MC Diatribe, August 6

The following is an interview I conducted for the Somerville News with Mark Mclaughlin, also known as MC Diatribe, a local independent rapper and activist:

What do you do at Bridge Over Troubled Waters?
I'm a street outreach worker. Basically, it's my job to find homeless youth and try and get them to come into our program.

And what do you get out of that?
What? Personally?

Yeah
I mean, it's getting kids off the streets. That always feels good. It's the first step hopefully in getting them to turn their lives around. So, it's always a good feeling.

I've read somewhere that every kid in Somerville is taught the word "gentrification" in school. What are your views on the gentrification of Somerville?
I don't know if they're taught it in school. I think it's definately become part of people's vocabulary. I think it was an unspoken thing for a long time. People knew what was happening. I remember kinda learning the word and thinking "Oh, that's what that is, that's what's going on." My views on it? Well, there's good sides and bad sides, you know. And you can't ignore the good side, it's a safer place to be, it's a cleaner place to be. The quality of life is better. But the negative side is lots of the lower class people don't get to be around to see all this great improvement. And that builds a lot of resentment. When it's a place, you know, you grew up in your whole life and I'd like to reap the benefits of this too. You hear a lot of people claiming that it's taking credit for cleaning up the city and the working class and immigrant communities should be grateful towards them, but the reality is, it's like "Ok, Davis Square is nice now. Too bad I just moved to Chelsea, or I just moved Everett, which are basically in the same conditions I left" Lots of these other communities are where Somerville was ten, fifteen years ago, so nothing's really changed for the working class or the immigrant community in Somerville. They're just getting displaced to someplace simular to what they just left. I want people to stay around for the benefits, to see how the great the city's become.

What do you think of the Green Line extension?
Same thing. It's great. Obviously, I can't deny the benefits of it. Like I'm not sit here and be like "Oh, it's a terrible thing." But I think that gentrification, centered right now around Davis Square, is gonna spread to untouched parts of the city. Whereas, right now, Somerville is still, in my opinion, a working-class city, besides the Davis Square area, which the Red Line brought. So, now you're gonna have the areas of Winter Hill and Union Square and East Somerville and Assembly Square, and all these things, you know, it's gonna bring agreat resource, but with that resource, am I gonna be around for the Green Line? You know, I live in East Somerville now because I got priced out of this neighborhood. Now, am I gonna get priced out of East Somerville too in a couple years? It's be like "Ok, this is great. Somerville has the Green Line. I live in Brockton." You know, that's the way it goes. I don't see the roots of this city. You know, the true people that have been here for generations, they won't be benefiting from this.

So, about five years ago, I don't know where exactly in the city this happened, someone graffitied...
Right here

Oh right here? Someone graffitied "Kill A Yuppie" What's the motivation for something like that? Is this a common feeling?
I mean, I think a lot of teenagers have felt a lot of resentment and there's a lot of anger and misunderstanding. Well, that's when they started learning this word gentrification. People are just really angry about losing there place in the city and they took it out on what they saw as a threat to their community. And that's where we, Save Our Somerville, came in to mediate and be like "You can't have beef with these individuals that are moving in. They don't know. They aren't doing anything on pupose. So the real problem you wanna fight with someone, come to City Hall and it's not a violent fight. There's not gonna be an armed struggle here. It's gonna be, you know, political. You need to get out there and vote and become a political presence in the city. That way, City Hall is gonna look at you if you say 'Hey, we this huge constituancy over here and we vote and we're not happy with what's going on.'" That's the way we try to make that shift, tried to harness that anger that the youth was feeling and turn it into something positive...which is a difficult task.

But there is violence in the city and you've witnessed it yourself?
Absolutely

How does that, along with the drug problem with youth in the city, inofrm your music?
A lot. I mean, it comes from...I use music as a self-expression and I, you know, I use it to get things off my chest. Growing up here, there's just a lot of experiences that I think people aren't aware of and I use music to express what I've seen and what I think a lot of people are unaware of. Especially, nowadays, when you think of Somerville, you don't think of these experiences anymore. And those are still very much alive in my life. I like to say, I'm speaking the untold story. There's a story here that a lot of people are unaware of, or it's not being told, or it's being forgotten, and I just wanna create awareness of the struggle here. And that we have a lot in common with simular communities, inner-city communities facing simular problems and I think, lots of times, when we think of Somerville, at least now, we don't think of these problems. And that's a bad thing because when you sweep it under the carpet for too long, things will fester and get worse. Lots of my music is outta respect and homage to my roots, just saying "This is where I come from. This is my environment" I always credit Somerville, and I why I think there's so much pride, not just in Somerville, but lots of Boston neighborhoods because Boston is place where people credit their upbringing, their roots for making who they are and I will always say Somerville made me who I am today.

