Boston rockers play fundraiser for bomb victims

Singer Joey McIntyre performs during the Boston Strong benefit concert at the Boston TD Garden in Boston, May 30, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Gretchen Ertl

By Richard Valdmanis

BOSTON | Fri May 31, 2013 12:56am EDT

BOSTON (Reuters) - A succession of all-star bands from Aerosmith to Jimmy Buffet rocked a packed house at Boston's TD Garden on Thursday night in a mostly raucous fund-raiser for the victims of last month's marathon bombing.

Tickets priced between $35 and $285 sold out fast at the 17,500-seat venue, with net proceeds to be donated to The One Fund, a reserve established by Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick that has so far received more than $37 million in donations to compensate victims of the April 15 bombing.

The music kicked off with a Jimi Hendrix-style distortion guitar version of the U.S. national anthem by rock band Boston that drew cheering fans out of their seats before lead singer Tommy DeCarlo told the crowd "Tonight we are all Boston."

Another Massachusetts band, Extreme, transformed the energy with a sing-along version of "More Than Words" - an acoustic love song - before the homegrown J. Geils Band unleashed a torrent of fast-paced R&B as lead man Peter Wolf strutted the stage in black leather and shades.

"We came up here to help out Boston, but also because these are some great bands," said Shelly Watson, who drove up from Rhode Island with her husband to see the show, which also included comedians and a short speech by Victoria McGrath, a young girl who was injured in the bombing.

Other acts included country star Jason Aldean, who despite not being from Massachusetts admitted to being a fan of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, New Kids on the Block, James Taylor and Aerosmith - which made a round-the-world detour from Singapore to make the show.

Donnie Wahlberg from New Kids on the Block won the decibel award when he took the microphone and yelled the word Boston repeatedly, drawing enthusiastic shrieks from the audience.

"We came here tonight to show the world how resilient we are," he said.

Fellow band mate Joey McIntyre displayed the marathon medal he earned on the day of the explosion before the group broke into a run of songs including "I'll Be Loving You" and "Step By Step."

Aerosmith closed the show with a bang with lead man Steven Tyler sporting an ankle-length cape and leopard-pattern shirt dancing with his microphone stand while singing rousing versions of "Sweet Emotion" and "Living on the Edge."

"How heavy does your heart feel after a night like this?" he asked the cheering crowd.

Concert organizers have declined to say yet how much money the concert will raise for The One Fund, but have said bands and venue employees were working for free.

Three people were killed and 264 injured, many losing their legs, by homemade pressure-cooker bombs that exploded at the finish line of the world-renowned Boston Marathon on April 15.

Kenneth Feinberg, a lawyer who specializes in mediation, was tapped by Menino and Patrick to run The One Fund. Feinberg has warned victims to lower their expectations of how much money the fund would be able to pay individual beneficiaries.

Boston bomb suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen with roots in Russia's volatile northern Caucasus, was captured in a dramatic police manhunt days after the bombing. He was criminally charged and is being held in jail.

His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was also identified by the FBI as a suspect but he was killed in a gunfight with police. U.S. security officials have said they believe the brothers had Islamic militant sympathies.

(Reporting by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by Scott Malone, Grant McCool, Eric Beech and Lisa Shumaker)

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Rockers The Hives lay down the law for "Lex Hives"

Singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist of The Hives performs at The Joint inside the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada in this January 15, 2005 file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Ethan Miller/Files

By Piya Sinha-Roy

LOS ANGELES | Thu Jun 14, 2012 6:09pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Swedish garage rock band The Hives put their hardest rock'n'roll effort into their latest studio album following their last record five years ago which harnessed urban music influences.

The new record, titled "Lex Hives" because the album "is the law of the Hives" according to bandmember Nicholaus Arson, follows "The Black And White Album" (2007). It took The Hives about two years to pull together as they struggled to find a sound that returned them to their garage rock roots from the hip hop-influenced previous effort.

"It's sort of timeless, what we do as a band," lead singer Howlin' Pelle Almqvist told Reuters. "We want to be one of those bands that withstands the tide of change in the industry."

