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Tyler-era 'American Idol' roman a clef? A little pitchy.

It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but we've watched a few episodes of "American Idol" this season. Because ice dancing. And everything else was reruns.

Eventually I went to the to-read list instead and grabbed the Kindle edition of "Elimination Night," the "American Idol" roman a clef written by Anonymous, who was clearly a staffer of some kind on the show during Season 11, when the judging panel included Massachusetts' own Steven Tyler alongside Jennifer Lopez. That was the last time we really tuned in "Idol" in my house, drawn by the car-crash, you-just-have-to-look possibilities of a show with, well, Steve Tyler and Jennifer Lopez.

The book, published a year ago, tries to be caustic and funny about the backstage scene at the show it calls "Project Icon." It makes fun of former judge Simon Cowell's nipples (he's Nigel Crowther) and host Ryan Seacrest's relentless careerism (he's Wayne Shoreline, aka Hostbot 9000). Lopez becomes the gazillionaire homegirl Bibi Vasquez, with a lethal ego and her tits and ass insured for $100 million (apiece, I think).

Aerosmith's Tyler here becomes Joey Lovecraft of the currently-on-hiatus band Honeyload. The band split after Joey took a symbolic - there's no good way to say this - dump during a concert and then fell off the stage, understandably annoying guitarist Blade Morgan. (Joe Perry, come on down!) Joey joins the "American Icon" judging panel because he "wanted to get Honeyload back together. Or, more accurately, he wanted Blade Morgan to beg him to return as lead singer."

Anonymous actually does a pretty good job broad-brushing the asinine-but-entertaining side of Tyler's public persona. When someone asks Joey how he'd feel about J-Lo Bibi joining him at the judges' table, Joey says, "As long as I have a face, Bibi Vasquez will always - always - have a place to sit." That's our Steve Joey!

I actually felt bad for Randy Jackson, who is portrayed here as a lonely, fat white boy named JD Coolz (nee Jason Dee) who grew up in a black neighborhood in Bakersfield, taught himself to play bass and "became a fixture in the weed-smoking rooms of all the major recording studios." Now he "moved slow, wore a lot of jewelry, communicated only in fist bumps and monosyllabic slang," manifesting "a Great Dane-like lovability." Ouch.

To be frank, though, as you've probably gathered by now, "Primary Colors" this isn't. The book's satire is broad and slapdash. Joey Lovecraft jumps out of an airplane apparently without a parachute just to make a point. Twice. And the story's narrator, an assistant producer named Sasha, has nothing to add, storywise.

Fact is, "American Idol" and its personalities are pretty much beyond parody, as is the entire modern reality TV/celebrity-industrial complex. Even the great Carl Hiaasen fell short in his attempt to mount an attack on its Britney Spears/Lindsay Lohan flank in "Star Island." "Elimination Night's" essential superfluity is revealed by fact that, at least according to the first few pages of my Google search, no one has ever exposed the author and gotten them fired from the show. Working there is, clearly, its own special kind of hell.

At the moment, though, the book is only $2 in Amazon's Kindle store, if you're interested.

Roadrunner once! Roadrunner twice!

I don't know what that dipsh*t is talking about in his blurb on the sleeve (right). NEAR definitive? Jonathan Richman's "Roadrunner" is as definitive a cruising song from the '70s as could possibly exist, and it looks like a Mass. legislative committee will move along a bill to make it our official state rock song. At Thursday's hearing, nobody showed up to testify in behalf of declared competitor "Dream On," about which I will not comment. Anyway, how could you not vote for a song that namechecks Howard Johnson's, Route 128 and Stop & Shop?

How many of us who grew up around here have had that moment of driving around late at night with the radio on (probably tuned to WBCN) and having Richman come on singing about driving around late at night with the radio on? Ultimately, "Roadrunner" is about transcendence, that joyous feeling when what poet Richard Hugo called "the tortured try of local drivers to accelerate their lives" just might work.

The bill is co-sponsored by state rep turned Boston Mayor-elect Marty Walsh, and has been masterminded by his adviser, Boston arts publicist Joyce Linehan. Her testimony on behalf of "Roadrunner" yesterday is here. If you like what you read, let your state rep know, especially if they're on the Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight.

