Berkshire Pop Year 2000 In Review
By Seth Rogovoy

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., December 21, 2000) -- This past year was a very good one for popular music fans in the Berkshires, especially those whose tastes run toward folk, blues, roots and even off-the-beaten-track music.

This was in stark contrast to the trend just a year or so ago, which saw the decline and fall of the region’s key performance venue, the so-called National Music Foundation, in Lenox.

But pop abhors a vacuum, and in the wake of the NMF’s departure several venues and series sprung up which offered fans of live music plenty of opportunities to enjoy performers of regional and national renown while holding out the promise of more to come.

Two venues in particular established themselves as reliable, forward-looking presenters. Each was unlikely in its own way to bear the mantle, but that just might have been partly what made them succeed. I speak of course of Club Helsinki in Great Barrington and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams, the former an annex to a restaurant and the latter an art museum.

Of course, these are just superficial descriptions of places that have quickly become much more than what they appear to be. In a year’s time, Club Helsinki has become the focal gathering point for South County’s hip population of artists, musicians, art lovers and music lovers. More than just a nightclub, Club Helsinki has taken on the role of community-builder. With outreach efforts in collaboration with the Railroad Street Youth Project, with its stage welcoming local musicians on open-mike nights, and with off-site events and promotions such as the Maceo Parker concert at the Mahaiwe Theatre, Helsinki has fast become a cultural incubator. And Mass MoCA is quickly living up to its stated goal of being an interdisciplinary cultural laboratory, and not just a bunch of buildings with pictures on the wall. Many of its presentations, including experimental theater, film, and dance, are accompanied by innovative composer/musicians like Gary Lucas, Mark Dresser and Phillip Glass, giving Berkshire audiences the equivalent of a Brooklyn Academy of Music or the Knitting Factory in their own back yard.

With its eclectic mix of blues, soul, rock, folk, jazz, reggae and country, Helsinki is fast on its way to becoming the Berkshires’ equivalent of the Iron Horse. With two or more touring acts coming through the club every weekend, plus regional and local performers filling out the schedule the rest of the week, Helsinki has established a reputation outside the area which will only attract even more talents along the lines of what this past year offered.

The list of performers who came through is staggering, ranging from the Cuban jazz of Juan Carlos Formell, soul by the Holmes Brothers, reggae by Burning Spear, Everton Blender and Richie Spice, blues by Eddy Clearwater, Tab Benoit, Debbie Davies and Toni Lynn Washington, the Bashert Klezmer Band and Jewish world-beat group Pharaoh’s Daughter, jazz from Hamiet Bluiett, Olu Dara and Mose Allison, folk from Odetta, Sally Taylor, Jules Shear, Stacey Earle and Marshall Crenshaw, plus zydeco, cabaret, funk and rock. And that’s not nearly even half of it.

The Berkshires still needs a theater-size venue for regular concert performances of the type that occasionally occur at Mass MoCA, which had Patti Smith in the outside courtyard and Luna in its black-box theater, in addition to its popular dance concerts. The one-shot deal with Maceo Parker at the Mahaiwe was a harbinger of hope for more, although there have been mixed signals about the theater’s future use for pop concerts.

There still is a knee-jerk reaction against anything that smacks of a large, rock-concert-style gathering of youth in the Berkshires; witness the overreaction against last summer’s Berkshire Mountain Music Festival at Butternut Basin (although the overwhelming community-wide backlash against the criticism of the festival was very encouraging). These attitudes will hopefully become a thing of the past, especially as the restoration of North Adams’s Mohawk and Pittsfield’s Colonial theaters proceed. Certainly these venues can occasionally host the sort of performances that regularly pack Northampton’s glorious Calvin Theatre, the sort of performances that used to bring younger people to Tanglewood before that venue effectively conceded any interest in catering to the tastes of those under the half-century mark. Great Barrington was also the site of several other new concert series. The Guthrie Center presented a mix of top, nationally-known singer-songwriters like Bill Morrissey, Cliff Eberhardt, Vance Gilbert and Lucy Kaplansky alongside regional and up-and-coming performers. What the Guthrie series lacked in organizational and promotional know-how it made up for in its old-fashioned, seat-of-the-pants, coffeehouse feel.

Similarly, the Rave Review series at Searles Castle in Great Barrington also attracted crowds for jazz-cabaret performances by the likes of Dave McKenna and others, even if it wasn’t always clear who’s on first (I don’t know; second base). What’s more important is establishing once and for all the fact that there is a year-round audience for jazz, folk and other popular music.

That audience continued to be underserved, however, in central and northern Berkshire. As usual, almost nothing happened in Pittsfield, save for some underpromoted jazz concerts at the Berkshire Museum. And in spite of its burgeoning, high-tech industry and the consequent demographic evolution of North County, outside of Mass MoCA, these was yet to be any response in terms of providing nightlife for the minions who labor in Silicon Village, who are said to flee the commonwealth by 3 p.m. every Friday.

Ironically, the one venue that seemed to have had a grasp on how to attract and hold a concert audience in North County seems to have lost its touch. For a few years running, the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown had the best concert series in the Berkshires. The Clark’s attention to every detail of concert promotion was staggering; even the performers were moved to comment from the stage on how well things were managed at the Clark. Over the last year, however, the Clark’s auditorium programs have the feeling of a rudderless ship. Formerly there was a seamless conjunction between the curatorial vision behind music at the Clark and the marketing and promotion of the same. Now, it seems like the captain left the ship on autopilot and it’s just sailing in circles. This is a shame, as the Clark has some great acts scheduled in upcoming weeks and months. Perhaps it’s not too late for someone there to pull things together and make something of what’s left.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Dec. 29, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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