Happy Riot Grrl Day, everybody

The mayor of Boston has declared April 9th Riot Grrl Day:

Joyce Linehan, the mayor’s Chief of Policy and Hanna’s longtime friend, will present Hanna with the proclamation at the event. According to Linehan,“[Kathleen’s agent] called me to see if I would introduce Kathleen, probably based on the fact that Kathleen, back in the day, used to stay at my house when bands came through town…We knew each other from the indie rock world.”

The proclamation, signed by Walsh himself, says that it is in part a reference to Hanna’s “Riot Grrrl Manifesto.” A portion of the document also details why the 20 year old manifesto continues to be pertinent today, stating, “The riot grrrl philosophy has never felt more relevant, with misogyny still rampant in many cultural spaces…”

It's not just Boston that needs this. With the lead letter in this week's NME asking why women are being groped at gigs in 2015, we need a worldwide - or at least a musicworldwide - Riot Grrl Day. We need every day to be a Riot Grrl Day.

"Your call is important to us..."

Boston (the American city, not the now-defunct Crosse And Blackwell pickle of the same name) is inviting local musicians to submit songs to be used as hold music for when people call.

It's a great idea, although risky for the bands who do take up the offer - surely the last thing you'd want to be is the guys who soundtrack a forty-five minute wait to complain about racoons in the bins?

Rolling Stone pretends to misunderstand that not all doctors are medical

When Rolling Stone put an alleged terrorist on its front cover to illustrate a perfectly reasonable current affairs story, there was an outrage-bundle so huge you could see it from eight miles away.

However, when Rolling Stone does this...:

As if he hadn't already proved it countless times with his surgically precise songwriting and the healing power of his gift for melody, Elvis Costello can now call himself a doctor of music.

... nobody seems bothered.

Despite the fact that Rolling Stone knows full well that while doctorates and medicine can overlap, they're not exclusive.

And despite the more pressing fact that "his surgically precise songwriting and the healing power of his gift for melody" is perhaps the worst sentence anyone has ever written about music, ever, in the history of ink and noise.

It is such an awful sentence that local police went round to check on the writer, James Sullivan, assuming that the words had been arranged as some sort of desperate cry for help. "It appeared at first" explained Sheriff Madeupski, "that Mr Sullivan was being held against his will and being forced to write about Mr Costello's honorary degree from a Boston school, and tried to signal this through his opening words. Upon investigation, though, it was discovered that he was merely being menaced by a tight deadline and a news story that had no real interest beyond a few alumni of the New England Conservatory."

Baseball Diamond knocks it out the park

It's been a tough week in Boston.

Things are starting to get back to normal, with baseball resuming yesterday evening. There's a tradition at the Red Sox of singing Sweet Caroline, and as a gesture of solidarity their rival teams had been singing the song as well this week. Last night, Neil Diamond turned up in Boston to join in:

Diamond’s rep tells The Hollywood Reporter as soon as the singer heard the Red Sox game was going to happen, he felt a need to be there. He took a red-eye flight with his wife, Katie McNeil, from Los Angeles to Boston and made his way to Fenway directly from the airport in time for the game's opening ceremony.

"I was humbled and honored to be in Boston and to be able to personally thank and express my gratitude to the first responders and law enforcement officers,” Diamond said through his rep,

A lovely, warm gesture at the end of a cold, hard week.

Boston bans the mosh pit

Boston Police seem to be setting out to recreate Footloose, only more messy. After a Flogging Molly gig at the House of Blues, the city has decided that there will be no more moshing in Boston:

According to police, 60 concertgoers engaged in an “aggressive mosh pit dance,” during which people were running and “colliding into each other,” including some who were “knocked to the ground.” No injuries were reported.

So that sounds like a pretty typical mosh pit. Sure, not to everyone's taste, but enter at your own risk, surely?

The cops, though, can't believe that security didn't intervene:

“Dancing is a First Amendment right, but the behavior itself is a violation, especially when it becomes dangerous and a public safety hazard,” Boston police spokeswoman Officer Nicole Grant said.

The city’s licensing board took the matter under advisement after a City Hall hearing yesterday, while the club was ordered to put up illuminated signs saying moshing is not allowed.

If they really want to get involved, couldn't they focus their energies on stopping people talking during the support band?

That sound? It's just weeping

Boston Public Health Commission has carried out a snap survey of local teenagers' reactions to Chris Brown's attack on Rihanna. If the Commission had been hoping to release a positive-sounding press release about how far we've come in public attitudes to domestic violence, they would be disappointed:

“Somehow young people have gotten the message that this is just part of a relationship,” said anti-violence advocate Deborah Collins-Gousby.

Of the 200 Boston youths (ages 12 to 19) surveyed last month, 51 percent said Chris Brown was responsible for the incident, 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible and 52 percent said both were to blame; 52 percent said the media was treating Brown unfairly; 44 percent said fighting was a normal part of a relationship; and a “significant” number said “Rihanna was destroying Chris Brown’s career.” Women blamed Rihanna as much as men did.

