Don’t shut out rock; Deb Pasternak
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., March 9, 2001) - Anyone with the least bit of vision can see that the Berkshires are poised to ratchet up the year-round cultural life to a whole other level. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon - or even a cultural columnist - to tell that developments in North, Central and South County all point to enhanced cultural offerings in all the performing and visual arts.

As always when this happens, however, there is a contingent of the cultural commissariat ready to do what it can to squelch any efforts to include popular music in the mix.. The “no rock” contingent is a blend of know-nothings who at best are misguided and misunderstand the diversity of popular music -- lumping together everything from Willie Nelson to Wu-Tang Clan -- and who at worst are guilty of sheer age-ism and racism -- youth-hating elders who irrationally fear any gathering of under-20-somethings outside of the carefully-controlled, prison-like walls of school, and who automatically equate such get-togethers with rampant drug abuse and sexual promiscuity.

If this weren’t such a pathetic, age-old phenomenon, one dating back at least as far as the 1950s and Elvis Presley -- if not even further to the shrieking hysteria surrounding the young Frank Sinatra (how quickly they forget) -- it would be laughable.

But there is nothing funny about something which threatens the very vitality and integrity of the Berkshire cultural economy. Demographics count, and at this point, 45 years A.E., or after Elvis, few folks under 60 haven’t been touched in one way or another by Anglo-American popular music, be it Elvis, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, or any of the thousands of performers who are their creative offspring. The overwhelming success of Club Helsinki, which caters to an older crowd, is proof enough that there is a Berkshire audience eager to enjoy live rock and roots music, but it’s not enough: Berkshire needs a larger venue to attract theater-style acts.

But the argument in favor of pop doesn’t rest solely with demographics and box office. That would too easily invite pandering, and the whole point of existing institutions like Tanglewood and Mass MoCA and planned cultural centers like the revitalized Colonial and Mahaiwe theatres is not to pander but present the performing arts with a curatorial vision. A curatorial vision, however, that ignores the best in popular music - including folk, jazz, pop, blues, and, yes, rock and r&b (that’s black music to you, white man) -- would be nearsightedness at best or willful blindness at worst.

Just because popular music is the most popular form of entertainment among young people doesn’t mean it should be stricken from the menu at the Colonial and the Mahaiwe, as has been suggested on occasion. First of all, popular music appeals to plenty of people between the ages of 20 and 60. Secondly, who says teen-agers don’t count? Thirdly, some of our most eloquent artists use the form of popular music to make creative statements that rank with the best of new classical music, painting, literature, theater, film and dance. Indeed, take a poll of creative artists in all fields and you’re guaranteed to find that it’s not Mozart, Beethoven, Picasso, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, or Martha Graham who is the most influential artist of all but Bob Dylan.

One need look no further than Norhtampton to see the recipe for success for theaters like the Colonial and the Mahaiwe. The recently-restored Calvin Theatre presents a diverse array of touring theatrical productions, dance programs, children’s entertainment, classical music, and, yes, rock music and various offshoots of rock that appeal to teens and 20-somethings as well as to the rest of us older, culture-loving folk.

Preempting rock shows at theaters or advocating prior restraint on well-managed, weekend-long festivals at area ski resorts such as the annual Berkshire Mountain Music Festival at Butternut Basin, is biased and self-defeating. And unless the local authorities are ready to close down all the bars -- to and from which adults are encouraged to drive and hang out at drinking copious amounts of alcohol -- or prohibit the sale of beer at ballparks and other sporting events where violence and aggression is tolerated if not encouarged, it is the height of hypocrisy to condemn rock shows as mere venues for communal drug use.

Deb Pasternak - www.debpasternak.com

I once wrote, “Combine the bohemian folk-jazz leanings of Rickie Lee Jones, the shimmering melodicism of Jonatha Brooke and the raw gutsy blues of Rory Block, and you get a rough approximation of where Deb Pasternak is coming from.” But with Pasternak’s most recent album, “Eleven,” that equation needs to be adjusted somewhat by adding some Shelby Lynne or Sheryl Crow to the mix to account for Pasternak’s newfound penchant for soul-rock.

It’s a natural direction for Pasternak, who has been a mainstay of Boston’s folk-rock scene for half a decade or more. On “Eleven,” Pasternak gets down and funky on tunes like “Jack,” powered by a noir-guitar riff and Tom West’s groovy B-3 organ, and rocks hard on “One Regret,” which slowly builds from a matter-of-fact confession to a veritable scream. It’s typical of Pasternak’s musical and emotional range, and her sultry, insinuating vocals reveal as much with their tone as her lyrics. Pasternak makes a long-overdue appearance in the Berkshires next Thursday, March 15, with her band at Club Helsinki.

Kicking off the weekend at Helsinki tonight is Funk-Kin, a New Jersey-based funk outfit that, as hinted at by its name, claims lineage from the original Parliament-Funkadelic and George Clinton’s P-Funk Allstars. Judging from the group’s eponymous debut CD, the group mines the same vein as P-Funk, with tunes powered by phat funk grooves.

Tomorrow night, the Pioneer Valley’s top reggae outfit Black Rebels returns to Helsinki. Led by Senegalese natives Manou and Dr. Jeannot, the group includes natives of Africa, Jamaica and the U.S., and plays a brand of classic, conscious roots reggae steeped in Rastafarian thought and culture.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 9, 2001. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2001. All rights reserved.]