REVIEW: Roger and Tom trapped in box, break out

[L to R] Rhodes, Radochia and Waldron perform.
Photo from Simple Machine Theatre.

SOMERVILLE—After walking down Elm St. and settling in Davis Square Theatre for Simple Machine’s presentation of rogerandtom, a few objects come into view. The four chairs, stacked white boxes, the bookshelf loaded with blank white books and the antique telephone are meant to represent Penny’s apartment. Really, though, they’re just a couple of chairs, some boxes, a telephone and a half-full bookshelf—right?

Directed by Stephen Libby and written by playwright Julien Schwab, rogerandtom is about the collapsing of existential notions. It’s a play within a play. Its characters are estranged from themselves and from each other. The universe of reality they’ve inhabited starts to slide from the start. Confusion falls at their feet and from their mouths, at times letting the audience in on the joke, and other times laughing right back. Waves of omniscience bounce off the walls.

            The acting from the three-person cast is to be admired. Penny, played by Anna Waldron, exhibits the pent-up articulation of a fictitious character too naïve to know she exists only in the play. She shrieks, she cries, lets out sighs of relief, and makes the audience swing with her every mood. Stephen Radochia who plays Richard, Penny’s husband, anchors the whole charade, keeping the audience and the characters calm and collected amidst the chaos. Andrew Rhodes’ Roger is the glue between Pretend and Reality. He spat with nervous energy, always cautious, with eyes shifting strongly and hands moving in and out of the pockets of his swishy vest. They are characters trapped in their own skewered timeline.

            Schwab, who has lend an outstretched hand to the medium with various productions in New York and Los Angeles, has crafted a very peculiar type of play. It breaks the fourth wall down early on then, scrambles to pick up the blocks and build it up again. It could’ve been wrenched from Charlie Kaufman’s brain or skimmed of Eugène Ionesco’s thoughts. It’s absurd, yes, but it’s more than just that.

Rather than rely easily on the befuddlement of the audience, it strives to dig deeper and uncover hidden truths of each character. Through each wacky, neck-craning layer, a real story unfolds inside a larger story until they both run parallel, revealing a strange bit of sentimental surrealism at the end. It could be everywhere at once or nowhere at all. As Radochia’s Richard says, “It’s about family, love, but mostly, it’s about theatre.” rogerandtom plays through April 7 with a live conversation with Schwab and the rest of the artists hosted by Veronica Barron at 3 p.m. today. Say nothing if you understand.

www.simplemachinetheatre.com
*
from: Somerville Scout
More: A review of writing the review for "rogerandtom"

Somerville Scout (March/April)

Lou Cohen and Lou Bunk, co-directors of Opensound. Photo by S.S.

The Sound Between Two Lous: How Opensound co-directors Lou Bunk and Lou Cohen took different paths to end up in the same strange echo chamber ("Somerville Scout", March/April 2012, No. 14)
*
An artist can hook an idea from anywhere in the sea of creative thought and turn it into something grand, or something shy and minimal. When Lou Bunk bought a new refrigerator he found an intense joy – not in the new slick shelving units, or extra fruit and vegetable bins – but in the tall binding logs of Styrofoam that outlined the refrigerator inside its box. “I felt like I passed through some door in my life,” he says. Bunk made instruments from the Styrofoam, wrapping six or seven rubber bands around each block. [CONTINUE]

Springsteen Demolition Inc.

The Boss seeks to end the bickering and reign in the compassion on Wrecking Ball 

      America has produced some fine, hard-workin’ songwriters—Woody Guthrie, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp—but with the current, ongoing structural damage that has befallen us in the last decade, those musicians (the undead ones forgiven) haven’t quite given voice to the voiceless. Enter: The Boss. Not to say he is better than any of the names mentioned above, but Bruce Springsteen kicks down the door with his new album, Wrecking Ball, giving hard-etched verses and choruses on the state of the union. It could be a new chapter in “A People’s History of the United States,” offering accounts from the barstools, back alleys and parking lots across America as we watch the rich fatten and our own bellies bloat in hunger. It’s a powerful, up-in-the-morning-gon’-take-charge album.

