Shredding it Brewer Style
By Jenna Croyle

With driving rhythm-based originals and amazing musical harmonies, Eric Brewer and Friends offer their audiences a fresh, raw approach to the music while always keeping them wanting more with remarkable beats.
 

and a truly outstanding musical event with each show the band plays.

With distinctive grooves, excellent time keeping and classic rhythms, Steve Barone is a major drumming force behind the distinctive sound of Eric Brewer and Friends.

In most bands, the keyboard player is usually the person who knows the harmony precisely and will give you chapter and verse on inversions if you were to ask, for this band, no statement could be more true. As a veteran keyboardist helping to bring out the innovative sounds of Eric Brewer and Friends, Charlie Meyer is certainly this band’s secret ingredient.

Ralph Reitinger III takes his style of instrumental music and brings it to unknown perfection levels with his melodic lines having as much of as a Bass Taste as the Bass Line itself. Rhythmic melodic patterns move fluently and are expressed in such a masterful way as to show without a doubt, Ralph is the face of bass in Erie.

The first thing I noticed when I saw Eric Brewer and Friends was some of the best sax playing I have ever heard. Joe Cieslak shows his versatility and takes his horn work to new heights that are totally engaging and infectious without overshadowing the rest of the band or showboating. Cieslak is one of the most creative Sax musicians blowing a horn in Erie today.

Never over shredding, Eric Brewer’s screaming fingers along with the original compositions and the fusion of Jazz, Rock and Funk all presented with that jam band sound driven by an obvious passion for music has melded in such a way that has created perhaps the most innovative band to hit an Erie stage in the last decade.

With this caliber of talent and musical proficiency, it is certainly no wonder why Eric Brewer and Friends swept last year’s RockErie Music Awards, while never selling out the sound and always keeping it real.

For more information on Eric Brewer and Friends, please visit their Facebook page.

Johnny James and the Absolutes
Bringing Noise and Experience To The Stage
By Drew Chiodo

Erie is full of bands with genres ranging from old school hardcore, to the newest form of dubstep and everything in between. Erie has the type of musical flavor that everyone can relate to and enjoy.

complete with its own spin on classic 60s garage-rock.

With a slight hint of The Ramones, mixed in with The Stooges and a splash of Joy Division, this band has a unique sound that seems to revive the rebellious feeling that these kinds of bands originally brought to the stage back in their early beginnings.

From veteran and new members alike of Erie’s music scene, the sight and sound of these local legends taking the stage together is enough to satisfy even the most hungry of show goers.

“Black Rose Diary starting a new band (in any way) is awesome”, says Matthew Barthlemes, a long-standing member of the music community here in Erie. “I always liked their style, always catchy”.

This band brings together many aspects of music that are not usually seen or utilized by bands revolving this specific genre. Johnny James and the Absolutes use numerous layers of guitars and sounds to bring this rare blend of music to life.

Though not an easy task by any means, this band applies the use of mass-guitar tones and noise to collaboratively connect the separate parts of the music into one central zone, bringing forth an epic and different kind and all around style of music.

With an ever-expanding grasp on the sound and genre of their music, it is no wonder why Johnny James and the Absolutes fan-base is so rapidly expanding.

People of all ages and musical tastes are beginning to realize what this band is actually bringing to each and every show they perform. They bring a fresh look on a classic style that can only be replicated specifically in this fashion by this band of talented musicians and veterans to the message behind it.

Fight Club: Music Festivals
Are super-sized summer festivals live music's biggest bargain, or bummer?
By Phil Freeman and Melinda Newman

Lollapalooza, Coachella, Vans Warped Tour, Bonnaroo, Stagecoach, Pitchfork, Outside Lands, Jazz Fest, Sasquatch, Electric Daisy ... the list goes on and on.

There are now so many large music festivals -- some static, others traveling -- that an artist like Coldplay can route an entire summer tour playing nothing but festivals. But is it too much of a good thing? Two writers go a few rounds on the topic.

PHIL FREEMAN: There was a time when I loved to spend the day lounging on the grass in the blazing sun, watching bands on a stage that was close to a city block away and paying $5 for a bottle of water. That time was the early 1990s. In 2011, the appeal of outdoor rock festivals is totally lost on me.

I've got bona fides to cite, of course: I saw the first Lollapalooza tour when it hit New Jersey in 1991. I've been to Ozzfest more than once, as a journalist and just as a metal fan. I've put in my time. And on the other hand, I've been relatively fortunate in that I've missed out on the real music festival debacles of the past. I'm too young to have attended Altamont, and I didn't go to Woodstock '99, though I did watch it on cable -- and while I didn't learn about the horrific violence and sexual assaults until later, all those fires did look kinda awesome.