What is backpacking rap, or is it backpacking rap?
I think it kinda comes from the idea of people just selling CD's out of their backpack. You know, just being an undergound MC, but it more goes with the term of being a socially conscious rapper, being more abstract, you know, being a little more poetic. It's basically become anti-mainstream-type rappers. I would definately consider myself a backpack rapper. But it's basically the term for the underground MC having the stuff in there backpack and going around. It's anti-mainstream, that traditional gangsterism or whatever you wanna call it, thug rap.

What's it like being a white rapper?
Pshhhh, nowadays, I mean (laughs) I don't think it's any different. I mean it depends where you're at. There are experiences of being like,"Oh he's good...for a white kid" and it's more like, "No, I'm just good. Regardless of color." Nowadays, I feel like that's a stigma that's really gone. Emimen is renowned as one of the est of all time and Boston, in particular, has a lot of white MC's. It depends on what circle you're in and it depends what kinda music you're trying to do. I think if I was a white guy trying to act, trying say I was from the ghetto, I was selling crack, doing all this stuff I'd be a little like "Ok, doubtful." but if you're a white dude adn you're from the suburbs and you're rich and whatever, I think you'll be accepted in hip-hop as long as you're honest. Just keep it honest and people will accept you. Not everyone's gonna feel it. Not everyone's gonna like it. Some people are gonna be like, "This guy's whack because I don't relate to that." But, I think if you're honest with it, I doesn't matter what color or what gender you are or what-have you.

Steve Earle/Dirty Dishes/Steel Train/Suspicious Packages

Filmmaker/Actor/Musician/"not gay, but we have sex" Casey Regan

I've learned a lot researching and reporting for this blog. I've built this collection of pieces out of nothing and wrote about what I love, music and art. Experience is the most valuable teacher and all you have to get some experience is do-it-yourself. It's meaning and benefits stretch beyond scene or group or culture itself. You don't need permission to live. You don't need permission to learn. If you have the right attitude, nothing can stop you. Do it yourself.

I've been so inspired by the art I've seen and the music I've heard that I have taken up my first love, music. I am playing bass in The BOOTS, a Mission Hill/Jamaica Plain band with rhythm and blues and post-classic rock n roll simplicity, somewhere between The Blues Brothers and The Bay City Rollers. We feature dreamboat Phil Wilcox on Springsteen-esque vocals and Air Castle guitarist Nick Hashem shredding on the guit-fiddle.

Keep an eye out for our gig at Hellgate at the end of the month.

I'm also playing guitar/percussion and vocals in the Emerson College-based outfit Charlie & The Dive Dolls featuring four lovely ladies and myself busting some heavy blues.

EP coming in October.

Hard work is rewarding no matter if you fail or succeed.

Applause, Applause, Applause for the Dirty Dishes. Boston's hardest working, perhaps most talented independent rock band. They are the hottest band on the local music scene, a group of Berklee kids recording music DIY. The term used to describe them is "shoe-gaze." What does that mean? I looked up the definition on the internet and I'm still not sure what it is. I truly on honestly think the Dirty Dishes are undefinable. They combine so many genres together, their definitions can and have only gone so far.

They soldiered through despite shitty sound, it buzzed and feedbacked all night and Jenny's vocals were muffled a lot. Drummer Mike Thomas yelled a crack about it. "Is there even someone running sound. Is this a joke?"

With this change in audio, you could hear each individual member of the band for how talented they are. Jay getting extra heavy by employing mutli-string bass "chords" as it were. Mike wrecks yet controls his drums like sage warrior defending his tribe. Jenny's footwork on the pedals and solo was off-the-charts as usual. Alex headbangs as the medula oblongata, the brain stem of the band.

They proved quite adaptable by the end of "Into Thin Air" playing with the feedback and grinding instruments on amplifiers. This show forced them to sound raw and forced them to be raw.

