Welcome to the working week here at Shore Fire. Suite 16 is a place for our gang to let you know what we're up to and what our clients are doing. What we're thinking about in the media world, the entertainment world, the music world. Places we've been, places we're going. Every once in a while, what we had for lunch. Thanks and enjoy.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
An Early Fireworks Celebration: Marilyn's Birthday
Shore Fire President Marilyn Laverty's July 3 birthday neatly coincides with Independence Day celebrations, so this is always a festive time of the year for all of us at Shore Fire. This year, we partied with an ice cream and coffee spread -- along with fixings like sprinkles, chocolate sauce and whipped cream -- the perfect late afternoon snack combo. Happy Birthday MTL!!
No "Loss" But Good "Eaton" At Nick's Birthday Party
It's a June birthday for Nick Loss-Eaton, who celebrated at the office kitchen table yesterday with an exquisite offering from Teany Cafe -- a scrumptious vegan Vanilla Raspberry Buttercream cake...Happy Birthday Nick!
You know what's really fun? Music trivia. And you know what's really REALLY fun? Winning. And that's exactly what team Prove It All Night did at Pianos' Monday trivia night.
A group of us from Shore Fire decided to test our music trivia chops at the LES bar and see how many free well drinks and shots we could win. Some of the questions were pretty obvious (who is James Osterberg?) but others (what city is the setting for Deep Purple's "Smoke on The Water") took some deliberating.
Team captain and Shore Fire president Marilyn Laverty performed the first victory dance of the evening:
Here's the winning ballot that brought in those well drinks coming....
Our esteemed colleague Andy Silva looks dapper after taking a shot of free whiskey
Later, (after Prove it all Night won round 2) Steve LaBate of Paste joined us for a game. Here he is talking with our very own Nick Loss-Eaton
It was definitely a great night and I hope to go back again soon. It's great to work with a bunch of bona fide music buffs. It makes getting free drinks at Pianos on Monday night that much easier.
'Hedwig' sing-along - I'm pulling the wig down from the shelf
One of my favorite parts of 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' – Stephen Trask's brilliant gender-bending rock musical, starring/directed by John Cameron Mitchell – is the sing-along during "Wig In a Box": the words come up on screen, and you can't help but oblige Hedwig and belt out along with her, "I put on some makeup/turn up the eight-track/I'm pulling the wig down from the shelf."
I saw 'Hedwig' again on Saturday night at the 92Y Tribeca, where they hosted a sing-along screening of the film much to my delight. "The Origin of Love" and "Wicked Little Town" sound even better with a theater full of folks singing along with you, and the heartbreaking saga of Tommy Gnosis and Hedwig is all the more, well, heartbreaking (and heartwarming).
The screening was part of a series at 92Y Tribeca, which will host regular sing-alongs of your favorite movie musicals roughly once a month (sorry kids, 'Labyrinth' and 'Purple Rain' have already happened). Next up: 'The Little Mermaid' on July 18. Buy your tickets now and start learning the words to "Under The Sea." I'll see you there.
Costello, Lauderdale and gang Sweep the Floor at Letterman
Elvis Costello corralled a few of his musician friends for a jaunty performance of Sulphur to Sugarcane last week on the Late Show with David Letterman. It was all strings for the song from Elvis' new album Secret, Profane & Sugarcane (#13 on the Billboard 200 this week...WOW!). Besides Jim Lauderdale (seen here outside the dressing room), a great singer and writer in his on right, the rest of the band was string slinger extraordinaire Larry Campbell and go-to Nashville double bassist Dennis Crouch. Costello sat for an interview with Dave before his performance.
Elvis and the Sugarcanes (musicians from the new album) played a tour de force two and a half hour set last night at the Beacon Theater, only the second show of the tour...I already got a great email from a Costello-watcher saying "Please tell me that somebody captured last night's show for posterity, whether legally or, uh, otherwise. What an incredible band, and what an amazingly perfect choice of back-catalog material to showcase it." The point is: Don't miss this show when it comes your way.
Cupcakes, Cupcakes Everywhere, With A Few To Spare
We all raised a cupcake in honor of Nora Lyon's birthday yesterday. Nora picked a selection from Sugar Sweet Sunshine, which regular Suite 16 readers might recognize as a staff favorite. As Lauretta Charlton observes elsewhere here on our blog, we all love quality baked goods!
Here we dig in:
Heer's Nora with a little bit of Elizabeth Lutz peeking in from the left, and a bit more of Diana D'Angelo on the right.
I went with friends to see Doves last night at Terminal 5. The band was in top form, as usual (I have seen them 4 times now and have never been let down. Well, except for the first show at Irving Plaza on the Lost Souls tour when they were plagued by technical difficulties and had to stop the show for a LONG time). I have to say that it was the first time I've ever found it difficult to find a space to actually see the band. Like ever. Granted we got there as they were just about to go on. But still. Anyway, great great show. They started out with the mind melting "Jetstream" from their new album Kingdom of Rust (which is nothing short of genius by the way), got the room bouncing with Motown stomper "Black and White Town" from Some Cities, and almost ended with "Cedar Room" from Lost Souls. The reason I say almost ended with "Cedar Room" is because it was the first of the encore songs and the last entire song I heard.
I'd like to blame it on hunger, being slightly drunk (due to having not had time to eat dinner, hence the hunger, and drinking a healthy quantity of beer), and tired (up at 730am and worked out after work, before show), and I just wanted to get home and crawl into bed. But the reality is much more disturbing: I made a calculated decision that if I left at the time I did, I would beat the large crowd leaving the venue, and would have a much better chance of getting a cab.
How lame is that? Would I leave a movie before it was over? Of course not. I'd already paid for my ticket and mortgaged the house in order to buy popcorn and soda as well, and god dammit, I'm not going to miss the ending after having invested so much. So why would I do this at concerts? I asked myself this morning that if I had made it to one of the My Bloody Valentine reunion shows, would I have done the same thing? Answer: probably. I saw them on the Loveless tour anyway. Okay, not a good example. Would I have left early from The Who playing live at Leeds in 1970? Answer: I honestly don't know. And since The Who is my favorite band of all time -- in fact I am probably the biggest Who fanatic on the planet -- this is the kind of disturbing, gut wrenching, soul searching question I will spend the rest of my life trying to answer. Or at least, spend the rest of today trying to answer.
It's no surprise that we at Shore Fire are big fans of NPR but their website is getting bigger and better every day too! You can get lost for hours surfing their site... I mean I don't, not at work at least. They just added this great new jazz blog A Blog Supreme and check out this cool video feature they did on the history of the boombox.
Here at Shore Fire there are two things that make us all happy – great music and baked goods. But recently, I've taken my love for baked goods to a new, and perhaps alarming, level. Last week when Rebecca Shapiro brought her homemade brownies to the office for a trial run, I devoured the first one very quickly. They were AMAZING and I'm told they will eventually be on the menu here.
More symptoms....
Soon we will celebrate the venerable Nora Lyons’ birthday, and I don't think I've ever been so excited about icing and cake (she requested cupcakes from the Shore Fire favorite Sugar Sweet Sunshine to be sure) and over the weekend I baked an apple pie that I was so proud of I almost cried. Here she is:
I don’t think summer official begins until you eat homemade apple or rhubarb pie (and brownies for good measure), but that's my borderline obsession with baked goods talking. If baked goods are not for you, you can always check out some of the awesome shows happening in June which is terrific way to start a glorious summer as well.