       Song one, and first single, “We Take Care Of Our Own,” starts like a cannon blast. A guitar crackles with the beat throughout like bricks crumbling to the earth and Springsteen’s voice drags in the gravel. The imagery focuses on a country losing its footing, unraveling in the face of disaster, but reminds of the compassion found wherever the stars and stripes are blowing in the wind. It’s enough to make the eyes swell with middle-class gratitude.

       “Shackled And Drawn” is a working man’s song about finding—sometimes with difficulty—nobility in being tied to hard-work and a job that ails you. It rolls along in a celebratory shuffle finding comfort in lyrics of dread. It fades, then digs deeper into that same theme on “Jack Of All Trades,” an everyman ode to taking whichever job comes and adapting to its demands and techniques. Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine tugs on the verses then explodes with classic rock riffing.

Throughout the album the drums and guitars are rugged and heavy, sounding like the demolition, then reconstruction, of buildings. There are deep detonations throughout the background on “Death To My Hometown” and thick, Bonzo-like drumbeats on “This Depression” and “Easy Money.” Wrecking Ball is Springsteen’s first time working with producer Ron Aniello and includes members and the horn section of The Sessions Band, whom he’s worked with previously, as well as most of the E Street Band. Springsteen looked to experiment with soundscapes and ambient textures. The results come out nicely. It’s hard to criticize a musician for trying something new so far into their career, but the embellishments are subtle enough to keep the old-timers attentive. Even Michelle Moore’s slight rap interjection in the sentimental “Rocky Ground” goes down fairly easy.

       The album’s tone pivots midway through the rising-from-the-pew title track. When Springsteen bores the phrase, “Hard times come. Hard times go,” into your skull, past the outer membrane and deep into your subconscious, the rest of the album takes on a gritty uplifting nature. It’s a point of no return. It’s wiping the dirt on your shirt and looking adversity straight in the eye. Shit’s fucked up, so, bring on your wrecking ball. Let’s get this over with and move on. From that point forward the album climbs up the ladder of optimism reaching a high point when the late Clarence Clemons releases his golden dragon sax on “Land Of Hope And Dreams.” It’s a warm tribute to The Big Man who died last year. He also plays on “Wrecking Ball.”

       Since 2009’s Working On A Dream a lot has happened in America for the Boss to reflect on: the banks losing their guts, the Occupy Movement, the surging dysfunction of Congress, rising unemployment, Keystone XL, the entire Obama Presidency, and all the while Springsteen has been watching and is none too pleased. Today’s America may be a weird toxic cauldron of disagreement and disappointment; it may be unjust, cruel and sometimes inhumane, but Springsteen wants us, not to band together in hatred against the powers that be, but instead, help each other out like Americans have always done.

Best Tracks: "We Take Care Of Our Own", "Wrecking Ball", "Rocky Ground", "Land Of Hope And Dreams"

Somerville Scout (Jan/Feb)

Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein at the Regent Theatre.

Married To The Music: Musicians Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola are so filled with ideas, even their side projects have side projects ("Somerville Scout", Jan./Feb. 2012, No. 13)
*
Sea monkeys, x-ray spectacles and dirt from Dracula’s castle are a few of the things Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola have thought about – and written about, and tried to collect – since starting their fourth band, Darling Pet Munkee, last spring. [CONTINUE]

A Love Letter to Arizona

Dear Arizona,

    I confess to you that my love for you has only grown after moving across the country. As you enter your one-hundredth year of statehood I congratulate you. You may lack the historic magnitude of Massachusetts and New York; the laid-back ocean breezes of California; and the seasonal patterns of most other states; but AZ, baby, you’re in a class all your own and I love ya.

    You are an enchanting region where the rocks run red and geology spreads its wings. From the pockmarked border towns with miles of dirt in between, through the Sonoran desert spilt in the middle, to the forests of Flagstaff and its hidden jewel lakes, up North through the gaping Grand Canyon and to the snow-capped mountains that watch over suburban palaces.