This time they were perched on an actual stage, as a band of this caliber deserves to be, a level above us. In my ideal society, talented artists are often held in the highest regard. This stage was in the Enormous Room, which is a bar-sized room, not that enormous, featuring expensive drinks, but a saucy back door that can be easily snuck in through. Follow the graffiti to your freedom.

Last week, I saw Steel Train at the Middle East Downstairs. They held there guitars tight to there chests and played them well. Fast rock, but not that much punk, too dramatic to be punk. They are kind of like the So-So Glos from Brooklyn and a pinch of the Arcade Fire. I'm getting bogged down in details, point is: They fucking rocked! There show had such a fantastic energy, everyone was rocking and rolling, have the best time, dancing so naturally it might have been a music video. My girlfriend and I met some young ruffian college kids as we were innocently gulping white wine on a parking lot outside as they indulged in tequilla, whiskey and pocket beers. We introduced ourselves. It was my girlfriend's idea. She's so friendly. I love her, btw.
We saw them inside, flashing their whiskey bottle. They saw me, remembered and offered me a swig. I took it. Later, I went to the bathroom and came back, seeing a big ol' security guard dragging all three of themm off holding the whiskey bottle in his hand. Boys were busted.
I danced with my girlfriend engaged a lot of ridiculous, grotesquely cute PDA. Like it said, the show had a great energy.

I saw my Dad's old friend and folk outlaw legend Steve Earle, trucking as ever, playing an epic acoustic set at the House of Blues. Phil, of my band The BOOTS, came and got to meet the mythical agitator with a backstage pass procured by my Pops. He still has not stop talking about the redemptive power of that meeting. He felt cleansed. My dad and Steve Earle rule. That's also what Phil kept saying.

Steve broke out classics like "Copperhead Road" and "Guitar Town" and more recent stuff from post-rehab Steve, like a personal favorite "South Nashville Blues" where the man plays some pretty intricate bending chords with a capo. He said after finishing, ripping off the capo "That song sounds a funner to play than it actually is."

He prefaced "City of Immigrants" by saying "This song is about the city I live but it could just as easily have been about this city" I feel a part of it, as I might as well be an immigrant, living in Boston from Chicago suburbs. Is that saying too much? Do you know what it's like? I feel like an immigrant, man.

He saved the best for last, playing his Emmy-nominated song from the HBO show Treme. It's about Post-Katrina New Orleans. Steve plays a street musician. He only had the greatest things to say about the city, and so passionately as well. He called it the heart of American music.

The man is an American legend, a man who journeyed to the edge of the dark side and almost dove in, but came out better than ever. Even he thinks he's making the best music of his career, and I would agree, so does fellow young person Phil. He's accumulating a new generation of fans. He's in a great stride. His greatest ever.

On the final hand, I went to he rawest, roughest, sweatiest, newest, most amateur show in a third level apartment on Ashford St in Allston last night. It was the debut of the buzzy power pop trio Suspicious Packages, featuring Brock Ginther and Casey Regan playing their hearty heart hearts out. They were both drenched in sweat rocking out. They sounded like if Dead Kennedys went foward in time and liked Primus a lot. Some of the faces Casey made, especially while singing, were so absurdly contorted. He entered a new level. The man is on most days an actor and a filmmaker. He can really cut loose. Keep and eye out for our comedy troupe Worst Birthday Ever. And our upcoming independent horror short Meat Me In Plainville, small town goes crazy after being cut off from it's main source of delicious protein....human meat.

I've seen a lot so far and I hope to see a lot more. I actually just aqcuired an unpaid internship at the Somerville News. I'm no longer just a boy, just a student, I'm a reporter.

This would be the part in the movie where the proud music quelled and I smiled into the camera.

You stay classy, Boston town

Steve

Elements: Line, Color, Form, Nave Gallery, 'til July 25th

Art is always in motion. Meanings change week-to-week, day-to-day, even moment-to-moment. They are replaced and molded to fit audience’s wants and needs. Famed screenwriting guru Robert McKee wrote in his manifesto Story, “Stories don’t always mean what their writers think they mean.” The same rings true for artists and their art. But I don’t know if that’s more of a problem or less of one because I’m still not sure who’s more concerned with meaning, artists or writers.

