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Dear Reader, I’m a whiny lefty curmudgeon with a closet full of axes to grind with everyone from national celebrities to local politicians, not to mention countless random individuals and doofuses on social media. I’m also the person who is in charge of the hard news at DigBoston, and so I often fill this space with rants and segues to our larger features and investigations, which we use to shovel deeper toward the core of all these ills that bother not just me, but lots of other people too. At least, that’s my hope as I sit down to wrap up each week’s newspaper and pen this column.

Even with the aforementioned attitude and outlook, however, I pine for positive material every now and then. And while we faithfully feature inspiring arts and entertainment writing every week, as well as hopeful interviews galore with artists, activists, and other Bostonians who are helping to responsibly make Mass a better place, I tend to fill my reader’s note with piss and pickles, making for a salty intro to a publication that doesn’t necessarily read darkly throughout.

I have been wanting to share thoughts along these lines for weeks now, but it’s never the right time. Either white supremacists are rumored to be coming into Boston, or President Not-See himself says something insanely hurtful or ignorant. Or both. That much can be counted on to happen on an almost daily basis nowadays, while this week I felt guilty being chipper due to the depressing natural horrors down in Houston.

If you’ve been near a radio, computer, or television, it’s hard to think about much else.

Still, I see a little bit of promise. I see it in the youth our writers work with at the Transformative Culture Project, where high school media students just completed another season of intensive training in filmmaking. I also find hope in the community and elected leaders who are working overtime to bring more wet establishments to underserved neighborhoods like Mattapan, which as of now has not a single sit-down restaurant where you can get an alcoholic beverage. You can read more about that in Haley Hamilton’s Terms of Service column this week.

I am excited about the Jamaica Plain teenagers who unearthed proof that TD Garden has held back on promises made to the community years ago, and also about the brilliant young digital innovators who did what city administrators failed to do and programmed an app to connect youth with free public activities.

I apologize for slipping some contempt for Boston bureaucrats into that last one, but if you can’t see the negative space, it’s hard to realize what the positive’s supposed to look like.

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LO KEY ENDORSEMENT NEWS TO US

Why would Somerville Mayor Curtatone be seen with this guy?

BY CAROLYN BICK @CAROLYNBICK Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone has been touted as a model liberal official, a local champion of immigrants, regardless of their documentation status, and immigrant protections. He’s the proud elected head of a sanctuary city and has displayed a Black Lives Matter banner on City Hall.

But as progressives in his midst have been buzzing about for weeks now, Curtatone was photographed at a recent campaign kickoff event for Ward 1 Alderman candidate Elio LoRusso. LoRusso’s right-wing values— in particular, he has expressed anti-undocumented immigrant sentiments and spewed anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric—seem to run counter to the mayor’s own claimed values and positions.

Upon inspection, it appears that the incongruence afoot boils down to one central issue: affordable housing.

Reached for this article, longtime LoRusso acquaintance and Affordable Housing Trust Fund member Martin Polignone made the same argument that some others who are active in Somerville politics are making: He suspects that Curtatone wants to see LoRusso’s challenger, current Ward 1 Alderman Matt McLaughlin, lose his seat on the Board of Aldermen. The mayor and McLaughlin have continuously butted heads over two big-ticket developments that lack Somerville’s required 20

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percent affordable housing. LoRusso, on the other hand, is in favor of both projects.

“The mayor would use [LoRusso] as his puppet,” Polignone said. “I believe that’s why the mayor is kind of supporting [LoRusso]—either overtly or covertly, I don’t know, but Elio is pretty confident the mayor is going to use his people to get out there, campaign, support him.”

Reached for comment, LoRusso denied having any mayoral backing in a phone interview and said that Curtatone shows up at everyone’s campaign kickoff events. McLaughlin doesn’t buy it.

“He wasn’t at mine,” the alderman said. “He wasn’t at [the kickoff parties for aldermen] Bill White’s, Lance Davis, Mark Niedergang… [the mayor] basically only goes [to the events of] people he supports.”

Curtatone, who himself is up for reelection, has also appeared on LoRusso’s campaign materials. According to McLaughlin, that seems to indicate support. “[It] is generally expected for candidates to ask permission to show their likeness on campaign materials, which some of these are,” McLaughlin explained to DigBoston. “If I took a picture with [US Sen.] Elizabeth Warren and used it in materials, it would be an indication of endorsement.”

Curtatone did not directly return multiple requests for

comment. But in an email through his campaign manager Gregory Maynard, Curtatone denied supporting LoRusso and said that he had not granted LoRusso permission to use his image on campaign materials. Through Maynard, the mayor also noted that he appeared at LoRusso’s kickoff in order to talk “to as many voters as I can about my progressive, successful record here in Somerville.”

LoRusso, an East Somerville native who was born to Italian immigrant parents, has run for the Ward 1 aldermanic seat four times prior to this race. Every time, he has lost. In his last rodeo four years ago, he was defeated by McLaughlin, whom Curtatone supported.

This time around, according to his campaign manager Maynard, Curtatone doesn’t plan to officially endorse any candidate for Ward 1 alderman. Asked if he’s reluctant to get behind McLaughlin because of the pair’s opposing stances on development in Somerville, the mayor wrote through Maynard, “No comment.”

One would think that Curtatone would want to distance himself from LoRusso politically. A self-declared Donald Trump supporter, LoRusso commends right-wing politicians and activities. He has suggested that marriage should only be between a man and a woman, saying in a Facebook post in 2015 that the country is “falling apart” because of “nonsense” like gay marriage.

LoRusso has also called undocumented immigrants “illegals” online and has stated on social media that he believes they should be kicked out of the country. When reached for comment, he said undocumented immigrants need to contribute to society “in the right ways” and noted his concern about “criminals” who “come here and break laws.” “Somebody who comes here who is going to work to make sure they are going to get a visa, get working papers, we should commend them,” he said in the phone interview.

When questioned further, LoRusso said he doesn’t see how federal and state issues—specifically regarding undocumented immigrants—relate to a community campaign.

“These are issues that … have nothing to do with me being an alderman,” LoRusso said.

“My job as an alderman is to represent the people of Ward 1.”

Given Somerville’s sanctuary status, many people who live in Ward 1 are likely to be undocumented. Nonetheless, antiundocumented immigrant sentiment is nothing new for the candidate. In response to an October 2013 Somerville News article that reported that Somerville state lawmakers were against a program that penalized businesses that hired undocumented immigrants, LoRusso commented:

“The mayor has some answering to do, in terms of how you can support someone who doesn’t reflect the values you reflect, or the values we believe in as a city.”

All illegals should be booted out of this country. Furthermore, they should not have the right to get drivers license [sic] and in state tuition. If our pols are for this they should also be booted out of office. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH… Illegals get free health care, free food stamps and all their rights and we the legal ones pay extremely high health insurance and get nothing handed to us. Time to clean up the state house and white house [sic].

Ben Echevarria is the director of the Welcome Project, a Somerville organization that assists immigrants, both documented and not. Over the years, he and Curtatone have worked closely together to help the city’s immigrant population. (Curtatone publicly voiced opposition to the aforementioned employer penalties and even signed an executive order removing Somerville from the program.)

Echevarria believes Curtatone is personally, not politically, supporting LoRusso. Nevertheless, Echevarria is surprised at the apparent endorsement.

“To me, it’s a slap in the face,” Echevarria said, adding that he hasn’t yet spoken personally with Curtatone about the matter. “The mayor has some answering to do, in terms of how you can support someone who doesn’t reflect the values you reflect, or the values we believe in as a city.”

McLaughlin feels differently. He said he isn’t surprised that Curtatone isn’t supporting him and points to a disagreement this past April. McLaughlin opposed a waiver that Assembly Square developer Federal Realty Investment Trust (FRIT) sought from the city’s Planning Board, which would allow the company to bypass an ordinance that requires such developments to include 20 percent affordable housing. FRIT instead requested to develop only the initial 12.5 percent that was in place when it began the Assembly project in 2005.

Despite the waiver’s unpopularity among Somerville’s residents, the measure not only passed, but the percentage of affordable housing units was reduced to just 6.25 percent on-site—half what FRIT asked for in the waiver—without a clear explanation as to how the number had decreased. McLaughlin denounced the decision in an op-ed, writing that Curtatone put developers ahead of “hundreds of residents [who] testified in support of more affordable housing.”

That wasn’t the end of it. In June, another big-ticket development that Curtatone favored met opposition, once again at the hand of McLaughlin. He was the only alderman to vote against zoning proposed by Union Square Station Associates (US2), citing the developer’s avoidance of public meetings, as well as a rather strange incident in which the names of Somerville residents were signed onto development-supporting emails they never sent.

In challenging McLaughlin, LoRusso said that he does not oppose developments like this, also adding that affordable housing is important to him.

LoRusso declined to address the specific amount of the FRIT waiver and did not mention his own ideas for creating more affordable housing.

“It’s a political benefit,” said McLaughlin, suggesting that LoRusso would side with the mayor more than McLaughlin himself does as an alderman. The Ward 1 incumbent opposes Curtatone’s vision for the city, which he argues “doesn’t include the working people.”

“That’s why I am fighting with him all the time,” McLaughlin said.

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STONEWALLED TOKIN’ TRUTH

Meet the activists and businesspeople backing #disownstone in Boston

BY MIKE CRAWFORD @MIKECANNBOSTON

With upcoming events in Los Angeles and Boston, the Cannabis World Congress & Business Exposition (CWCBE) is facing a boycott first proposed by influential leaders in the cannabis industry, among them members of the Minority Cannabis Business Association (MCBA). Their primary grievance is a single, truly awful keynote speaker, Roger Stone, a self-described political dirty trickster who, in one of his most recent ugly feats, helped Donald Trump win the White House.

Among other things, Stone is facing heat for his substantial record of racist and other insensitive remarks— “mandingo,” “professional Negro,” and “muff diver” among them—to criticize political opponents. It’s despicable stuff, and there’s no apparent end to it. Last week Stone said, “A politician who votes for it [the impeachment of President Trump] would be endangering their own life.”