Formed in 1993 in Fagersta, Sweden, The Hives consists of Almqvist, his brother Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem on guitar, bassist Dr. Matt Destruction and drummer Chris Dangerous.

The band first gained popularity during the garage rock resurgence of the early 2000s that gave way to bands like "The White Stripes," but The Hives changed tracks and experimented with new sounds on their last record, working with R&B producers Timbaland and The Neptunes.

For their fifth studio album, released earlier this month, The Hives went back to their roots, which is showcased on the energetic opening track "Come On!," as well as the blues-rock track "I Want More" and the anthem-like tune, "These Spectacles Reveal The Nostalgics."

"We were really more interested in making a classic record. We wanted it to be like it could have been recorded at any point in the last forty years, whereas our last record was more like our attempt at being modern," said Almqvist.

The band compiled the entire album themselves from "plugging in the guitar" to "arranging the songs and engineering."

The frontman's personal favorites on the album are "Patrolling Days" for its "epic quality" and "Midnight Shifter," which reinvents energetic soul music from 1960s America.

Reviews have been generally favorable with the album earning 70 out of 100 on review aggregator site MetaCritic.com.

Rolling Stone's Chuck Eddy gave "Lex Hives" three out of five stars, saying the band "lose steam at times, but by the LP's end, their toga party is back pogoing and the neighbors are knocking." Hamish McBain at music publication NME gave the album an eight out of 10 rating, calling the album "amazing.

DECADE OF GARAGE ROCK

The band embraced garage rock and punk for their debut album in 1997, "Barely Legal," following it up with 2000's "Veni Vidi Vicious," both of which achieved moderate success.

Their 2001 'best-of' album, "Your New Favourite Band," launched The Hives onto mainstream charts, led by their singles "Hate To Say I Told You So" and "Main Offender."

More than a decade on, the band has an extensive touring schedule in both Europe and the United States, and while some industry watchers say rock is giving way to the popularity of electronica and dance music among younger fans, Almqvist believes the opposite.

"Rock 'n' roll seems to be doing pretty damn great ... I don't really feel like it's struggling. There's definitely enough of an audience," Almqvist said

The Swedish rockers are known for their on stage antics while clad in black suits and ties, led by Almqvist, who combines hyper energy and scissor kicks with provocative comments to the audience.

The lead singer said that while he doesn't plan his live performance stunts, he's been perfecting the persona of Howlin' Pelle since the age of eight, when he decided he wanted to be a rock band frontman.

"One New Year's Eve, we were watching television, and there was a live performance by James Brown and The Who. Those two performers were pretty much where I got my stage groove. They're all you need," said Almqvist, referring to Brown and the antics of Who bandmates Pete Townsend and Keith Moon.

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Alden Bentley)

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Folk rockers Burlap to Cashmere back from tragedy (AP)

By CAITLIN R. KING, Associated Press Caitlin R. King, Associated Press – Thu Jun 30, 12:40 pm ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Guitarist John Philippidis woke up groggy from a monthlong coma in a hospital room full of people.

He disregarded doctors urging him to stay in bed and slowly shuffled to the bathroom. As he went to wash his hands, he reflexively looked up in the mirror and saw a closed eye, a head the size of a basketball and his face disfigured beyond what he thought could ever be repaired.

"I started laughing," Philippidis said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

At the time, he couldn't remember that two ex-Marines and a female accomplice had beaten him to within an inch of his life and left him for dead during a random, road rage incident just miles from his home in the New York borough of Brooklyn.

Doctors took his reaction as a good sign — and it was.

"I just remember that feeling of being reminded right there in that moment that you're alive. Whatever happened to you, you're alive," said Philippidis.

That was 2005.

Today, 33-year-old Philippidis is feeling more alive than ever. His recovery sparked a reunion with award-winning, folk-rock band Burlap to Cashmere, and after a 12-year hiatus, the band is preparing to release its second, self-titled album, due out July 19 on Jive/Essential Records.

Recovery was a slow process, aided in large part by his cousin, Burlap lead singer Steven Delopoulos. Doctors didn't know whether Philippidis would play guitar the same way because of the damage he suffered, and he was nervous to even pick one up.

