AT8 Around Town
The COASTAL STAR
April 2018
Around Town
B
Art brings Commissioner Abrams face-to-face with his rock hero
ack in 1976, The Cars was an obscure club band playing around Boston, the group’s career no doubt helped along by such gigs as the Harvard freshman class mixer. Palm Beach County Commissioner Steven Abrams missed that show, as he was a lowly freshman at the University of Pennsylvania and wouldn’t transfer to Harvard until the following autumn. By then, the music from the band’s debut album, vocals by Ric Ocasek, was echoing through the dorms along the Charles River. Both have since enjoyed considerable success. On April 14 in Cleveland — the band’s spawning ground — The Cars will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. After graduating from Harvard, Abrams earned a law degree at George Washington University and clerked in the Reagan White House before settling down in Boca Raton. After three terms as Boca’s mayor, he now sits on the County Commission and had the honor of serving as the county’s first mayor when the office was created. But it wasn’t until St. Patrick’s Day that the politician
and his rock hero met. Also an accomplished visual artist, Ocasek was showing his work at Wentworth Gallery at Boca’s Town Center. Abrams’ wife, Debbie, who says her husband has been a huge fan of Ocasek’s for years, wrangled an invite to the opening. “He fondly recalled his Cambridge, Mass., years,” Abrams said, but confided he didn’t buy a painting. “I wish I could afford one … because unlike some musicians who paint, he is a very good artist.”
Joining The Cars at the Hall of Fame induction will be Bon Jovi, whose leader Jon Bon Jovi is a new Palm Beacher. He laid out a cool $10 million for a 6,803-squarefoot home on Ocean Bon Jovi Boulevard just a few blocks north of The Breakers. Built in 1985, it was most recently appraised for taxable purposes at $6.5 million, but when your personal fortune is estimated at $410 million, what’s a few bucks here or there? Of course, Bon Jovi is not
the first from his band to call the Palm Beaches home. Drummer Tico Torres, also an artist of some renown, called Admirals Cove home for two decades before recently moving to Miami. The suicide last winter of another Palm Beacher, Allman Brothers drummer Butch Trucks, stunned a legion of fans both international and local. As talented a character as he was a drummer, Trucks could be a curmudgeon with his rants on politics and mistreatment of people, but mostly, he got in his licks with a twinkle in his eye. With that in mind, professional photographer, collaborator and friend Michael Price decided it was time for a salute, one that Trucks would have relished. He summoned diehard local friends and fans to a back-room gathering at Pizza al Fresco in Palm Beach. With general manager JoseLuis Duran handling the pizza delivery and the libations, the dozen or so who could make it shared Trucks and Allman stories late into the evening. They were bolstered by inside observations from Allman’s bassist, Oteil Burbridge, who
County Commissioner Steven Abrams with Ric Ocasek at Wentworth Gallery in Boca Raton. Photo provided just finished a tour on bass with Dead & Company, the latest assemblage of The Grateful Dead. Burbridge, who recently moved to Boca Raton, and Allman percussionist Marc Quinones, now a resident of Lake Worth, are expected to be jamming at the Wanee Festival in Live Oak on April 20 with Les Brers, an Allman spinoff formed by Trucks. A week before Wanee, the “Greatest Art Show Under the Sun” sets up April 13-15 in Delray Beach. The 56th Delray Affair will cram more than 500 artists, crafters and food vendors into 12 blocks along
Atlantic Avenue from the tennis center to the Intracoastal Waterway. The beer and wine garden and the Delray Honda Entertainment Zone return to Old School Square, and local restaurants will again offer regular and happy hour menu specials plus the return of Delray Affair After Dark. (www.delrayaffair.com) Elsewhere on the music scene, on April 16 at Lynn University, Atlanta-based pianist and vocalist Nancy Elton will perform a minirecital at 2 p.m., then teach a master class — free and open to the public. That night at 7, flute legend Nestor Torres will lead
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