As these things tend to go, CWCBE Managing Director Scott Giannotti only made matters worse with his response to the announced boycott of Stone. Attacking back on Facebook, he wrote that “you people” who are boycotting are “dumb,” attacked competitors, and argued that his conference is “the most politically and culturally diverse conference program in the cannabis industry.”

Before long, a #disownstone petition on change.org racked up hundreds of signatures, while a who’s who of national names also weighed in. In Boston, 4Front Ventures Founder and President Kris Krane, as well as Matt Simon of the Marijuana Policy Project (the Washington, DC, org that largely funded the Mass legal initiative) are both supporting the boycott. As is the national drug reform organization Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

With his longtime buddy Trump in Washington, Stone’s play appears to be to get the president to approve medical marijuana on a federal level, which could result in a minimal number of those licenses being granted to elite operations—presumably, many with connections to Stone. Sort of like he did with casinos when his last crony occupied the highest office. From the Village Voice: “within days of Bush’s election,” Stone was invited “to serve on the Department of Interior transition working group—helping, in his own words, to staff its Bureau of Indian Affairs 6

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(BIA). Stone has since used this unannounced perch to market himself to tribes and developers from Louisiana to California, earning fat fees and contingent percentages of future casino revenue. Just two of the five deals examined by the Voice are projected to pay him at least $8 million, and perhaps as much as $13 million.”

In his own response to the boycott, Stone tweeted, “Boycott of my Sept #CWCBE 420 speech in LA is fabricated agit prop.”

Stone also wrote that the liberal accountability group Media Matters was behind the alleged conspiracy, and so I checked with local voices who fight for reform in Mass to see where they stood on the boycott.

On my WEMF Radio show, The Young Jurks, Boston City Councilor and candidate for mayor Tito Jackson didn’t hesitate to support the boycott. “Let your green speak for you,” Jackson said. “You should not be placing your dollars to support a show like that. This is not only about the minority cannabis community, it’s also about the majority cannabis community, showing where you stand and standing with your brothers and sisters. You have an opportunity to stand up. Roger Stone cannot and should not be looked [at] like an expert in all things in cannabis.”

Said Cambridge State Rep. Mike Connolly: “I support members of the cannabis community and join in rejecting the presence of a bigoted racist and misogynist in the role of keynote speaker.”

Cambridge City Councilor Jan Devereux, who has supported and helped open dispensaries in her city, called Stone “notoriously shady.”

Marta Downing of Canna Care Docs, which sponsors The Young Jurks, said, “We stand with the Minority Cannabis Business Association. Canna Care Docs of Massachusetts will not be in attendance.”

Daniel Fishman, one of the leading Libertarian Party members in the state and a talk show host on WRKO, didn’t mince words. “Roger Stone represents [the] worst crony capitalism goals of big marijuana,” said Fishman, who is clearly not funded by George Soros. “We see now the monied interests trying to get richer by using the power of government to grant a select few monopolies through

licensing.”

Charles Laquidara, a legendary Boston radio host who worked for WBCN and later with WZLX, said, “I see nothing wrong with people not showing up for the nonevent. I also see nothing wrong with a nonviolent protest outside the door.”

Said Monica Cannon, founder of the group Violence in Boston: “Roger Stone coming to the city of Boston is another indicator of racism, misogyny, and sexism being accepted in this city by people in power. Using cannabis as a form of blind patriotism to gain support. Roger Stone is a racist white supremacist and every time we allow people like him into this city it sends a clear message that they are welcomed, and they are not.”

Shaleen Title, a local MCBA member and co-drafter of the Yes on 4 initiative that legalized cannabis in Mass, added: “There is no room for hate in our space, which is already grappling with the ramifications of 45 years of the war on drugs. As more than 20 speakers and sponsors noted in their sign-on letter, inviting Mr. Stone to speak to the crowd, especially as we see the rise of overt racism and anti-Semitism, is an affront to the very movement that CWCBE purports to promote.”

Adding to the pile, Stephen Mandile, founder of Veterans Alternative Healing and We Are Allies, said, “I support the boycott of Roger Stone. He is a relic, of an era of oppression and exclusion. There is no place for racism and sexism in society in 2017. The legal cannabis industry, as a relatively new industry, needs to be built with inclusion from every segment of society. We need to make sure it has the values of a united America, not divided by the hate of our nation’s past.”

Peter Bernard of the Mass Growers Advisory Council said, “I support this boycott and will not be attending the expo. Society has enough of his brand, and that sort of thinking has no place in the cannabis world. Mr. Stone should go back to the 1950s where he belongs. Maybe he can take [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions with him.”

And Beth Waterfall of Women Grow said, “Women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community—populations that Roger Stone has publicly and repeatedly insulted— have an opportunity like never before to create an industry and companies that are inclusive, compassionate, and environmentally and socially responsible. Mr. Stone, as a longtime advisor to our current president, has an ugly and very public track record of misogyny, racism, sexism, and willful ignorance that certainly should not be rewarded or celebrated with the privilege of presence on a cannabis convention stage.”

And yes, my team at The Young Jurks has joined the boycott..

Ed. note: The former publisher of DigBoston is an owner of NECANN, a DigBoston sponsor and another one of many cannabis conferences coming to Boston this year. One of the current owners and editors of DigBoston also currently serves on the board of NECANN.

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THE CENTER CANNOT HOLD DEMOCRACY IN CRISIS

This ain’t the summer of love

BY BAYNARD WOODS @BAYNARDWOODS

One night last week, I suddenly started pouring sweat, heart pounding, as I fell off my couch. I couldn’t feel my hands or my feet and my vision was narrowing, occluded by static, into a small spot. It was the beginning of a highfever, five-day stomach flu. To paraphrase Joan Didion, it was not an unreasonable response to the summer of 2017.

I’ve been thinking about Didion a lot, especially “Slouching Toward Bethlehem,” her piece from 50 years ago, a report on some of the lost children of the Summer of Love and also an extended meditation on William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Second Coming.”

The line connecting Yeats to Didion to us: The center cannot hold.

The election should have shown us that clearly. The majority lost and we elected an authoritarian entirely uninterested in compromise.

Some of the president’s most prominent supporters on the far right think of their movement as countercultural.

Paul Joseph Watson, a British YouTube twit turned Alex Jones acolyte, even sells swag sporting the phrase “Conservatism Is the New Counter Culture.”

He’s not entirely wrong. As Watson points out, he’s not talking about Mitch McConnell, but is instead pointing to the likes of Milo Yiannopoulos and Cassandra Fairbanks, who also write about conservatism being the new punk.

Even Mike Flynn is a surfer.

But there has always been something reactionary—a snotty white boy yelling, “look at me”—about the American counterculture.

This so-called counterculture of pseudo-journalists is trying hard not to be called “alt-right”—the moniker was coined by Depeche Klan clown Richard Spencer—because the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which Spencer was supposed to speak at, gave this counterculture its

They think people should be punished for that kind of stuff, without quite realizing how it is that the government is charging 200 people for breaking the same windows.

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Altamont. As the headline in the Berkeley Tribe read back in 1969 about that massive Rolling Stones concert where Hells Angels, who were supposed to be security, killed a young African-American man named Meredith Hunter: “Stones Concert Ends It: America Now up for Grabs.”

When James Alex Fields slammed his car into a crowd of celebratory Antifa protesters marching through Charlottesville after the racists had been largely routed, killing Heather Heyer, he changed the American right in ways they don’t understand, just as the Hells Angels murder at a Rolling Stones concert changed the left of that era. It destroyed their counterculture, releasing and magnifying its most violent elements and revealing its essence.

It was a tragically clarifying moment, and Donald Trump has decided where he stands. The POTUS erases every measured statement read from a teleprompter with an unhinged rant about how they are trying to take our heritage away when statues of white supremacists are taken down.

Trump sees the battle as one not between Democrats and Republicans, but between the alt-right—the deplorables, and Nazis, and guys wearing white khakis and polos, and the new right media frat pack counterculture crew, all led by himself—and the “alt-left,” a contingent that in his mind likely includes Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and perhaps all but the most right-wing journalists as well.

“They show up in the helmets and the black masks and they’ve got clubs—they’ve got everything,” Trump said in Phoenix, before letting loose with a sort of weird holler: “Antifa!”

Americans might have been surprised to see Nazis in America, but anyone who was ever involved in a punk scene knew about Nazis. There were always skinheads around. And often punks to kick their asses.

That’s essentially what Antifa is—punks getting shit done. The anticapitalist, often anarchist activists don’t just fight Nazis. They do Food Not Bombs, collecting sustenance from grocery stores and markets to feed to the homeless.

They offer court support to political prisoners and work as street medics during protests. In Charlottesville, it was street medics who helped tend burning eyes and busted faces. And when Fields drove his car into the crowd, street medics cared for the injured in the crucial moments before ambulances arrived.

And Antifa will fight. “If it hadn’t been for the

antifascists protecting us from the neofascists, we would have been crushed like cockroaches,” Cornel West, the famous intellectual, said of Charlottesville, noting that the “police didn’t do anything in terms of protecting the people of the community, the clergy.”

One reason that the cops didn’t do anything: They were guarding the windows of the shops flanking Emancipation Park. The cops, it seems, were more worried about Antifa than the alt-right. Because sometimes some of them also break windows.

Meanwhile, more than 200 people were arrested in an antifascist and anticapitalist black bloc protest on Inauguration Day, after some people in the group smashed the windows of several multinational corporations, including Starbucks and Bank of America.

There hasn’t been a lot of interest in the case on the broader left, because many find it hard to sympathize with people who smash shit. They think people should be punished for that kind of stuff, without quite realizing how it is that the government is charging 200 people for breaking the same windows.

But the District of Columbia’s chief judge made a ruling last week that may make the broader left more sympathetic toward the J20 defendants.

“You are providing all the data to the government,” Chief Judge Robert Morin said to lawyers for DreamHost, the web registrar that hosted disruptj20.org. They were fighting against a warrant that would allow the government to take all of the contents of that site—and any emails associated with it. The court placed certain limitations on what can be done with the information— but still demanded it all be handed over to the feds.