    I’ve driven sunset-first on your highways that circulate around one another. I’ve had too many close calls of crashing into other cars trying to catch a glimpse of the sunlight shrapnel. Here the sun is a god and it casts down the sins of the universe. Sweat drops ten months out of the year. When I walk across Lindsay and McKellips my line of vision reaches out for ten miles. In the distance mountains are like prehistoric whales lurching from the ocean. If I should find myself drunk, lost and weary in the desert, I know the mountain ranges will always lead me home—Four Peaks to the Superstitions to Red to Camelback. A fortress that protects the valley. An open sky to watch over you always. And when night falls and the sun closes shop an achingly gorgeous array of purples, pinks and slices of orange mix and mesh with exhaustive pollution for the most beautiful showcase of nature anyone could ever imagine in one lifetime. Arizona, happy birthday you devil!
* MESA, ARIZONA
* #SummerShare

DRONE CONTROL

NASH APPRECIATION

One of the dirtiest, most filthiest, things just happened to me. In discussing the impact of Amar'e Stoudemire fitting back into the New York Knicks' newfound rotation, with sudden superstar Jeremy Lin effectively working the point, ESPN showed old clips from the Steve Nash/Stoudemire era from 2002—10 in Phoenix. The real disgusting and most offensive part, though, was not the steepening sense of disappointment, but, when the clips ended it was Bruce “Bowtie” Bowen, the ex-Spur, doing the analyzing with his dumb face. I had to take a shower to let all the aggression slide away.

Bowen was on the San Antonio team that beat the Suns in the Western Conference Finals in 2007 winning the championship that year, and it was Bowen’s multiple cheap-shots to Nash’s groin, and Stoudemire’s ankle the following year, that created a hostility between the two teams that will never die (Horry, Duncan, Ginobli: you are not forgotten). But this is not about holding a grudge the size of Texas, but rather paying tribute to the best point guard to ever play the game of basketball. A point guard who makes everyone he plays with (even Lopez) better. Stoudemire flourished with Mr. Assist and is now considered one of the top power forwards in the league. No one threads the needle with such grace or has the cool and calm to dribble in and out of human trees and wait patiently for the perfect pick-and-roll to present itself. And if none of that pans out, he’ll just do a quick hop and drain a three. That’s Nash 101 and we in Phoenix hold onto it with our collective grip like it’s a dying baby slipping from life’s grasp on a hospital bed. Steve Nash, 38, heads to his eighth All-Star game Feb. 26 as a reserve and he’ll be there representing the team that gave him the platform to be a star.

In today's hypercharged market, basketball stars are constantly chasing the next best scenario. Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Deron Williams have all suffered from inflated ego and visions of gold and confetti, but still have had trouble controlling their destinies. Their anxieties have created an atmosphere of constant discontent in this league. If your name isn’t in lights and you’re not immediately deemed Larry O’Brien-bound by a bunch of ex-basketball star hacks, then you’ve failed by many. Forget chemistry, loyalty and honor, it’s nothing but a crab factory on this beach.

By all accounts, Nash could’ve asked to be traded from the organization in these last few seasons and no one would’ve blamed him. But that’s not his style. He stuck around when Coach D'antoni left; looked for the beauty in adding Shaq—the biggest, clunkiest player ever—into a “run-and-gun” offense; was patient after two early playoff exits and two years under .500; and still remains mired in the post-Richardson, post-Dragic, post-Carter era we now find ourselves in today.

“Maybe I’m old school,” Nash says, on honoring his contract amid all the terrible moves the front office has made. (It was only two years ago that we lost the Western Conference Finals at the hands of Ron Artest only to trade half the team away!) He could be shipped to New York or Orlando and get his ring by this June, but he’s hung around. That loyalty is next-to-impossible to find on any other team and before the unfortunate, damning event that he actually is traded, let’s pause and shout hallelujah for such an icon and one that may be the last of his kind. Steve Nash, you’re my hero (Monta Ellis ain’t nothin’ but a bitch to me).

