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Ukulele jam video. For reals.

If you read my Globe feature on the ukulele resurgence a week or so ago, you might wonder how the uke jam in Cambridge turned out. Well, no need to wonder:

BSO unveils iPhone app

The Boston Symphony Orchestra today unveiled its iPhone app, the BSO Media Center, which can be downloaded free from the iTunes store. Now, no matter where you go, you'll be able to find out immediately which concerts James Levine isn't conducting!

The app gives iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users access to the BSO, Boston Pops, and Tanglewood anywhere with "the latest updates, program notes, and comprehensive season schedules for all events, as well as special offers on tickets, merchandise, and digital music." You'll also be able to access the BSO’s award-winning Classical Companion, BSO and Pops podcasts and some WebTV and live audio streams. It doesn't look like direct ticket purchasing is in the cards at the moment, though.

Look around Symphony Hall on any given night and you'd figure it's the least-wired audience in town, just by the average age. But the orchestra has had success releasing concerts on its BSO Classics label for download. The app was  created for the BSO by Newton-based MobiLaurus.

New Pernice CD and "Sh*t My Rock Star Says"

We'll get to the book in a moment. The new Pernice Brothers CD, "Goodbye, Killer" drops June 15 and it's another gorgeous set of melodic rock and pop. Sunny on the surface, mordant underneath, always erudite: it's impossible to mistake Joe Pernice's voice and lyrics for anyone else's. When was the last time you heard an album that namechecks Ford Madox Ford and Leni Riefenstahl? My favorites are the jaunty title track and chiming rockers "Something For You" and "Fucking and Flowers." The anthemic "The Great Depression" is irresistibly catchy, although it's either about an actual depression or the worst girlfriend ever.

Once in a while Pernice gets too cute by half - a spoiled "Bechamel" as romantic metaphor - but that's kind of a trademark, actually. You have to go too far regularly to get to a classic like, "I'd kiss your ass to kiss your ass again" (in the twangy, broken-hearted "Newport News"). Pernice sings the same way - occasionally there's a falsetto note he can't quite hold, as on the refrains in "The Great Depression," but somehow that too makes it all work.

My previous favorite Pernice disc was "Discover A Lovelier You," which for all its varied sounds seemed to be of a single dreamy mood. "Goodbye, Killer" reminds me more of "Revolver," which I've also been listening to a lot since I got the Beatles box - a collection of disparate songs held together by the voices and guitar sounds. Love the guitar work all over the place by Pernice and  James Walbourne (also of the Pretenders), especially the electrics on the throbbing "Jacqueline Susann" and the slide on the title track, which sounds like it dropped off a Rod Stewart album circa "Gasoline Alley."

(Photo: Pernice, center, with bandmates Ric Menck and Walbourne. Not shown: Bob Pernice, known as "Other Pernice." Pic by Mike Ritter.)

Referencing other artists is a rock critic's crutch of course. But Pernice keeps reminding me of Elvis Costello, and not just because of the glasses and (sometimes) beard, or the way he can go from the new wave of "Jacqueline Susann" to the bucolic country of "We Love The Stage." It's the way he produces pretty sounds that seem to curdle when you hear what he's actually saying. Like Costello, Pernice seems to enjoy coming off as a misanthrope. And like Costello, you get the sense that all the bristly wordplay is a romantic's defense mechanism, and once or twice an album the armor drops. Anyone who protests so eloquently that he's not "The Loving Kind" probably doth protest too much.

But then again.

Let us now consider "Pernice To Me," the paperback released simultaneously with the CD.

The slim volume comes from Ashmont Books, the publishing arm of Dorchester's Ashmont Records, both of which are basically Pernice and the one-woman conglomerate known as Boston publicist Joyce Linehan, who also serves as Pernice's manager. "Pernice To Me" - which I and other Linehan fans have been demanding for many months - recounts the communications between the pair, documented over time by Linehan via the @ashmont twitter account. They share the author credit.

Example:"Pernice to Me: We're touring in YOUR car? All I can say is, that piece-of-shit lezmobile better not break down. And I'm driving." (A footnote in the book explains that Linehan does drive a Subaru, although she is not a lesbian.)

No less an authority than critic Robert Christgau says that the book is a kind of music journalism, offering "little glimpses into the highly unglamorous life of an indie-rock lifer." Christgau seems to think it's the life that's given Pernice the nasty mouth. I don't know Pernice, but I have to figure it's part performance, a way of amusing himself via the caricature of an infantile, egomaniacal, misogynistic, utterly self-centered artist. Because if it was all for real, Linehan would have (justifiably) killed him by now.

"Pernice to me: People keep saying I'm a curmudgeon. It's like you invented this character. Tweet that."

It's a hilarious postmodern Punch and Judy act. And give Linehan credit: the twitter stream preceded @shitmydadsays by months, and that's now going to be a sitcom starring William Shatner as dad. What delicious irony it would be if Pernice's indie-rock life was glammed up by a "Shit My Rock Star Says" sitcom based on "Pernice to Me." Maybe if Costello isn't too busy with his talk show...

Tasty breakfast links!

The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis is becoming a rent-a-center, according to a fascinating Edgers p1 piece in the Globe today. ... Louise dug Actors' Shakespeare Project's production of the rarely seen "Timon of Athens," which I wrote about last week. ... JC Lockwood is worth reading on Kristen Miller's new album, "Walk." ... A fascinating, um, real estate brief. Really. ... And oh, yeah, my Friday theater column, about the Stoneham Theatre. ... In Maine, they're hoping the movie about the Wyeth family (Andrew et al) will be made there. ... Big gallery expansion at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. ... phew, enuf.

