Local Rhythms – A Kindle In Your Future

For any technology to be truly compelling, it must advance an already important process.
E-mail improves the essential task of letter writing.  An MP3 player makes listening to music easier.  A camera phone is used to take insurance company pictures of fender benders.
How many of those collisions are caused by distracted drivers talking on their camera [...]

Middle School Bands Shine At Claremont Opera House

An enthusiastic crowd of parents and music lovers gathered at the Claremont Opera House Saturday night to hear performances from four area middle school bands. Keene’s St. Joseph Regional School and Kurn Hattin (Westminster, VT) joined jazz bands from the Charlestown and Claremont Middle Schools to showcase their advanced student music programs.
The night also provided [...]

Chuck Wicks @ Claremont Opera House 19 March 2009

Country is music’s last meritocracy, a genre where, as John Mellencamp wrote recently in Huffington Post, “stars [come] from seemingly nowhere to grow to tremendous popularity; think Garth Brooks.”
Or think Chuck Wicks, who thrilled a sold-out Claremont Opera House last Thursday with a blend of heart-tugging ballads and straight up rockers.  The lanky singer-songwriter rose [...]

Newport Folk & Jazz Festivals Returning to Their Roots?

Though last year’s Newport Folk Festival was quite successful by recent standards, producer Festival Productions still owed Rhode Island money in  January.  Because of this, the state’s Department of Environmental Management voided their contract to produce the festivals at Fort Adams State Park.
Yesterday, original founder George Wein announced plans to produce the shows himself, launching [...]

Mellencamp – Blame It On SoundScan

Writing in Huffington Post, John Mellencamp says that the music business’s problems began long before Napster.  Relying on Soundscan store reporting and BDS per-play radio reporting changed the game, he says, “from one that measured popularity to one that was driven by population” :
Record companies soon discovered that because of BDS, they only needed to [...]

Richard Shindell’s Literary Touch

Few musicians possess the literary voice of Richard Shindell. His songs read like short stories, with an eye for detail and a knack for parable that would please fans of Raymond Carver or Flannery O’Connor.
The folksinger’s sixth album of originals (Not Far Now, Signature Sounds) is again full of well-drawn characters with tales to tell.  [...]

Local Rhythms – Boycott Ticketmaster

You’ve been dying to see Bon Jovi since your big hair days, and he’s going on a summer tour.  No matter what it costs, you’re determined to be there.
With a posse of laptop-wielding friends, watches synched to the atomic clock, you count down the seconds to on-sale.
A few frantic mouse-clicks after the opening bell, it’s [...]

Chuck Wicks Keeps Things Cool

Chuck Wicks
Claremont Opera House
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tickets – $20.00

7:30 PM – Order Tickets
Though he’s out straight juggling gigs and learning to dance on national television, Chuck Wicks is in a breezy mood.
“My songwriting buddies are coming out to L.A,” says the rising country star, who has two hit singles, a top 10 album, and a [...]

Greedy Artists Hide Behind Their “Fans”

I’ve long suspected that musicians were profiting from the so-called secondary concert ticket market.  How else to explain the availability of premium seats on Ticketmaster’s TicketExchange site literally seconds after they go on sale?  The site is advertised as a “fan-to-fan” source for the best ducats, which is a joke.  These people are speculators , [...]

Local Rhythms – Greening St Patrick’s Day

The first St. Patrick’s Day celebration on this side of the pond happened in Boston in 1737, 19 years ahead of New York.
It’s satisfying to know that, even if NYC has a bigger parade.
Here’s another fun fact: though it’s been a public holiday in Ireland since 1903, the religious focus of the observance – Patrick [...]