From July 8th to the 25th the exhibition Elements: Color, Line, Form is showing at the Nave Gallery in the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church in West Somerville. It features work by local artists Ron Brunelle, Kathleen Finlay and Alisa Dworsky, each showing work concerned with one of the three titular elements.

Ron Brunelle’s acrylic paintings are deep with several layers of glaze. They are colorful combinations of oranges, reds, and yellows with complementary blues and greens sinking in. It seems that he used some unorthodox methods like spray-painting the aforementioned glaze.

Alisa Dworsky created excellent, yet simple graphite drawings of helix loops, twisting and turning, whole walls of these bending loops.

I had a chance to talk with the third artist, Kathleen Finlay, who created plaster sculptures showing sheetrock and little cloth houses. I asked her what the meaning was trying to convey with these sculptures and she said she really wasn’t trying to make a statement. She explained how artists are always searching for inspiration, wanting insight. She asked me to apply my own meaning. She wants her work to have “layers of meaning,” nothing fixed.

However, if she had to apply a subtext to work, which seem to be precarious cloth houses on a cliff noting man’s vulnerability. The building of these soft houses is how we try to comfort ourselves.

She uses material left over from other projects as perhaps a statement about man’s ability to sustain through these tough odds against us. We are small, but she believes in us.

Then we talked about art and the Internet for bit. She seemed pleased that a young person such as I was interested in so much. Glad to make you proud, Kathleen.

Three artists.

Three mediums.

Three basic elements: line, color, and form.


Check it out.

The Museum of Bad Art, Somerville Theatre, July 5th (Permanent)

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) located in the basement of Davis Square's Somerville Theatre features selected works that are a little off, a little bizarre, and a little bit, well, bad. I'd just like to bring attention to this underrepresented branch of the art world with a quick analysis.

-Loneliness in a Blue Lagoon - a bacon-skinned nude sits dramatically on the titular lagoon (which looks like a beach) with no expression on her face to match her horribly sunburnt skin or lack of skin.

-A Latin version of the King of Rock n Roll called Pablo Presley, featuring a shitty Mexi-stache.

Overall, there were a lot of topless women at the MOBA who didn't need to be topless and a good chunk of those were in front of volcanoes for no reason.

-There was a piece simply called Too Fat People.

-An outline of a pink elephant with disproportionate legs over some "bad-ass" graffiti.

-Perhaps the worst piece in the entire Museum was a shitty expressionist representation of an effete man with a mustache smoking a cigarette against a fucking ugly mustard-colored wall.

-Naked man and folding chair. No explanation.

-The most horrifyingly colorful sex scene ever:


-Middle-aged woman with no face melting in a bathtub.

-Gremlin-looking multi-cultural kid reaching for a peaceful, weather-less globe.

-A shapeless woman in a dress that looks like wallpaper.

A barely visible woman with huge fake-looking breasts formed by the outlines of clouds (which are thicker than the clouds themselves?) dubbed "Silicone Clouds"

-There were these that are just beyond words:


-A tree with eyes as leaves, and guess what? They're crying.

Another MOBA trend: A lot of eyes where they didn't need to be and a lack of eyes where they probably should be.

-The final, and largest, piece in the Somerville Theatre collection is a giant oil painting feature the face of Robert Redford from The Great Gatsby wearing the disco hat that Dan Ackroyd and Steve Martin wore in the "Two wild and crazy guys!!" sketch. The weird thing is: those two came out around the same time.

Some come to the MOBA, adjacent the men's room in the basement, if you want a good chuckle and a good "WTF?"

You have to buy a ticket for a movie to gain access, so I'd recommend the art-related culture commentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop" featuring Shepard Fairey and Banksy. Very good. And it'll get you in the mood for some art.

Also, check out the original MOBA, also located in a theatre basement, the Dedham Community Theatre. They have a gift shop, which I'm sure is extremely entertaining.

Nine Lives, Doran Gallery, MassArt, 'til July 2

There are over 250,000 students in the Boston area. It’s amazing how many institutions of higher learning are around. However, our schools try to keep us isolated and insulated from these outsiders, our neighbors. Go out and explore another school ‘round the city for no other reason besides discovery.

Over at the Doran Gallery in one of MassArt’s Artist Residence, there’s a really cool graduate student exhibition going on, Nine Lives. These youngsters are pushing barriers and doing some interesting experiments.