Music 2.0: Lots of brainpower getting together to figure it out

Well, actually the event title is "Music 2.0: Tools + Tech for Musicians, Marketers + Managers." It's being held Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Microsoft N.E.R.D. Center at 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142 (directions: http://microsoftcambridge.com). It's the brainchild of friend-of-HubArts Charles McEnerney, best known as host and  Producer of Well-Rounded Radio (http://wellroundedradio.net + @wellroundedradi), and founder of Musicians for Music 2.0 ( http://musiciansformusic2.com + @musicians4music ). It's about figuring out how to thrive in the brave new world of music marketing and distribution, to connect musicians of all stripes with tools and technologies to help them thrive. Check some of the guests who'll be doing 10-minute presentations and taking questions:

* Philip G. Antoniades, President, Founder, Drummer, Nimbit, Inc. http://nimbit.com
* Nate Aune + Mike O'Neill, Co-Founder, Audience.fm, http://audience.fm
* C. Allen Bargfrede, Author, Music Law in the Digital Age, Assistant Professor, Music Business/Management, Berklee College of Music
* Joe Berkovitz, President, Noteflight LLC, http://www.noteflight.com
* Brandon Casci, Founder, Loudcaster, http://loudcaster.com
* Jason Evanish, Customer Development Manager, http://oneforty.com
* Kabir Hemrajani, Founder, RiotVine, http://riotvine.com

OK, that's just the first like, third of the list. Interested? Go here to RSVP. Did I mention it's free? And there will be beer? And the beer is free too?

Boston Pops' Kennedy tribute with DeNiro will hit iTunes, TV

The Boston Pops Orchestra’s world premiere performances of "The Dream Lives On: A Portrait of the Kennedy Brothers" on Tuesday and Wednesday with guest narrators including Robert De Niro, will be recorded for CD and download via iTunes and the Pops' own website. WCVB (Ch. 5) will also feature a full-length performance of the work as part of a Memorial Day television special, "An American Salute: The Pops at 125," on May 31. Written by composer Peter Boyer and lyricist Lynn Ahrens and commissioned by Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops, "The Dream Lives On" pays tribute to the legacies of John, Robert, and Edward Kennedy. The performers also include Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, and Cherry Jones, and the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, under the direction of Keith Lockhart. The recording will be available as a CD at the Symphony Shop. Online, the recording will be sold in 320 kbps open MP3 formatting and an HD Stereo option sold in Apple or PC format. The recording will also be made available on iTunes, CDBaby, and Amazon.com.

Winslow Homer in season at Portland Museum

This summer the Portland Museum of Art will showcase 20 works from the its collection of Homer watercolors and oils on canvas. It's the first time since 1988 that all of the works will be on view together in the Charles Shipman Payson Building, due to their sensitivity to light. And there's lots more Homer on tap.

@BobDylanSays tells it like it is on Twitter

Say what you will about his aching croak of a singing voice, but at 68 Bob Dylan is still relevant, even on Twitter. For some time now I've been following @BobDylanSays, which delivers his lyrics as hourly one-liners that seem to comment with oracular brilliance on the tweets I receive before or after them.

Consider, for example, this week's juxtaposition of an update on health care reform from Boston.com chief @dabeard with a comment from the bard:

As usual, Bob takes the long view.

Dylan can be concise ("Blowing in the Wind") or verbose ("Desolation Row"), but I would not have predicted him to be at home in the 140-characters-at-a-time format of Twitter. And in fact his official  @bobdylan feed has not been updated since Jan. 30.

@BobDylanSays describes its method thusly: "Every Bob Dylan song line-by-line. 1 line/hr until all have been tweeted. After each song, BobDylanSays-bot chooses next one at random." At the moment, it has almost 10,500 followers, compared to 15,200 for @bobdylan.

Like any great artist, Dylan can shine his brilliance on even the most mundane topics, such as the Red Sox and their problems aligning their current corps of position players...

Yo-Yo to the Ma-x

The CD is slowly dying even with the classical audience, as Jeremy Eichler wrote in the Globe yesterday, but, um, holy crap! Look at this! Sony pinged me the other day looking for some PR for "Yo-Yo Ma: 30 Years Outside the Box," a massive collection of music from the world-renowned cellist who calls Cambridge home. Usually I ignore such requests, but this thing is the classical music equivalent of the alien ship hovering over Manhattan in "V." The set includes 90 CDs – every original album Ma has recorded to date, plus two bonus discs with the first release of John Williams’ Suite from Memoirs of a Geisha for Cello and Orchestra. It's all been remastered with "DSD technology," whatever that is, and the numbered, limited-edition set comes in a velvet-lined box and features a 312-page book. The perfect Christmas gift for the classical music fan on your list, eh? Ready to hear how much it costs? Better sit down. The set lists for $632.99, but shop around: Amazon.com offers a link to one vendor  selling it for $499.40, while Borders.com wants $754.99. In fact, Ma's own web site started selling the first 200 numbered editions in late September, for $789. And there are higher prices out there. I've emailed to ask how many sold.

Morning reading: BMAs, NH arts center and (groan) journalism

Check out all the Boston Music Awards winners at Boston.com as neither On The Download nor RSL have anything up yet. For my southern NH posse, I have a story in Globe North today about plans moving forward for a new arts center in pastoral downtown Newfields. ... My old friend Ted Bale reviews STREB at the ICA in Dance Magazine. ... Amanda Palmer gets a nice write up on the Huffington Post. ... I've been thinking a lot about this piece about millennials and how they relate to brands. There's a million dollars in there somewhere. ... On the downside, this is a really depressing and really accurate assessment of the state of the journalism market.