Ten se nejlip má! Right, Peter Griffin?

Good translation is an art, and Google Translate is, well, a fart. It stinks, especially with so-called minor languages, meaning languages not spoken by a lot of people. Like Czech. Admittedly a difficult language that, despite years of study, I have never been able to master. My latest study strategy is to download American television shows, like "Family Guy," with Czech subtitles. That way I get to learn interesting words that you'll find nowhere in standard grammars, like how to call someone a fatass, which, for the record, is tlustoprde ... if you can believe what you read, which, after reading the translation for the theme song, became a bit of a leap of faith — almost as much as taking directions from Google Maps.

Dagmar: No reason to get bugged

The swarm of Dagmar fans is undoubtedly bugged-but-not-especially-surprised by the news that there’s still nothing behind Door No. 3, the much-anticipated, long-promised third edition of  what we like to call Jim Bauer's Insect Chronicles. You know? Depressed-boy-meets-insect-goddess. A stirring, of sorts. Issues arise and, and ... and taking a dramatic turn on the follow-up, Door No. 2, buzzing toward reality, including what happens to the real-life band and and .... And Dagmar, the Beverly-based, New York-hardened band fronted by Bauer and lit up, like a lightning bug, by Meghan McGeary, with her goggles, flight gear, cute little wings and soaring voice ... the band has been, um, let’s say a little optimistic about getting that third disc into our grubby little hands for a while now, so, as Bauer admits on the band’s web, there’s no particular reason to believe them now that the album is almost done. No, really, it is.  But there is good news on the Dagmar —  or, as Stephen Colbert might have it, Dagmarish —  front, as “The Blue Flower,”  a bit of musical theater that combines pre-war Berlin cabaret decadence  and ... well, country and western lyricism hits the stage. No? Think Weill working with Merle Haggard rather than Brecht. American Repertory Theater will be taking the production around the block as part of its new season, right about the time that the playwrights — the husband-and-wife team of Jim and Ruth Bauer — set up shop as visiting artists at Harvard.

Lots of interesting things about this show. It was indirectly responsible for the formation of Dagmar, putting Bauer and McGeary together for the first time, when the one-who-would-become Insect Goddess joined the Blue Flower cast in 2001. It was picked for the first New York Music Theatre Festival in 2004 and was a finalist for the 2005 American Academy of Arts & Letters Richard Rodgers Award, but with seven actors, a tech-heavy video component — “and no commercial potential,” Bauer adds — the project ultimately collapsed of its own artistic weight. Which was fine. Bauer was eager to get back to music. The show also introduced the world to Babblespeak, or, as Bauer sometimes calls it, “Maxperanto.” It sounds vaguely German, but it is a completely made-up language. It’s his nod to the Dadaists, who concluded — accurately, it turns out — that language has become so completely corrupted that it is nearly useless as a vehicle for communication. On “Door No. 1,” Bauer sings “Babylon,” a gritty blues number, in Maxperanto. Sometimes during interviews, when asked for an explanation, he gives long, complex answers in the made-up tongue, with McGeary translating.

The show will run from  Dec. 2 to Jan. 8 at ART’s Loeb Drama Center. The new album should be done by then. No, really! Besides, if you need to scratch that Dagmar jones, you can check them out Memorial Day weekend at In a Pig’s Eye, 148 Derby St., Salem. The Dagmar Duo will perform from 9 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. May 29. There’s no cover, but they’ll be passing around the hat. Hey, even insects have to eat.  Questions? Check out Dagmar’s web or call 978.741.4436.

Detouring into reggae

You never know, exactly, what you’re going to get when Gary Shane and the Detour pulls into town. The band, which scored several big hits in the power pop days of those lazy, crazy eighties, is a, um, constantly shifting musical paradigm propelled by a virtual musical kaleidoscope of local talent. So it should be no big surprise to anyone to see a couple of unfamiliar names on the roster for the Return of Gary Shane and the Detour show coming up at Stone Soup Cafe, an Ipswich venue that has seen more than its share of (re)incarnations. This time out, Shane will be backed up by Granite State guitarist Dennis Monroe, who has been a constant in the post-2000 revival of the band; drummer Peter Gordon, bassist Eric Bistany and Richard Pierce on harmonica. They’ll be doing “the same old rock and roll thing,” says Shane — playing hits like the reggae-tinged “Shadow World” and “Johnny’s Coaltrain,” both of which made huge splashes on local and national charts back in the day.