The thing is, the atmosphere has changed radically since festivals began in the '60s, with Monterey and Woodstock. Back then, people were (or so I'm told by an endless series of gray-haired commentators on TV shows about the hippie era) out to achieve transcendence and engage in free love while grooving to the greatest rock music ever made (a proposition I'll be happy to dispute at another time).

By the mid '70s, though, the music had changed, with peaceful hippie jams being replaced by the heavier, proto-metal sound of bands like Cactus and Grand Funk Railroad, and the festival atmosphere became more about getting staggeringly drunk/stoned and falling over while amplifiers blew your hair back. But honestly, even that sounds like more fun than a modern festival. I mean, let's look at the options: You've got Bonnaroo and various other regional jam-band festivals, which provide ample opportunities to become a feast for insects and listen to some of the worst music on Earth (hint: If a jam band uses the words "groove," "funk" or "soul" in their name, rest assured their actual music will possess absolutely none of those qualities). You've got the Pitchfork Festival, which is basically a musical version of the Stuff White People Like blog. And you've got the Mayhem and Uproar tours, roving metal and hard rock festivals providing a never-ending parade of neck tattoos (Mayhem) and mullets (Uproar). Even the festivals that don't involve camping still require audiences to show up at noon if they want to see the earliest bands, then spend the entire day wandering from one patch of sun-dried grass to another, standing in DMV-length lines for overpriced liquids and dehydrated food, risking their lives to use the bathrooms (assuming there are any some outdoor festivals just set up porta-johns), all the while finding themselves surrounded by the kind of people who go see all-day outdoor rock concerts.

MELINDA NEWMAN: I could write this whole post about porta-johns and festivals. They clearly have all been designed by men, and I don't understand why if we can put a man on the moon, we can't design a self-cleaning porta-john. When I went to Woodstock '94, I trained myself to not go to the bathroom for 15 hours. True story, but that's for a different time.

But, Phil, you're selling festivals short. Even at said Woodstock '94, which, as you will recall, basically turned into a mudfest (I was getting mud out of body parts for days, and my clothes were unsalvageable), there was great music and a wonderful spirit to be found. A festival, when it's done right, takes on its own personality that the acts end up conforming to, not vice versa.

That's why festivals like Coachella, Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza can sell out before the first act is even announced. If mullets and tattoos are your thing, there's a festival for that; if it's an electronica/dance vibe you want, there's Electric Daisy; if it's laid-back jam bands (with Eminem thrown in for good measure this year), then Bonnaroo is for you. The key is finding the festival whose vibe best matches your temperament and going with it. For example, I'd be miserable at Pitchfork, since I have virtually not a shred of smug hipster in me, but I've spent absolutely glorious hours at everything from Woodstock '94 to the pit of some day-long festival in the mid-'90s that Metallica headlined (whose name escapes me) to the first Lilith Fair in 1997 to 2005's Coachella and two New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals, the most recent one only a few weeks ago.

Each one has provided me with some kind of musical nourishment. Hands down, Jazz Fest is tops on that account. Unlike almost all of the other festivals, roughly 80 percent of Jazz Fest's lineup is from Louisiana. Spread out over 11 themed stages, such as the gospel tent, blues tent or jazz tent, some of the best music you've never heard before can be found. For example, my friends and I hit the festival grounds around noon on opening day this year and were immediately drawn into the gospel tent to see Rocks of Harmony, an all-male gospel group that raised the rafters and took us to church on that Friday afternoon. Throw in the absolute best food offered at any festival in the world from primarily local vendors, and a price around $110 for admission for the entire three days, and you should owe Jazz Fest money by the time you leave for the pleasure you get in return. Though perhaps not in such great variety, that thrill of discovery can be found at any festival.

Each one has provided me with some kind of musical nourishment. Hands down, Jazz Fest is tops on that account. Unlike almost all of the other festivals, roughly 80 percent of Jazz Fest's lineup is from Louisiana. Spread out over 11 themed stages, such as the gospel tent, blues tent or jazz tent, some of the best music you've never heard before can be found. For example, my friends and I hit the festival grounds around noon on opening day this year and were immediately drawn into the gospel tent to see Rocks of Harmony, an all-male gospel group that raised the rafters and took us to church on that Friday afternoon. Throw in the absolute best food offered at any festival in the world from primarily local vendors, and a price around $110 for admission for the entire three days, and you should owe Jazz Fest money by the time you leave for the pleasure you get in return. Though perhaps not in such great variety, that thrill of discovery can be found at any festival.

PHIL FREEMAN: Melinda, I believe the Metallica-headlined festival you're thinking of was actually Lollapalooza 1996, which many members of "alternative nation" decried as a sellout for having a metal band on the bill, even as crowds came out in droves. The following year, the organizers went edgier, with Orbital and Devo co-headlining, and nobody showed up. The festival went dark until 2003, and since 2005, it's been a three-day event in Chicago, rather than a national tour, and the range of acts has turned it into just another massive festival on the European/U.K. model, rather than the traveling megadose of weirdness it was in 1991, when I went.