“It appears that the government is saying that just because it is under the same domain they can use one search warrant to obtain content from numerous specific email accounts,” said Raymond Aghaian, a lawyer for DreamHost, who likened it to searching all Gmail accounts with a single warrant.

“That’s problematic,” said Paul Alan Levy, who argued for anonymous “Doe” citizens for Public Citizen, a public interest law firm. “People don’t want the government to have their information if they didn’t do anything wrong.

And what the judge’s order fails to do is to take adequate steps to protect the interests of those Doe users.”

A lot more people go online than will ever be arrested at a protest—and no one likes the idea of giving the government a list of people who have visited a site opposed to the president.

If the larger left can embrace Antifa and Black Lives Matter, instead of being scared of its own most vital elements and rushing toward the center, it may have some sort of chance. The center cannot hold.

Tips to baynard@democracyincrisis.com

SOCIALIST MOMENTUM BRAWL FOR CITY HALL

Boston DSA backs candidates in three cities

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON

scare tactics against “socialism.” You had someone running for president and winning millions of votes who called himself a democratic socialist. Poll after poll shows that millennials and young people have no fear of socialism— in many cases, they have a higher opinion of it versus capitalism. In many cases, a DSA endorsement is going to bring in new voters who haven’t been engaged in the process before.

It seems you’ve seen a major increase in interest in your organization since the last presidential election. How much of that interest, on the general membership side, is reflected in the amount of interest people in your orbit have in actually running for office?

DSA membership has exploded over the past 9 months since the Bernie primary and the election of Trump. The vast majority of our members have less than a year of experience in a democratic socialist group, and our primary concern in the short term is turning these new members into activists [and] organizers, and [to] help drive change on a host of issues.

Running DSA members for office and supporting democratic socialists for office is definitely something we are going to be pursuing over the next few years. Two of the endorsees (JT Scott and Ben Ewen-Campen, both in Somerville) are DSA members, and there are several other DSA members who considered a run for office.

What kind of support can DSA offer candidates around here? How about nationally?

Locally, DSA’s primary support will be people power.

There are over 50 DSA members in the Boston area who have volunteered to door knock for our endorsed candidates, and we are planning to focus those people on a few key races (JT Scott, Ben Ewen-Campen, and Lydia Edwards). We’re socialists, so we don’t tend to have huge amounts of money to throw towards a campaign, but people power can defeat well-funded opponents who don’t have the volunteers.

Nationally, DSA is endorsing a handful of a candidates, including JT Scott. National can direct remote resources for phone banking and tap into a bit of the small donor money machine that the Bernie Sanders campaign relied on.

What are some of the biggest challenges that you see the candidates you are endorsing, a rather progressive lot, facing? In the primary election in particular, since that’s where a lot of the action is around these parts.

Most of these candidates will only have a nonpartisan general election—most of the drama is going to come around Nov 7. Many of our endorsements went to challengers, and there are a host of difficulties that challengers face: building their name recognition, raising money, defeating the power of incumbency. However, at the local level, those issues are actually less difficult to overcome than, say, at the congressional level. You can knock an entire municipal district several times before the election and get your message out. You can’t do that in a congressional district.

Could you see a situation where a candidate could lose some general support from centrist voters as a result of an endorsement from DSA? Sure. Municipal voters by and large are a mostly white, older, wealthier demographic that skews higher on home ownership than the general population. Fear of the word “socialism” is still probably a factor for some of those voters.

But these endorsements were sought out by the candidates themselves. Any candidate who thought they’d be hurt by an endorsement by “socialists” was free to decline to seek the endorsement. It’s a testimony to the changing political climate that so many candidates sought our endorsement.

The Bernie Sanders campaign really helped to stop red NEWS TO US

Check digboston.com for the full interview.

And the Boston DSA endorsements are…

SOMERVILLE

JT SCOTT (Candidate for Ward 2 Alderman) BEN EWEN-CAMPEN (Candidate for Ward 3 Alderman) JESSE CLINGAN (Candidate for Ward 4 Alderman) WILL MBAH (Candidate for Alderman-at-Large)

BOSTON

LYDIA EDWARDS (Candidate for City Council District 1) ALEX GOLONKA (Candidate for City Council District 9)

CAMBRIDGE

QUINTON ZONDERVAN (Candidate for City Council) VATSADY SIVONGXAY (Candidate for City Council) SUMBUL SIDDIQUI (Candidate for City Council) DENNIS CARLONE (Candidate for City Council)

FEATURE

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PHOTO VIA BOSTON DSA FACEBOOK

While some folks were holding their noses and values and deciding which horrendous major party candidate to vote for in the last presidential election, droves of other people were looking for viable alternatives to hitch up with in hoping for a better future. With many in the latter group being disenchanted Bernie Sanders supporters, it’s no surprise that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), along with other similarly minded fronts, has attracted significant attention in the mad dash toward decency.

Including here in Greater Boston, where our DSA affiliate has been increasingly active of late.

In addition to helping organize regular educational events, the Boston DSA, which is an activist group as opposed to an actual party, has played a role in recent actions, including the rally outside of the State House during the contentious “Free Speech” demonstration on Boston Common earlier this month. The group’s also busy pounding the pavement and knocking on doors for a number of candidates in Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville, and so we asked Matthew Miller, an executive board member of the local chapter, about the potential boost of all this socialist momentum.

With so much attention on the president of the United States and related national matters, whether they apply locally or not, how does your group plan on helping spur interest in municipal elections, which aren’t exactly headline events to begin with?

The traditional view in Mass politics is that voter turnout numbers are remarkably stable year to year and that you should always be skeptical if someone claims “this time is different.” Excitement at the national level typically doesn’t trickle down to the local level.

However, there are some indications that something really is different about this time: It’s not just that people were shocked by the election of Trump and want to defeat him—it’s that the level of grassroots activity on the left has increased dramatically since the election … but also vastly increased membership in DSA and other left groups. DSA is now the largest socialist group in the USA since WWII. There’s a sense that the Trump administration needs to be resisted at all levels: You need to fight Trump in the Senate to block the healthcare repeal, but you also need to be calling the State House to pass legislation to make up for the damage Trump is doing to our climate, civil rights, and other policy areas. And for many, yes, there is a sense that you need to resist even at the municipal level.

9

CAT ROCK GUEST INTERVIEW

In which a kitty legend interviews the Acro-cats for us

BY KEYBOARD CAT + DIG STAFF Some of us here at DigBoston consider ourselves to be incredibly lucky to know Charlie Schmidt, an artist of innumerable stripes in his own right as well as the former owner and companion of the dearly departed feline Fatso, better known to the world wide web as Keyboard Cat. So when we saw that the amazing trainer and animal advocate Samantha Martin was coming to Arlington with her own world famous performing house cats, we asked Schmidt if he would channel Fatso and pitch a couple of questions to the Acro-cats. He agreed to do just that, while on their end, Martin and Acro-cats tour manager Polly Smith reported to the Dig that they “had to type for the [Acro-cats] and explain their answers,” since “they do not have opposable thumbs.”

If this all sounds like a joke, you’re only right in that you’re meant to have a laugh.

Nevertheless, we really do know Keyboard Cat by proxy, and the interview below is absolutely the closest thing you are going to get to an actual celebrity cat-on-cat interview (that we know of at least, though we always welcome news tips).

Plus there is a very serious side to Martin’s work.

In the process of touring with animals and teaching

The interview below is absolutely the closest thing you are going to get to an actual celebrity cat-on-cat interview

them in wildly creative ways through her career, the kitty performance facilitator has helped find homes for more than 200 homeless cats, all the while contributing a portion of her show takes to affiliated causes. She’s also helped make a gaggle of kitties, including Tuna and the Rock Cats who will encore next week in Arlington, extremely famous by accompanying them to programs like the Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which has got to count for something.

Without any further ado, here are several human adults and a number of talented cats, one of which is up in kitty heaven, conducting the best freakin interview that you’ve read between house pets this week.

Have any of you met Keyboard Cat? None of the cats said they met keyboard cat. They did meet the piano-playing cat from Philadelphia though, but can’t remember her name. We have also met a Dracula cat from Pittsburgh, Catula.

Do you actually understand that your show is helping other cats who don’t have it so good?

Well, JAX knows—she takes care of the new kittens we get when we foster, which is all the time. She is always making sure they are clean, and hangs out with them so they feel like they have friends until their furrever home gets found.

Most of the other cats know what it was like to be homeless because they are all rescues. Some of them don’t act very grateful, cats can be jerks you know, but most of them thank us every day for giving them a place to sleep and eat and have something to do, instead of just wandering around causing trouble. We get lots of cuddles

>> THE AMAZING ACRO-CATS FEAT. TUNA AND THE ROCK CATS. 9.2-9.4 REGENT THEATRE, ARLINGTON. CIRCUSCATS.COM. 10

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and purrs and licks and jumps!

What do you watch for TV? Well, they all watch that zombie show, The Walking Dead, because of the tiger in it. I’ve seen some of them watch cartoons like Josie and the Pussycats and also Thundercats. They really like that movie A Fish Called Wanda, and Finding Nemo too.

What is the actual background of these performers?

Samantha Martin started training the family dog at age nine. When she was older she knew she wanted to work with animals for TV and films so she started with rats (and horror movies). She had a rat show until she found a very special orphan cat with amazing abilities, where it quickly turned into a cat show. All of these cats are former orphans and rescue cats from all across the nation.

What kind of show are we going to get in Arlington?

Cats jumping through hoops, ringing bells, riding skateboards, and way too much more to list. You might see a cat in the audience, too. The finale is the only all-cat band in the entire world. They play real instruments and it’s over eight members now (even some non-cat members!). The show last about 1.5 hours, and there is even a meet and greet with the band right after the show.

Where do hard-partying cats like to go after a concert?

You certainly won’t see them at the dog park! Most of them really do just like to go back to their tour bus and rest… with some catnip wine and mousey toys. It is very swank and decked out just for them.

