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TAKING ON TERROR IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS _by Peter Keough See ARTS | p 5
DROPKICK MURPHYS
SO MANY ARE OUT TO GET YOU — AGAIN
_by Mike Miliard
See NEWS + FEATURES | p 12
CELLARS BY STARLIGHT
_by Dan Kennedy
SMASHING NEW DISC
See MUSIC | p 6
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REAL GIRLS PLAY TACKLE WOMEN’S PRO FOOTBALL COMES TO JAMAICA PLAIN _by Camille Dodero See NEWS + FEATURES | p 26
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Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan is spending millions to build a City of God in suburban Florida _BY ADAM REILLY
See CITY OF GOD | p 16
CROSSWORD, AT LAST REJOICE! A Jonesin’ by Matt Jones | p 42
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16 JUNE 17, 2005 | NEWS + FEATURES | THE BOSTON PHOENIX
City of God TOM MONAGHAN’S COMING CATHOLIC UTOPIA K BONAMI
_ BY A DA M R E I L LY
THE BOSTON PHOENIX | NEWS + FEATURES | JUNE 17, 2005 17
f
IT TAKES COURAGE — OR RECKLESSNESS, OR CONTEMPT — TO STAND INSIDE BOSTON COLLEGE HIGH SCHOOL AND CONDEMN THE STATE OF CATHOLIC EDUCATION. FOR NEARLY 150 YEARS,
BC High has been a prized destination for the sons of local Catholic families; the list of notable alumni includes politicians (former state Senate president William Bulger) and intellectuals (former New York Times Book Review editor Chip McGrath), and being a “Triple Eagle” — a graduate of BC High, Boston College, and Boston College Law School — is still a potent credential in Boston’s corridors of power. If Tom Monaghan knows this history, he doesn’t care. It’s a Saturday in March, and Monaghan — founder of Domino’s Pizza, former owner of the Detroit Tigers, and self-appointed savior of American Catholicism — is addressing an overflow crowd packed into BC High’s gymnasium for the first annual Boston Catholic Men’s Conference. Monaghan doesn’t seem like a revolutionary: his voice is gentle, his graying hair mussed, and he leans against the podium for support as he speaks. But his rhetoric is incendiary. Catholic schools are failing, Monaghan announces; on key issues (religious observance, sexual behavior, opposition to abortion), graduates of Catholic colleges and universities are actually less orthodox than their co-religionists who attend secular institutions. The problem is especially bad at elite schools, which are academically rigorous but spiritually impoverished. Yet Monaghan brings good news as well. At Ave Maria, the university he’s building in southwest Florida, things will be different. In a few years, the median SAT score will be higher than that at any other Catholic institution; even better, the dorms will be single-sex, a quarter of the classes will be taught by “wholly orthodox” priests, and students will be urged to become priests and nuns. Bold talk — but the most dramatic part of Monaghan’s speech is yet to come. Ave Maria won’t be just a university, he continues. It will also be a new town, built from scratch, in which the wickedness of the world will be kept at bay. “We’ve already had about 3500 people inquire on our Web site about buying a home there — you know, they’re all Catholic,” Monaghan says excitedly. “We’re going to control all the commercial real estate, so there’s not going to be any pornography sold in this town. We’re controlling the cable system. The pharmacies are not going to be able to sell condoms or dispense contraceptives.” A private chapel will be located within walking distance of each home. At the stunning church in the center of town, Mass will be said hourly, seven days a week, from 6 a.m. on. “So,” Monaghan concludes, with just a hint of understatement, “it’ll be a unique town.” As he exits the stage, the applause is thunderous. Right now, few people grasp the scope and significance of the Ave Maria project. Monaghan has been well known for years, and his forays into higher education — including Ave Maria University (temporarily located in Naples, Florida) and Ave Maria College and Law School (in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor, Michigan, for the time being) have received a fair amount of press. But the town of Ave Maria, which may become Monaghan’s most significant endeavor, has gone largely unnoticed. The earnest young usher who greeted me at BC High wasn’t aware of Monaghan’s urban plan; neither, until a few weeks ago, was Americans United for Separation of Church and State. This may be by design. The town’s Web site, www.avemaria.com, minimizes its religious component, and Monaghan’s spokesman, Robert Falls, says it’s too early to discuss the way faith will shape life there. (Monaghan did not respond to several requests for comment for this story.) Why the reticence? Maybe because the Ave Maria Tom Monaghan envisions — a Catholic hub in which opportunities for sin will be strictly circumscribed, and from which the truths of orthodox Catholicism will emanate throughout America and the wider world — may be illegal, and will certainly be controversial. If Monaghan’s dream comes true, Ave Maria will, in effect, become America’s first gated Catholic community. The decades-old efforts of American Catholics to assimilate will be reversed, and American religious pluralism will face a serious challenge. What’s more, the ascension of Pope Benedict XVI has many conservative Catholics hopefully anticipating a smaller, purer, more obedient Church. If Ave Maria becomes a reality, it will become the American embodiment of this ideal — a combative bastion of orthodoxy in a sea of dissent and deviance. In other words, the stakes are high. And the less scrutiny Monaghan’s utopian plan gets in its early stages, the more likely it is that it will come to pass.