At that time, there were no large music festivals in America. The idea had basically petered out after the US Festival and Live Aid in the mid-'80s, and what really gave Lollapalooza its impact was that it proved the "alternative rock" or "college rock" market was much larger than it had previously been given credit for being, particularly by the music press. There were suddenly a whole crop of acts that music magazines had to take seriously, and those acts included the Butthole Surfers and Nine Inch Nails.

My single greatest memory of Lollapalooza '91 was also one that indicated the cultural changing of the guard: Before the first band took the stage, a bunch of hippie types had gotten down in front and set up blankets, 'cause, you know, outdoor rock concert. Well, the Rollins Band came out, plugged in, Henry Rollins bowed to the audience, and as soon as they struck their first chord, the mosh-pit horde descended and an entirely new paradigm for concert behavior was established. What had once been contained within punk and metal clubs was now literally out in the open for the world to see. And the sight of hippies running in panic, as their blankets literally flew through the air? Hilarious and awesome, a perfect start to the day.

The great thing about the original Lollapalooza, though, was that by festival standards, it was pretty small-scale. There were fewer than a dozen acts, one of which (Siouxsie and the Banshees) didn't even perform the day I was there. They hadn't yet expanded to multiple stages, the way Warped Tour, the Mayhem Festival or Ozzfest routinely do & and frankly, your description of Jazz Fest, with nearly a dozen stages going at once, gives me hives. Events like that are just overkill -- you can talk about "value for money" all you want, but that's taking it to an absurd extreme. I don't buy art at Costco. I'd rather see one great band than 12-20 mediocre ones any day.

MELINDA NEWMAN: Phil, I refuse to let you blame the downfall of Lollapalooza as a touring concept on my beloved Metallica (though thank you for figuring out that it was Lollapalooza that I was talking about. My brain cells were too fried to remember that)! That was a fierce show. I fearlessly worked my way up to the front of the mosh pit and was close enough to watch James Hetfield spit ... a lot.

As Mae West said, "Too much of a good thing can be wonderful." Festivals that are no longer relevant (and, sadly, Lilith 2010, we mean you) quickly die out because no matter how low the ticket price, you can't give away something that no one wants. As far as your knock of Jazz Fest, don't knock it until you've tried it. Of the many festivals I've attended, it's singularly the one I've enjoyed the most.

Those hippies that you saw fleeing at Lollapalooza put down their hash pipes eventually and got back on the bus -- the festival bus, that is. Their spirit lives on in Bonnaroo and in every Phish festival that takes place or one of the four Dave Matthews Band Caravans that are under way this summer. If you just want to be narrow-minded and only be with music of your preferred ilk, yes, there are even festivals for you, especially if you want to noodle along to Phish and/or Dave Matthews Band until you go blind. That's what's so great about festivals. There's one for everyone's taste. When it comes to festivals, I say, "Super-size me."

Your nostalgia for the fests of yore -- which we were too young to attend (or not even born) doesn't mean that today's fests don't have just as much to offer. Your argument reminds me of the theme to Woody Allen's great new movie, "Midnight in Paris." Allen's message is that no matter what era we're in, we find ourselves nostalgic for an earlier time. Bonaroo 2011 will be someone else's Woodstock '69.

Plus, while a festival can bring attention to a neglected scene, as you point out with the initial Lollapalooza, that's an added benefit but not a mandate. The point of any festival is to come together and join in the communal experience of a shared love for the music that is pouring over you from all directions (and, of course, to make money). Whether it's Woodstock, Live Aid, Lollapalooza or Bonnaroo, or 1969 or 2011, in that regard, the song remains the same.

Remembering Legendary Cleveland Rock Critic Jane Scott

She was like Andy Warhol: iconic blond hair set in a most determined pageboy that never moved. That, and red oversized glasses. You couldn’t miss her at shows -- be it the Dead Boys, Pearl Jam or Neil Young. Paul McCartney serenaded her; the often prickly Lou Reed adored her, and young people in Cleveland had a better sense of the bands they loved because Jane Scott worked so hard to show stars as human beings.

Scott, known as the “World’s Oldest Teenager” for the almost half-century she covered rock music, died this morning. The enduring critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, whose first assignment was reviewing the Beatles' Sept. 15, 1964, concert at Public Hall, was 92.

Though her work life began as a Navy code cracker, Scott’s greatest translation was the onslaught of rock music as America found itself in the midst of seismic generational and social shifts. Her legend was forged accompanying Jimi Hendrix to buy a blue Corvette at Blau Chevrolet in Cleveland Heights, sharing beers with the Doors' Jim Morrison and writing “His name is Bruce Springsteen. He’s going to be rock’s next superstar” long before Time and Newsweek caught on.