MESA, ARIZONA

Pale stone tan neighborhoods
that seem to never end, and
when they do it's nothing but
desert waiting to snap like a
bear trap the moment your paw
touches down. Every step
more watchful as the rooftop
shadows fall away. Dried out
cacti spine, snake holes, twigs
looking like scorpions, tarantulas
looking like dead weeds and
the most beautiful mountain-work
ever crafted beaming in front. It
causes awkward walking
patterns—dipping, swaying,
hopping—Bow down &
worship the rocks of time!
They breathe openly the light
of the sun, which rests eternally
on the shoulders of everyone.
* Home forever no matter
where my rent checks are
sent.

Thurston Moore Reminisces, Slides Into the Future

SOMERVILLE, MA--Last night marked a sort of return to The Somerville Theatre for Sonic Youth guitarist and vocalist Thurston Moore. The feedback-and-drone rock band last played the theatre early in their career in the 80s. On that night Moore threw a temper tantrum, left the stage thirty minutes early and locked himself in their van. “I’m back exorcising that demon,” he said with his typical smirk.
     This time around, the scene was different. Moore played in support of his third solo album, last year’s, Demolished Thoughts, with his new backing band. Christened Demolished Thoughts, the ensemble includes Keith Wood on acoustic guitar, Mary Lattimore on harp, John Maloney (former Burren employee) on drums, and Samara Lubelski on violin. A surprising split from Kim Gordon, his wife of twenty-seven years and co-founder, bassist and vocalist of Sonic Youth, threw the fate of the band in permanent jeopardy last year. No announcement has been made on their future.
     In his newest musical incarnation Moore is much calmer than that night in the 80s. Gone is the distorted destruction and wall of feedback from his previous work and in place are spiraling acoustic crescendos. The song structure is still mostly the same with long-winded outros that melt down and disintegrate in acoustic noise. Clearly there’s still a soft spot in his heart for Sonic Youth that this band only hints at, but this project follows its own meandering path.
     The group played songs from all of Moore’s solo discography, even reaching back to 1995’s Psychic Hearts. “Circulation” from Demolished Thoughts, roared out of control but was pulled from the static bog by Lattimore’s plucked harp strings. The addition of violin and harp created a constant classical drone that led the audience down stereophonic hallways of dread. Moore’s vocals are still the vocals of warning, dead-pan and off-putting.
     Moore was friendly with the audience and patient as they shouted senseless one-liners for attention. Between a few songs he offered his own beat-up poetry streaming free from his mind. Sentence fragments were mashed in a sweaty electrical pulp offering an angulated glimpse into life with his new band. One poem reflected on a beer-fueled heavy metal practice they had.
     Kurt Vile, who released the full-length (and #4 Best Album of 2011) Smoke Ring For My Halo and the EP So Outta Reach last year opened the evening. He brought his usual sleepy songs drenched in soft reverb and highlighted by his fishtail mumble. He stood mostly alone, center stage, with acoustic guitar, but was joined every few songs by Lattimore on harp.
     It was a casual show, a laid-back affair, the soundtrack to those final moments of a deep sleep and so, the rest of the night was spent in a perpetual awakening. Moore takes his Demolished Thoughts to The Allen Room at Lincoln Center in New York City tomorrow night.
****
Photos by Eli Jace

CANDIDATES

Mitt Romney your soul has split

and slid out into five sons

dressed in white leaving

you with blank sheets of

tin for a head. Teleprompter

plugged into your

ankle.

Ron Paul, the man with interesting ideas

and iron will, but, also a large

capacity to worm into folds

of thought lost on general

public. Sweep up our foreign

encampments, respecfully,

then vanish into the cold.

Rick Santorum sleeps beside angels 10hrs

every night. No assholes in his

line of vision, only prayer and

nothing but the prayer. Face

cringing like a dog getting

beat.

Rick Perry the shaky Texan. Eyebrows like

carpet samples, and, well, thanks for

trying.

Michelle Bachmann doesn't understand

but, God bless her shiny hair

and oh so gentle reworking

of American history.

Newt Gingrich with jowls a'swinging,

pointer finger out, blames

The Media for everything

then, whirls around and

uses it to sell books. Wife #3

(Callista) w/ lazer eyes

and steel-beam neck.