But the interesting thing about the show, which is being billed as “The Return of Gary Shane and the Detour,” is the fact that the Detour, in fact, is the opening act. At some point, and it’s still a little loosey-goosey at this point, the Detour will shift gears — and personalities — and become Imojah and the Skylight Band. That will happen just as soon as Jamaica-born singer Wade Dyce shows up. He’s the real deal, a singer who made his bones, musically, on the island with Cultural Roots, which released four albums in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Shane met Wade, now a Salem resident, in the Shadow World of real life, in the hallways of North Shore Community College — actually singing him a tune in the hallway — and “got a real education” and a “burning yearning” for reggae from him. Since then, they’ve done a couple of benefit concerts for Haiti relief efforts, at Great Scotts, in Allston and at Blackburn Performing Arts, and a fundraiser for Whole Foods.

Expect the old Luciano song “Sweep over my Soul,” expect a cover of the Road Apples hit “Let’s Live Together.” After that, well, who knows? The concert starts at 8 p.m. April 17 at Stone Soup Cafe, 141 High St., Ipswich. For more information, call 978.356.4222.

 

Beyond NSMT: A new troup in Gloucester

I know I should be happy when an art venues survives or, in the case of North Shore Music Theatre, is wrestled from its dirt nap — even if it hasn’t put on a show I find even remotely interesting in ... well, ever? And maybe I am. Way down, deep inside. But, more than anything, the news that somebody was able to con the bank out of $3.6 million and is dumping it into a Dunham Road venue that seemingly met its maker last year after a prolonged, agonizing porcelain swirly dance (a failure as much of imagination as finances, always an issue in corporate arts and mass-produced culture) underlines the importance of living wills and do-not-resuscitate orders, as well as the need for good aim and velocity when working with wooden stakes. And what’s going to save the old Music Tent this time around, you ask? You know, the same overproduced, overpriced dog food that the pup just won’t go near. They’re calling them time-tested musicals, we call it (yawwwwn) the same old thing — brilliantly repackaged, I’m sure, just like the old theater itself.

We wish them well as we cluck our tongues, but we are way more intrigued by the theater news up the road a piece from the Garden City, in Gloucester, Fishtown (Does every community around here have a nickname?), where Cape Ann Theater Collaborative, the new kid in town, is about to launch its first season, one that is as intriguing as NSMT’s is flat and predictable — and, from the look of it, very little in the way of song and dance. Thank God. And probably none of the bells and whistles either. They open March 19 with “The Weir” by Irish playwright Conor McPherson. The play is set in a small pub in rural Ireland, where local men swap spooky stories in an attempt to impress a young woman who recently moved into a nearby “haunted” house. The tables are soon turned when she tells a tale of her own.

They’ll follow that up next month with, if you can believe it, the largely forgotten but ultimately riveting lyrical “Effects of Gamma Rays on Man in the Moon Marigolds,” an unflinching look at dysfunctional family life in a home destroyed by booze, probably best remembered for its 1972 big-screen adaptation with Joanne Woodward as the boozy, bleary Beatrice. How it translates across the decades, we’ll see. The company will also stage ”The Ocean of Technology,” a new piece by the improv group the Fish Schticks in the fall.

The company was founded in January by Michael McNamara, Susan Frey, Pauline Miceli and Pat Maloney Brown. The idea is to keep the focus local and the productions affordable — and, by building a season in the shadows of Gloucester Stage’s dark months, supporting year-round theater on the island.

What? Yeah, yeah. We love North Shore Music(al) Theater. It really is an institution. Blah, blah.

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Cape Ann Theater Collaborative will stage “The Weir” by Irish playwright Conor McPherson, at 7:30 p.m. March 19-20 and 26-27, and at 2 p.m. March 21 and 28 at Gorton Theater, 267 E. Main St., Gloucester. The cast includes David McCaleb, Michael McNamara, Rory O’Connor, Michael O’Leary and Kierstin Searcy. Dublin native Pauline Miceli directs. Tickets are $15. Info: 978.879.3172.

Musical Mystery Tour: Mendelssohn's "Fantasy and Variations"

It’s not often that smaller pieces grab all the attention — especially when the centerpiece of the performance is Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, traditionally an audience favorite. But that’s exactly what’s happening this month with Cape Ann Symphony. The program includes an historical curiosity, an unusual piece for two pianos and orchestra that was written, in part, by a major classical composer, a piece that vanished, pretty much without a trace, resurfacing 176 years later, after getting what amounts to major reconstructive surgery, reassembled after a major musical forensic workup — then getting a premiere half a world away (in Texas, of all places) and hitting the road for its East Coast coming out party with the Gloucester-based orchestra. Adding to the mystery of the rather breathlessly named “Fantasy and Variations for Two Pianos and Orchestra on the Gypsy March from Weber’s ‘Preziosa.’” is the fact that it was written with two endings, both of which will be played during the March 28 performance, without fanfare, without much in the way of comment, and letting the audience know which of the composers wrote which ending — or even, with any certainty, for that matter, which ending was actually used.