Two different sorts of Christmas folk

Emails dropped one right after the other from two Passim-related Christmas festivities. Very different events, however, or maybe the differences are mostly attitudinal.

Tom Rush (right) returns to Symphony Hall with another Club 47 holiday show featuring three generations of musicians on Dec. 28. These tend to be upbeat, familylike affairs. Rush of course headlines along with Jim Kweskin Jug Band with Bill Keith, Geoff Muldaur and Maria Muldaur, plus Patti Larkin and "(relative) newcomers Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion." It was back in 1981 that Rush started the Club 47 concerts, honoring the legendary Cambridge folk venue now known as Club Passim. Tickets for “The Club 47 Tradition Continues” range from $35 to $200at Boston Symphony Hall box office, 888-266-1200 or bso.org.

Meanwhile, Erin McKeown is heading to Cambridge with her Anti-Holiday Spectacular for two shows actually happening at Club Passim. Let's just quote the release: "Sick of the holiday hype, and tired of gritting her teeth until New Year's Eve, Erin has decided to take a stand against the annoying holiday spirt with her anti-holiday album "F*ck That!" and tour...The Spectacular is the world's first anti-capitalist, pro-queer, suspicious of christmas-as-patriotism, sex-positive, not safe for work, multi-ethnic, radical leftist Anti-Holiday show." The Spectacular brings McKeown and her Crank Carolers to Passim on Dec. 6 at 7 and 9:30. Tix are $20 ($18 for members) at passim.org.

New music from three Mass. faves

I've been listening to Patty Larkin for 30 years and change and for nearly that long to Barrence Whitfield. In person first - Stone Church, Middle East - and later on CD. I don't think I've ever heard Susan Tedeschi in person, which baffles me, but I've loved her voice since I heard her cover of "Don't Think Twice (It's All Right)" years ago. They're all pretty amazing singers, they all have Mass. connections and/or addresses, and they all have fine new albums.

Let's start up-tempo. Barrence Whitfield and the Savages' Dig Thy Savage Soul came out a few weeks ago and has been in heavy rotation here ever since. They were a big band around here in the 1980s - and more popular in Europe, I think - but split up circa 1990. Lately, North Shore resident Whitfield has been working in a Beverly Salem record store and playing occasional solo gigs, as well as turning up to take lead vocals on the encores whenever his friends in Los Lobos come to town. Now he's back together with original Savages guitarist and songwriter Peter Greenberg on a screamer of an album. Greenberg was in the Lyres and brings their gonzo garage-rock style here, redolent of both classic '60s Nuggets and punk, with the occasional taste of 50s greaser traditionalism a la Eddie Cochran. Riffs! Lyrics! Hammering beats! Barrence! Standouts here are the full-tilt "Hangman's Token" and the bring-the-hammer-down-at-a-measured-pace "I'm Sad About It." There's also a song about "Oscar Levant." Seriously. The puzzler is "Daddy's Gone To Bed," which is just like all the others except they must have cut it on a day when Barrence had ripped up his voice, because he sounds exactly like present-day Bob Dylan. You know, gargling broken glass. WTF.

I'm still digesting Made Up Mind by the Tedeschi Trucks Band, which is led by Tedeschi (a member of the supermarket family) and her husband, the brilliant slide guitarist and sometime Allman Brother Derek Trucks. Their partnership seems genuine and a joy to watch, and dang if the world doesn't need a new Delaney & Bonnie, right? Tedeschi's voice splits the difference between Bonnie Raitt and Bonnie Bramlett, but it has an instant emotional transparency, so that she could sing the phone book and fill it with exquisite emotion, like Raitt or Chrissie Hynde. She makes you feel. There's a lot of good stuff here, from the Raitt-esque romp of the title track to expansive "Do I Look Worried" and "It's So Heavy," all of which offer Trucks a chance to shine. But the killers here come among the last few songs. "Sweet and Low" finds Tedeschi slaying us with her betrayed-woman's lament as Trucks emotes through his guitar. Great pauses. And the one that tells you they're here to stay is the closer, "Calling Out To You," with just Trucks on an acoustic steel guitar and Tedeschi doing what she does best at the mic. Devastating.

