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ually brace yourselves a native new yorker i know because my aunt went to high school with him in yonkers no seriously can we really have a state song written and sung by someone who grew up a yankee fan also when he sings dream on dream on dream on at the end windshields have been known to crack the other problem with these picks is they display a clear south and southwest of boston bias where s the north shore love it s time one of our local legislators jumped into the fray and i have the perfect song to do it with rock and roll band by boston i lay out the argument here it s sung by brad delp an actual native of peabody it has a local reference i e just another band out of boston they may have met a sad end but the band s name is boston for crying out loud so listen up candidates in the april 2 special election for peabody s new state rep better make this your first order of business before the state loses its ability to rock posted by pete chianca at 2 47 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels boston music politics thursday february 21 2013 column putting the do back in doo wop hear ye hear ye i come in praise of the sh booms the shu wops the bom diddy boms the ring a dong dings well not so much that last one but all those others i m talking about doo wop that marriage of r b and early rock n roll that started on city street corners in the 1950s and had doo wah diddied its way into the oldies bins by the time the beatles got here i was reminded of my longtime romance with doo wop by acapella the new album by kenny vance and the planotones which showed up in my inbox earlier this month vance a founding member of jay the americans is clearly a man on a mission he s recorded some of these classics before but never sans instruments and his sheer love and appreciation for the songs is palpable from the first bom bom bom of the cadillacs zoom to the last wee hee eee of the flamingos gorgeous i ll be home in between vance and his group go deep on oldies that most people probably haven t heard unless they re among the group that popped the originals onto their turntables 50 plus years ago i felt like it was time to do a tribute to the days when we started vance says and on acapella he nails numbers by such long forgotten groups as the charades the collegians and the paragons not to be confused with the paradons who are also represented here with a silky smooth version of their one hit diamonds and pearls even though i m not part of the demographic who heard these songs their first time around kiss queen and foreigner were on my school bus soundtrack i ve had a soft spot for doo wop as long as i can remember and for that i have to credit my father who was growing up in the bronx when dion dimucci was just a guy from the neighborhood not the frontman for the belmonts to hear my dad tell it pretty much any group of guys with the inclination could and would gather on the street corner and form a doo wop group he even recalls doing a doo wop competition with his sister and two friends at mt carmel church hall in the bronx a gig that he thought went well until the other groups got up all of them made up of black kids who sounded like they should have been on the radio my dad recalls laughing we didn t even stay for the rest of the contest even if his doo wop career stalled by high school though he retained a love of the music that ensured a steady diet of oldies on our family stereo wcbs fm in new york was in its heyday and sunday nights featured the doo wop shop with don k reed played every week in its entirety in our living room even as a kid there was something that struck me in songs like the five satins in the still of the night and vito the salutations souped up version of unchained melody first and foremost were of course the tight knit arrangements of nonsense syllables that made up the backbone of every track beyond that though was the way the songs captured the simple joy of a bunch of guys singing in a tiny studio or possibly a bathroom the production was simple and the lyrics were almost always of the you true blue variety but that was part of the charm acapella is certainly slicker than any of those early records but vance who at 69 somehow manages high notes and harmonies that would be impressive for someone a third that age captures their heart and soul true to the originals but not slavishly so the planotones imbue songs like the rollicking zoom zoom zoom and the smoky mio amore with sparkling vibrant personality vance also somehow avoids the lite fm vibe of a manhattan transfer or the college a cappella group smarm that can neuter these songs street corner grittiness don t take my word for it though here s what my father the erstwhile doo wopper had to say after a few spins through acapella as someone who s familiar with most of the original renditions of these songs i tend to be disappointed when they re covered by another group he admits with this album i found i enjoyed some of the songs just as much as the originals when the doo wop is this good he points out you don t miss the instruments dad s favorite from acapella is you cheated which he describes as unbelievably true to the 1958 original by the shields but the whole package every track is true to the doo wop spirit that helped fuel early rock n roll close your eyes and you may even find yourself back shu bopping on a belmont avenue street corner whether or not you were there in the first place posted by pete chianca at 7 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels column music tuesday january 29 2013 column faking it on facebook you may have sometimes wondered why certain people spend so much time on facebook there are several possibilities including 1 to get as many pictures of your children onto the internet as possible so strangers know what they look like 2 to let people know the awesome word you just played in online scrabble 3 to keep up with friends who you d cross the street to avoid if you saw them coming 4 to suffer acute feelings of misery and loneliness not necessarily in that order if we re to believe a new university study that last one may be more likely than you d think according to reuters the study found one in three people felt worse and more dissatisfied with their lives after viewing their friends profiles on facebook those people are clearly doing it wrong after all the only way your facebook friends are going to have more appealing lives than you is if you fail to keep up with their level of meticulously crafted fraudulence because as mark zuckerberg often says facebook isn t about the life you have it s about the life you pretend to have ok he doesn t actually say that but i m sure he s thinking it take this finding from the study vacation photos were the biggest cause of resentment this jealousy is completely unwarranted because no matter how awful your vacation is you can usually get your family to look happy at least long enough to snap a few pictures perhaps because you ve bribed or threatened them or because they just saw grumpy fall off the mickey s soundsational parade float which admittedly would be funny people then post the pictures on facebook with the caption another great vacation day with the fam this is code for here are the three minutes when we didn t look miserable which you should remember before starting into your spiral of depression