Posts by Rob Azevedo
The last thing I remember before the virus took hold, I was standing on stage at the Rex Theatre with a herd of others, belting out the chorus to the Rolling Stones “Satisfaction” during the encore.
Each caller was candid about how they’re managing life during the musical drought inspired by the Coronavirus. Some were more upbeat than others. Some hid the despair better than others. And some just didn’t give a fuck. Instead of taking a mental pounding from the fear and consternation, they just started writing new songs, they said, peeling through the unfinished numbers and piecing that shit together. Hit the ground running with a new bag of tricks when life resumes, which, by all indications by our President, you’ll be back to work before the big spike hits.
A working musician, unlike other musicians with full-time jobs, are the ones who’ve thrown caution to the wind and listened to their muse, believed in it, followed it, believed in their own craft, in themselves, believed in you, the listeners, hoping that you would believe in them and help keep the dream alive. And the bills paid.
Zoe Boekbinder doesn’t need to listen to music to be a musician. Sounds odd, right? Not really if you think about it because with all the music going on inside Zoe’s head, well, there just isn’t room enough for any outside distractions or influence.
And the hot topic this week being the Coronavirus, well, I figured I should stop watching videos on Facebook of my friends playing music in bars and educate myself on this deadly disease that seems to be a sneeze away from killing me.
I turn to this book sometimes when the mud is stuck wet and hot between my ears. During the end of this bitter season, I find myself struggling to say the simplest of words, turning a phrase, completing a sentence. Can’t seem to capture a thought. I have it, I have it, then it’s gone. Everything sounding like a car wreck coming off my tongue. A mish-mash of mispronunciations.
For the last three-in-a-half years, like countless others, I’ve devoted way too much of my mental energies to one Donald. J. Trump, our President. Just saying that still widens my eyes at times. No, that’s a lie, every time I say it.
This Friday night at 7 p.m. at the “Spotlight Room” on Hanover Street, John and his trio, Divergent Strings (Wayne Hughes and Roger Ramirez), will play a wide variety of music, from classical to South American to Spanish with original pieces and fresh arrangements of rock tunes mixed in.
That’s why I got so excited when a new friend of mine named Alfredo “Fredo” Benavides from Manchester came into my life shining like a new diamond, a musician I’d never met, someone with real chops, killer instincts, a man with a real taste for the game. Fredo was more than I expected, much, much more.
I’m telling you, it’s going to be one of those nights down at Jupiter Hall on Hanover this Friday night, I can feel it. No rain, no snow or fog in the forecast. Perfect weather for kicking around downtown, breaking in the brick. Great night to drink, get fat, then walk it off.
And today, as I sit at my desk awaiting my new desk calendar, clothed like an Eskimo, I look to 2020 and I see my 50th birthday approaching around the bend and I plan to paint the squares of the New Year like a graffiti artist might a bare wall at midnight, marking up the hours of my days and nights.
Q&A with Boston-based singer/songwriter Chris Trapper, performing at Jupiter Hall Dec. 13.
The wild ride wiped me out and I felt defeated by the dawn of a new season, once again.
Even on a gray afternoon, the sight of the bold sign bolted to the newly restored building on Amherst Street brings a flutter to my heart. Which could also be the onset of something disastrous. But, let’s stay focused.
When you blow your back out, everything changes. How you sit, eat, watch TV, slide off the couch, pee, shower (I do both at once), dry off, pull on your socks, get out of your car, and, good Lord, if your libido starts to itch (as it often does), make love.
The letter and the application went out in the mail sometime before winter, and by the start of my last semester at Wentworth, I received a letter from Plymouth State College, welcoming me into the fold. I was elated. Finally, I felt inside like my apprenticeship from being a nothing to something had ended.
Over the years, I’ve watched a handful of musicians that I’d grown to admire suddenly drop out of the music scene. Poof, just like that, they’re gone.
I didn’t go for the politics. I went for the spectacle. And it paid in spades. And it paid off with promise. What I see on TV night after night as I torture myself on a daily basis, watching all sides of the news — MSNBC to FOX — I came to see that it is quite possible that the news is somewhat bullshitting most of us.
The tap and strum, that pluck and pick, all of it going off at once. It was hypnotic to me, soothing, like a chime, a repetitive force that slowly works its way inward. An unworldly talented young man with many world’s ahead of him to feast on. World’s he’s never seen. World’s he’s loved and lived in. World’s Senie hopes to return to someday.