I'm not quite sure how 51 per cent can blame Brown, 46 per cent can blame Rihanna and then another 52 per cent can blame both of them. But since the responses defy all understanding, there's no reason why they shouldn't also defy mathematical logic too.

Glasvegas having some trouble

Glasvegas are reported as having cancelled their Boston gig; James is having troubles with their visas, apparently. It's not known if this is a tit-for-tat action following Busta Rhymes' problems getting into the UK.

Pipettes set Boston on fire

The Pipettes barely made it out alive (okay, had to cut short their set) in Boston last night when a monitor burst into flames. It was a charity gig, apparently. If only something half as interesting happens during the Woganthon tomorrow night...

The Ben Folds fight

Interesting scenes at this year's Boston Pops: Keith Lockhart was forced to suspend the Ben Folds performance as half-naked men wrestled in the audience. The Associated Press reports:

Witnesses said they heard a scream from the balcony, and the sound of chairs falling, then a second scream as the fight escalated.

"The first time there was a scream, Keith looked up that way but he kept going," audience member June MacIndoe told Boston's WHDH-TV. "Then about a minute and a half later...there was a big scream and you could hear chairs falling over and you could see them up there, fists going."

At that point, Lockhart stopped the performance for a couple of minues, she said. "He just stood there, you know, quiet."

Some might argue that a spot of mindless violence provides an entertaining diversion from a Ben Folds gig.

Delp death "suicide"

Texas police have ruled the death of Brad Delp, singer with Boston, a suicide. Coroners reports put the cause of death as carbon monoxide poisoning.

[Full obituary]

MORobit: Brad Delp

The lead singer of Boston, Brad Delp, has been found dead at New Hampshire home.

The Beatles were the galvanising force in Brad's life - he bought his first guitar after seeing the band on the Ed Sullivan Show; for the last thirteen years he'd been playing in a moptop tribute act called Beatlejuice

Delp joined the band after a period making the heating coils for Mr Coffee machines by day, and singing in Boston club bands by night. Winning the lead vocal role in an audition, Delp proved the crucial element in securing the band a record deal - previous attempts by Tom Scholz to gain interest in his band's demo tapes had come to nothing. Epic offered a deal, and although Scholz went along with a lot of the executive's demands - dumping original drummer Jim Masdea in favour of Sib Hashian; hiring bassist Fran Sheehan - he pulled the wool over their eyes where it mattered most to him. Ignoring their insistence that the debut be made in a proper studio, MIT grad-geek Scholz recorded almost all of 1976's Boston in his home studio.

Delp remained on board for 1978's Don't Look Back and - when founder member Barry Goudreau jumped ship to make a solo album - helped out there, too. Scholz was less than thrilled by CBS choosing to market the resulting album as "almost Boston". The bitterness and bad feeling dragged the band to the edge - Scholz claiming the label was trying to cut him out in a bid to up the band's workrate; CBS/Epic launching a lawsuit for breach of contract - but somehow Delp managed to remain onboard; keeping himself going by working on Keith Emerson's soundtrack for Best Revenge.

MCA bought the Boston contract and the third album, Third Stage, finally got an eventual official release in 1986. Some twenty years before it became a concept, Scholz took the decision to tour the record by playing it, track for track, in the order they appeared on vinyl; ahead of its time, the audience wasn't satisfied with an explanation that the songs formed a story that had to be told in a specific way. They just wanted the big numbers.

After the tour, Delp started to concentrate more on Goudreau's new band, RTZ (Return to Zero). Brad formally withdrew from Boston in 1991 when his tour commitments to RTZ would have made it hard for him to work with Scholz. The record company somehow forgot to mention during the promotional work that Delp wasn't on Walk On - fans only discovered that his voice (for most, the defintion of the band) was missing by peering at the credits on the inner sleeve after hearing the vocals of Fran Cosmo coming from their speakers.

Luckily for the band, Delp quit RTZ when their label, Giant let them down - rather than going through the hoops of signing for a new paymaster, Delp chose to stand down. This meant he was free to join the tour for Walk On, although space was also found for Cosmo. The dual-voice Boston that emerged would remain in place for 2002's Corporate America album.

The bivocaled band continued to tour - successfully - until last year when Fran Cosmo quit. Delp, once again, became the voice of Boston, working on a new album and planning for a tour later this year; appearing in Beatlejuice in between.

Police were called to Delp's home early yesterday afternoon by his fiancée Pamela Sullivan; he was dead when they arrived. Although the cops are describing the death as "untimely", their press statement rules out foul play:

On March 9, 2007 the Atkinson Police Department was requested to respond to Mr. Delp's residence for an untimely death.

Mr. Delp was apparently left alone in his home at his time of passing.

The cause of death is still under investigation at this time. There is no indication of foul play involved with the passing of Mr. Delp.

This case is still under investigation by the Atkinston Police Department and the New Hampshire Medical Examiners Office.

Delp had two children from a previous marriage; he was 55. Tributes in the first 24 hours after his death focused as much on the charitable works he performed in his community as on his musical career.