Marines instead of the Army; his stint in the Corps built his confidence, and ended up being “the best thing that ever happened in my life.” When the fledging pizza business Monaghan and his brother founded in 1960 was struggling, the brother bailed out: in exchange for their delivery car, Monaghan gained sole control of what would become Domino’s. The company scrapped its unprofitable six-inch and nine-inch pies when a bunch of workers called in sick one day; earnings immediately skyrocketed, and a new business model was born. The 1980s were very, very good to Monaghan. Domino’s store count surpassed 5000, and the company became the nation’s largest privately held restaurant chain. In 1983, Monaghan bought the Detroit Tigers, his hometown baseball team; a year later, the Tigers won the World Series. In 1986, the International Franchise Association named Monaghan its Entrepreneur of the Year. (By 1999, he was number 271 on the Forbes 400 — the annual listing of America’s richest individuals — with an estimated net worth of $950 million.) At the height of his success, though, Monaghan had a troubling epiphany. Reading Mere Christianity, by the British Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, he reached a chapter titled “The Great Sin,” dedicated to the perils of pride. “That chapter hit me right between the eyes,” Monaghan explained at BC High. “I worked harder than most people. I thought that was virtuous. But now I realized that all I was trying to do was have more than other people. . . . I thought, ‘If pride is the greatest sin of all, I’ve got to be the greatest sinner of all.’ ” He did not sleep that night. The next morning, Monaghan took what he calls a “millionaire’s vow of poverty.” He halted construction of a new mansion, sold his extravagant collection of luxury cars, stopped flying first class. And he looked for ways to put his wealth to good use. Monaghan did not sever his ties to Domino’s immediately; he retained ownership for nearly a decade, yielding his controlling share in 1998 for almost $1 billion. For much of that time, however, religious philanthropy was his primary focus. In the late 1980s, Monaghan’s donations to anti-abortion groups prompted the National Organization for Women to organize a Domino’s boycott. In the early 1990s, Monaghan spent millions of dollars rebuilding a Nicaraguan cathedral that had been destroyed in an earthquake. The reconstruction occurred amid widespread poverty and hunger in that country, and was criticized by some as an ostentatious vanity project. For the most part, though, Monaghan has been less interested in strengthening existing institutions than in creating new ones. The parts of his empire are varied (see “Monaghan’s Empire,” page 18). But they have two things in common: they promulgate Monaghan’s highly conservative brand of Catholicism, and they owe their existence to his deep pockets. Building this network has not been cheap. According to Business Week, Monaghan had parted with $450 million of his $950 million fortune by the end of 2004, a giving rate that ranks him ahead of Bill Gates and George Soros. There’s an obvious precedent for Monaghan’s endeavors. During the Cold War, some East European dissidents challenged the Soviet Union by creating a “parallel polis” — a network of institutions that would let them disengage from Communist society and live in relative freedom. For Monaghan, the enemy is the morally corroded secularism of modern America, and the freedom he seeks is the freedom to fully obey the moral teachings of the Catholic Church. Still, his method is strikingly similar. The resemblance may not end there. Hundreds of years from now, dissenters like Václav Havel will be remembered for helping to foster communism’s demise. And Monaghan, as improbable as it may seem today, could be remembered as the man who helped transform America into a theocracy.