here s another one women were more likely to envy physical attractiveness next time you find yourself jealous of how good someone else looks on facebook please remember we live in the age of the digital photo that means people can consider dozens even hundreds of pictures of themselves before finding that very special one that thanks to a quirk of lighting shadow and the fortuitous placement of a potted plant and possibly photoshop makes them look like a vaguely blurry gisele bundchen that photo is immediately posted on facebook and the others are deleted with prejudice having committed the crime of being you know accurate i m told this problem has spilled over into online dating because instead of posting pictures that show what they actually look like many would be daters are posting pictures of gisele bundchen and that s just the men then there s envy over how many likes or comments were made on photos and postings this one is tougher because while you can pick your friends you can t make them like you or your photos of your very special children or that thing you found on the internet with the angry cat on it which admittedly is pretty funny your best bet here is to try to inspire the guilt like and its corollary the guilt birthday greeting by liking as many of your friends posts as you can thus making them feel obligated to like you back barring that some people have been known to create fake facebook profiles and use them to elevate their like counts er not me other people i suppose the other thing to keep in mind is that the respondents in the study were from germany where misery and loneliness are recreational activities like whist but no matter where you re from i would think a good remedy for facebook depression might be to shut it down go outside and try to like a few things in the real world or on twitter i hear kim kardashian s on there posted by pete chianca at 7 00 am no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels column facebook internet thursday january 17 2013 column one man s hit is another man s les mis if you re a card carrying male person you know there are only three kinds of hugh jackman movies that are acceptable for you to see 1 movies in which he slashes evil mutants with his adamantium metal claws 2 movies in which he kills vampires with a giant crossbow 3 see no 1 not included on that list you ll notice are movies in which he spends hours singing into the camera at such an immediate distance that it s impossible not to notice his unkempt nostril hairs or dapper graying curls depending on whether at that moment he s a starving parole breaker or an aging reclusive single father or possibly the mayor i lost track somewhere in there i m referring of course to the movie adaptation of les miserables in which hugh jackman as jean valjean is basically singing the entire time whether he s dragging ships to shore running his factory or visiting anne hathaway in france s dingiest hospital where she s dying in a teary eyed short haired kind of way fortunately for jean valjean everyone around him is also singing even russell crowe so none of this seems out of the ordinary now you might think i went to see this film because my lovely wife dragged me there but i actually went because i just happen to be a fan of les miserables i ve seen the musical three times and i dare say that i even find it well stirring yes i know that may call into question my masculinity and my artistic preferences not to mention indicating an unusually high tolerance for bombast i first saw les miserables in boston when i was in college for the same reason that college students do everything because i could get discount tickets no not because i was drunk if that were the case i would have gone to cats it didn t take me long to realize that not only did les mis have a pretty compelling story but it was just epic enough to truly lend itself to full throated warbling plus muskets not that i m a full les mis apologist there are a few things i ve found off putting about the musical to this day including 1 marius he s a drip what with all his love at first sight gushing when he should be figuring out how to load his musket of course that makes him a perfect match for cosette together they make the drippiest couple in musical theater history and that includes emile and nellie in south pacific er i had discount tickets 2 i can t figure out the math every time i add it up valjean comes out to be about 200 years old and yet he can still carry grown men through sewers for days on end although the next day he wakes up and can t lift his valise and 20 minutes later spoiler alert he s dead so there you go 3 let s face it it s a lot of fuss over bread still it s pretty gripping for a musical and i can t really imagine a way the movie could have done a better job adapting it jackman has this uncanny ability to project an inner sincerity even when he s slashing mutants so he s an ideal valjean and hathaway is certainly good at conveying distraught she generates more close up actual tears than all the other actors put together although it was admittedly pretty close as for crowe he s not the greatest singer in the world but he does a nice job projecting the sense that if you didn t fully appreciate his performance he might reach through the screen and smolder you to death it s a lot better than clint eastwood s singing in paint your wagon which spoiler alert is exactly how you d imagine clint eastwood s singing regardless though i d argue that even if les miserables is flawed it s impossible not to get caught up in the sweeping story of redemption and the soaring if bombastic music that goes along with it i challenge even the most manly audience members the ones who thought liam neeson was too wishy washy in the taken movies to listen to valjean and company sing one day more and not feel at least a little bit stirred and don t worry if it makes you uncomfortable you can just close your eyes and think about crossbows posted by pete chianca at 6 00 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels column movies musicals tuesday january 01 2013 in and out 2013 all the rest we admit the overly attached girlfriend meme makes us nervous of all the things that are in we d be hard pressed to find something more in than frozen yogurt that s the only explanation for the glut of frozen yogurt establishments bursting from the ground fully formed like superman s fortress of solitude by process of elimination that would probably mean ice cream is out but just try getting between us and our chunky monkey tablets particularly ipads are in people carry them around now like your gym teacher used to carry around that stupid clipboard but don t worry your smartphone is still in at least until they figure out how to attach an ipad to the side of your head while you drive and now that everyone has a tablet laptops are on their way out and all the desktop computers have now been dismantled and turned into yogurt shops as far as the types of phones that are in blackberries are now being used primarily to keep napkins from flying off picnic tables and even the iphone has lost some of its sheen since the iphone 5 wound up requiring all sorts of new chargers and cables chargers and cables are out the samsung galaxy is the new in hip phone we know that because the commercials tell us they are commercials are in online creating memes and then distributi...