NEWS TO US

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THE POSSIBILITARIANS FEATURE

Heads up for Bread and Puppet’s Insurrection Circus

BY DIG STAFF @DIGBOSTON There are puppet shows. There are circuses. And then there’s Bread and Puppet’s Our Domestic Insurrection Circus, which is not likely to be so recognizable to those who are familiar with traditional forms of either of the aforementioned spectacles. For this circus addresses “the absurdities of our current political moment,” comes complete with “a contingent of archetypal washer women in the guise of the National Demolition and Composting Force,” and features “a giant blue pageant puppet representing water protectors, and decapitalization decapitations of capitalist monsters, frequently interrupted by unignorable sunrises.”

And it’s interactive. As promised, “Bread and Puppet accompanies their proposal of general insurrection with the announcement of a new political party, the Possibilitarians, who have a platform that includes 12

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promoting the ‘thousand alternatives’ to the capitalist empire system… Possibilitarian candidates are nominated and audience members are invited to sign up to volunteer to construct this new political party.”

For more on the myriad political and entertainment possibilities headed to Cambridge on Sunday, we reached out to puppeteer Joshua Krugman to bring readers up to speed on everything from Bread and Puppet’s burlap bison to their Massachusetts Labor Day tradition.

This is an annual occurrence in Cambridge at this point. What is the Bread and Puppet connection with the crowd here like, and how much does the show typically change from year to year?

We love to perform for the diverse, socially and politically engaged crowd in Cambridge. We’re honored

to be so warmly welcomed back year after year. It’s great to perform on the Cambridge Common in the middle of everything because we also get a lot of unsuspecting audience members, passersby who get turned into a public by the paper maché clouds, the stiltwalkers, the flagrunners, and brass band.

There are common elements year to year, and they are always remade to respond to the current moment. For example, the washerwoman is a classic Bread and Puppet character that represents the strength of working class women. Washerwomen fight and triumph over all kinds of evil. What that evil is and how it is to be conquered changes with the times. This year the washer women fight a series of billionaires—tall paper maché reliefs— who appear in the guise of “The Joint Chiefs of Disaster,” “Energy Transfer Partners” (the corporate entity behind

the Dakota Access Pipeline), and “The US-Mandated Fiscal Control Board” (which is imposing austerity on Puerto Rico to the benefit of US hedge funds).

Please tell us a little more about “Our Domestic Insurrection Circus,” and why it is especially fitting for this point in history.

Domestic insurrection is called for when a government becomes largely a club of millionaires and billionaires pursuing the interests of that club, rather than the those of the majority. Domestic insurrection is called for when our neighbors are rounded up and sent back to countries where they fled war, persecution, or poverty. Domestic insurrection is called for when foreign policy seeks to prolong and exacerbate international conflicts in order to maintain high sales of US weaponry. Domestic insurrection is called for when money collected from taxpayers is used to develop new world-ending weapons instead of keeping public schools open and providing healthcare to all. Domestic insurrection is called for when the organs of public information are controlled by the same billionaires that have hijacked the government.

Domestic insurrection is called for when police occupy poor, black and brown neighborhoods, using excessive force with impunity, and when one of every eight African American men in the country is unable to vote because of a past conviction. Domestic insurrection is the urgent response of citizens and residents to the catastrophe of our current economy and politics.

The Domestic Insurrection Circus calls for the disposal of the incompetent ruling class by underthrowing them

Domestic insurrection is called for when a government becomes largely a club of millionaires and billionaires pursuing the interests of that club, rather than the those of the majority.

from the toes up and immediately implementing the 1,000 alternatives to the wasteful and destructive habits of Capitalism.

The Domestic Insurrection Circus proposes a new political party, the Possibilitarians, as a potential instrument for this implementation. The Possibilitarian Pro-Paradise platform says that “total consumer nonconfidence must be the cornerstone of a new, nonprofitable economy,” and that “the sky must be restored to its advisory capacity for all aspects of humdrum life.”

Who are some of the new characters we are going to meet when Bread and Puppet comes to town this time?

We’ll meet Puerto Rican students fighting US-imposed austerity, Washerwomen who compost the war machine, Hedda Gobler who possesses the rare ability to train wild turkeys, Shwa people from the Ecuadorian Amazon who are fighting oil companies, belligerent Kaspers, contradancing

goats, and Pinky the Elephant.

On a technical note, how do you actually transport these magnificent puppets to a show like this?

We travel in a converted school bus painted by founder and director Peter Schumann. The bus will also form the backdrop for the show.

Bread and Puppet started in New York City more than 50 years ago, but has been up in the sticks in Vermont since the 1970s. When you bring performances to places like Cambridge, for us city folk, do you tend to notice how tightly wound we are? And how might the experience loosen up some city slickers in the crowd?

I think the show is meant to shake city slickers and country cornstalks alike out of their complacency in the face of the destruction of the planet and the political and economic tyranny under which we all live, and inspire them with the Possibilitarian battlecry that there are 1000 alternatives to this system, that we have the power to do away with this system. That’s why the washer women knock over the billionaires so much in this show. We’re showing you it can be done.

What is New England’s history with alternative puppet theater? Would you say we’re in the epicenter? I know we have the Puppet Free Library on Newbury Street, which has some ties to Bread and Puppet.

The Boston area has several long-running radical puppetry projects including the Puppeteers’ Cooperative, founded by Bread and Puppeteer Sara Peattie, and the HONK! Festival, founded by Bread and Puppeteers John Bell and Trudi Cohen.

Finally, can you please explain the post-show sourdough rye bread ritual to the uninitiated…

For Bread and Puppet, art (represented by puppetshows) and food (represented by bread) are both essential to human life, and should be freely available to all people in sufficient quantity and variety. Pairing the bread with the puppetshow makes this point. Also we find that the puppetshows and the bread both need good chewing in order to get at the sense of them.

>> BREAD AND PUPPET’S ‘OUR DOMESTIC INSURRECTION CIRCUS.’ SUN 9.3. 3PM/FREE/ALL AGES. CAMBRIDGE COMMON, CAMBRIDGE. BREADANDPUPPET.ORG

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HEADLINING THIS WEEK!

STILL THIRSTY TERMS OF SERVICE

If you think Boston has enough liquor licenses, you must live in a neighborhood that has a bunch

BY HALEY HAMILTON @SAUCYLIT

Marina Franklin

Friday: An Evening with Marina Franklin + Rob Shapiro Saturday: Thought Bomb w/ Matthew Flynn + Marina Franklin

COMING SOON Fronnie Does

Special Engagement: Thurs, Sept 7

Colin Kane

Showtime, Howard Stern On Demand Sept 8+9

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Rescue Me, Nurse Jackie Sept 14+16 (No Friday Shows)

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The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Sept 22+23

Corinne Fisher with James Myers Special Engagement: Sun, Sept 24

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Last week, the Boston Globe ran stories representing both sides of the contentious argument around whether Massachusetts lawmakers should bump up the number of liquor licenses that are available in Boston.

Kudos on that coverage. As readers of this column and my reporting on the topic know by now, since Prohibition, Boston has been arbitrarily capped by the state when it comes to how many licenses it may grant businesses within its borders. Every other county in Mass, like nearly everywhere else in the country, has a limit on licenses based on population: one license per every whatever number of residents.

Boston, meanwhile, has had virtually the same number of liquor licenses since 1933.

Two measures have been passed this century so far to boost that number and to increase the startlingly small number of booze-bearing restaurants in certain predominantly black neighborhoods. One initiative, in 2006, aimed to get more licenses into such hardship areas, but due to underhanded political and legal maneuvering, the bulk of those were apparently used to populate the South Boston waterfront with new establishments. Another measure, in 2014, successfully sprouted bars and restaurants in places like Eastie and Roxbury but still was not broad enough to conquer the disparity in full.

Now we’re back at square one, so to speak, where there are no licenses available to give to qualified businesses and where the cost of the right to serve is upwards of $350,000 on the open market. This as Boston booms in every other conceivable way.

As for the warring sides of the debate which played out in the Globe: On one side, there are restaurant owners who bought licenses for a small fortune and are concerned that more availability of less-expensive hardship licenses—or, heavens forbid, a complete removal of the arbitrary cap—would lead to a devaluing of major assets. As one owner of several establishments told the Globe, “The one thing I knew was, if something goes wrong—the business burns down or I lose my lease — I’ll always be able to sell my liquor license.”

And yes: If it gets to the point where liquor licenses are no longer an endangered species in Boston, the money spent on buying one however many years ago will not likely be remunerated. But guess what—if you operate a bar or restaurant with a liquor license, or several bars with liquor licenses, then you have probably made good on that investment. Or else you would have sold your license for a lot of money by now.

While I don’t like to equate things to slavery, it’s easy to point out that a similar pitch was made about human investments. We’re not talking about an individual’s right to freedom, or even civil rights, when we talk about liquor licenses in Boston.

But we are talking about a monied class holding the keys to successful businesses, financial opportunities, and local job growth over the heads of a huge portion of the city’s could-be budding business owners.

Erasing the cap on liquor licenses in Boston is not only the logical, practical, and sustainable thing to do, it is the conscientious and moral thing to do, especially when you examine the ways such a change can both birth new businesses and allow Boston to grow as a whole.

The list of reasons to maintain an arbitrary cap on liquor licenses in the city is short. That something was bought for a pretty penny once upon a time, and might lose value if more licenses come out to help improve conditions in neighborhoods that need restaurants, ought to be a bottom-tier consideration.

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HAYLEY THOMPSON-KING MUSIC

The Boston country singer on biblical feminists, psychotic melancholia, and singing as a form of inspirational purging

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN The first time Hayley Thompson-King moved to Boston, she got lost on the one-way streets. Trapped in the brooding awkwardness of a U-Haul in a then-ungentrified corner of Cambridge, she wasn’t sure where to turn in the presmartphone era, yet somehow she already felt charmed by the city. It was 2002. The alt-country singer-songwriter and classically trained musician had moved here for the first time. Born and raised in Florida, she left her hometown to study classical music at New York University. When that wrapped, she left for grad school at New England Conservatory. Like most Boston transplants, she left for New York City once more and then dipped her toes in Los Angeles, but eventually she made her way back in 2008, unable to deny the city caught her heart for good.