Herman Cain is fish fish. Pizza champion fish

fish fish, holding hands, cupping

ass, whispering ears, fish fish,

winking across the room, fish

fish fish.

Tree At Butcher Jones (2012)

SOMERVILLE SCOUT--Hot Molasses: After the Flood

SOMERVILLE SCOUT--Hot Molasses: After the Flood

TOP ALBUMS--2011

10. THE WHOLE LOVE-Wilco
Wilco, always the go-to for Americana experimentation, roar back with The Whole Love. Jeff Tweedy reigns supreme as the most daring and fruitful songwriter of these times and with a crack professional band backing him up, another page turned in their history. From the blast-off of “Art of Almost” to the quiet, stirring confessional “One Sunday Morning (Song For Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend)” Wilco cement their feet in the palace of rock and roll.

9. BAD AS ME-Tom Waits
Tom Waits is baaaaack! The scrap metal blues are alive and well in 2011 with Waits grumbling and moaning of leaving wherever he is right now. Bad as Me is all about unrest and anxiety and with two and three minute songs, it sounds that way too. Enlisting the help of Keith Richards, Les Claypool, Flea and Marc Ribot, Waits crafted a funky, brash, junkyard treasured album for these monolithically troubled times.

8. HOT SAUCE COMMITTEE PART 2-Beastie Boys
Yo, throat cancer ain’t nothing but a bitch to the Beastie Boys. Put on hold after Adam "MCA" Yauch discovered a cancerous tumor intruding his salivary glands, Hot Sauce was finally released this year and I almost trashed my entire room by the end of opener “Make Some Noise.” After experimenting with instrumentation on The Mix-Up, the B-Boys returned, a little older and more grizzled, to their trademark goofball raps. All you crab rappers, you’re rapping like crabs.

7. HELPLESSNESS BLUES-Fleet Foxes
Words that have described Fleet Foxes: pastoral, melancholic, folksy, harmonious. After the wild success of their first album it’s easy to get frightened that expectations will get the best of them. Not so with Blues. They made a record that sweetly illustrates the struggle of today’s common man: dragging oneself to work while dreaming of the peaceful woods and searching for moments of tranquility and acceptance. The harmonies are prevalent and folk strumming comforting. This is home, wherever that may be.

6. BLOOD PRESSURES-The Kills
The greatest girl-boy duo since those siblings in red and white stopped production, The Kills return with the very fine Blood Pressures. The songs are quick, to the point, drenched in reverb and tinged with that subtle nostalgia that keeps you coming back. Alison Mosshart vocals slice through the distortion of guitarist Jamie Hince creating end-of-the-world black ballroom music.

5. 4-Beyonce
Beyonce very well could be the supreme diva of our time. It’s so refreshing she didn’t take the electronic pound-it-in-your-head dubstep route other divas (Lady Gaga, Rihanna) have taken to broaden their sound. Each song touches on different genres of pop music to create a well-rounded album. It starts with a downcast mood reflecting on troubled relationships (c’mon Jay!), but pulls itself from the mud to emblazon the speakers with songs like “Love on Top” and “Countdown.” Get it girl!

4. SMOKE RING FOR MY HALO-Kurt Vile
Kurt Vile woke himself up long enough to record this layered acoustic gem. Still less hazy than his previous albums, Smoke Ring is the soundtrack to the marijuana-laced dreams you can never remember. He takes Kurt Cobain’s angst-fried snarling and pours cough syrup all over it. There’s a comfort in lethargy as the world swoons all around your bedroom.

3. THE KING OF LIMBS-Radiohead
The most challenging record of the year is also the most rewarding. Radiohead raise their ceiling of creativity with each new release and The King of Limbs, certainly, is no different. At first you’re not sure if the drum tracks are lined up with the electronic tracks and then you’re wondering what Thom Yorke is saying and before you realize it the song is splashing in glorious ponds of connectivity and all is right with the world. Inside of 38 minutes, but demanding repeat listens, Radiohead prove, once again, why they are skyscrapers above the rest of the pack.