IF MONAGHAN’S DREAM COMES TRUE, AVE MARIA WILL, IN EFFECT, BECOME AMERICA’S FIRST GATED CATHOLIC COMMUNITY
EMPIRE BUILDING Monaghan’s story is a remarkable one, improbable and uplifting enough to inspire a Ron Howard movie. His father died, on Christmas Eve, when Monaghan was four years old; his mother’s poverty caused Monaghan to spend much of his childhood in foster homes and a Catholic orphanage. He entered the seminary in ninth grade — moved, Monaghan says, by a desire to “seek the salvation of souls” — but was soon kicked out for unruly behavior. A few years later, he finished last in his high-school class, graduating only after he tearfully begged a teacher to intercede on his behalf. As Monaghan tells it, sheer dumb luck helped transform him from a ne’erdo-well into one of America’s most successful executives. (“I owe all my success to stupidity,” he likes to say.) After dropping out of the University of Michigan, Monaghan joined the Armed Forces, accidentally enlisting in the
TALK OF THE TOWN As Monaghan breathes life into his new Catholic community in Florida, he’s enjoying the same good fortune that propelled him to the pinnacle of the business world. He might never have ventured into Collier County if the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan, had been more accommodating. But when he proposed building Ave Maria University in Ann Arbor Township, along with a 250-foot-crucifix bearing a 40-foot Jesus, local officials balked, leading Monaghan to look south in 2002. As it turns out, the social and political conservatism of Collier County — in the last presidential election, George W. Bush reaped 65 percent of the vote — fits nicely with Monaghan’s own views. (Monaghan is a frequent donor to conservative Republican political figures, including Senators Sam Brownback, Tom Coburn, and Rick Santorum). Naples also has a large Catholic community, as well as large pockets of extreme wealth, much of which is possessed by retirees willing to direct it to the right philanthropic cause. What’s more, people are moving there at a brisk clip: Collier County ranks among America’s fastest-growing counties, with a population increase of 18 percent between 2000 and 2004. The serendipity doesn’t stop there. After giving up on Ann Arbor, Monaghan initially planned to build Ave Maria University at a site in North Naples. But when an eagle — an endangered and protected species — was spotted on the grounds, he was forced to look elsewhere. At this point, the Barron Collier Companies — a powerful local developer named for the same pioneer who gave his name to Collier County — sprang into action, and a deal was struck. Barron Collier would donate 900 acres of land outside Naples to Monaghan so he could Continued on page 18
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8 DAYS A WEEK
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THE BOSTON PHOENIX | ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT | JUNE 17, 2005 3
8 DAYS A WEEK A ROUND-UP OF NOTABLE HAPPENINGS THURSDAY 16 FILM
If Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel’s La niña santa/The Holy Girl caught your fancy, you’ll want to check out her previous effort, 2001’s LA CIÉNAGA/THE SWAMP, which is a kind of Latin American Peyton Place. It screens today at 8:20 p.m., tomorrow at 5:45 p.m., Saturday at 3:45 p.m., and Sunday at 4:10 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue in Boston; call | 617.369.3300.
CLASSICAL
On one side of Huntington Avenue, SEQUENTIA presents “Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper”; on the other, KEITH LOCKHART and the BOSTON POPS counter with Faith Prince and Lisa Vroman in “A Tribute to Stephen Sondheim.” Wonder whether Sondheim used any Rhineland harp melodies. Both events start at 8 p.m. Sequentia is at Jordan Hall, 30 Gainsborough Street, and tickets are $20 to $48; call (617) 868-BEMF. Keith and the Pops are at Symphony Hall, 301 Massachusetts Avenue, tonight through Saturday (8 p.m. each night), and tickets are $16 to $120; call | 617.266.1200.
