From: jmf@endor.harvard.edu ( ghost )
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Subject: wolf sightings
Summary: better luck last time
Keywords: we saw the wolf, too
Date: 3 Sep 92 23:16:02 GMT
Organization: DAS Purchasing, Harvard University

In article <kaplan4.714922101@husc10> kaplan4@husc10.harvard.edu (Merrill Kaplan) writes:
>TEMPEST appeared at Johnny D's in Somerville last night, with We Saw the
>Wolf opening for them.  
>
>The Wolves (for those who don't know) are drums,
>bass, two voices (one male and one female), and guitar (switched often
>with a bailalaika).  Unfortunately, that's also the order of volume,
>descending.  The band's sound suffered greatly from the volume of the
>percussion and the fervor of the drummer.  He appeared to have been lately
>of some punk band, or else to have a serious feud with the drumskins...
>They had some interesting material, including a very electric "Betsy Bell
>and Mary Gray" and an unusual "Matthy Groves," but I wish I actually
>knew what they sounded like with a decent mix.  The guitar/bailalaika-
>player seemed to be quite good (although his voice was not to my taste),
>but that's largely judging from what his fingers _looked_like_ on the 
>instruments.


The lead-singer/guitarist/balalaika-player was none other than 
Andy Nagy, DJ on WBRS's Black Jack Davy show, 8-10:30 pm Mondays, 100.1 FM

The last time I saw any wolves was at least a couple of years ago,
when the lead singer was a dark-haired woman with a darker (& better)
voice than the current suitable-for-rock/punk blonde female co-lead,
and Andy was singing only harmony.  Andy's wife recently had a baby
(you can hear Jamie-the-littlest-DJ gurgling in the back on the radio
sometimes) & I don't know if said wife was in the former or is in the
current version of the band, so I ought to step lightly here...

They used to do punkish electric folk,
now they seem decidedly slanted toward folkish punk (punk being by 
definition electric, I left that out as an adjective).  I've always wanted
to like them more than I do, on account of Andy's show being so good
(& me winning so many free tickets).

However, I'm the one who doesn't like RainDogs either, based on one
hearing..
that's the band where Johnny Cunningham doubles the lead guitarist's lines..
I heard them do this & thought "what a waste of Johnny Cunningham;
any decent fiddler could do *that*" & then read an interview where
none other than Johnny said "its so neat..I get to double the lead 
guitarist's lines" among his other reasons for being in the band.
So who am I to say?

This time around Wolves had lot of original songs, all punk, some 
on the little-used-lately but time-honored theme of people doing in
various family members in various ways...there've been so
many cases around here lately of wives hiring 16-year-old lovers to kill
their husbands, husbands stuffing their wives in car trunks & then 
reporting them 'missing' & husbands killing their children
"they made me pay too much child support!" (& then themselves if
they remember to get around to it) that it seems a natural idea.
I liked, if like is the right word, those modern punk murder ballads 
better than the songs to somebody's mushroom lunch, or whatever.
They'd often get a great refrain going but not back it up by a strong
verse, & the songs did tend to end on a symbol clunk, all of them.  

Andy might have been a little intimidated opening for Lief Sorbye, who
he's obviously been an admirer of for a long time
(as evinced by his radio feature & intro remarks at Johnny D's).
And I bet the mix is supposed to be fuzzy, for punk...
I'm definitely gonna go see them til I like them, but I may let some
more time go by in between to see how things change.