Thompson-King sits across from me at Loyal 9 Cafe in East Cambridge, a hideaway breakfast joint that’s surprisingly modest for the area but full of charisma. She seems to mirror both, even when she explains her love for the city. “Boston really supports music,” she says, hands moving with excitement. “You don’t have to play with bands who sound like you or are in the same realm as you.

That may be because, while we have a wonderful music scene, we don’t have music of a music industry, which preserves this youthful passion. The way I learned about record labels was through friends running their own. It shaped me as an artist, and when I then go to places like Los Angeles or Nashville, I feel like I’m unique in a very positive way—and people there tell me that, too.”

Thompson-King’s love of the city is crucial to her narrative. After all, she’s got a fuzzy, country-rooted heart that manages to sound at home in the corner of New England. She makes it work. Being a country musician in Boston isn’t the easiest, unless you’re pursuing folk punk à la Dropkick Murphys, but she found her home in offshoot genres. She ruled guitar in lo-fi trio Banditas and joined psych-rock icons Major Stars as a singer. In mere months, she was solidifying her place in the music scene, including behind an apron at the Middle East as a bartender.

Several years back, though, Thompson-King decided to look inward. She kicked off her solo career and found it suited her better than expected. Chances are that’s because she floats freely between influences, dubbing her sound as “alt-classical” rather than traditional Americana or country. Her past bands’ influences can be felt on her new LP, Psychotic Melancholia. On single “Teratoma,” she sways through a blues rock fire. Elsewhere, like on “Large Hall, Slow Decay,” she embraces honky-tonk Southern stomping, and she warps her voice to enter a range comparable to Nikki Lane or late-night country stars. It makes sense she can flex it that easily: She majored in opera performance during grad school and spends most of her days teaching private voice lessons to students in high school.

Psychotic Melancholia sounds like a record that poured out of Thompson-King’s soul because that’s exactly what happened. That’s where it gets its name. Thompson-King grew up fawning over 19th-century German composer Robert Schumann, a so-called punk rocker of the classical world. He died of psychotic melancholia. When she

discovered that, Thompson-King connected with the phrase on a higher level.

“We all have it, or so I think, being driven mad by this waiting,” she says of Psychotic Melancholia. “The Germans have so many words for tiny variants of emotions, and some people say melancholia is the time where you’re waiting for inspiration. The idea of being driven mad by that? It’s funny, but it’s real. You are full of an idea—you’re not waiting for it to come to you, because you definitely know what the idea is—but the issue is that you can’t get it out of you when you want to. Artists and non-artists have this feeling, it’s universal, and I feel like it’s allowed people to relate to the title.”

Waiting for inspiration to leave your body and take shape in the form it’s meant to is best described as vomiting, or at least that’s the case in her eyes. ThompsonKing starts describing an old David Lynch installation, Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times), that illustrates her point of view. “I tell my students that singing is like throwing up, because it is,” she says. “You have to wait for it to come to you, and when it does, you have to let it out—out of everything: your mouth, your nose, just all of the air. You get out of the way, release all your muscles, and allow this thing to let it escape without being choked. And suddenly, everything feels better. You feel healthy.”

So that’s what she did on Psychotic Melancholia—and that’s why it sounds so damn good. Thompson-King had her own life stories that took shape as bile. These songs are her way to turn experiences, thoughts, and emotions—all of which had been prominent in her life but otherwise glossed over in regard to coming to terms with them or wringing them for their worth—into tangible ways to understand her own past.

One of the most recurrent examples is “Dopesick,” a slow-burning number that allowed her to tap into her parents and grandparents’ sorrow. While her family raised her well—Thompson-King recounts times her father roped cattle and then tossed her atop a horse—there was an unspoken pain they had in their past that they sheltered her from. In some deep sense, she needed to address what was withheld. “Living with you / living so blue / is like being dopesick,” she sings during the chorus. It’s a simplistic phrase, but to her it takes on much deeper meaning, and replaying it live is a cathartic way experience the sentiment as if in hypnotherapy.

Then comes “Melancholia 1,” which gets its name from an old etching of the same title. In it, a woman sits amongst dozens of tools, chin atop her hand, staring upward midthought. Thompson-King wrote about Lot’s wife, one of the characters in the Bible, at several times during the album—she even named a song after her, which discusses how she was defiant and didn’t obey God. On this track, Thompson-King decides to capture the moment where Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt.

She’s not dead. Her heart’s just beating incredibly slowly.

In Thompson-King’s mind, that means God didn’t kill Lot’s wife. Rather, he saved her. And it turned out that tale from the Bible had more to do with an uncovered moment from

her own life than she ever expected.

“This guy Lot was terrible by all accounts—he fathered children with their daughters!—yet his wife is considered the villain in the story. She stands there to watch the city burn for all eternity because his true love was this city.

After I wrote the song, I took a step back and realized: Holy shit, this is about my life,” says Thompson-King. “When 9/11 happened, I not only lived in Brooklyn, but I watched it. I stood on top of a roof where my friends were standing, and I literally saw bodies. It was hard. I never talked about it, even in therapy, and I pretty much decided it was time for me to leave New York. Obviously I left for grad school, but I felt ripped from the city, and after I wrote this song I realized this was the first time I addressed that.”

Psychotic Melancholia has several ties to the Bible, but it’s not all about religion. It’s about storytelling, legends, and debunking the two. After all, Thompson-King was raised Episcopalian. She just obsessed over these stories as a kid because they left so much uncovered.

“The Bible is endlessly fascinating to me,” she says. “I never understood what was right and what was wrong.

Did Judas go to hell? Questions like that, which were never met with an answer, I now can return to so I can point out what’s odd, questions I had, and to accept that I don’t have the definitive answers. I didn’t intend for [these biblical references] to be a feminist statement, but these are characters, almost always female, who were doomed as being totally wrong and bad even though they didn’t go against God any more so than the men around them.”

It’s the type of zoned-in obsession that drives any artist to create a large body of work. Fittingly enough, when she was at the start of plotting this album, Thompson-King found herself with an incredible opportunity, one that only Boston could have granted her. Though, if we’re being specific, it’s Somerville she should thank.

Somerville started a new artist-in-residence program, and Thompson-King is one of the first recipients to be chosen. Five artists of varying backgrounds were picked for the first installment of this residency. Somerville put them up in brand-new, beautiful, discounted housing with the intent of that space being used to help them further their creative endeavors. Thompson-King is the only musician of the bunch. Instead of pressuring her, it opened up new floodways, and now she’s quickly learning how this style of live-work life can propel her career forward. The most obvious example of such is Psychotic Melancholia, which she finished while living in the residence housing.

“I don’t know if I could do what I do or have done what I’ve done if I was anywhere else,” she says earnestly. “When you’re making something truly different, when it’s in that embryo stage, Boston won’t crush it. The scene at large will help it grow. I can point to so many people who supported me, including DigBoston about my EP a few years ago.

When people are interested in what you’re doing, they support it, and that allows for so much to happen, even for someone doing something as nontraditional as weird country music like I am.”

>> HAYLEY THOMPSON-KING, THESE WILD PLAINS. THU 8.31. LORETTA’S LAST CALL, 1 LANSDOWNE ST., BOSTON. 9PM/21+/FREE. LORETTASLASTCALL.COM

MUSIC EVENTS SAT 9.02

FRACTURES RECORD RELEASE À LA ELLIOTT SMITH SOFT FANGS + HOLIDAY MUSIC + ILLITERATE LIGHT + MORE [O’Brien’s Pub, 3 Harvard Ave., Allston. 8pm/21+/$8. obrienspubboston.com]

16

08.31.17 - 09.07.17

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MON 9.04

DO617’S FREE ALLSTON CHRISTMAS PARTY MARCELA CRUZ + LATRELL JAMES + MORE [Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston.

12pm/all ages/free. do617. com]

DIGBOSTON.COM

MON 9.04

TITO JACKSON FOR MAYOR FUNDRAISER SCAMPS + MINT GREEN + COURTERS + SOLO SEXX

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$10. greatscottboston.com]

TUE 9.05

EXPERIMENTAL HIP-HOP FROM OUTER SPACE SHABAZZ PALACES + PORTER RAY

[The Sinclair, 52 Church St., Cambridge. 8pm/18+/$18. sinclaircambridge.com]

TUE 9.05

BUSTING OUT OF STEREOLAB KRAUTROCK LAETITIA SADIER SOURCE ENSEMBLE + NICHOLAS KRGOVICH

[Great Scott, 1222 Comm.

Ave., Allston. 9pm/18+/$13. greatscottboston.com]

WED 9.06

DREAM POP WITH A CREEPY TWIST WARPAINT

[Brighton Music Hall, 158 Brighton Ave., Allston. 7pm/18+/$22. crossroadspresents.com]

NICK SHEA MUSIC

Meet the Boston rapper who’s repping old-school hip-hop at just 20 years old

BY NINA CORCORAN @NINA_CORCORAN

>> NICK SHEA’S NEW ALBUM, ALL WE NEED IS TWO MINUTES, IS OUT NOW VIA BANDCAMP.

CENTRAL SQUARE CAMBRIDGE

MIDEASTCLUB.COM | ZUZUBAR.COM

(617)864-EAST

THU 8/31 - 8PM

SONEX DJ CO

FRI 9/1 - 6:15PM

KARLOS COBHAM “STAY LIT” /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

DOWNSTAIRS

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THU 8/31 - 7PM

WEMF:

THE FURIES, LANDS, SMALL TALK FRI 9/1 - 10PM

VERSUS: GOT MOVES SAT 9/2 - 7PM NATALIE JOY, THE AMERICAN INDIE, THE HOUSE ON CLIFF SUN 9/3 - 8PM WEMF PRESENTS: “ANUTHR WURLD” /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

UPSTAIRS

ART BY NICK SHEA

There’s a chance you’ve marveled at Nick Shea’s talent before without even knowing it was him. The 20-year-old East Boston rapper used to spend his days beside the T as a part of the Wreck Shop Movement’s Subway Cipher.