BOOKS
This spring’s Dave Eggers is SEAN WILSEY, whose New Yorker–excerpted memoir Oh, the Glory of It All (Penguin) recounts, among many other adventures at boarding schools and with his evil stepmom, a harrowing adolescence at the side of a globetrotting, do-gooding, man-eating, occasionally suicidal socialite mother. He’ll read from it at 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street in Coolidge Corner. It’s free; call | 617.566.6660.
FRIDAY 17 FILM
In Pawel Pawlikowsky’s MY SUMMER OF LOVE, two Yorkshire girls (Nathalie Pres and Emily Blunt) fall in love with each other. The focus of Mark Rosman’s THE PERFECT MAN, on the other hand, is on two matchmaking daughters searching for a new hubby for their single mom; Heather Locklear, Hilary Duff; and Aria Wallace star. Mom might want to take ANOTHER ROAD HOME, which is also the title of Israeli filmmaker Danae Elon’s documentary about her search to find her long-time family caregiver, a Palestinian. But as Herman Melville reminds us, all roads take us back to the DEEP BLUE, and that’s the title of Alastair Fothergill’s documentary on the sea and its flora and fauna. Pierce Brosnan narrates. Rounding out this post–Batman Begins week is Harvey Kahn’s THE DEAL, in which the US finds itself at war with the Confederation of Arab States; Christian Slater, Selma Blair, Robert Loggia, and John Heard star. The Brattle Theatre celebrates the genius of Harold Lloyd with the weeklong retrospective “SAFETY LAST,” be-
Daniel Clowes, detail from Ice Haven
BEHIND THE EIGHTBALL | FRIDAY | Daniel Clowes, that
great comic-book chronicler of deadened suburban ennui, has a new “narraglyphic picto-assemblage” titled Ice Haven (Pantheon). You could think of Ice Haven as a bizarro-world Grover’s Corners where Leopold and Loeb, an ersatz Fred Flintstone, and a cop-killing stuffed bunny all live there. Clowes will be signing his story at 2 pm at Million Year Picnic, 99 Mount Auburn Street in Harvard Square; call 617.492.6763. Then at 7 pm, he’ll do the same at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard Street in Coolidge Corner; call 617.566.6660. ginning today with his 1925 classic THE FRESHMAN (3:30 and 7:30 p.m.), in which he takes his knocks as a tackling dummy in order to get a chance to play for his college team, and the 1928 SPEEDY (5:30 and 9:30 p.m.), where he’s a cabdriver whose fare is none other than Babe Ruth. That at 40 Brattle Street in Harvard Square; call (617) 876-6837. (Steve Vineberg’s review is on page 6.) Mark Felt may have come forward as “Deep Throat,” but does anyone remember the origin of the phrase? DEEP THROAT (1972) was the crude, ingenious, and hilarious porn film that broke the box office and almost revolutionized Hollywood and American pop culture. Directed by Gerard Damiano and starring Harry Reems, Linda Lovelace, and lots of bad skin and hair, it screens at midnight tonight and tomorrow at the Coolidge Corner Theatre, 290 Harvard Street in Brookline; call | 617.734.2501.
BEER
Representing for New England suds snobbery, the AMERICAN BEER FEST brings more than 100 craft-brewed beers, real ales, and guest speakers from the brewing industry to the Boston Center for the Arts’ Cyclorama, 539 Tremont Street in the South End. There’s a VIP party tonight from 5 to 10 p.m. (tickets are $37.50) and sessions tomorrow from 1 to 4:30 p.m. and 6 to 9:30 p.m. ($22 each). For advance tickets and information, visit www.beeradvocate.com.