“Fantasy and Variations” was a one-of-a-kind collaboration between Felix Mendelssohn and Ignaz Mocheles, a composer “now largely forgotten, but someone with a pretty good reputation in his day and as big as Mendelssohn,” says Kiyoshi Tamagawa, pictured, left, the Southwestern University pianist who premiered the piece with the Austin Civic Orchestra a year ago. They were pals, together in London for a benefit concert in London in 1833, and decided they should do something together. The path of least resistance, especially when you’re talking about creative people with large egos and certain ideas of how things should be done, would be writing variations for piano and orchestra, allowing them to work together — and apart — at the same time.

They settled on “Gypsy March,” from Carl Maria von Weber’s “Preziosa,” incidental music for a play of the same name, essentially a retelling of “Novellas ejemplares,” a series of short post-Quixote stories by Cervantes. They composed four variations on the theme — Mendelssohn writing the first two, Mocheles the rest — in less than two weeks. Contemporary accounts say the performance, with Mendelssohn himself playing piano, was a rousing success. And that was the first and last time the piece was performed as such — until 2009, eight years after J. Michael Cooper, a musicologist and Mendelssohn scholar based at Southwestern, got his hands on the original — if frustratingly incomplete — documents.

The original piano parts were never published. Mendlessohn left the original score with Moscheles, who published an arrangement for two pianos without an orchestra the following year — thoroughly irritating Mendelssohn, because “ he scarcely recognized the music,” says musicologist John Michael Cooper, also of Southwestern University. The work has been performed and published in that version, often with Mendelssohn himself credited as the main author. The score — and with two separate versions of the finale — and various scraps of paper on which the two pianists had worked out their own parts, remained in Moscheles’s possession until his death, ultimately ending up in the papers of Russian piano virtuoso Anton Rubinstein, who donated it in the late 1800s to the Library of the St. Petersburg Conservatory. There it remained until 2003, when Cooper — author of a virtual library shelf of material on the composer, including “Mendelssohn, Goethe, and the Walpurgis Night: The Heathen Muse in Western Europe, 1750-1900,” “Mendelssohn’s ‘Italian’ Symphony,” “The Mendelssohns: Their Music in History,” and “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy: A Guide to Research” — discovered the papers. Cooper and Jonathan Bellman, a leading authority on the so-called Hungarian Gypsy style that colors the work’s central theme, reconstructed the piano parts. That is what Cape Ann Symphony will be playing. The piece shows “what the piano parts might have sounded like,” Tamagawa says during a recent interview from his home in an unusually cold and wet Texas. “Nobody knows for sure what they actually played.”

The sound of music
So what’s it like? It’s a short piece, running about 15 minutes. Tamagawa, who has lived in Texas since the 1980s, but is from Connecticut and still considers New England his home — “so it’s always nice to get back,” he says — compares the work to jazz singers covering a standard, as a vehicle to putting their stuff on display, a chance to show off their chops. It has a lot of flash — “a combination of virtuosity and bombast,” says Tamagawa. “It’s very entertaining and not meant to be especially serious.”

“It’s a fun piece,” says Yoichi Udagawa, conductor and music director of Cape Ann Symphony — and the Melrose and Quincy symphony orchestras and faculty member at Boston Conservatory, where he teaches conducting. “It’s very virtuosic, there are a lot of notes. It doesn’t pretend to be deep. It requires a lot of flash ... It’s fun. Which is not to say that fun can’t be serious. The overall mood is upbeat.”

Playing Mocheles to Tamagawa’s Mendelssohn will be Jun Tuguchi, a “phenomenal player,” says Udagawa, “and a remarkable performer who’s able to play in any style.” The New England Conservatory-trained pianist last played with Cape Ann Symphony five years ago, performing Ravel’s Concerto in G major.

They’ll play both endings at the Cape Ann performance — closing with one, backing up and playing the second. Which one will go first, the Mendelssohn or the Mocheles? And which ending does the man with the baton prefer? “I won’t tell,” says Udagawa. “Both are good endings. Actually, the differences are subtle,” says Tamagawa.