One of these kids was Colin McNamec, who paints very detailed oil paintings of rubbish. There’s overturned sofas without cushions, rusty old gas tanks, wood pallets, piles of dying Christmas trees, tipped-over traffic cones, dressers left as trash, and abandoned strollers next to street light. The extreme detail really added to the harsh realism of his pieces. He seemed to want to show a sort of underbelly, the stuff society ignores.

Next up was Elizabeth (Libby) Foster who painted some of my favorite pieces in the exhibition. Her stuff was very abstract, featuring very bold strokes and colors that wouldn’t necessarily go together anywhere else. But here, I dig her rough, broad style even though I can’t begin to understand what it means.

There’s Susan Spaniol, who had abstract work as well. Hers were more carefully constructed mixed media with pencil, ink, and bits of gold foil. These pieces had more structure than Libby Foster’s, yet I feel more drawn to the latter.

With a whole corner of the gallery for herself, Michelle Leier exhibited excellent landscape oil paintings with a lot of colorful stylization reminiscent of expressionism. It’s cool to see a painter just using classic expressionism, not trying to traverse three or four different styles or mediums at once. Here’s a complementary comparison: Her work reminds me on Monet or Van Gogh, not with the intricate detail of those two, but enough grace and form to say Michelle has incredible talent worthy of the named droppage.

Susan Marie Brundage painted very detailed pictures from the view of someone driving down the interstate in, what I’m totally assuming was, southern Indiana or something. Her work features subjects like trailer homes, liquor stores, and porn shop. Her small paintings, all lined up in up on the wall at the Doran, formed a composite of Middle American vice and shame.
These were all set against grey skies and trees without leaves, but these pieces were not all wholly depressing. Her referential titles kept me smiling. (Ramble On, Fake Plastic Trees, My Old Kentucky Home)

Zehra Khan (a great name) makes black-and-white, ink-on-paper pieces of rodents behaving horribly, drinking, smoking, vomiting, shitting, fucking. A reminder about some of our own species choose to behave, called "Bunny Explosion." One of her pieces turns to color as it leaves the paper and rounds a corner onto the actual wall of the Doran Gallery. I love that. I love a dynamic art piece that transforms the space it’s exhibited in. That’s the future of art, not static, guarded pieces sitting still behind glass cases in museums. This is the future of art.

Felicia Van Bork pieces here the hardest to understand. Here wide, wide landscapes have much ambiguity to them. I’m not sure what she was trying to say. One of her pieces showed what looked kind of like a whale and was called "My Next Body." Does that have something to do with reincarnation? I do not know.

The most innovative piece at the exhibition was the hexagonal booth-type set-up by Amy Baxter McDonald. On the interior panels, it showed truths and on the exterior, facades forced upon women in the Middle East. That which is seen on the outside, the unseen veiled on the inside. It was a sobering political statement and an excellent concept. The haunting and horrifying images included rapes, forced abortions, and the deaths of children. When standing in the center of the booth, the viewer is surrounded by these horrors as these women are everyday.

The pieces by Heather Hudson had a dark irony to them, showing the popular doll Raggedy Ann is compromising and downright inappropriate positions. There was a prelude to a rape called "Trust Me," a nude portrait a la Kate Winslet in Titanic, and other such disturbing sexual subtexts involving beloved childhood toys. I watched my little sister play with the Raggedy Ann doll when I was a little boy and my innocence is thoroughly offended! I’m just kidding. I thought they were all pretty fucking hilarious. Imagine if we were all that close-minded.

Space 242, Get Your Freak On, May 21, 2010

It’s hard to orchestrate an excellent conversation. It’s hard to coax a revelation through dialogue. It’s hard to make genius happen. A pure conversational conclusion develops naturally. Attempting to shape one with conscious creation is not unlike playing God, but also an interesting social experiment.

A lot of talented visual artists have a difficult time describing their creative process other than physical technique. When asked about meaning or subtext or intellectual creation, they are slide-lined when asked and tend to give no answer.

When I asked San Francisco-based photographer Mark Cross at his exhibition in Rotterdam (place-name-place drop) about any meaning in his work, he didn’t really feel that question was consequential. He implored me to make up my own meaning for his work and he would definitely endorse it.

