Fenway Park organist Josh Kantor is a utilityman of sorts, playing keyboards for a number of outfits in addition to entertaining the Red Sox faithful. His highest-profile gig is with the fantastic national pastime-themed band the Baseball Project; his hidden-track rendition of the group’s “Panda And The Freak” is a highlight of its aptly titled third album, 3rd (Yep Roc). Kantor is guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand-new Q&A with him.
Kantor: Getting through January in Boston can be tough. The feasting and socializing and time away from work that characterize December have dissipated, and the joys of getting to stash away your heavy coat and not have to walk/bicycle/drive through snow and slush are not yet in sight. Diversions from winter’s harshness are essential to one’s well-being, and I’ve managed to hit upon a couple of good ones in recent years.
Hall Of Fame baseball writer Peter Gammons and Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations (and former Boston Red Sox Executive Vice President and General Manager) Theo Epstein are rock fans, so some of their charitable work involves organizing great benefit concerts that raise funds for their foundations’ support of a variety of youth services organizations. Their big show, Hot Stove, Cool Music, has taken place in Boston each January for the past 14 years. In more recent years, a reception for sponsors at a small restaurant on the night before the show has been turned by Bill Janovitz (of Buffalo Tom) into an epic, night-long Rolling Stones jam. Bill is such a Stones buff that you might figuratively say he wrote the book on the Rolling Stones. More literally (and literarily), it should be mentioned that Bill did, in fact, publish a cool book about the Stones last summer.
The Stones jam has become something of a geek-fest for local rock musicians to get to hear and play many of their favorite old songs with friends and colleagues (perhaps most notably Ed Valauskas, whom I’m convinced has played bass on every record made in Boston in the last 20 years). This year’s show started with a front-to-back performance of the Stones’ slightly peculiar 1977 Love You Live double live album, and I was fortunate enough to score an invitation to play piano for side four (the one with the hits). In a “you couldn’t have made that up” moment, I got to play “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” with Cubs TV play-by-play announcer and Hot Stove supporter Len Kasper, who more than held his own onstage. The vocalizations of the Upper Crust’s Chris Cote (who’s probably a better singer than you are) were a major highlight for me this year. Allman Brothers guitarist Derek Trucks jumped up a few years ago for the late set and left the rest of us to pick each other’s jaws up off the floor after hearing and seeing him play up close.
Making its way onto Boston’s January music calendar for the past couple years is “One-Hit Wonders” night at the venerable Club Passim, for which a gaggle of impressive Boston singers each pick a favorite one-hit wonder song and perform it with the Loomers acting as the house band. Due to some good timing and some good luck, I was asked to sit in on keyboards for both years. The lead-up to the show included vigorous debate among the performers as to the precise definition of a “one-hit wonder” and even whether the term was endearing or insulting. What to do about an artist like Nick Lowe, whose longevity, success, and esteem suggest that he’s so much more than just a one-hit wonder, yet who scored a hit single on only one occasion (“Cruel To Be Kind” in 1979)? What to make of Soul Survivors, who had one very big hit (“Expressway To Your Heart” in 1967) and one small follow-up hit (the similarly titled and similarly approached “Explosion In Your Soul” in 1968) before disappearing from the charts? What to rule on Rick Derringer, who had one hit in his own name (“Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo” in 1974), but who was also in the McCoys when they hit number one with “Hang On Sloopy” in 1965? In the interest of playing fun songs, we ended up taking a liberal approach to the “one-hit wonder” definition, as long as the singers promised to perform the songs with conviction.
As is the case with one-hit wonders, the song choices ranged from the sublime (Mott The Hoople’s “All The Young Dudes”) to the ridiculous (Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting”). I took a fairly forgettable stab at singing Status Quo’s psychedelic “Pictures Of Matchstick Men.” Among the highlights: Catie Curtis re-imagined Elvin Bishop’s tale of a callous playboy (“Fooled Around And Fell In Love”) as an anthem of lesbian empowerment; Vance Gilbert sang Rupert Holmes’ “(Escape) The Piña Colada Song” while also providing running commentary in between lines on the absurdity of the song’s plot without having sung or even heard the track in more than 30 years; and Club Passim’s long-time booker, Matt Smith (whose job is either due to his impeccable taste or vice-versa), delivered Tracey Ullman’s retro-Brill Building masterpiece “They Don’t Know” (written by the great Kirsty MacColl when she was just 19). I also discovered that you haven’t lived until you’ve been in the backing band when a 10-year-old girl makes her stage debut and tears down the house with Vicki Lawrence’s murder ballad “The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia.”
Last year’s “One-Hit Wonders” show was a benefit for local songwriter Stuart Ferguson’s battle with multiple myeloma, and he watched a live video stream of it from his hospital bed. We’d anticipated the same approach for this year, but Stuart had other plans: He attended the show in good health and donated all the proceeds to the club, which operates as a non-profit arts center. At night’s end, when Stuart belted the line, “Hey kid, rock ‘n’ roll, rock on, and where do we go from here?” during his chilling version of the all-time great one-hit wonder “Rock On” by David Essex, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