The “undiscovered” Mendelssohn, as it is being billed, will be sandwiched between Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. “It’s very exciting to play a new piece,” says Udagawa, but the conductor also likes to pair unknown and well-known pieces, like this as a way of “finding a new balance.”

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Pianists Kiyoshi Tamagawa and Jun Tuguchi join Cape Ann Symphony for the East Coast premiere of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Fantasy and Variations for Two Pianos” at 2 p.m. March 28 at Fuller Auditorium, Blackburn Circle, Route 128, Gloucester. Also on the program, will be Mozart’s Don Giovanni Overture and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7. Yoichi Udagawa conducts. Tickets are $30 for adults, $25 for seniors, $20 for college students, free for children under 18 years old. Information: 978-281-0543 or capeannsymphony.com. .

Ex-Roadsteamer guitarist playing the blues

By J. C. Lockwood
Sunday morning. Peter Tentindo's on the phone, croaking out an apology about something, it's hard to tell what exactly ... Oh, wait. It's about his croaking: The former Robbie Roadsteamer guitarist blew out his voice after four weekend shows with Britannica, the classic rock outfit fronted by "Grateful" Ted Solovikos.

Luckily for the Danvers axeman, the throat issue should have no impact on his next big gig — a performance that does not require any singing. Or any other musicians, for that matter. No, it's not a solo instrumental show. Not exactly. It's not even really a concert. And it pays way better than most shows. He's earned a spot in Round 2, the district level, of Guitar Center's King of the Blues competition. It's still a long road to the Hollywood House of Blues finals, but if he gets through this round and the next, he's got a shot at a $25,000 payday. And endorsement deals. And national ink. And gear. And bragging rights for being "the nation's top undiscovered blues guitarist."

Yeah, there's a lot riding on one short, tense gig that takes place under some pretty unnatural circumstances. You get five minutes to set up, you play your part against a pre-recorded backing track, you get out of the way so the next guy can crash through his "set" and then you wait for a three-member panel to give its marks, deciding whether you move on to the next round. "It's pretty nerve-racking," says Tentindo, who actually got his start in a similar, if significantly less profitable showdown eight years ago, as a high school student, when he won the Almost Famous: Next Generation of Guitar" competition — and a chance to play at the old House of Blues in Cambridge. The tune that got him there was an early version of his guitar instrumental "Reflections," which was on his post-high school solo album.

He's lived in Danvers all his life. Well, there was the short time in Revere, but we don't count that. His father Ken Tentindo was a musician, who played guitar in the Wildkats, a band that made a lot of local noise during the 1960s. Peter Tentino got his first guitar when he was 10 years old and learned his way around the instrument. He grabbed the spotlight during the "Almost Famous" competition, then released "Reflections," shortly after graduating from Danvers High School. He moved on to Salem State College, where, despite his rocker ambitions, he broadened his musical horizons, playing in the college jazz ensemble, and grabbed academic accolades, like the President's Art Scholarship and Creative Arts Award. Then in 2005, he landed a slot playing guitar with Robbie Roadsteamer, a bizarre musical hybrid that combined music, comedy and something approaching theater, but with a World Wide Wrestling kind of attitude — an often rude, usually hysterical and histrionic parody metalband blowout fronted by a Louis Robert Potylo, coincidently another Oniontown resident. It was a wild, two-year ride for Tentindo. He performed on, and wrote for, two Roadsteamer albums ("Postcards from the Den of Failures" in 2006 and "I'll Be at Your Funeral" in 2007) and played some high-profile gigs, like the Warpred tour. It was his first real band. "It really opened my eyes," he says. "I learned how to be a performer, but, more importantly, I learned that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my life."

Then last year, without warning, Roadsteamer came to an abrupt and, considering the frontman's outrageous, high-decibel personality, quiet end, calling it quits last year without a public word of explanation. Even Tentindo doesn't have a clear idea what happened exactly, saying it's possible that Potylo finally grew weary of the character. The guitarist surveyed the post-Roadsteamer environment, trying to plot his next move, when he ran into Solovikos at an open mike at Mandrake Bistro in Beverly. "Something clicked," says Tentindo, who also teaches guitar and piano at the Music & Dance Connection in Danvers. Best known for his work with Smuggler, the 1980s North Shore rock band that collapsed just after landing a big record deal, Solovikos invited Tentindo to join Britannica, his new band, which focuses on British Invasion covers, but does some original material as well. Formed last year, the band has been playing out regularly and will be featured during Salem's Haunted Happenings for the second year running.