Last but not least is Wellfleet resident Larkin, whose Still Green comes out in a couple of weeks, reflecting some difficult times in her life, including the loss of both her parents and her sister's stroke. This is a little more subdued album for Larkin, who can be an exuberant guitar slinger when she's in the mood. But as usual there's fine songwriting and intimate, complexly emotional singing here, notably on "Best of Intentions," with its meditative piano and guitar strum, and the full-hearted melody of "Nothing Else Really Matters." What I liked best is the highly modern, buzzing sound of the spooky "Down Through the Wood," with its brush snare and snapped-off guitar figures, and the up-tempo "Mando Dream." They have little enigmatic fills and loops and layers that move them into Aimee Mann or late-Suzanne Vega turf. I talked to Larkin a few weeks ago for an upcoming story (both of us remembering a wild houseparty gig she played in NH back in 19coughcough), and you'll see that in print before the album hits the streets in a couple of weeks.

BSO just can't get a break

Following years of health problems that ultimately derailed the tenure of musical director James Levine, the Boston Symphony Orchestra now has a serious though apparently temporary medical issue with Levine's successor at the podium, before he's really even started the gig. One more and we're going to start making jokes about the drummers for Spinal Tap.

This just in...

Statement from Mark Volpe, BSO Managing Director:

“Due to a household accident that has resulted in a severe concussion, Andris Nelsons will not be able to conduct the Verdi Requiem at Tanglewood on July 27. Over the weekend, Mr. Nelsons was struck in the head by a door that unexpectedly swung open at his residence in Bayreuth, Germany, where he has been conducting at the festival.  Mr. Nelsons is currently receiving medical attention at a hospital in Bayreuth.  His doctors report that he is expected to make a full recovery but, as always with concussions, Mr. Nelsons has been strongly advised to take time out of his work schedule and not travel by plane at all at this time. It is therefore with a heavy heart that he is forced to withdraw from his Tanglewood performance.  

Though this is disappointing news to all of us at the BSO, as well to the orchestra’s many supporters, we have every expectation that Mr. Nelsons will recover as quickly as possible and that we will see him in Boston in October for his scheduled concerts at Symphony Hall.  Our thoughts are with Mr. Nelsons during this time of healing and recovery.” 

Statement from Andris Nelsons, recently appointed the next Boston Symphony Orchestra Music Director, starting in the 2014-15 season:

“Truly, I feel a great sense of sadness at not being able to come to Tanglewood this week to conduct the Verdi Requiem and to spend time amongst our great musical family, including Tanglewood's wonderfully supportive audience.  I will miss you all and am very sorry indeed that this very unfortunate accident prevents me from being there. I am grateful to be receiving the best possible medical attention and am currently resting well. I promise I will recover as soon as possible and very much look forward to coming back in good shape for my performances with the orchestra in October in Boston.”   

An announcement about who will conduct Tanglewood’s July 27 performance of the Verdi Requiem will be forthcoming. 

(BSO picture of Nelsons by Stu Rosner.)

Los Lobos in Boston: They've always been outside the box

There are a lot of reasons to love Los Lobos, who headlined yesterday's Outside the Box festival opening concert on Boston Common. Their classic, yearning, rootsy originals, for one. They opened Saturday with "Will the Wolf Survive?" - which got kind of a pro-forma run-through, as they were still getting it together - and the set also included a much better, fully invested performance of "Matter of Time," which showed David Hidalgo's keening voice still in fine form at whatever age he is now.

Los Lobos with Alejandro Escovedo on Saturday.

You can also love them for their faithfulness to the Mexican-American base of their music, from their acoustic interpretations of classic folk songs (skipped Saturday) to rockout fun like "Cumbia Raza," which they romped through. Or you can enjoy their embrace of the late '60s-early '70s rock and soul they also grew up on. On Saturday that meant performances of the Temptations' "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" and the Allman Brothers' "One Way Out," among others. They even played "La Bamba," a hit cover they've shunned for long periods.

Of all the day's crowd-participation moments, the one that seemed best-suited to the mostly white, greying audience was the call to finish the Allmans' chorus with, "might be your man, I don't know." But Los Lobos themselves are probably at their best when all the strands of their musical heritage combine, as they did here on "The Neighborhood."