ART
A half-century before the completion of the Big Dig, a bungled attempt to create a beltway around downtown Boston left a swath of demolished houses and displaced families. Since 1971, when the project was abandoned, after more than two decades, the land has been sur-
_ E D I T E D BY C A R LY C A R I O L I
reptitiously reclaimed by more than 100 gardens. Now, artists and activists investigate the legacy of that project in “SIFTING THE INNER BELT,” an exhibit at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Mills Gallery, 539 Tremont Street in the South End, comprising installations, projections, photography, research projects, and interactive performances. The related events include free manicures for gardeners (every Thursday and Friday from 4 to 8 p.m. through the exhibit’s run) and a sampling of locally grown bitter melons (July 22 through 30). The show opens tonight with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. and continues through July 31. While you’re there, poke your head around the corner at the Mills’s project space and check out Andrew Mowbray’s installation “JUST FOR MEN,” for which the artist scrubbed the gallery floor using only his head and the hair dye of the title. Call | 617.426.8835.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Digital cameras are revolutionizing photography, but Maggie Taylor does away with the camera altogether. A trained photographer who once took pictures of her collages, she now assembles her compositions directly on a flat-screen digital scanner, then buffs them into a quasi-painterly sheen in Photoshop. It’s an odd effect that implies depth, with sharpfocused features and hazy middlegrounds that invariably give way to dark backdrops — invariably because Taylor doesn’t close the lid on the scanner. “THEN AGAIN,” an exhibit of her images, is on view at the Griffin Museum of Photography, 67 Shore Road in Winchester, through September 10; call | 781. 729.1158.
SATURDAY 18 THEATER
Franz Kafka never made it to the USA, but that didn’t stop him exploring us from the New York harbor to an Oklahoma of which Rodgers and Hammerstein never dreamed. The American Repertory Theatre’s Gideon Lester has adapted the resulting novel, AMERIKA, for the ART at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street in Harvard Square, where it continues through July 10. Tickets are $12 to $72; call | 617.547.8300, or visit amrep.org.
DANCE
“AN EVENING OF DANCERS IN BLACK AND WHITE,” with dancers from New York City Ballet, Boston Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem performing and Jacques d’Amboise as an honored guest, will benefit the Topf Center for Dance Education. It’s at the Wang Theatre, 270 Tremont Street in the Theater District, and the Shubert Theatre across the street, and tickets range from $50 for the performance to $150 for the reception and after-party thrown in; call (617) 482-0351.
CLASSICAL
The Boston Early Music Festival goes local with the BOSTON CAMERATA, which will celebrate its 50th birth-
Continued on page 4
ECT F R E P E R U T U F HAMLET
Commonwealth Shakespeare Company has found its Hamlet: he’s Amesbury native Jeffrey Donovan, a young Broadway journeyman who’s Jeffrey Donovan been seen in the USA series Touching Evil and the recent film Hitch, and he joins a cast that includes George of the Jungle director Sam Weisman as Polonius, Will Lyman as Claudius, and John Kuntz as Guildenstern and Osric. CSC’s 10th annual on-the-Common production of the Bard runs July 16 through August 7, but this year, the stage moves from Parkman Bandstand to the Parade Ground, near the corner of Beacon and Charles Streets. For more information, visit freeshakespeare.org.