But right now Tentindo is focusing on two things: One, getting his voice back. And, two, locking up the district finals for the King of the Blues gig, which take place next week in Boston. He says he's not nervous about the competition, despite its stakes. "I'll do my best," he says. "What happens happens. I'm confident. I'm ready to do this."

JUST THE FACTS: Peter Tentindo will perform in the district finals of the King of the Blues competition September 30 at the Guitar Center, 1255 Boylston St, Boston. The competition starts at 7 p.m. Performance times are determined by a drawing just before the music begins. For more information, call (617) 247-1389. For more information about Tentindo, log onto myspace.com/petertentindo

Cutthroat looks beyond the North Shore

Okay, so here's the way they look at it: The band has been blowing out eardrums and offending people in fun and interesting ways for about eight years now and has scored some pretty big successes along the way — especially as a live act. But time's come to face facts: Things just aren't happening on the North Shore and it's time to deal with that inescapable fact. So when Captain Cutthroat takes the stage this week at Dodge Street, it could very well be the last time the hard-edged, hard-working and, let's not sugar-coat it, borderline psychotic Salem rockers play a local show, according to frontman Phil DeSisto, who has already blown town.

So this is the way it's gonna go: Cutthroat will play Aug. 7 at Dodge Street in Salem, previewing all the songs that will be on "Maciste," its upcoming album. In October, they're taking off to San Francisco to record the album — at Sharkbite Studio with Billy Anderson, the guy behind albums by Mr. Bungle and the Melvins, among others, in the producer's chair. They've got a couple of dates lined up, including a show at the notorious Viper Room in Los Angeles and a Halloween show in San Francisco, probably the only other location in the United States that could give Salem a run for its money in Halloween Weird. When they get back, the band will start booking East Coast dates to promote the album, then start planning a European tour with the German rock band — and fellow 2006 Emergenza Festival finalists — that goes by the acronym MBWTEYP, probably a good thing since the name is, um, edgy? My Baby Wants to Eat Your Pussy.

Scheduled for release in late fall, “Maciste” takes its name from a Hercules-like character who first appears in a 1914 Italian silent movie, but he's in dozens of films, all of which deal in the big mythic three: black arts, evil rulers and super-hot love interests who need rescuing and loving, not necessarily in that order. In the film DeSisto saw, the dude ends up in Hell and charms the pants off everyone, including the devil. Gotta love that.

Like the band’s eponymous 2007 debut, “Maciste” will be a wild ride of sounds and styles, from “Waiting to Burn, a fairly straightforward rocker born of breakup, to “The Opening of Mouths” (Get your mind out of the gutter. it’s about the final process of the Egyptian mummification ritual) which DeSisto describes as “probably the heaviest thing we’ve ever done,” hinting at Sabbath or, maybe, Neurosis, another Anderson-produced act whose sound, like Cutthroat’s, bleeds across styles: in their case, from hardcore and doom to ambient and industrial.

Captain Cutthroat has been described as providing the soundtrack for an ADD generation, music for people with short attention spans and a never-ending jones for visual and sonic distractions — and seemingly odd musical departures that make sense only within the context of the band’s odd, explosive unformula. Which is probably the only way you could have an album with both soul-crushing weight, like “Opening of the Mouth,” and what DeSisto describes as “a swing tune” called “Dakota,” inspired by a magazine article (“I’m a National Geographic junkie,” the singer says.) about a suddenly abandoned town. The tune will feature a guest appearance by Morphine saxophonist Dana Colley.

Arrrrrrg!
Cutthroat’s been hitting it in one form or another since 2002, playing local haunts and building a reputation as a tough-as-nails live act. In late 2005, the band entered the Emergenza Festival as a way to boost its profile. and did it, demolishing the competition and earning a slot for the final showdown in Rothenburg, Germany in 2006. Their debut album with all the crowd favorites, like “Horror Song” and “Deep in the Freaks,” followed. There have been some big shows since, but the band has been unable to break out of its North Shore slump and, ultimately, break through. They’re hoping the new record, with Anderson as producer, will help them kick down a few more doors and break out of what they see as a regional rut. That’s why the band will be focusing on away dates — and they’re telling local fans to chill.

"Nothing personal,” says DeSisto. “It's time to move on. We can't just sit around here any more. We’ve got to make it happen.”

JUST THE FACTS, MAN: Captain Cutthroat will play all the songs from "Maciste," its new album, Aug. 7 at Dodge Street Bar & Grille, 7 Dodge St., Salem. Ho-Ag and Hara Kiri open. This is Cutthroat's last local show scheduled for the year. For more information about the gig, call 978-745-0139. For more information about the band, click here.