Opener Alejandro Escovedo has similarly mixed musical roots although he's from Texas, not East L.A. I arrived on the Common just in time to see him close his set with a blazing version of Neil Young's "Like A Hurricane." Hidalgo introduced Escovedo as "one of my best friends" when they brought him back out during the Lobos' set. He sang the great "Rebel Kind," the best-known track by his old band True Believers, which shared many an early-80s stage  with Los Lobos, and the sad ballad "Rosalie," probably not a great choice for the festival setting.

Although "Outside the Box" touts its innovative programming, this was a pre-made lineup. Los Lobos are touring with Escovedo and Los Lonely Boys, who filled the middle slot on the bill, and the mix-and-match jamming went on all afternoon. By the time the three Lonely Boys neared the end of their set, there was an equal number of Lobos on stage. And after Escovedo finished his guest spot with the Lobos, the Lonely Boys began filing back on. Normally to see "One Way Out" with twin drummers and multiple guitars, you have to actually go to an Allmans show; here I think there were nine people on stage.

One of the day's musical highlights was when Lonely Boys' guitarist Henry Garza turned a long jam around into the opening riff of the Dead's "Bertha," one of the Lobos' best and most popular covers. And as has been traditional at Los Lobos' Boston gigs for many years, the show closed with local vocal whirlwind Barrence Whitfield, another old friend, leading them in a demented version of "Georgia Slop."

And that's the thing about the Lobos. As much as I love their music, it's how they roll that I enjoy the most. All afternoon long, they seemed to be having fun. Friends for forty or more years, generous artists, unpretentious and utterly without vanity. Escovedo is a natty dressy (pipestem jeans, scarves) but the Lobos mostly dress like they're about to work on their car. They're middle aged, with extra chins and greying hair and in some cases a decent gut. Bassist Conrad Lozano put his glasses on halfway through the set, the better to see us with I guess, and he was up there in front of 10,000 or so people wearing old cargo shorts and Keen sandals, exactly like half the guys in the audience.

Berklee for Africa for Berklee

In the last few weeks the news from northern and western Africa brings fresh conflicts. But Homeland Security means something different at Berklee College of Music on Monday night, where students from Africa will present a concert of music and dance from their homelands of Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa and other countries.

Homeland Security: Celebrating Contemporary and Traditional African Music and Dance will feature original student compositions with deeply personal meanings, including “Va Gumulelana (No More War),” by Helder Tsinine, the first non-English language song to win the Peacedriven Songwriting Contest, and “Battle” by Jason Ekhabi Sibi-Okumu, about his struggle with kidney failure. Berklee’s 16-member West African Drum and Dance Ensemble and another group choreographed by student Jeniffer Criss will perform traditional drum and dance pieces from Ghana, Togo, Guinea and Mali.

Berklee's been getting increasingly international lately, with satellite operations and outreach. The West African ensemble features percussionist Victor “Blue” Dogah, who in 2008 was named Berklee’s first Africa Scholar—an award covering full tuition and room and board for four years  – through a program started by Berklee president Roger Brown. (No relation.)

The show is Monday at 8:15 p.m. at the Berklee Performance Center, 136 Massachusetts Ave.. Tickets: $8 in advance, $12 day of show, at the BPC Box Office. More info: 617 747-2261 or berkleebpc.com.

Photo: Berklee student and concert performer Neo Karabo Mashao from South Africa, courtesy Berklee.

First listen: Kingsley Flood face their 'Battles'

Fresh off a win as Best Americana Band at the BMAs, Kingsley Flood seems intent on proving that they'd like to take the whole deal.

The band's new full-length, "Battles," officially due Feb. 5, still offers the intimacy that drove their 'bout-perfect first album, "Dust Windows," but you no longer hear the crickets and seldom expect Levon Helm to come in on the chorus. Again, there's an abundance of big hooks and little grace notes that will lodge these songs in your head. But "Battles" continues down the rock road of last year's "Colder Still" EP, as frontman and songwriter Naseem Khuri leads his merry band of brothers and one sister further out onto their own not-especially-categorizable musical terrain. "Battles" might be just the thing to get them into the plain-'ol'-best-band category next year.

