Jaggery is a quintet out of Boston with piano, viola, harp, contrabass, percussion and the striking ethereal voice of songwriter Mali Sastri coalescing into their own magical universe.
For Christmas they have created a most beautiful rendition of “Coventry Carol.”
From their website and Wikipedia, Jaggery informs:
The Coventry Carol is a Christmas carol dating from the 16th century. The carol was performed in Coventry in England as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew. The carol refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which King Herod orders all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed. The lyrics represent a mother’s lament for her doomed child. It is the only carol that has survived from this play.
Bonnaroo, the four day music and arts festival, begins today in Manchester, Tennessee.
This is the tenth year and the lineup is stellar.
In celebration of Bonnaroo,RCRDLBL has released from their archives a free download of 24 bands performing this year including Arcade Fire, Florence and the Machine, Sleigh Bells, Best Coast, Iron & Wine, and the Black Angels among others.
Featured here is Twin Shadow, the nom de plume of George Lewis, Jr., who developed his chops in Boston before reinventing himself in Brooklyn.
The Cure played in Boston on April 20, 1980. This was the band’s first visit to America and only a short four-city tour. Boston was the last stop.
The show took place at the Underground, a long-defunct basement club owned by Boston University. Mission of Burma was the opening act.
Robert Smith’s birthday is on the 21st but he recalls the gig as being on his birthday. Perhaps because the show ended past midnight when he turned 21.
The show was documented by Jan Crocker, years before self-contained handheld video cameras.
“A Forest” was the last song of the set before the encore.
Insert your password and experience this amazing performance. (Join the Oedipus Project on the left and we will send it to you.)
In December I was asked to put together a compilation of Boston artists as a soundtrack for the Boston Music Awards’ celebration.
While no means comprehensive (there are some noticeable absences), it is a cross-section of some of Boston’s finest if not quirkiest musicians over the years, and includes some of the best songs to emanate from this fair city.
As we await the release of new music in 2011, hear the diversified talent that is Boston.
Jan Crocker is a DIY videographer who worked at MIT’s film resource center in the late 70’s and who had the vision to film the burgeoning punk rock scene in Boston as well then relatively unknown punk bands as they passed through town. The earliest work is pre-MTV, and in those days the cameras were four-times the size of video cameras today–heavy, awkward, and tethered to cables that snaked through the club. In Jan’s own words:
“Shoots in those days were difficult. This was before Betamax and VHS cameras. Shit MTV wasn’t even plugged in then. The hand held stuff and cell phone things we take for granted today were science fiction back then. We used all of the MIT Film/Video Section equipment for the video shoots. They had a ton of equipment and it was all modified and tricked out by the engineer types. The shoots required up to 8-10 people to make it all happen. Most of the shoot had three b/w cameras. The camera signals were sent to a special effects generator and the Director would choose the shots he/she liked and would switch between them. Audio was recorded with two ambient mikes lowered from the ceiling and mixed with a board feed into a portable Shure mixer and sent to the video tape deck. The location production was all done live on the fly. These were students mind you doing the video work and that created additional production issues as well. You know cameras moving up, down, and shaking. Some cameras not even running. Alcohol was also involved.”
This is rock history and Jan wisely recorded and preserved it. His website includes numerous clips of many of the seminal punk bands from the 70’s and early 80’s. Here we can see his own rare footage of the Cure, the Buzzcocks, and Richard Hell, plus vital Boston bands like Mission of Burma, Human Sexual Response, The Lyres, The Neighborhoods, Robin Lane and the Chartbusters, Unnatural Axe, and La Peste. He’s also included early videos of various punk bands from around the world to give a feel for the era. (The Clash, Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers, Gang of Four, Dead Kennedys, The Stranglers, Dead Boys, to name a few.)
Jan occasionally transfers complete performances to DVD. He has just released a concert performance of the formidable Boston band La Peste from various venues across Boston in 1979. Their local hit “Better Off Dead” was also a favorite of the late British DJ John Peel. You can order the DVD here.
We’re indebted to Jan Crocker for chronicling this era. I know I was at many of those shows. How I wish that I had kept a journal. This is a taste of the La Peste DVD.
Cameron Mesirow is the band known as Glasser. She was born in Boston but moved to San Francisco pre-adolescence. (Of interest, her parents are Casey Cameron of the band Human Sexual Response and her father is a member of the Blue Man Group in Berlin.) She recorded her first EP by herself on GarageBand in 2009. Now with the assistance of a studio and producers her debut album Ring will be released later this month. Sumptuously beautiful, “Home” from that album is the Song of the Day.
The Clash first performed in the Boston area on February 16, 1979, at the Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge, MA. It was a Friday evening and the band was scheduled to come up to the radio station for a late night interview with me. Unfortunately, it never materialized as our staff had just gone on strike. The new owners of WBCN had decided to fire half of the workers in order to break the union. We all walked out. Scabs were hired. Although we eventually emerged victorious, this is another story for another post. That evening at the concert Joe Strummer dedicated a song to me and wished all of us good luck in our struggle.
The Clash returned to Boston later that year and played the Orpheum Theatre on Wednesday, September 19, 1979. Sam and Dave were their support. After their performance the entire band joined me on my program as guest DJs. Here is a recording of what remains from that night in radio history with a increasingly drunken Clash playing their favorite songs, exposing their politics, battling with listeners and singing along to the Dave Clark 5 and the Village People! Yes, this did air live.