Then, he moved over to the Common, where he performed freestyles to passersby. Shea’s got a message for the people, so he delivers it to them directly, free of cost.

Though he’s technically not yet an adult, Shea is wise beyond his years. During the daytime, he works in art. He just accepted a position as a teaching artist at the Institute of Contemporary Art, where he will teach writing and poetry to students at an afterschool program there and at various high schools in nearby neighborhoods. After hours, he hones his skills as a hip-hop artist: as the man writing the words, producing the beats, and drawing the art. He released his debut album, All We Need Is Two Minutes, and he’s going out of his way to make sure CD copies of it are signed and hand-packaged. Given what a labor of love rapping is for Shea, it makes sense his first proper album is lovingly crafted. After all, this has been a long time coming.

Nick Shea got his start when he was 14 years old. During ninth grade, he would freestyle at the bus stop, drum up ideas at school, and then rush home afterward to make beats in his room. Eventually, his mother directed him toward Zumix, an after-school nonprofit centered around music as an outlet for the East Boston youth. He joined when he was 15 years old. Mere days into his classes there, he debuted an original song in public for the first time.

“I wrote a song that had no point—it was just words that rhymed, really—and I was shaking the whole time I read it off a piece of paper. Corey [DePina], the songwriting and performance teacher, told me, ‘That’s all over the place, but I love it and we can work on it together,’” says Shea. “Zumix was a place where if I wrote a song about cupcakes, they would push me to make that the greatest cupcake song ever. Being able to go there really helped me find my own voice and understand that my voice is valid, so that if I want to write about a song about my dog, that’s as valid as writing a song about a breakup or politics.”

Instead of scouring the depths of YouTube on the regular, Nick Shea gets his elbows dirty in the dust of local record stores. He dug through vinyl and picked up discarded albums on the street for All We Need. The sampled audio is addictive, from a cappella doo-wop groups to hardcore funk and jazz, and he turns it into his own by recording various instruments over it. “Livin’ On” features thick, gelatinous bass. “Mouth Music” sees Shea yelping and tapping his mouth for a bare-bones, all-vocal beat. “Float Away,” a track featuring Sway Casey, samples a piano part hidden nearly an hour into a Thelonious Monk record from the ’60s.

“As soon as I heard that ding, I knew I had to use it,” Shea says of the Monk sample. “I try to wait and dig deeper into records like that, to avoid the obvious samples that start off a track. That includes using things like a Sesame Street record that no one would ever want. It’s fun and fulfilling to do, like making a collage of sorts. One night, I went to Cheapo Records expecting to stop in for a minute and buy one record, but I bought 80 dollars’ worth of records—like what on earth am I doing?—but it was worth it.”

Everything else in Shea’s music isn’t as straightforward. Sure, “I’ll Be Up” is about one relationship where he was told he wasn’t good enough, and that’s easy to decode. While “Better Than This” seems to be written from the perspective of someone reviewing a negative relationship, according to Shea, it’s just personification. He actually wrote it about a firsthand experience with on-and-off depression. Shea decided to turn it into a character, using the song’s chorus—“I don’t want to spend my life with you / so I say / but I still find myself coming back to you each day / now what does that say?”—as a way to talk about depression’s grasp on emotional and mental well-being.

That’s where Nick Shea finds himself now: gearing up to perform this material live. He’s learned the importance of going out, meeting people, and showing them what he’s capable of. While he may not be doing Subway Cipher much anymore, he’s pushing himself to perform in front of larger groups. He’s planning a record release show for All We Need Is Two Minutes. He’s working on a new album with Sway Casey. He wants to do more, and, given that his passion won’t shift out of high gear anytime soon, it’s best to start watching for his name.

“I’ve learned to express myself fully and not feel like I need to hold up to a certain standard of what hip-hop is, a writer is, or a male is,” says Shea. “It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to talk about hurt feelings. It’s also okay to act like a top dog braggadocious rapper.

Whatever the feeling is, you have to know there isn’t one feeling you’re supposed to [be] feeling. Everything you feel is valid. Learning to share that, specifically with face-to-face response, has helped me, and I’ve felt a lot more productive in doing so, too.”

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THU 8/31 - 7PM

WEMF:

CARPATHIA, TONY BULLETS, DOMINIC MALFARA FRI 9/1 - 8PM BIG EYED PHISH (DAVE MATTHEWS TRIBUTE) SAT 9/2 - 6PM CHUGGERNAUT, PATHOGENIC, HEPATAGUA

SAT 9/2 - 11PM SOULELUJAH SUN 9/3 - 8PM PROBLEMATTIK MON 9/4 - 6PM

DIVIDING SKIES, A FATHOM FAREWELL, IN ELYSIUM TUE 9/5 - 7PM BORN WITHOUT BONES, SAVE ENDS, DEAD LEAVES WED 9/6 - 8PM LEON SWITCH, TERRAPHORM, KATE! RUSH, STUBBS /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

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FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

17

FILM

LOUIS BLACK ON RICHARD LINKLATER

A South by Southwest founder discusses his new American Masters doc about the noted Texas filmmaker

BY JAKE MULLIGAN @_JAKEMULLIGAN project is probably a little different.

Louis Black is a film producer, the co-founder of the Austin Chronicle, a senior director at the South by Southwest music festival (which he helped to found), and an original board member of the Austin Film Society, which itself was founded by director Richard Linklater (Slacker [1991], Dazed and Confused [1993], the Before Sunrise trilogy [1995/2004/2013], Boyhood [2014]). That filmmaker is the subject of Black’s directorial debut, Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny [2017], which was co-produced and co-directed

by Karen Bernstein. The film will be broadcast on television this week as part of PBS’ long-running American Masters series.

I’ve been watching American Masters for years, but I don’t know anything about how it’s produced. Specifically, I don’t know if these films are produced independently and then distributed by PBS, or if it’s hearing pitches and then funding production, or if the station itself is assigning filmmakers to particular subjects…

In our case, we pitched it to them, they were interested, [and] it was kind of an independent production with the understanding that if they liked it, they would accept it, and if they didn’t like it, there would be no relationship. So we did it as an independent production, and fortunately they liked it, and it became an American Masters. I think their relationship with every

If the film works, what it should say is “go make your own movie.”

It shouldn’t say “just admire the fuck out of Richard Linklater...”

So while you’re producing and directing this film along with Karen Bernstein, you know where you want it to eventually broadcast, and you’ve even had conversations with that potential [television] distributor. What kind of formal considerations do you then have to take into mind, while producing the movie, to get it to a place where it can air on PBS? As a writer, I don’t think I would believe myself, but: Karen and I worked really hard to make the film we wanted to make, and I didn’t actually think about what the reaction was going to be. I didn’t even think about what Rick’s [Linklater] reaction was going to be … I didn’t have bigger considerations. I wouldn’t believe it myself if somebody said to me, “I wasn’t really that concerned about what Rick was going to think about it,” because that seems ridiculous! But it was actually true.

I had to have the film work for me, and for Karen, and for my partner Sandy [K. Boone], who’s an associate producer on it. It wasn’t like we had to jump through certain hoops.

We were aware of American Masters, and we were aware that we were making it for a [specific] audience, but I really had to make the film that I felt strongly about.

You’ve mentioned a couple times that it had to be the movie you “wanted to make.” Richard Linklater is an artist who’s been the subject of a wealth of critical discussion, even if all his individual films did not get their proper due … there have already been nonfiction features about his work (including Double Play: James Benning and Richard Linklater [2014] and 21 Years: Richard Linklater [2014]) and a number of his films have been released by the Criterion Collection with additional interview clips and other footage on the discs … what it is that you wanted to say about him that hadn’t been said already?

Well, that’s almost more grandiose [than it was]. Karen said, “Let’s do a doc on Rick,” and I said, “Sure.” My whole life, you know … in ’86, two friends came to my partner Nick [Barbaro] and I, who published the Chronicle, and said, “Let’s start a little regional music convention”: South by Southwest. Somebody comes and says, “Let’s do this,” and I say yes without stopping to think it through.

Rick and I met in ’85 at Liberty Lunch. He came over to talk to me because I’d written an obit for Sam Peckinpah that he really liked and wanted to talk about. We started talking about films, and 31 years later we’re still talking

about films … and we entered into what became a very long discussion on [Linklater’s] films, but in the same way we’d talked about so many different films. At a certain point what I really wanted to do justice to is that for as much attention as Rick has gotten, I think that people have a hard time making sense of his filmography, because it’s so disparate.

I’m finishing a book on the films of Jonathan Demme, a book I’ve been working on for most of my adult life, as I like to say. And with both Jonathan and Rick … there’s only two books on Jonathan, one of which is just interviews … and it’s because both of these guys are addicted to making films and made all different kinds of films. I think they’re harder to grasp than other filmmakers. So what Karen and I really wanted to do was be organic about the body of his work. I think the defining thread [of Dream Is Destiny] is an auteurist study. It’s about a director. It’s not thematic necessarily, although I think there are consistent thematic [concerns across Linklater’s movies]. But the thread that connects all these films is this director who has an incredible passion for film and an equal passion for people.

Another subject that’s constant in Dream Is Destiny is the practicalities of film distribution and financing.

There’s a section on the way that press and grassroots promotional tactics—which is obviously connected to your own personal work at the Chronicle—helped get Slacker to a major distributor. There’s a clip included that details how Before Sunrise was shot in Europe for the sake of tax subsidies. There’s a section about what the financial failure of The Newton Boys [1998] meant to Linklater and how it resulted in his next films (Waking Life [2001] and Tape [2001]) being shot with digital video formats. Why was it important for Dream Is Destiny, within an auteurist study, to keep a focus on the business and finances of filmmaking?

