What's The Deal With...CURLING? Winter Olympics 2018 Preview With Paul! at DO617

I’m no stranger to a broom (actually, I am, you can ask my partner) but I had some tough questions for my friend good friend Paul Aronofsky of the North End Curling Club about the wonderful world of curling in preparation for this year’s Winter Olympics. 

 

How did you get into the sport?

I was watching the 2010 Winter Olympics and saw these rocks crawling down the ice very slowly and people just screaming back and forth and sweeping in front of it, and was like “this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen! How do I get into this?”

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Boston's Best Pizza at Do617

Boston’s Top 5 Pizza Places

If you were to believe Serpentor’s telling of the origin of pizza, the delicious meal was conceived at the Siege of Alesia in 52 BC by Julius Caesar with pita and “some cheese, even the stale rinds will do” toasted over a fire by Roman centurions. This could all be a bunch of hooey derived by writer Larry Hama to fill pages in G.I. Joe Yearbook #3 in 1987, but we love it so much that our head canon can’t be swayed.

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Brain Candy Live! With Adam Savage and Michael Stevens - placeholder

Adam Savage (Mythbusters) and Michael Stevens (Vsauce) joined us to talk Brain Candy Live!, actual candy and the horrors of mansplaining. But more importantly, science! This two part interview caused a riff in the space-time continuum. First we asked Adam Savage about Brain Candy Live! and working with Michael Stevens.

DO617: WE’RE EXCITED ABOUT BRAIN CANDY LIVE!

ADAM SAVAGE: Me Too!

WHAT IS THE MOST SURPRISING THING THAT HAS HAPPENED WITH A GUEST ON STAGE AT BRAIN CANDY LIVE?

We have some wonderful, wonderful audience interactions. We bring a young person up on stage every night to build a machine with us. It is really, really fun to get their help, they don’t quite realize what kind of machine they are making and then they get to drive it.

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5 Questions with FAST ROMANTICS at DO617.com

How’s the first leg of your tour going so far?

Havin’ a hell of a good time, thanks for asking! We’ve really missed the states and our experiences in the USA had such an impact on this record, it’s feeling really special to play them to American audiences finally.

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INTERVIEW WITH PAZ LENCHANTIN OF THE PIXIES

DO617: Did you contribute to writing on this new record (Head Carrier) as well as performing on it?

Paz Lenchantin: Head Carrier was a collaborative effort. We had six weeks or so pre-production on the songs. The songs mainly came from a skeleton that Charles (Black Francis) had come up with. Some of the songs didn’t make the cut at RAK Studios in London.

We were inspired there, we had a little apartment, Charles and I, we were adjacent, attached to he studio. We were like a family. We made dinner, we made coffee in the morning, talk about music, listen to music while we weren’t in the studio.

While we were there, some other songs came up. These last minute gems. One of them didn’t make the record. However, this song was very important to me because this song inspired another song that I wrote that DID make the record, which is called, ‘All I Think About Now’.

This song features me singing lead on vocals. The lyrics were written by Black Francis. He asked me what I wanted to sing about. I thought, this is an exciting moment…I’m being asked what I want to sing about…

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5 Questions with CJ RAMONE at DO617

5 QUESTIONS WITH CJ RAMONE

CJ, THANKS FOR JOINING US. WHAT’S NEW WITH YOUR SOUND ON AMERICAN BEAUTY?

SONGWRITING IS A GOOD PIECE SHARPER AS IT’S MY THIRD GO AROUND, SECOND ON FAT WRECK. I WORKED WITH PRODUCER/ENGINEER PAUL MINER THIS TIME SO THE SOUND OF THE RECORD IS BIG! GUITARS A BIT CRUNCHIER AND THE VOCALS MORE UP FRONT WITH A GOOD DOSE OF STEVE SOTO’S BEATLESQUE HARMONIZING. IT ALSO INCLUDES SOME GREAT PERCUSSION BY PETE SOSA AND DAN ROOT’S GUITAR WORK THAT CAN’T BE BEAT. WE’VE EVEN GOT THE BOYS FROM MARIACHI EL BRONX PLAYING TRUMPETS ON A TRACK!

How is it playing with other punk royalty Steve Soto (Adolescents), Dan Root (Adolescents), and Pete Sosa (Street Dogs) and will these guys be joining you on the road?

COULDN’T ASK FOR BETTER. THERE’S A CONFIDENCE YOU FEEL STEPPING ON STAGE WITH VETS LIKE THOSE GUYS. PETE IS THE BABY BOY OF THE GROUP, BUT HAS AS MUCH ROAD TIME AS SOME OF THE OLD TIMERS IN THE BUSINESS.

THE ONE HANG UP IS THOSE BOYS ALL GET BUSY SOMETIMES AND I’VE GOT TO KEEP IT ROLLING. MY SECOND LINE UP IS CHRIS ELLER AND JOSH BLACKWAY FROM THE HUNTINGTONS AND MY GOOD BUDDY NATE SANDER.

How is it working with the fine folks at FAT WRECK CHORDS?

YEAH FAT IS A GOOD HOME FOR ME. NEVER HAVE A PROBLEM GETTING SOMEONE ON THE PHONE AT HEADQUARTERS AND THEY’RE QUICK AT GETTING THINGS DONE. ALSO DOES NOT HURT THAT THEY’VE GOT A BOAT LOAD OF GREAT BANDS WHICH MEANS LEAVING WITH LOTS OF VINYL ANYTIME WE STOP IN ON A WEST COAST RUN!!