But she was also a champion of smaller bands and local talent. She’d write about the Dead Boys, Devo, Joe Walsh, Chrissie Hynde and Rocket from the Tombs (which went on to become Pere Ubu). She celebrated Eric Carmen’s band the Raspberries and followed his solo success.

“When we finished the 10 nights at the Front Row Theatre,” recalls Cleveland icon Michael Stanley on the run that finished the Michael Stanley Band’s record-shattering live career, which included selling out two nights at the Richfield Coliseum faster than Led Zeppelin and four consecutive nights at Blossom Music Center. “It was over… and I had to face it. When I went back into the dressing room, after everyone was gone, there was Jane.”

There was Jane. Indeed, and always. Woodstock 94. Lollapalooza. Live Aid. She covered the broadest spectrum of music: R.E.M. to the Captain & Tennille, Nine Inch Nails to Aerosmith, Mott the Hoople to the Plasmatics, Prince to John Prine.

What set her apart was her willingness to be a fan. In a milieu of jaded critics, Scott wanted to believe in the possibilities of rock and the passion of the fans. In a 2002 interview with Plain Dealer critic John Soeder, she explained, “What I like about rock music is that you can’t sit around, feeling sorry for yourself… the blues perpetuates your feeling of despondency. Rock gets you up on your feet, dancing, and you forget about it. The beat gets you going.”

Not merely a cheerleader, she was an avid supporter of U2, Blondie, the Doobie Brothers, the Doors, any Beatle or Rolling Stone, but tried to embrace all artists. Over her 40+ years covering the genre, exhaustive as her knowledge was, there were still holes, but she believed the stories needed to be told.

“It always seemed like she never quite knew what to ask us,” remembers dB Peter Holsapple. “She was very firm with us, very businesslike. But when you’re going to Cleveland, just talking to her made you feel like you’d made it there… and you knew that.”

If Jane Scott leaves a legacy, beyond thousands of stories filed, it’s the artists who knew they were somebody because she turned her notebook toward them. As Reed enthused for her 80th birthday, “I love Jane Scott. I always have, I always will. When I was in the Velvet Underground, Jane was one of the only people I can remember who was nice to us. Interested in the music, the styles -- a very smart, guileless lady who loved music and musicians and had unbiased attitudes towards the evolving culture.”

(Growing up in Cleveland, I devoured every word she wrote: about Jackson Browne, Gil Scott Heron, Springsteen, the Ramones, the Stray Cats and Heart. She made me feel like I knew them, because she did. Not only did she, she got the very best out of exhausted, often cranky, certainly entitled stars. Because she could -- and did with unwavering dignity -- I believed I could too.)

Jane Scott loved rock and roll until the end. She still went to concerts, still knew what to ask. In 2008, Lyle Lovett flirted with her from the stage of the State Theatre where he was playing with Guy Clark, Joe Ely and John Hiatt.

Her writing gave music deeper context for generations in the city hailed as the “Rock & Roll Capitol of the World.” She captured the essence of rock coming of age, growing into maturity and finding its way into the 21st century. Her mark will be felt for years to come.

Brian Eno Explores the Melody of the Spoken Word

He puts Rick Holland's poetry to music in 'Drum Between the Bells.'

The process behind Brian Eno's new album, "Drums Between the Bells," a collaboration with the English poet Rick Holland, is based on a simple premise but one that could change the way you hear your next conversation.

"We are all singing. We call it speech, but we're singing to each other," Eno said (sang?) from London during a recent phone exchange. Eight years ago the British-born composer, producer, visual artist and sonic conceptualist began putting his belief to a test: "I thought, as soon as you put spoken word onto music, you start to hear it like singing anyway. You start to develop musical value and musical weight, and you start to notice how this word falls on that beat, and so on."

Hence "Drums," on which Eno has created a 16-track work of exquisite musical structures that support, reinforce, play tricks with, encapsulate and interpret Holland's poetry. It's read by a collection of human voices gathered from Eno's everyday life, including the receptionist at his local health club, his Polish bookkeeper and a South African woman he met on the street — in addition to Eno and Holland. The work, part of a career that includes at least 45 solo and collaborative albums, is a fascinating, magnetic experiment in sound.

Perhaps most significantly, though, is that "Drums Between the Bells," eight years gestating, captures most of the Eno sensibilities that have made him such a force in modern music: You can hear melodies suggestive of his gentle late 1970s work on "Music for Airports" and "Discreet Music." Other pieces, like the title track and "Sound Alien," are as furiously propellant as his 1992 drum and bass inspired album, "Nerve Net." The soft, easy melodies on "Cloud 4," which Eno narrates himself, could be updated reworkings from "Another Green World."

More than mere experiment, Eno pushes his idea further in the liner notes for the release: "I hope this record will signal the beginning of a new way for poets to think about their work, and for audiences to think about poetry."