MIA ANDERSON’S DRAG KINGS, SLUTS, AND GODDESSES They
were doing cabaret, burlesque, and female-to-male drag back before that description constituted a typical night out in Jamaica Plain. But after 11 years, Mia Anderson’s pioneering crew are calling it a day — consider the culture officially pushed forward — with one final fling. That would be a three-night stand, June 24 through 26, at the Footlight Club, 7A Eliot Street in Jamaica Plain, and centering on a celebration of the African goddess
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01_VARIOUS ARTISTS, WFNX BEST MUSIC POLL: WICKED GOOD BOSTON BANDS 02_PERNICE BROTHERS DISCOVER A LOVELIER YOU [Ashmont] 03_THE RED CHORD, CLIENTS [Metal Blade] 04_BANE, THE NOTE [Equal Vision] 05_DRESDEN DOLLS [8 Foot] 06_VARIOUS ARTISTS FOUR BY FOUR, VOLUME 2 [Lunch] 07_THE RECEIVING END OF SIRENS, BETWEEN THE HEART AND THE SYNAPSE [Triple Crown] 08_DROPKICK MURPHYS TESSIE [Hellcat] 09_PLAN B WELCOME, GENERATIONS! [Self-released] 10_THE UNSEEN STATE OF DISCONTENT [Hellcat]
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COMPILED FROM NEWBURY COMICS
Cave’s in
MAD MAN FILMS, BADMAN, AND NIGHT RALLY the scene, you might introduce yourself to an f audience by rhyming over familiar beats. If you’re an If you’re a new hip-hop artist just coming on
unknown indie-punk band in a city full of them, with your first album coming out in a couple of weeks, you might ease your audience into your quirks by learning a bunch of other people’s songs, borrowing a few wigs, and throwing a bazonkers house party. In lieu of a mix tape, then, Mad Man Films showed up in drag for the tra_ BY C A R LY ditional centipede-infested + CAMILLE Allston-basement gig last Friday, blowing up 40 or 50 neighborhood kids with a set that included Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” Britney’s “Toxic,” Nick Cave’s “Red Right Hand,” and shoutouts to the local ice-cream joint. It was an instructive and destructive mix: MMF’s own songs are as bracing and frenzied as any of their peers’, but they often come laced with subterranean art funk, as if they were a throwback to early Primus and Chili Peppers. “This is a song about black people,” said the group’s magnetic singer/guitarist, George Lewis, introducing a number called “Brotherfucker.” “It figures I’m the only black guy here.” With his blond bob wig concealing a ’frohawk and a “Black Power” button affixed to his ax strap, Lewis shook the crowd like a combination of Johnny Vulture, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore, and a waitress at Jacque’s, alternating between gritty R&B shouts and a convulsive croon-to-a-scream that recalled Cave in his Birthday Party days while venturing into the audience to make out with whoever would reciprocate. (Boys, mostly.) Halfway through the set, he was down to his shorts, and a helpful hand relieved him of those for a spell. After drummer Joe Ciampini belted out a Tom Waits song in a braying alcoholic baritone, building to a feverish, churchlike call-and-response with the suddenly sanctified
basement brats, Lewis had the audience join hands in a prayer that the cops wouldn’t show. A few minutes later, they did. Waits and Cave were also touchstones the next night at Great Scott for Providence’s Badman, a quartet with two drummers, one of whom played an elaborate junk-metal contraption hoisted on scaffolding rails — a very mid-’90s touch. Fronted by a misanthropic chanteur, and flanked by a guitarist peeling off noirish stabs drenched in reverb, they sounded CARIOLI like the Bad Seeds immersed in D O D E RO the guttural clank of Bone Machine. They didn’t quite bring down the house, but they did bring down the junk kit, and when the scaffolding collapsed in mid song, they barely missed a beat: “Deconstruction!” the singer declared. But the main attraction that night was Night Rally: their headlining set wasn’t billed as a record release party, but it was the Inman Square trio’s first gig since their long-delayed split LP with just-split-up pals Clickers finally found its way onto the merch table. After Ho-Ag bassist Patrick Kim wholly confused NR neophytes by introducing himself as guitarist Devin King and then climbing off stage, the actual Ralliers segued into 17 seamless minutes of “Triptych,” the three B-side songs from that brand-new Honeypump Records seven-inch. Night Rally are chronic eye closers — if you murdered someone on stage, they’d never make the witness stand — and they sang about poison green air and bulletproofed birthday suits seemingly ignorant of anyone else in the room. Which meant they missed the red-shirted guy freaking out in the front row as if he’d just won the lottery.
OUT
THE PIXIES’ FRANK BLACK June 15 at Agganis Arena.
Gold standards NEWS AND NOTES ON PIXIES, CLINTON SPARKS, HELLFEST, AND MORE Is PRIMARY VOLTAGE RECORDS kaput?
