuring tracks by baseball-loving national acts like Pearl Jam and the Allman Brothers Band, several bands featuring both active and retired baseball players as well as Epstein and Gammons, and lots of locals.

The Paradise turned out to be an ideal venue for the sold-out show thanks to the relatively new front room (what used to be the dance club M-80), which served as a refuge for VIPs throughout the night, ensuring that anyone who wasn’t there for the music had a place to hang out and schmooze, and cutting down just a bit on the overcrowding in the club’s main room. The big stage was the setting for a diverse roster of rock provided by the local bands who’d contributed to the CD, as well as all four of the baseball-related outfits: former Angels/current Mariners infielder Scott Spiezio fronting his grunge-metal band Sandfrog; retired Cy Young Award winner Jack McDowell fronting his quirkier, pop-inclined Stickfigure; Epstein playing guitar in his female-fronted Trauser; and the older Gammons playing, well, rhythm guitar and fronting the Hot Stove All-Stars, who looked suspiciously like the Gentlemen. Each outfit had its own novelty value, particularly Sandfrog, who sounded like Alice in Chains and actually covered an Alice in Chains tune.

Still, the musical highlights were provided by the musical pros. Early on, after a loud set by Loveless (with Jennifer Trynin stepping out of the frontwoman spotlight to play guitar), Buffalo Tom singer/guitarist Bill Janovitz silenced a chatty crowd by playing one of the best sets I’ve seen him do in years. Only an hour earlier, he’d been playing daddy as he mingled among the VIPs with his kid in arm, but there was rock-and-roll fire and passion in his delivery of a short set that drew on both the Buffalo Tom songbook and his solo material, including the track he recorded for Hot Stove, Cool Music, a Buffalo Tom–style emotional rocker that finds him returning from his so-so dalliances with country music to the kind of song that’s much better suited to the intensity of his voice. The biggest surprise of the night, which advertised appearances by Kay Hanley and the Gentlemen, was Dropkick Murphys, whose rabid local fan base might have created a riot outside the club if it had known that Boston’s Irish-punk true believers were going to be taking the stage. Fortunately, "Hot Stove, Cool Music" made the move from a minor-league baseball-oriented benefit to major-league musical extravaganza without so much as a hitch.

BY MATT ASHARE

Issue Date: January 16 - 22, 2004
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