A bold statement from anyone, but the notion carries weight considering that the man behind the proposal is a figure whose influence over a four-decade creative life includes cofounding Roxy Music, coining the phrase (and, arguably, inventing the genre) "ambient music," producing transcendent music by artists such as David Bowie (his classic "Berlin" trilogy), U2, Coldplay, Talking Heads and Devo, documenting New York's revolutionary No Wave movement of the late 1970s and steering the notion of sampling with the 1981 landmark collection with David Byrne, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts."

Eno's on to something here: a movement propelled by advancing technology has transformed the recorded voice into an endlessly manipulatable digital sound file, every syllable and glottal stop a tone to potentially rework.

Deconstructing and recontextualizing the human voice has been going on for years, of course, stretching back to early musique concrete, William Burroughs' cut-up experiments with Ian Sommerville and beyond. From Steve Reich's landmark "It's Gonna Rain" to the Velvet Underground's tragedy, "The Gift," to trucker Red Sovine's "Teddy Bear" to the collected works of Gil Scott-Heron to hip-hop's endless verbal exclamation points, the voice has collided with music in myriad ways. . But in the last decade, the ability to mess with our utterances has advanced in directions once unimaginable.

"We are right at the beginning of a digital revolution in what can be done with recorded voices," writes Eno in the liner notes. "[T]hey can be stretched, squeezed, harmonized, repositioned, inverted, diverted and perverted. Speech has become a fully-fledged musical material at last."

Indeed, last weekend in Las Vegas, the electronic producer Skrillex proved Eno's point when he deconstructed a recording of Henry Rollins' 2008 spoken-word tirade against electronic dance music. Harnessing Rollins' closed-minded dismissal of the genre, Skrillex transformed it into an electronic battle cry as furious and angry as anything Rollins did with Black Flag.

Eno is on a similar — though much more nuanced and beautiful — path: "I think one of my pursuits over the years is trying to answer the question of 'what else can you do with a voice other than stand in front of a microphone and sing? What other roles can a voice have in modern music?' And 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' was one attempt to answer that question, and various other things I've done — 'Music for Airports' was another attempt."

In the late 1990s while attending a cultural symposium, Eno heard Holland read one of his poems, and something struck a chord. "I thought, that's exactly the kind of poem I want: something that is compact, evocative, not over-specific, and quite pliable, in the sense that it had to be able to be pulled apart, and stretched, and all the other things that I want to do with sound." Four years later after a series of conversations, the two sat down in Eno's studio to experiment.

"The minute I walked through the studio door, he just put a microphone in my hand and said, 'Right, read,'" recalled Holland on the phone from England. They didn't talk concepts but just worked with voice and words. After this initial session, Eno suggested incorporating other people. These new tones, cracked open by Eno, changed the entire dynamic of Holland's poetry.

"All the different voices that he accumulated were far more interesting," said Holland, "because the stresses came in unusual places, or they were foreign speakers who had this very different, lilting tone. And when you take some of the melodic elements and mirror the voice, the reading of whatever poem sort of takes it where the whole piece ended up going."

The result is an album filled with epiphanies. The quiet, otherworldly bliss of "Dreambirds" features an archetypical Eno piano melody that seems to caress the voice of health club worker Caroline Wildi, whose smoky, rich tenor evokes Marianne Faithfull's. "Dreambirds … the floating caw caw …. The britilla hen … the parrot arachnis," whispers Wildi while behind her Eno has crafted a quiet piano run that circles around her voice teasingly.

"I just went in and started moving notes, so that quite a few of them fell on her words," recalled Eno of his creation of "Dreambirds." "And I thought that was a lovely effect … when the music and the voice occasionally kind of rung together. That really made it magical for me."

Taken as a whole, Eno's musical manipulations create mystery that adds an extra dimension to Holland's words, which on paper exist in an entirely different — silent — realm. Eno compares the process to a painter discovering an entirely new set of colors. "They're not just new varieties of colors, not like new kinds of pink. It's totally new colors that don't have names at all. And so a lot of the pursuit of pop music, actually, has been exploring those colors. What can we do with these new colors? What happens when we combine them with one another?"

Alice Cooper Recalls Bizarre Sing-Along With Iggy Pop and Brian Wilson

As rock star get-togethers go, Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop's late 70s meeting with Brian Wilson has to be one of the most surreal.

According to Cooper what started as a chance for a spot of hero-worshipping ended in bizarre fashion with the Beach Boys leader playing the same children's song repeatedly for an hour until things got too weird, even for the two rock upstarts.

Speaking to Contactmusic, Cooper recalled, "It was about 1978 or something like that. Iggy and I were sitting there waiting -- you know it was Brian Wilson one of the great writers of all time -- and he sat down at the piano and starts playing 'Mama's little baby loves shortnin shortnin, mama's little baby loves shortnin bread.'"

