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Re: [bomp] Re: review of Brett Milano's book
The only thing Count Viglione
did for Boston was release Unnatural Axe's first ep ..
I know of no other record that he released that holds any weight in the city
..
----- Origina
l Message -----
From: "Crawdaddy Simon" <crawdaddy.simon@sympatico.ca>
To: <bomp@xnet2.com>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 5:54 PM
Subject: [bomp] Re: review of Brett Milano's book
>
> Seriously, does anybody outside of Viglione himself give more than half a
> fuck about most of the people he mentions?
>
>
>> This book is his version of the Boston music scene
>
> Whose version is it gonna be, he wrote the damn thing.
>
>
>> Didi Stewart & The Amplifiers(one mention of Didi that I
>> could find)
>
> Only one mention of Didi? Oh well that's it, count me out then.
>
>
>> If you want to read about "Brett Milano's Favorite
>> Boston Rock & Roll Bands" - The Pixies, Mission of
>> Burma, The Lyres and a few more essays from the Milano
>> scrapbook, the list is $24.95.
>
> But who's gonna buy a book about Jon Butcher's Axis & Johanna Wild bands,
> Farrenheit, Girls Night Out or Fox Pass outside of Boston, let alone
> publish one in the first place? I dig Andy Pratt, but I'm not so out of
> touch as to believe he matters more than Burma in 2007.
>
>
>> If Mission Of Burma are featured, yet leader Roger Miller
>> hailed from Ann Arbor, why couldn't Milano have done
>> pages and pages on other huge figures
>> like Al Kooper, Stones producer Jimmy Miller, Herb
>> Reed of The Platters and author of Grammy winning song
>> "A Natural Man" and "Sunny" Bobby Hebb
>> who lived in the Rockport area for decades.
>
> So kinda like a book-length version of Viglione's consistently unreadable
> All-Music Guide reviews?
>
>
>> If you're
>> looking for extensive information on Ron Scarlett,
>> Childhood, Little Joe Cook (with a
>> world's record number of appearances at The Cantab),
>> Mickey Bliss, John Kalishes (of Susan and the Ben Orr
>> Band), Jonzun Crew/Peter Wolf/New Kids
>> On The Block guitarist Tony Rocks, Quill (a sentence
>> and a half or so), Shane Champagne, Gary Shane & The
>> Detour, Pure & Easy Records and other key figures
>
> Yeah... no.
>
> CS
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <mingus2225@aol.com>
> To: <bomp@xnet2.com>
> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 4:39 PM
> Subject: Re: [bomp] review of Brett Milano's book
>
>
>>
>> Wow, what a caustic and bitter review.
>>
>> I can understand having issues with Milano's book,
>> but that "review" is nothing but an all-out attack.
>>
>> "HE DIDN'T WRITE THE BOOK I WOULD HAVE WROTE WAHHHH"
>>
>> Go write your own book, Joe.
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Louis Shukat <louis_shukat@yahoo.com>
>> To: bomp@xnet2.com
>> Sent: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 4:34 pm
>> Subject: [bomp] review of Brett Milano's book
>>
>>
>>
>> from our friend Joe
>>
>>
>> REVIEW:
>>
>>
>>
>> Brett Milano is passionate about the music he likes,
>> but "The Sound Of Our Town: A History Of Boston Rock &
>> Roll" (Commonwealth Editions, 2007) is more about
>> Milano's tastes than what actually transpired. This
>> book is his version of the Boston music scene, and
>> doesn't even scratch the tip of theiceberg.
>>
>> Looking for information on the highly influential
>> Wayne Wadhams, Berklee Professor and producer of Full
>> Circle, singer in The Fifth Estate? Don't look here.
>> There should be a lot more about Moulty & The
>> Barbarians, there's nothing I could find about Jon
>> Butcher's Axis & Johanna Wild bands, Farrenheit (one
>> mention of Charlie Farren?), Girls Night Out, Didi
>> Stewart & The Amplifiers(one mention of Didi that I
>> could find), MCA artist The Rings, two mentions of Fox
>> Pass - nothing on Fox Pass founder Jon Macey who went
>> on to produce demos for Elektra Records'. Maxanne
>> Sartori is not discussed and with only two references
>> to Sartori - a powerful scenemaker responsible for
>> helping Billy Squier, Aerosmith, The
>> Cars, Fox Pass...in fact, why is Squier and his band
>> Piper merely glossed over?