So I have to commend Ami and The Space 242 Gallery for facilitating an exchange like this among the 100-plus artists featured in the exhibition, Get Your Freak On: Celebrating Circus Folk, Carnies and Sideshow Freaks, which had it’s closing ceremony last Friday. So, I realize my review is sort of useless at this point in time, but the art lives on. Ain’t that what’s important?

Once the ball of this conversation got rolling, it didn’t stop. It sped up in theories about the drama of the bearded lady, kaleidoscope-y art with many many freak faces spinning around, male inclination toward comic book art (no show at Space 242 contained as much female work)

It reached an extended zenith with a topic introduced by Ami herself. She expected to get more “freaky, twisted, bizarre” stuff with the topic at hand, but wound up with more submissions that were more “fun and festive.” A series of answers unearthed interesting truths.

One said “Artists identified with freaks because they both live on the fringes of society. There’s a level of sympathy.”

This hit me harder than what I expected to be the lesson or subtext featured in any poetic perspective on sideshow freaks to be pity stories, full of loss and mistreatment, Freaks and Pinocchio, on up through The Elephant Man. You know, “who’s the real freak?” kind of stuff. The classic artistic turning of the tables on the audience, who got a kick out the pain and misery of these…”freaks.”

I thought the whole exhibition would be a re-hashing of this almost jaded theme, one that’s clearly been done before.

But I got some new perspective from some artist’s statements. One talked about the historical aspect, how this sort of thing doesn’t really exist anymore. It’s very inhumane and politically incorrect. Most circus sideshows around nowadays feature feats of strength of endurance, like a skinny guy shimmying through a tennis racket or a tattooed man with a split tongue. One artist commented about how anyone can become a freak in a sideshow as long they “twist” themselves in some way, while freaks of the past didn’t have a choice. They were forced into what was essentially indentured servitude.

A Chuck Klosterman-looking artist stood up dramatically outside the circle of chairs denoting the artist’s roundtable and talked about the cynicism of modern culture killing the illusion of the sideshow freak. “People aren’t going to stare at the bearded lady anymore. They are going to say hormone treatment.”

And here’s is where I found a big chunk of meaning: Modern culture is very cynical. I doubt I’ll have to debate with anyone about that. See, even that last sentence was insanely cynical. My point being: people are sick of cynicism. They want things that are earnest, optimistic, and borderline illusory. They want things that are proud and positive. They don’t want the same vindictive and judgmental revisionist irony that’s made everyone lose trust in everything.

Yes, there are terrible things in the world and yes, it’s important to shed light on them. It’s important to get the true stories about sideshow carnival freaks, Christopher Columbus and The Alamo. But these myths, these signifiers mean more to culture than the true stories ever could.

That’s why there’s New Weird America, where artists and musicians have accepted the flaws of this country and are still groovy with it. Irony and cynicism have turned society into elitist fucks who try and stay two steps ahead of everyone and don’t trust anyone. Good old fashioned American earnestness breeds good feeling, community, and, most importantly, courage.

The powers that be in the world want people to fear one another, compete, and be malicious. They don’t want us to be proud of ourselves. The want us to be beaten down and cynical. You know why? Because cynics are never a threat to their power. Cynics never do anything. All they do is talk about the stuff they want to do and all the things they would change. Trust me, I’ve been a cynic most of my life

But since I’ve decided to be earnest, since I’ve started looking for good and happiness and illusionism, I’ve felt a lot happier. To move around a famous quote, “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.”

Some people might say that I am lying to myself, that if I feel troubled, I should express it. Understandable. But it’s healthier to express yourself by becoming the solutions you want to see in the world rather than talk about them. Talk gets you nowhere. Action is progress, even if you fail.

In conclusion, I don’t want things to be swept under the rug, but I don’t want pieces of dust to be shoved in my face. I want the floor properly cleaned. It can be done with earnestness and optimism, so you see.

“Smile and the world smiles with you. Frown, and you frown alone.”
- somebody who said “Hi!” a lot…I’m assuming

The Dirty Dishes, Wadzilla Mansion, May 8, 2010

Fans of rock music can’t help but be drawn to really talented chicks. They are few and far between. I’m not saying there are a lot of girls without talent trying and failing to play good rock music in Boston. There aren’t that many playing any rock music in any form whatsoever. One could say that rock n roll is a very masculine art form, like stand-up comedy or beer can-architecture.