Looks that way. Owner/operator Evan f Koch, always a class act, is taking an extended break to get his MBA at the Wharton School. He’s leaving the future of the label somewhat open-ended — “I can’t do it next year,” he says — but it’s clear that for the time being, the bands on the label, including the INFORMATION, BABY STRANGE, the GOOD NORTH, and the ska band MASS HYSTERIA, are looking for new homes. “Evan is a smart business person and did a great job with a small label in this city,” says Information guitarist Zack Wells. “It seems that he just hit his stride as far as the type of bands he was signing and that everything was starting to come together. He has a great opportunity [at Wharton], so I _ BY C H R I S don’t blame him for his choice and wish him well.” While the Information look for a new label, Wells says he and local promoter Carl Lavin are overseeing the sales of the band’s remaining CD stock. Seems that CMJ cover was a fluke: RUNNER AND THE THERMODYNAMICS are on “indefinite hiatus,” according to frontman Marc Pinansky, because of “internal tensions and constant line-up changes.” Pinansky says he’s got what he hopes to be another Runner album written and will be playing a few solo dates
(including this Friday at the Milky Way) while undergoing some “creative refueling.” In the meantime, he’s put Runner’s album The Dude up for free download at runnerrock.com. In more constructive developments: Hydra Head has announced a September 13 date for Perfect Pitch Black, the first post-RCA album from CAVE IN, which compiles nine songs recorded by the band with producer Andrew Schneider over the past three years. I scored a demo copy about five months ago and it’s incredible. The songs include “The World Is in Our Way,” “Screaming in Your Sleep,” and “Tension in the Ranks,” some of which have already found their way to the Web; now let’s hope Stephen Brodsky and the boys can get their shit in gear for a tour. RU C K E R Meanwhile, Brodsky’s side project New Idea Society — a collaboration with Eulcid’s Mike Law — doesn’t seem like so much of a hobby anymore. The group are in Japan for a string of dates, and when they arrive home, they’ll team up with Schneider in Brooklyn for a livein-the-studio recording, mixing new songs with a few off their debut, You Are Awake or Asleep. Look for an early-fall release. You’d have thought this happened a long time ago: on June 13, the PIXIES finally got a gold record for 1988’s Surfer Rosa. It’s only their
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second gold, the first being for 1989’s Doolittle, which was certified in 1995. The Pixies wrapped up a three-week tour at a sparsely filled Agganis Arena last week; the hype is over and the kids do not believe. . . . Our homeboy CLINTON SPARKS has been holding it down on Eminem’s Shade 45 satellite-radio channel; now he’s teaming with Slim Shady for a summer mix tape. Look for The Anger Management Tour III / Shade 45 on a street corner near you. Every year, indie-metal kids pack up their parents’ cars and bolt to the annual New Jersey throwdown known as HELLFEST. This summer, the five-stage extravaganza goes down August 19-21 at Sovereign Bank Arena in Trenton, and though the complete line-up hasn’t been announced, New England is already well represented, with the ACACIA STRAIN, CONVERGE, RAMALLAH, the RED CHORD, HATEBREED, RECEIVING END OF SIRENS, and Connecticut’s WITH HONOR playing alongside
Carly Carioli can be reached at ccarioli@phx.com; Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero@phx.com.
Nile, Sick of It All, Terror, recent RCA signees Anti-Flag, Rise Against, and a reunited Youth of Today. Keep updated at hellfest.com. . . . The aforementioned WITH HONOR are hanging with Brian McTernan (Thrice, Hot Water Music, Cave In, Reach the Sky) at his Maryland-based Salad Days Studios and recording This Is Our Revenge, the follow-up to Heart Means Everything (Stillborn); it’s set for October 18 on Victory Records. . . . CONVERGE have posted a rare track — “Wolves at My Door,” previously available only on the vinyl of You Fail Me (Deathwish, Inc.) — at myspace.com/converge. And Converge guitarist Nate Newton’s side project DOOMRIDERS have posted an MP3 for the title track of their forthcoming Black Thunder; visit deathwishinc.com or myspace.com/doomriders.
Chris Rucker is the host of New England Product, which airs Sundays from 9 to 10 p.m. on WFNX 101.7 FM.