The shock-rock veteran continued, "He goes, 'No this is the greatest song ever written', dead seriously. We were two little kids, we go, 'Umm OK. Why is that the best song?' 'I don't know it's just the best song ever written.' That's like [Sir Paul] McCartney telling you that because you go, OK -- I guess you're right."

It's an incident Wilson remembered in his 'autobiography' -- co-written with Eugene Landy -- 'Wouldn't it Be Nice: My Own Story.'

"With me singing lead, I got Alice to repeat "mama, mama, mama" and Iggy to chant "shortnin', shortnin', shortnin'. Thinking something was up my sleeve, they enjoyed this bizarre situation for about fifteen minutes. But after an hour of singing 'Shortnin' Bread' they realised that either I really was as off the deep end as rumour had it or I was having fun at their expense."

He concluded, " In truth, it was a combination of both. Either way, they left. 'This is too much for us,' Iggy said. 'Too damn weird.'"

L.A. Philharmonic Gets in Sync With 'West Side Story'

The film's 50th anniversary will be marked at the Hollywood Bowl with the orchestra playing Leonard Bernstein's score as it unspools. Easier said than done.

In town conducting at the Hollywood Bowl in 1955, composer Leonard Bernstein took a break to visit with playwright Arthur Laurents at the Beverly Hills Hotel swimming pool. The two men sat at the edge of the pool, their legs dangling in the water, discussing not just their assorted projects but also that morning's headlines about juvenile delinquent gangs.

The way Laurents put it in his memoir "Original Story By," that poolside conversation jump-started "West Side Story," one of the most accomplished musicals of all time. Both men were already intrigued by choreographer Jerome Robbins' idea to rethink Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" as a contemporary musical, and the collaborators soon scrapped Catholic and Jewish protagonists for a tale of rival urban gangs.

"West Side Story's" Jets and Sharks burst onto Broadway in 1957, then onto the big screen in 1961. Robbins and Robert Wise directed Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer as the doomed lovers, and the film won 10 Academy Awards, including best picture. A supporting cast led by Rita Moreno, George Chakiris and Russ Tamblyn sang, danced and fought its way across New York's Upper West Side to Bernstein's extraordinary music, Laurents' tender book and Robbins' incomparable choreography; then-27-year-old Stephen Sondheim crafted the memorable lyrics.

Now comes the film's 50th-anniversary year, and where better to celebrate than at the Hollywood Bowl, which played a role in its gestation. To honor the occasion, the Bowl will present on Friday and Saturday, July 8 and 9, a newly remastered HD film screening and a live performance of Bernstein's music, with David Newman conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

"This is the first time the complete film score has been played by an orchestra since it was recorded in 1961," said Garth Edwin Sunderland, senior music editor at the Leonard Bernstein Office in New York. "Until now, the only way a symphonic orchestra could play this music was to play excerpts from the Broadway score or 'Symphonic Dances From "West Side Story,"' a 20-minute concert suite of the dance music."

The "Symphonic Dances" have been performed nearly three dozen times by the Los Angeles Philharmonic alone, for instance, most recently under the baton of Gustavo Dudamel at the Bowl last summer. So when the Leonard Bernstein Office approached the L.A. Phil with the promise of a complete score for the Bowl this summer, who could say no?

"'West Side Story' is one of the iconic movie musicals, and we haven't seen it in this form with a live orchestra," said Arvind Manocha, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Assn. "For us, it was a no-brainer."

It was not, however, an easy task for the people who put together the 90-minute score. For the Leonard Bernstein Office, which works to protect and preserve Bernstein's legacy, it was a complicated, multi-year endeavor.

"This is something I wanted to do for quite a while," said Paul Epstein, senior vice president of the Leonard Bernstein Office. "The experience of having a live orchestra is so much more visceral than hearing the soundtrack of a film. With the 50th anniversary of the film coming up, we reinvestigated how to overcome all the obstacles."

The organization, which is the event's producer, had long faced two challenges: Substantial parts of the film's score were missing and, until very recently, there was no good way to separate the film's vocal and orchestral tracks. How would an audience be able to hear the film's vocals without hearing the filmed orchestra?

First was the problem of locating the film music, an endeavor that took Bernstein staffer Eleanor Sandreski a year of research. But even that didn't net a complete orchestral score, explained Sunderland. "For instance, there were not just changes made by the film editor after the recording sessions but also improvisations by studio musicians," he said. "In some places, too, the film orchestration was unwieldy for live performance without the limitless resources of an MGM recording studio."

A major challenge was finding a balance between Bernstein's original orchestrations and the film's elaborations upon them, Sunderland said. "There were 30 seconds in the prologue, for instance, which had five xylophones, doubled by five pianos. It's a thrilling section but completely impractical for live performance."