Not that they've turned their back on rootsy. From its title to its picked-guitar intro to its timeless-sounding chorus, "Waiting on the River to Rise" couldn't be any more heartland. But it quickly dawns on the listener that there's something a little strange and slanty about that piano line, and the lonely whistling is more Morricone than Mayberry. Then, with a change of just a couple of words, the last verse goes somewhere unexpected, a declaration of - well, what? Ambition? Revolution? - before there's this ominous solar flare of a noise (Mellotron) at the close that makes you think it's something even worse. Sui generis.

At the other end of the spectrum - and the very next track - is "Down," a slashing little poseur-takedown driven by a throbbing fuzz bass riff that would not have sounded out of place from bassist Nick Balkin's other outfit, electro-rockers Logan 5 and the Runners. It's one of the slightest songs on the album, but definitely the kind of thing to make clear KF's ambitions aren't confined by genre.

Subtler effects flavor many of the tracks on this ambitious album, which was produced at Great North Sound Society in Parsonsfield, Maine by Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter, Langhorne Slim). But it's not the electronics, it's the resulting broody atmosphere that matters on tracks like the opening "Don't Change My Mind" and the haunting "Habit."

With its little plucked riff and its instant-earworm "I know, I know" vocal hook, "The Fire Inside" will stick with you. Faux-jaunty "King's Men" has musical-hall piano and trumpet and a barking dog; it's "Penny Lane" to the Kinks-ish blare of "Sun's Gonna Let me Shine" and "Pick Your Battles." "Strongman" is a straight-ahead stomper that comes closest to the joyous gonzo of the band's live shows (although I could do without the "bad cold" vocal filter here and elsewhere).

As always, from song to song Khuri's lyrics jump from confessional directness to Dylanesque and oblique, and at best split the difference. What's he singing about? Somewhere in most of these songs is the struggle to stay true to the self and what's right, against the temptations of self-doubt and fear, fame and sex, surrender and anger. Sometimes he sounds like a budding rock success trying to embrace his temptations ("Sun Gonna Lemme Shine"), while at others he's a busted-out working man overwhelmed by failure or family or infidelity. Even the twisted ones think they're doing the right thing, or at least embrace the wrong with open eyes.

"Hard times for the quiet kind" indeed. If there's any justice, and at the risk of making Jersey wince, 2013 ought to be the Year of the Flood.

You do need a weatherman...

Hurricane Sandy has local forecasters getting on their foul-weather faces and rolling out their bold-faced fonts, although there's still no telling exactly which way the storm will go early next week. Normally I'm loathe to fall under the spell of publicists who try to tie their arts events to such things - storms, the Red Sox, whatever. (Isabella Stewart Gardner liked going to Fenway, we get it, now give it a rest.) But the New England Philharmonic opens its season this saturday with - wait for it - "Atmospherics." The 8 p.m. at Tsai Performance Center program will focus on composer in residence David Rakowski's fourth symphony - wait for it! - Scare Quotes. Our local forecasters are not involved, but each movement in the symphony use titles taken from The Weather Channel website: Waning Crescent, Current Conditions, Ice to Rain and finally, Double Shot. Each movement "quotes" musical themes from pieces by other composers, including Bach, Mahler and Oliver Nelson with his jazz standard "Stolen Moments." Tickets, $25, at www.nephilharmonic.org. On the (literally) bright side, the program also includes Thea Musgrave's "Rainbow."

In Cambridge, it's time again for RiverSing

Saturday brings the autumnal equinox, which means it's time for music, poetry and communal singing at the 9th annual Revels RiverSing at the Charles River. Revels music director George Emlen hosts the free outdoor celebration featuring over 100 chorus members, the Revels Children’s Chorus, musician David Coffin, the Second Line Pleasure Aid and Social Society Brass Band, sax man Stan Strickland on the river (right) and more. Did we mention it's free?  There will be groups sings of about 20 folk songs (lyrics available onsite and at www.revels.org). Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s Steve Barkhimer and  Jennie Israel and Cambridgepoet Toni Bee will recite. The main event is at 6 p.m., but festivities begin at 5 with family fun in Harvard Square's Winthrop Park, followed by a procession to the river. This is fun for anyone who likes music and ritual, and those with an anthropological interest in Cambridge's unique culture.