If the film works, what it should say is “go make your own movie.” It shouldn’t say “just admire the fuck out of Richard Linklater,” it should say “go make your own movie.”

It was real important to us that this was about a kid from a small Texas town—who was extraordinarily talented, we’re not all that talented—but who went out and made movies, and built a career, and did it methodically. The leap from It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books [1988], a film he essentially made single-handedly, to Slacker, one of the great independent films, to Dazed and Confused, which is to my mind extraordinary … his learning curve isn’t straight up, it’s incrementally incomprehensible. The leaps he makes in those three films! But the reality is, this isn’t a Hollywood studio filmmaker, this isn’t John Ford making three films a year. This is a modern independent filmmaker who’s determined to make films. And who has had some successes, but for the most part has never had megahits. So financing was a reality, and how his films did theatrically was a reality, and promoting them was a reality. We wanted the film to really be about that.

>> RICHARD LINKLATER: DREAM IS DESTINY. NOT RATED. SCHEDULED TO AIR ON LOCAL PBS AFFILIATE WGBH ON FRI 9.1 AT 9PM. ALSO CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR RENTAL ON VOD OUTLETS.

FILM EVENTS FRI 9.01

FRI 9.01

FRI 9.01

[Brattle Theatre, 40 Brattle St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 5 and 7pm/ NR/$11. Screens through 9.7—see brattlefilm.org for showtimes on other days.]

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harvard Sq., Cambridge. 9:30pm/ NR/$7-9. 35mm. hcl. harvard.edu/hfa]

[Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Midnight/NR/$12.25.

35mm. coolidge.org]

PREMIERE ENGAGEMENT IN TRANSIT [2017]

18

08.31.17 - 09.07.17

|

THE FINAL FILM IN THE HFA’S ERNST LUBITSCH RETROSPECTIVE CLUNY BROWN [1946]

DIGBOSTON.COM

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS TWO THOUSAND MANIACS! [1964]

SAT 9.02

SAT 9.02

[Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St., Harv Sq., Camb.

7pm/$12 for 7 films. 35mm. hcl.harvard.edu/hfa]

[Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Ave., Boston.

3:30pm/NR/$11. Also on 9.3 (3:30p), 9.15 (4:30p), 9.16 (3:30p), 9.17 (11:30a), and 9.20 (6pm). mfa.org]

ALL-NIGHT VAMPIRE MOVIE MARATHON HORROR OF DRACULA [1958], NEAR DARK [1987], TROUBLE EVERY DAY [2001], MORE

AREA PREMIERE OF MATÍAS PIÑEIRO’S HERMIA & HELENA [2017]

SAT 9.02

COOLIDGE AFTER MIDNIGHT PRESENTS MANIAC [1980] [Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard St., Brookline.

Midnight/R/$12.25. 35mm. coolidge.org]

GOT AN EVENT? LIST IT. LIVE MUSIC • LOCAVORE MENU PRIVATE EVENTS

Use our self-serve listings page to get your event online TODAY!

digboston.com/listings We offer a free basic listing as well as enhanced and premium listings to really get you noticed.

9/04 Sextile, Guiding Wave Post-apocalyptic punk 9/05 Freddie For A Day Feat. Gunpowder Gelatine & Friends Celebrating Freddie Mercury’s b-day & benefitting GLAD AIDS Law Project 9/06 Dent May, Bong Wish. Luxardo Psychedelic synth pop 9/07 Blackalicious West coast hip hop 9/08 The New Review, Evolfo Funk mixed with old school soul

156 Highland Ave • Somerville, MA 617-285-0167 oncesomerville.com   @oncesomerville /ONCEsomerville

NEWS TO US

FEATURE

DEPT. OF COMMERCE

ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT

19

ARTS

BANALITIES, ABSURDITIES, AND ANXIETIES A conversation with curator Eva Respini on Dana Schutz at the ICA

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS timely, and then there are things that are really personal and anxious and isolated.

I think that is absolutely accurate, and the way that I think about Dana is that I think of her as a painter of the human condition and all that means—in its banalities, in its absurdities, in its anxieties. In the show you have the everyday people lying in bed, taking a shower, getting dressed, carpooling—and then there are these fantastical, absurd, vulnerable struggles and I think that’s also part of the human condition. And the way in which she uses scale as well as expressive color palette as well as composition.

This sense of compression that we see in a lot of the large canvases, in particular, to me are very much a common thought or reflection on our current moment and what it mean to live in a divisive sociopolitical time, but also what it means to live in a time of abstracted social relationships.

So if one thinks as her as sort of a commentator on the human condition at large, all of those things, even those leaps of imagination, these absurd scenes are very much a part of what it means to be human in a very sort of fundamental way.

before. My third time walking through, I was still noticing new things, particularly in Shaking Out the Bed. I would say you’re not the only person; I’ve had the same experience even as we were installing the works, which I’ve seen now many times. Particularly Building the Boat While Sailing and Shaking Out the Bed, there’s a decoding that happens on the part of the viewer. In Building the Boat While Sailing—I actually just noticed for the first time—this kind of sea monster that’s lurking below the boat with its mouth open, with these sharp teeth as if it’s about to swallow the boat. That’s one thing I hadn’t seen before, this kind of underwater threat that’s on the bottom right of the canvas and maybe in reproductions can’t even be seen—it’s something that needs to be seen in person. So that experience is absolutely part of the experience of looking—her works really demand an active looking on the part of the viewers.

Each time I walked through the exhibition I would notice things that I swear hadn’t been there just moments

What makes Dana tick as an artist? There are works that seem really politically motivated, stuff that’s really

What do you make of the controversy surrounding her right now? It feels kind of ridiculous to me, but it’s an interesting conversation.

Absolutely. I think her inclusion in the Whitney Biennial with the painting Open Casket—for me, that painting was a kind of flashpoint, not just for me but for many people, around conversations of race, representation, and cultural appropriation. That is absolutely an important and difficult conversation to have. I would say it’s one of the biggest topics of our time and it’s a topic that’s far bigger than one artist or one painting. Museums are a place where we can engage in those conversations and have the artist’s voice present. I don’t think a call to canceling a show or taking down and destroying a painting furthers that dialogue; I would argue the opposite—that our mission as a cultural institution and as a civic institution is to put forward those ideas and engage in a dialogue with our public, not to shy away from it.

>> DANA SCHUTZ. THROUGH 11.26 AT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART BOSTON, 25 HARBOR SHORE DR., BOSTON. ICABOSTON.ORG

ARTS EVENTS FINAL WEEKEND! NARI WARD: SUN SPLASHED

[ICA Boston, 25 Harbor Shore Dr., Boston. Through 9.4. icaboston. org]

20

08.31.17 - 09.07.17

|

DIGBOSTON.COM

FINAL WEEKEND! LISTEN HEAR: THE ART OF SOUND

[Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 25 Evans Way, Boston.

Through 9.5. gardnermuseum. org]

FINAL WEEKEND! BURN ALL NIGHT

[OBERON, 2 Arrow St., Cambridge. Through 9.8. americanrepertorytheater.org]

THE 7 FINGERS RETURN REVERSIBLE

[ArtsEmerson at Cutler Majestic Theatre, 219 Tremont St., Boston.

Through 9.24. artsemerson.org]

GREATEST AMERICAN MUSICAL GYPSY

[Lyric Stage Company, 140 Clarendon St., Boston. Through 10.8. lyricstage.org]

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT HERE

The first thing that struck me about these paintings was their size. How did that affect your curation of them?

Yeah, you know, the canvases are monumental and, I think for me, the scale is actually one of the most transporting, unique, and singular parts of her practice.

In thinking about the show, we actually were thinking of anchors—there are four, I would say, really monumental works in the show, and there’s one in each room. The way we started organizing the show and talking about what the themes would be and how it would unfold in space was thinking about those anchors and thinking about those monumental canvases as a world all to themselves.

The physicality, the experience you have as a viewer when you stand before them—it’s hard to explain it before someone’s been there. One really has to be physically before it and feeling very much that you’re enveloped in that world.

How would you summarize Dana’s role in contemporary art?

She’s a very astute student of the history of art and, particularly, the history of painting. I think she’s one of the leading figures who is revitalizing the medium today.

As we know, it’s been declared dead many times and revived many times, but I do think her work in painting is really pushing forward the medium and making it an inviting, exciting place for discussion and engagement. I think what she’s done particularly well, if you think about history painting, is really upending that tradition where what we usually see with history paintings are heroic acts from history, allegory from the Bible. She, instead, is rethinking that genre by monumentalizing the banal. For example, Shaking Out the Bed is a couple lying in bed— snoozing, spooning in bed—and so, for me, she’s really upending those kind of hierarchical categories and really taking them on in very contemporary ways.

ARTS

MAMA’S GONNA SHOW IT TO YOU

boston’s urban winery, intimate concert venue, private event space & restaurant

Gypsy arrives at the Lyric Stage

opening this fall

BY CHRISTOPHER EHLERS @_CHRISEHLERS

Upcoming SHOWS

When it comes to staging a revival of what many consider to be the greatest American musical of all time, the one thing that plagues all productions of Gypsy is expectation. Most theater people know just how they like their Gypsy and just how Madame Rose—one of musical theater’s most enduring creations—should be played.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” joked Leigh Barrett, who stars as Rose in the Lyric Stage Company’s upcoming revival of Gypsy.

Rose has been played by so many greats that it can be a challenge for an actress to forget about those expectations and put her own stamp on the role. From Ethel Merman and Angela Lansbury to Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Tyne Daly, and Bette Midler (the less that is said about Rosalind Russell, the better), there are more “definitive” Roses than Hamlets and King Lears combined.

But if anyone in Boston can put her own stamp on the role, it’s Barrett, one of Boston’s beloved dames of the stage. (She first played the role a decade ago at the Greater Boston Stage Company, which until very recently was called the Stoneham Theatre.) “What is the point of doing a show, even a show that everybody knows, if you don’t find your own voice in it?” said Barrett. “I’m not them—any of these people—and they are not me. Put on the CD or whatever the kids do these days, then you can hear them do it if that’s what you like.”