Ask Sid Ramin, "West Side Story's" Oscar-winning co-orchestrator. "On Broadway, we used 'doublers' for the woodwinds, where the first reed might play flute, clarinet, as many instruments as he knew how to play," he recalled. "But when we did the picture, it was one player for every instrument. I think we used 16 woodwind players rather than the four we had on Broadway. It was a luxury and we loved it."

Conductor Newman reviewed the evolving score as Bernstein Office staffers assembled their jigsaw puzzle. "Leonard Bernstein's music is so inventive and cleverly done, moving the story forward," said Newman, who has long conducted live music for film projects both at the Sundance Institute and the Hollywood Bowl. "Restoring film scores is like a treasure hunt, and I think this score is one of the jewels of the 20th century."

"Bernstein was such an unusual artist," he said. "At the time he wrote this, he was straddling musical theater, symphonic conducting and serious musical composition. I think in 'West Side Story,' he combined popular music, musical theater and opera idioms and turned them into a unique work of art. There was certainly nothing like this in musical theater before."

Steve Linder, senior vice president of global arts manager IMG Artists and the event's production supervisor, was impressed by Newman's enthusiasm and experience. "You have to conduct the score at the same tempo it was done in the original recording," Linder said. "There's very little room for interpretation here. Johnny Green conducted the original score and you're conducting Johnny Green's original tempos. You're also accompanying vocals and it's a syncing challenge. When you're looking at a film performance, Rita Moreno can sing that song 15 times and she's going to sing it the same way every time."

Technicians were simultaneously taking apart the film's vocal and orchestral tracks. "Traditionally, in motion picture mixing, you have the dialogue track and vocals mixed and kept separate from the final music and sound effects," said Robert Heiber, vice president audio at Burbank-based Chace Audio by Deluxe. "In 'West Side Story,' the orchestra is married to these vocals."

Working with new technology from Paris-based Audionamix, Chace strived to pull off what Heiber calls "an audio magic trick of the highest order." Chace and Audionamix tested their new process first on the film's song "America," a colorful musical number arguing the virtues and follies of Puerto Rico versus America; the song has not just traditional song and dance, but also complicated group vocals, large orchestrations, footsteps and finger snaps. When that worked well, highly trained technicians went on to extract all the music from the film's soundtrack and leave behind the voices and sound effects.

The Hollywood Bowl evening comes amid a gaggle of 50th-anniversary celebrations. The film was a highlight of the TCM Classic Film Festival in May; writer Misha Berson's new book, "Something's Coming, Something Good: West Side Story and the American Imagination," came out in June; and a Blu-ray version of the film debuts in November.

The Leonard Bernstein Office is also readying the film and reconstituted score for future concerts around the country and abroad. The film and live performance package is already booked at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall for Sept. 7 and 8 with Newman conducting the New York Philharmonic, and Newman will conduct the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at its Symphony Center from Nov. 25 to 27. The project's European premiere will be at Royal Albert Hall in London with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra in June 2012.

"One can only imagine Bernstein's music played live by a brilliant orchestra and a conductor sensitized to what Bernstein wanted," said the playwright-actor-musician Hershey Felder, whose "Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein" is due at the Old Globe in San Diego later this month. "When musicians are present, there is a deep connection with the audience. I don't know what happens exactly, but as great as a recording is, it never captures the true immediacy of sound leaving an instrument and going right through the listener's body."

Gregg Allman: Living Proof of Music's Healing Power

Gregg Allman is a believer in the healing power of music.

Barely a year after undergoing a liver transplant, the veteran American musician is back on the road with his regular band, looking a little frail but in good voice and excellent spirits.

The Gregg Allman band kicked off a European mini-tour at London's Barbican Center on Friday, with two further UK dates scheduled plus more in Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany before they head home next month for a lengthy tour of the United States and Canada.

The backbone of their set is a series of songs from the album "Low Country Blues," his first record for 14 years.

It was released in February to critical acclaim and commercial success to match, debuting at No. 7 in the U.S. Billboard chart.

Diagnosed with hepatitis C and advised he needed a new liver, Allman decided to go into the studio to record an album of songs by his blues heroes, before going under the surgeon's knife in June last year.

With award-winning producer/guitarist T-Bone Burnett at the helm, the result is a spare, no-frills collection of classics by the likes of "Sleepy" John Estes, Skip James, B.B. King and Muddy Waters.

It shows off Allman's skills as a hollering blues performer and a musician of eclectic good taste.

Allman, 63, who co-founded the Allman Brothers Band with his brother Duane in 1969, says music was a consolation during his traumatic health problems before and since his transplant surgery.

"It was a great feeling to have a real good record in the can," he told Reuters backstage at the Barbican. His famous long blond tresses are now white and tied in a ponytail and his bushy beard trimmed neatly.

He said the operation was "the most horrendous pain I have ever been through" and it had taken him a year to recover enough to be able to tour again, although he is still in pain and will need further treatment later in the year. "I feel like someone hit me with a sledgehammer. But I'm alive."