2. WATCH THE THRONE-Jay-Z & Kanye West
Docked from the top spot only because “Made in America” is a terrible song and totally disrupts the mood, Watch the Throne, fulfilled its promise to be the biggest release of 2011. Jay and ‘Ye get deep dissecting what it means to be black, rich and successful in America—pretty fucking fun, but also lonely and disengaging. Their thoughts move past bling and supermodels just long enough to reveal a landscape of paranoia, distrust and insecurity that may give its white audience something to think about before they mutter ‘nigger’ to their friend in the passenger seat. Let’s hope these fuckers never leave their zone.

1. LET ENGLAND SHAKE-PJ Harvey
England’s angel soars above the clouds to deliver the most poetically scathing portrait of her homeland. Dreamlike on arrival, but haunting in tone, England captures the drifting prominence of the United Kingdom as well as America and the rest of the E.U., for that matter. Harvey reflects on the atrocities of war and the unrelenting aftermath that follows. “The Words That Maketh Murder” offers a soldier’s deathly perspective as he walks the battleground filled with an unknown regret. It’s national pride gone awry, turned inward and defensive, and it comes through on the haunted breeze that is Harvey’s voice.

SOMERVILLE SCOUT---A Tingling in my Spine's Eye--Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys, December 9, 2011, Radio

SOMERVILLE SCOUT---A Tingling in my Spine's Eye--Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys, December 9, 2011, Radio

SOMERVILLE SCOUT -- Dastardly's Liebowitz Makes the Road His New Best Friend

SOMERVILLE SCOUT -- Dastardly's Liebowitz Makes the Road His New Best Friend.

DRONE CONTROL

NATIONAL BALLSUCKERS ASSOCIATION

     Okay. Enough is enough. It's time to feed fatbody David Stern to the lions. The NBA commissioner and his band of super-rich owners have turned a prickly, uncomfortable situation into an ugly funeral march. After three straight days of negotiations, including one 16-hour day, the talks between owners and players on how to divvy up finances in a flopping economy have been halted. Any morsel of positivity that was dangling above the marathon meetings has been gulped down into the blackness of uncertainty.

     As the players come down percentage point by percentage point on revenue sharing the owners continue to stand undeterred and unwilling to compromise. It is their way or the highway. And that highway leads to a fractured, if not totally destroyed season, loss of fan interest and the end of some critical hall of fame careers.

     Earlier in the month there was verbal agreement from both sides on a 47/53 split siding with the players, but before that had time to fester, Stern and company tip-toed back shamelessly asking if the players would consider 50/50. The players balked and walked away.

     It's appalling why the owners would keep up such a hard stance in these negotiations. Last time I checked owning a major sports team cost quite a bit of cash. These owners' bank accounts were overflowing well before they purchased their teams, and wasn't it the sheer love of basketball that urged them to buy? As true lovers of the game it's hard to understand why someone of wealth would put dollars before actual action. Sure you may not be making as much as you could, but at least THERE WOULD BE GAMES.

     To ask the players to make as much as the owners do is totally ludicrous. They've already come down huge, from 57% of revenue, which does stand to be a bogus-load of income. But let’s face the facts: the league would not have two legs to stand on if it weren't for the players. Last season had the highest ratings ever. Why? Because people were interested to see what the Miami Heat could do. They were interested to see what Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and that other guy, could do. When the Heat came to Sacramento to play against the lowly Kings, fans bought tickets just to watch those guys play and if you weren't rooting for them, you were vehemently hoping to see them fail. It's the players who drive competition and spark fan excitement. Without that kind of personality attached to the game, it'd just be a couple dudes sweating in a gym. Nobody wants to watch that.

     After the Dallas Mavericks pounced on the Heat in the Finals and the labor talk rumblings began, it seemed it wouldn’t be too big a burden. Now it’s become a nightmare. There goes training camp. There goes the preseason. There go the first two weeks. There goes November. Once Christmas games are officially canceled the nightmare will become fully realized and the asterisks will abound.

     When I shut my eyes at night I have visions of basketballs spinning in my head. I imagine alley-oops, no-look passes and pick-and-rolls perfected. When I wake the only news is Stern’s melting Jabba the Hutt face. Go Bruins?