Heavy Dates
WORCESTER
Heavy dates
New York City's Seeking Homer visit the Irish Times on Thursday, while
on Friday, Bill McCarthy's open-mic Christmas party features
performances by Debby Rao, Christie Leigh and the Lookers, Evel Karaoke,
Liniment, and Space'n at G. Willickers. Also on Friday, 31
North, who sound like Worcester's version of Hootie and the Blowfish on the
tracks we've heard from How Many Ways?, throw their second CD-release
party at the Lucky Dog Music Hall, 7th Rail Crew, Gangsta Bitch Barbie,
whose Grand Royal debut has been pushed back to March, Colepitz, and
Tester appear on a bill at the Palladium (originally slated to include
C60, until singer Keith Smith suffered a severe muscle tear stage diving into a
crowd at a New Hampshire radio show), and the Arthur Dent Foundation is
at the Tammany Club. On Saturday, Rhode Island heavies State of
Corruption join 6gig, Heidi, and Spyndakit at the Alley, the
Ugly Americans celebrate musical democracy at Ralph's, and Rhode Island
groove society flag bearers Foxtrot Zulu team up with Goofyfoot
at the Tammany Club. On Wednesday, punk rock preservationists Musclecah
are joined by Pitch-a-Fitt, Shoot the Dancing Bear, and 4 H8 Sake
at the Lucky Dog Music Hall.
BOSTON/PROVIDENCE
The exploitation-film producer
Arch Hall Sr. thought his son might make a decent rock-and-roll star, so he
cast Junior as a guitar-toting, bike-riding six-string rebel in such '60s teen
fare as Wild Guitar. Sleepy LaBeef, on the other hand, picked
himself up from Smackover, Arkansas, to become a regional rock-and-roll
favorite, and though fame did not reward him as it did his pals George Jones,
Roy Orbison, and Buddy Holly, Sleepy would go on to amass a repertoire of some
6000 songs and become known as one of the finer living repositories of American
roots music. Although their paths never crossed, Sleepy and Arch Hall Jr. both
wound up as celluloid monsters. Hall, who never made it in music, turned in his
only memorable performance on film as the titlular psychopath in The
Sadist (1963), where he was modeled loosely on real-life spree killer
Charlie Starkweather. Sleepy once put down his real-life wild guitar in an
attempt to break into the movies; he ended up as the Monster half of the
grade-Z turkey The Monster and the Stripper, a film directed by the
eccentric Ron Ormond, who later found Jesus and made a series of low-budget
evangelical films that might be described as Christ-sploitation. In any case,
The Sadist screens at midnight this Friday and Saturday at the Coolidge
Corner, (617) 734-2500, in Brookline. (It's become a cult classic, thanks in
part to its stark black-and-white photography by Vilmos Zsigmond, who later
went on to shoot things like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and
The Witches of Eastwick.) And after his monster one-shot, Sleepy went
back to rocking-and-rolling, which he continues to do to this day. He lived in
these parts for quite a stretch, so it's sorta like a homecoming whenever he
rolls back through; he's at the Bull Run, (978) 425-4311, in Shirley, this
Saturday night and at Johnny D's, (617) 776-2004, in Somerville, next Saturday,
December 23.
The Pernice Brothers -- the pop-slanted outlet of former Scud Mountain
Boy Joe Pernice, who's most noted for his lonesome alterna-country chops --
come out of hiding with shows on Friday at Flywheel, (413) 527-9800, 2 Holyoke
Street in Easthampton, and on Saturday at Lilli's, (617) 591-1661, in
Somerville. And the "Irish Tenors Christmas Spectacular" features
Anthony Kearns, Ronan Tynan, Finbar Wright, and a 60-piece orchestra on Tuesday
at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium, (978) 937-8688.
-- Carly Carioli
|