So Jenny Tuite, a gorgeous axe-shredding siren, is such a fantastic find. Not for me, but for fans of rock music in general, who are a lot of guys who’ve spent a lot of time watching other guys act like guys. Women doing this, and doing it fuckloads better than most guys should make chauvinists reconsider.
Jenny is the lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for The Dirty Dishes, an inventive and original hard-rock foursome with a buttressed foundation of passionate talent. I saw them play last Saturday at Allston’s Wadzilla Mansion. The Dirty Dishes, as individuals, are focused energy beams onto their instruments, but together, they unleash a combined auditory force upon eager audiences.

I was talking with David, the lead singer of SuperVolcano, about them when I heard their set staring up. We made our way towards the basement, the actual venue space, and I asked him what to look for with this new band,
“Their lead singer, Jenny….is siiiiiick.” This last word came out of David’s mouth as an impressive falsetto, showing how much he really dug this chick’s singing.
I went into the pit and watched the show.

Of course the first thing that hit me about this girl was her radiance. She is downright gorgeous. I could get lost and find myself in her eyes. The sheen of her hair reflected the hanging lights. Her hips wore an awesome blue skirt. It exuded a powerful sexiness. Entranced and held, divinely compelled, I soaked in the woman of marble-esque beauty, her voice, her style, the way she held her rhythm guitar.
I’d assumed that the shredding lead guitar was coming from someone in the back-up band that I couldn’t see at the time, but I soon realized it was actually streaming forth from the careful, concentrated fireworks of Jenny and her fingers. She was rocking in a band in Allston, right by the Mass Pike, like nobody’s business, an ethereal Aphrodite in a sea of grungy hardened Hephaestus’ and fronting it easily, singing her dynamic heart out.

The star Jenny should be is astounding. She’d be Karen O, but with intensely involved lead guitar. She’d be Lita Ford, but much more accessible and less obviously a sex symbol (less metal as well, The Dirty Dishes sound like a slightly hard boiled Plants and Animals with a pinch of Cold War Kids)
But goddamn, with those eyes and that presence, she’d be Edie Sedgwick, Janis Joplin and Patti Smith all rolled into one beautiful, talented prophetess for the 21st century, a girl who just plain needs to be shared with the masses.

And like any amazing genius, Jenny’s completely modest about her work. When I worked up the courage to talk to her about what she though her music meant, she nervously looked at her bandmate, saying “Oh man, we suck at this shit.” And like any genius, she works hard, plugging their next gig (Harper’s Ferry, June 8, with The Grass is Green) and giving me a free CD…What a professional!

I feel guilty spending so much time talking about Jenny, neglecting the other members of the band, who were just as talented, but didn’t share the same obvious limelight as Jenny. The rhythm section, with Mike on drums and Jay on Bass, kept the beat and brought the funk so naturally that it looked odd to see them without their instruments after the show. Jay jerked his body wonderfully as he played, in time and in check with every pluck of the bass and I don’t think Mike opened his eyes once during the whole performance.
They were so into their music, a very healthy extroversion for musicians. There are some rockers for which playing releases so much for them. They can play through any stress and every audience member appreciates them for the accompanying theatrics. If you’ve ever watched footage of Pete Townshend playing with The Who, especially in the late 70’s, you can tell he got more out any Who concert than anyone else in the audience or on stage. This is what The Dirty Dishes do as well…and how!

Their synth player and occasional singer, Alex, provided a pitch-perfect counterpoint to Jenny’s stoic grace, head-banging curly brown hair so hard I think his glasses fell off a couple times. The chemistry between them was incendiary. Can I write about any rock show without using the word incendiary? Well, if it was a good show, I don’t think that would be good journalism.
So when the Dirty Dishes finished their set and all I could do was stand and clap, shaking my head like I just saw Jesus himself turning water into wine. Hyperbole? Perhaps, but that’s how I felt and that’s how I acted.

The Dirty Dishes are going places, end of story. In January, they opened for Magic Magic and….wait for it….Passion Pit! Yes, this band I saw in an Allston basement opened for the double P’s. They seem to have taken a liking to them, as a recent blog post from Pit placed The Dirty Dishes at #1 on their playlist. High praises from high places. If that ain’t a fine example of networking, I don’t know what is.
I can’t wait to see Jenny on the cover of magazines. Not just for the aesthetics of how cool that would be, but also to say, “I was there!”