Director and choreographer Rachel Bertone, who is quickly making a name for herself around town as the go-to director for classic Broadway musicals, is all too aware of these expectations. “The first thing I said to the actors day one was that we have to strip ourselves of those expectations,” said Bertone.

It is the score—the glorious score by Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim—that usually ignites such expectations, according to Bertone. “What is said often of the play is that this is a play with music, so we treated it like a play and often did the songs as monologues.”

Some of the musical numbers, though, when not given the right kind of treatment, can feel like they are impeding the action rather than moving it along (“If Momma Was Married” and “All I Need Is the Girl” being the two largest culprits). “Sometimes you need to fight against the music,” said Bertone. “It’s easy to sit in the music, but I’m like, ‘No, we have to tell the story.’ This is not a song-and-dance show—we’re not just going to kick our faces, we’re not just going to belt this.”

“But that is going to happen,” Barrett added with a smirk. “There is face kicking.”

For Bertone, it all comes down to the text. “Everything Arthur Laurents wrote was so specific and so intentional. Every day I would go through the script and find a new gold mine,” she said. “It’s one of the first musicals of the Golden Age that really understood how to seamlessly blend story, text, song, and dance. It’s beautifully written in that way if you just listen to what [Laurents] has done. It’s all there for you, so don’t resist it.”

Bertone, of course, is correct. Gypsy’s script is iron-clad and is generally thought of as the finest example of book writing in all of musical theater. There are other things, too, to consider when thinking about Gypsy’s significance in the grand scheme of things.

At the time that Gypsy opened on Broadway in 1959, the kind of leading ladies that Broadway was accustomed to were women like Nellie Forbush and Maria von Trapp who, while generally free thinking and strong willed, still fit squarely within the roles of their gender and ultimately sought the validation of a man. Rose—a venerable force of nature—was none of those things.

“It’s really the first time we’ve had a character that is this flawed,” said Bertone. “It’s literally a psychological study of a woman, a very strong woman. It’s totally, like, ‘Hey, we’re gonna deeply explore the fragility of the human psyche.’ What musical did that? Not to this point.”

“And not to this point have we ever had a strong female lead in this way,” added Barrett. “There’s vulnerability, of course, but in wearing the pants, that patriarchal role, it hadn’t happened.”

Rose does have a man in her life—Herbie, played in this production by the tremendous Steven Barkhimer—but even still, Bertone considers the dynamics of their relationship almost taboo for the time period. (Although Gypsy opened in 1959, it actually takes place in the 1920s and 30s.) “There’s this role reversal with Herbie and Rose, and it’s so unlike the time period,” said Bertone. “Rose isn’t married, and Rose is calling the shots. Herbie’s like, ‘When are you going to marry me?’ It’s a complete role reversal and I think it’s very powerful for the time period they’re in. Who is this unmarried woman who doesn’t want marriage and is fighting?”

It goes without saying that Rose’s complexities are what make her one of the most coveted roles for actresses of a certain age. But Rose’s strength is what can also make her a difficult pill for audiences to swallow: She’s loud, she’s direct, and she’s driven, but if her vulnerabilities don’t shine through, the show loses its soul; it’s the right mix of domination and torment that make for a home run. But it’s not easy.

“We have to root for Rose,” said Bertone. “We have to understand her and root for her. Leigh is so great about inhabiting a character and helping a character be understood. If you’re not hooked into Rose’s story by ‘Some People,’ it’s going to be a very long play.”

Barrett points to something that Patti LuPone said of Rose: “She can do monstrous things. She can make monstrous choices and be monstrous to people in her life, but that does not make her a monster. I feel like my job is to help people understand where that comes from and what drives that,” said Barrett. “Rachel is helping me strike that balance. You can’t start her at an 11 at 8 [o’clock] because where are you going to go?”

“I think that, throughout, you see glimmers of that vulnerability,” Barrett added. “But our Rose is not a barking steamroller from the get-go. I think that would be boring.”

10.16 10.17 10.19

MAX WEINBERG’S JUKEBOX INCOGNITO (EARLY & LATE SHOWS) ANDERS OSBORNE & JACKIE GREENE (EARLY & LATE SHOWS) 10.20 RUSTED ROOT 10.21 AN INTIMATE EVENING W/ RICKIE LEE JONES 10.22 ALBERT CUMMINGS 10.24 QUINN SULLIVAN 10.25 LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III W/ LUCY WAINWRIGHT ROCHE 10.26–27 ART GARFUNKEL IN CLOSE-UP 10.28–29 KRISTIN HERSH & TANYA DONELLY 10.30 CRAIG FINN & THE UPTOWN CONTROLLERS PLUS JOHN K. SAMSON 11.1 RENAISSANCE A SYMPHONIC JOURNEY 11.2 COWBOY JUNKIES 11.2 BLUE WATER HIGHWAY BAND IN THE HAYMARKET LOUNGE 11.3-4 SHAWN COLVIN & HER BAND W/ LARRY CAMPBELL AND TERESA WILLIAMS 11.5 HOLLY NEAR W/ TAMMY HALL & JAN MARTINELLI 11.5 THE WEEPIES COMPLETELY ACOUSTIC & ALONE 11.7 TALIB KWELI 11.8 LOS LONELY BOYS 11.9 LEFTOVER SALMON EARLY & LATE SHOWS 11.10-12 MARIZA 11.11 ERIN HARPE AND THE DELTA SWINGERS IN THE HAYMARKET LOUNGE 11.12 ANTHONY GERACI & THE HIPNOTICS IN THE HAYMARKET LOUNGE 11.13 DAVID CROSBY & FRIENDS SKY TRAILS TOUR 2017 11.14 PAUL THORN HAMMER & NAIL 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR 11.15 LLOYD COLE 11.16–17 MARC BROUSSARD 11.18 IAN HUNTER & THE RANT BAND 11.19 ROBERT PINSKY’S POEMJAZZ (EARLY SHOW) 11.19 WILLIE NILE 11.21 DOYLE BRAMHALL II 11.24 AZTEC TWO-STEP 11.25 AN EVENING W/ MELISSA FERRICK 11.28-29 RUFUS WAINWRIGHT W/ MELISSA FERRICK 12.1 SUSAN WERNER 12.2 DONNA THE BUFFALO 12.12 DAMIEN ESCOBAR 12.13-14 SUZANNE VEGA PERFORMING SOLITUDE STANDING & 99.9F IN FULL

city winery Presents

9.15 9.19 9.20 9.21 9.24 9.28 9.29 9.29 10.10

PARACHUTE AT LAUGH BOSTON MASON JENNINGS W/ FRANKIE LEE AT HARD ROCK CAFE BEN OTTEWELL AT RED ROOM @ CAFE 939 DAVID WAX MUSEUM W/ CIARAN LAVERY AT LIZARD LOUNGE CHRIS HILLMAN & HERB PEDERSEN W/ JOHN JORGENSON AT HARD ROCK CAFE JOHN POPPER W/ KATRINA WOOLVERTON AT LAUGH BOSTON DAN WILSON AT THE RED ROOM @ CAFE 939 THE CHURCH W/ THE HELIO SEQUENCE AT THE CENTER FOR ARTS NATICK EILEN JEWELL W/ MISS TESS AT LAUGH BOSTON

&

food Drink 10.21 11.8 11.10 11.11 12.2

BOSTON WINE CLASS SERIES | WINE 101 | INTRO TO WINE BOTANICAL GIN LAB RIDGE WINE DINNER BOSTON WINE CLASS SERIES | WINE 102 | SPARKLING TO STILL TO SWEET BOSTON WINE CLASS SERIES | WINE 103 | WINE AND FOOD PAIRINGS

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SAVAGE LOVE

BANGTOWN PROSPECTS

WHAT'S FOR BREAKFAST

BY PATT KELLEY WHATS4BREAKFAST.COM

BY DAN SAVAGE @FAKEDANSAVAGE | MAIL@SAVAGELOVE.NET

My ex-boyfriend and I were together for a year and a half. He is a silver fox who is significantly older than me.

I was 23 when we met and he was 58. It was supposed to be a fling, but it evolved into a beautiful romance. But after much consideration (he has a vasectomy and already has four kids and will be retiring soon), we ended it three months ago. It was heartbreaking, but we made a conscious decision to be close friends and talk every day. Out of the blue last week, he asked me if I had a boyfriend. I don’t, but I was coincidentally about to go on my first date since the breakup. He proceeded to tell me he “kinda” has a new girlfriend, a woman closer to his age. This was not something I wanted to hear, which he could tell from the silence that met this disclosure. This conversation ruined my weekend. I have been unable to eat or sleep. The guy I went on a date with was sexy—not a love connection, but a bangtown prospect—but I was too emotionally fucked to do anything with him. Do I explain these thoughts to my ex? Let time do the healing? Why did my ex feel the need to tell me about his new girlfriend?

Heartbroken Over New Ex’s Yummy Your ex told you about his new girlfriend because you two are close friends, right? And close friends typically confide in each other about their love lives, don’t they? And that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?

Backing up: It’s always inspiring when two people manage to salvage a friendship after their romantic relationship ends. But it’s not possible—it’s certainly not on anyone’s list of breakup best practices—to go in an instant from lovers to besties who talk on the phone every day. You got your heart broken, HONEY, and only time can cauterize that particular wound. Your reaction to the news that your ex has a new girlfriend proves your post-breakup friendship wasn’t a “conscious decision” but an ill-advised rush. And while the physical aspect of your relationship with Mr. Silver Fox ended three months ago, you never got out of each other’s pants emotionally. (A bruised ego might also be contributing to your inability to eat or sleep—he got over you faster than you got over him.)

I don’t think you should explain anything to your ex right now, HONEY, because I don’t think you should talk to your ex for the next six months or so. You need to get on with your life—and getting on that new guy is a good place to start.

On the Lovecast, women in gay bars—we have a problem:: savagelovecast.com.

savagelovecast.com THE STRANGERER

BY PAT FALCO ILLFALCO.COM

22

08.31.17 - 09.07.17

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