As part of his musical therapy, he went on a brief tour with Elton John and Leon Russell four months after the operation. "But it was good and it got me out of the house."

Greeted by a standing ovation when he took to the Barbican stage, Allman was subjected throughout the performance to shouts and whoops from an audience that was more like a meeting of the faithful than a gathering of music fans.

However, he dealt with them with grace and southern charm and led the band on a brief tour through his back catalog and some choice cuts from "Low Country Blues," switching between his trademark Hammond B-3 organ and electric and acoustic guitars.

Shunning the airs and mannerisms of the rock star performer, he preferred to showcase the talents of fellow musicians in his rocking ensemble, with some stunning solos from guitarist Scott Sharrard, pianist Bruce Katz and sax man Jay Collins. For the London gig only, the band was augmented by two British horn players, Lee Badau on sax and trumpeter Alistair Walker.

Saving the best until last, the hyperactive crowd was treated to encores of Estes' "Floating Bridge" a haunting track from "Low Country Blues," and a barnstorming rendition of Blind Willie McTell's "Statesboro Blues," a vinyl classic from the Allman Brothers' 1971 live album "At Fillmore East," with Sharrard recreating the slide guitar of the late Duane Allman.

Allman appeared genuinely touched by the warmth of the reception from the London crowd. As he left, he wound his way slowly along the edge of the stage to shake outstretched hands and mumble thank-yous.

Brewerie at Union Station

Old-Fashioned Fiddle Music Fills the Air in San Jose's Rose Garden

In a region fixated on everything new, there's still room for something old.

San Jose's Rose Garden Park was filled with the jaunty twangs of a fiddle jam session Sunday afternoon, an apt prelude to Monday's Fourth of July celebrations.

The musicians, members of the Santa Clara Valley Fiddlers Association, billed as the state's only independent fiddlers organization, gathered under a small grove of redwood trees and played tunes that the body just can't resist wanting to move to. Fiddle jams include not just the fiddle, but also a number of other acoustic instruments, including guitar, double bass and mandolin.

"It's American music -- Saturday-night-relaxing-time music," said Charlotte Prater, a trustee of the association, who broke into a jig as five or more clusters of musicians picked up bows and picked at banjos, producing an array of blues-country-swing-and-old-time fiddle tunes.

"It has upbeat rhythms, but some of the songs are the saddest songs you've ever heard in your life," she said. —‰'Oh, Daddy, please don't go to the mine today. I've had such a terrible dream.' There are songs about children dying and soldiers dying. It's emotional music."

The music itself, though, is upbeat -- a musical metaphor of the resilient spirit of early Americans and others who overcome hardship and heartache to build a new country and work through individual struggles.

The fiddle provided the soundtrack of the growth and yearnings of a young America. Early settlers embraced the portable and rugged instruments. And while devotees of the art form are apt to refer to fiddling as "old-time" music, its tempo is still very much a part of the nation's landscape.

One doesn't have to be westward bound in a covered wagon to enjoy its foot-jumping beats. Today, its timeless tunes attract players from 8 to 80.

As the jam was getting started, Robin Gau and her three daughters showed up to join in.

"I like how it's very fast, very lively music," said 12-year-old Zoe Wu just before she and her family pulled violins out of their cases.

"It's so happy," Gau said. "It's a group thing. It gets people going. But it's never too rowdy. It's wholesome."

The association, which aims to promote the genre, holds annual youth fiddle contests. It performs the first Sunday of every month, usually at nearby Hoover Middle School, but moves its venue to the park in July and August. The group sponsors several training sessions for young people with a professional musician every year, said Richard Brooks, president of the 38-year-old fiddlers association that has as many as 200 members.

"The goal is for us to have fun," he said.

Just before Christmas, $4,000 worth of speakers, microphones and mixers were stolen from the group's San Jose storage locker. The nonprofit organization, which relies on donations, hopes to buy new equipment before its annual youth fiddle contest on Nov. 6.

Fiddle jam sessions are relaxed, free-flowing events. Each musician in a group gets a turn at choosing the tune. Players frequently shift from group to group.

"It's totally disorganized," Prater said. "If a jam gets too big, it breaks up" as some players drift over to other groups.

On Sunday, dozens of lovers of fiddling set up lawn chairs under the canopy of redwood branches to listen to the soothing tunes on a hot summer day.

"It's perfect summer music," said Mirell Fayne, who just recently fell in love with the folksy music. "You couldn't ask for more. You have the Rose Garden and the musicians. It's simple, acoustic, relaxing. It's a treat."

She's taken on a personal task to promote fiddle music.

"It's always the new that makes the conversation," Fayne said. "There should be a way to make this known. I'm sure a lot of people would be interested. There's a lot to learn about it. It's amazing to hear it live."

For more information about the Santa Clara Valley Fiddlers Association, see www.scvfa.org.

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