"Initially I was slow, and I put it down, and didn't look at it again, and said, `Nuh uh. Not gonna do this.' That was depressing me. It was like, `Oh my god, oh my god,'" he said.

Philippidis panicked, but his doctor reassured him that it would take time for his brain and nerves to reconnect.

Delopoulos would drive from New Jersey to visit his cousin nearly every weekend. Instead of pushing him back into music before he was ready, they would play the Xbox video game "Halo" and trash talk each other.

"The thing about Johnny is he's really good at guitar, but whenever we play `Halo' ."

"Oh, he's trash talking right now," interrupted Philippidis, as the two joke around.

Eventually, Delopoulos began testing out a few song ideas in front of Philippidis, and the album track "Orchestrated Love Song" took shape.

"Picked up a guitar, and I think we wrote the opening lick to that song, which was like not complex, but it made me feel like, `OK, wait, I can still do this. My hands are still moving,'" said Philippidis.

Little by little, Burlap to Cashmere began to reemerge. The band had broken onto the scene in 1998 with its major-label debut, "Anybody Out There?" Met with critical acclaim and multiple Dove Awards, they generated a dedicated following and quickly established themselves as an exceptional live act. However, relentless touring took its toll, and they went on hiatus in 2001.

"Steven and I will always play music together," said Philippidis. "We've been doing it since we were like 8. We're cousins. But this strengthened the fact that we needed to do it soon, because we realized at that point, well, life is fleeting."

Drummer Theodore Pagano heard some of the new songs and got onboard. He was at a crossroad in his own life, going through a divorce and having decided to leave his job in London, designing a 20,000-square-foot concept store for National Geographic that wasn't working out. After Burlap's initial breakup, Pagano quickly established himself as a top name in the interior design world. He designed all the top-floor room sets for Ikea and then did the same thing for Apple stores.

Pagano became an organizational and driving force behind Burlap to Cashmere that eventually scored them another major-label record deal.

"I always thought, if we were to do this again, if we were to make a record now, how would it be modernized?" said Pagano.

He popped into a studio session during a visit home from London and heard his band mates working on the album track "Live in a Van."

"It was very subtle, which we didn't do very well back in the day, and really, really well-executed," Pagano said. "All the sounds were right, and all that I didn't like seemed to have gone away."

The inspired, 11-track effort marks a departure from the band's first album. The grandiose textures that emphasized style over substance have been replaced with a more stripped-down sound and focused lyrics, reminiscent of Simon & Garfunkel and Cat Stevens. Their blend of Mediterranean rhythms and tightknit harmonies helps them stand out among popular folk-rock acts including Mumford & Sons, Avett Brothers and Fleet Foxes.

"It's a very shadowy record," said Delopoulos, who wrote all 11 tracks.

"There's definitely a lot of energy and a lot of uplifting moments, like `The Other Country,'" which Delopoulos wrote about his family member's last words before he passed away.

"There's sort of a redemption at the end," he continued. "But (the album) talks about, I would say, the different layers of life, the good times and the bad times all at once in one package with a bow on it."

These days Philippidis looks like a chiseled rock star, shredding guitar onstage in his skinny jeans, fitted shirt and dark sunglasses. The glasses hide a slightly closed eye, which can be fixed with one last surgery, and there is a C-shaped scar on his buzzed head from a tube doctors inserted to alleviate pressure on the brain. Philippidis has 13 titanium implants in his face. Doctors replaced his facial orbits, his forehead and jaw line. They also had to reconstruct his nose and sinuses.

His two male attackers are in prison, and the female who was with them fled the country. Despite the unprovoked brutality of the situation that nearly cost Philippidis his life, he and the rest of the band refer to it as the "accident."

"I view it as an accident, personally. I think we all do, because you can't really hold on to anything. I'm not really angry. I get to sit here with my cousin and somebody that I grew up with since I'm 11 years old and play music," said Philippidis, flashing that charming grin. "That anybody claps for our music is the biggest reward you can receive. We're just happy to be here."

___

Online:

http://www.burlaptocashmere.com

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