Care to tell us about your charitable work with Autism Speaks or any other organization?

I. HAVE SUPPORTED AUTISM SPEAKS FOR A LONG TIME NOW. I DO THE LONG ISLAND WALK WITH TEAM CJ RAMONE EVERY YEAR. MY WIFE DENISE ORGANIZES MOST OF MY INVOLVEMENT AND WE ARE PLANNING A CJ RAMONE BIRTHDAY BASH TO RAISE SOME FUNDS ALSO. AUTISM SPEAKS FUNDS INCREDIBLE AMOUNTS OF RESEARCH AND WITH THE NUMBER OF KIDS BEING DIAGNOSED EVERYDAY, IF THIS WAS A FATAL DISEASE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN CALLED AN EPIDEMIC LONG AGO AND THE FEDS WOULD HAVE POURED MILLIONS OF DOLLARS INTO IT. . SO TO MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE AUTISTIC COMMUNITY, STAY TOUGH!!!

Do you have a favorite ACID EATERS track? It doesn’t have to be one you played on!

MY BACK PAGES. OUR VERSION IS BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL.

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5 Questions with THE BESNARD LAKES at DO617

5 QUESTIONS WITH OLGA FROM THE BESNARD LAKES

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE THING ABOUT PLAYING IN BOSTON? OUR CHARMING ACCENTS? OUR HOSPITALITY?

I do love the Boston accent! We used to have a roommate from Boston and she has the best lingo and the best laugh. What else can you say, it’s a wicked deadly town you got there. I’m originally from the west coast of Canada, I grew up in British Columbia, and apparently we have awesome accents too, ha.

CARE TO TELL US ABOUT THE NAME OF YOUR LATEST EP, THE BESNARD LAKES ARE THE DIVINE WIND?

We’d been tossing around the idea of revisiting the “Besnard Lakes Are the…” title, and Jace came up with the Divine Wind. It’s apparently the english translation of Kamikaze, which he’d been reading about and thought it was a cool idea. It’s got a kind of poetic darkness to it, which is right up our alley.

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5 Questions with CAPTAIN SENSIBLE of The Damned at Do617

5 QUESTIONS WITH CAPTAIN SENSIBLE OF THE DAMNED

Did you know that the venue you are playing PARADISE ROCK CLUB is also celebrating 40 years?

No, good luck to them… if them walls could speak what stories they’d tell. Whereas with us the carnage over the years is well known. I can only guess at the money it cost us to replace wrecked equipment and pay fines. Of course, we had no idea it was us paying it all… managers don’t tell you that stuff. Until you ask them why you’re still stoney broke - despite playing all those shows.

Do you have any memories of past Boston shows you’d like to share?

The Rat Club.. we had some fun there over the years. Not so much the first time though, when between songs the audience chatted among themselves, accompanied by the sound of cutlery on plates. We dragged a table up onstage and ordered pizza… if you can’t beat em join em!

The band has of course taken some time off over the years, but continues to roll on and tour. What keeps you all coming back?

While there’s discerning music fans out there who want to see us, and we’re fit enough to do it we’ll keep going. Those old frauds the Stones are still out there, can’t let those old swines outlive us.

When our guitarist and leader Brian James quit the band in ‘78 we were considered to be washed up… especially with no history of songwriting between the remaining 3 members. But I wasn’t going back to cleaning toilets if I could possibly help it so started composing like anyone’s business, and with the help of our chum Lemmy on bass we did some gigs that procured a new record deal, and a new musical adventure began - that went thru garage, psych and goth phases… with us eventually becoming the evangelists for live music you see now. We live for that manic hour and a half onstage when there’s an element of danger and chaos… and anything could happen.

The music business has changed but the support from your vast swath of punk, goth and rock fans continues to stay the same. Not many you started out with are still doing it. How was it working with Pledge Music to fund your latest album, offering your fans something that they want?

Things are very different now… but we caught the tail end of a golden period for bands. When a label would book a live in studio for a few weeks and trust you to deliver something they can sell. They often ended up with drastically different records to that they were expecting… and you simply can’t imagine that ever happening today. We used to enjoy seeing the slightly shocked record company faces when we played our new finished albums the first time.

Our mates the Buzzcocks told us about this Pledge Music thing which I’d no idea about - but when told it allowed us to make the album that WE wanted to make… without a record label bloke watching over your shoulder I was there. So we can pretty much do what we like - which in the 80s would’ve meant getting comprehensively sloshed and wrecking the studio - probably getting thrown out of a few along the way for those sort of capers. Not this time though, being considerably older… and hopefully wiser.

Pinch, Stu and a Monty are such great players… they’re going to get a chance to flex their muscles musically. This is a band that can break out of a song structure and really jam it up.

Each album we’ve made sounds different from the last one - and this one will continue that trend. It’s fun to experiment, to be creative… take a few risks. The only shame is not releasing before the world tour, but to have boshed out a half finished album would be wrong. I have Sgt Pepper and Pet Sounds in my vinyl collection, played em to death over the years, and unlikely as it sounds always aspire to achieve those elevated standards.

Do you have a favorite (or least favorite) THE DAMNED song to play live?

Fave - Neat Neat Neat for the jamming scope the riff allows… we never play it the same twice.

Cheers - CS