>>
>> If you want to read about "Brett Milano's Favorite
>> Boston Rock & Roll Bands" - The Pixies, Mission of
>> Burma, The Lyres and a few more essays from the Milano
>> scrapbook, the list is $24.95. If you want to read an
>> objective overview of the Boston Music Scene just put
>> "Boston Music Scene" in google, you'll get much better
>> results. Brett is a much better
>> writer than this and needed to be more objective and
>> less tunnel-vision. This is hardly "The Sound Of Our
>> Town" and by leaving so many important individuals
>> out, or putting other acts higher up on the
>> ladder, Milano does a great disservice to the scene he
>> is claiming to document. There are thousands of
>> hours of interviews on audio and videotape and tens of
>> thousands of articles on the Boston area scene that
>> Milano could have accessed if he really wanted to
>> write "a history of Boston Rock & Roll". That he
>> failed to do put the elbow grease into this
>> collection of thoughts is an insult to the thousands
>> of hard-working musicians who built the scene long
>> before Brett Milano joined the party after-the-fact.
>> A critical moment in scene history, when The
>> Neighborhoods defected from original manager Richard
>> Nolan, lead singer of Third Rail, is not even
>> mentioned. Nolan wrote a lengthy article for
>> Boston's THE REAL PAPER "I created Frankenstein's
>> Monster". It is harrowing stuff, and it is that
>> information that is missing in this text.
>>
>> But far worse, after the few pages on The
>> Neighborhoods the unfocused Brett Milano writes a
>> paragraph about The Fools - a band that can
>> still out-draw and out-sell The Neighborhoods. So
>> this material isn't about what the community wants or
>> what happened in real time in 1975, 1976, 1980, 1985,
>> it is only what Brett wants to discuss and put his
>> blessing on. There's no doubt that Maxanne Sartori
>> was more important to the launching of the Boston
>> music scene than Oedipus Hyson, a man who -
>> like Milano - jumped on later and capitalized on the
>> hard work of others, but Milano goes to Hyson instead
>> of Sartori for his information. A better
>> source would have been the wife of a member of Blue
>> Oyster Cult, Deborah Frost, who wrote for New York
>> Rocker and had a punk show before Oedipus on
>> the rival station WHRB (Oedipus was on WMBR). With so
>> much missing and much too much revisionist history
>> don't expect Volume 2 because it is obvious Mr. Milano
>> thinks he has the final word on the Boston scene. If
>> Mission Of Burma are featured, yet leader Roger Miller
>> hailed from Ann Arbor, why couldn't Milano have done
>> pages and pages on other huge figures
>> like Al Kooper, Stones producer Jimmy Miller, Herb
>> Reed of The Platters and author of Grammy winning song
>> "A Natural Man" and "Sunny" Bobby Hebb
>> who lived in the Rockport area for decades. Scruffy
>> The Cat and The Neats were fun, but hardly as
>> influential as Brian Maes and RTZ (featuring Brad
>> Delp and Barry Goudreau of the band Boston). If you're
>> looking for extensive information on Ron Scarlett,
>> Childhood, Little Joe Cook (with a
>> world's record number of appearances at The Cantab),
>> Mickey Bliss, John Kalishes (of Susan and the Ben Orr
>> Band), Jonzun Crew/Peter Wolf/New Kids
>> On The Block guitarist Tony Rocks, Quill (a sentence
>> and a half or so), Shane Champagne, Gary Shane & The
>> Detour, Pure & Easy Records and other key figures
>> there's always Wikipedia. The New York Dolls get
>> more coverage than the band New England. Don't let
>> Milano try to tell you that Hirsh Gardner, Gary Shea &
>> John Fannon were too mainstream because the
>> author does cover the band Boston which was just as
>> arena rock as New England.
>>
>> Andy Pratt gets a mention but Clint Conley gets pages
>> and pages and pages.
>>
>> Is Milano trying to pass Clint Conley off as a bigger
>> star than Andy Pratt?
>>
>> How is that objective?
>>
>> Conspicuous In Their Absence is a play on an album by
>> Grace Slick's The
>> Great Society. It is a perfect title for Brett
>> Milano's revisionist
>> history of The Boston Rock & Roll Scene. It is a
>> travesty.
>>
>>
>> Thank God we have the internet
>> http://bostontheeighties.blogspot.com/2007/07/80s-boston-rock-roll.html
>>
>> --
>> Joe Viglione
>> p.o. box 2392
>> woburn, ma 01888
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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