Rick Berlin

There is a light that never goes out
For 30 years, Rick Berlin has explored countless musical styles. A new CD shows he's not done yet.
By Jonathan Perry, Globe Correspondent | January 27, 2006

One afternoon in 2004, a few of the folks affiliated with Hi-N-Dry, the Cambridge record label, were sitting and talking around the kitchen table. Singer-songwriter Rick Berlin had dropped by for a quick visit and, as he was leaving, he reached out and struck a chord on a nearby piano that, like the Norfolk Street loft itself, had once belonged to late Morphine leader Mark Sandman.
''It was really nice hearing the piano and we said, 'Rick, sing us a song,' " recalls former Morphine drummer Billy Conway, who was there that afternoon and would later help produce Berlin's striking new CD, ''Me & Van Gogh." A two-night stand celebrating the release is tonight and tomorrow at the Lizard Lounge. ''In the middle of the day, he played the most beautiful song for the little crowd, like a little treat, and then off he went. And I thought, 'This guy's got a switch that's always on.' Rick can throw ideas around at will -- he's got a million of 'em."
Or, at least as many ideas as he's been able to cram into more than 30 years of writing, recording, and performing, both solo and with bands of every style and sound: glam rock, new wave pop, torched cabaret. You name it, Berlin has done it, musical or otherwise. Shook hands with Richard Nixon (twice). Dropped acid before his physical exam for the draft. Dropped out of Yale Drama School, where he was on a full scholarship. Performed at a Frank Zappa anniversary party with Patti Smith and the funk group LaBelle. Opened for Roxy Music and the J. Geils Band. Signed to, and then dropped by, Epic Records. Turned down legendary label honcho Seymour Stein's $100,000 offer of a Sire Records contract. Wrote musicals rejected by Disney. Received a curious phone call from the namesake of his last band, the Shelley Winters Project.
''It's bizarre because I never thought music would be a career," says Berlin, 60, tucked into a booth at Doyle's Café in Jamaica Plain, where he has waited tables for more than 15 years. ''Six months after I put my first band together [Orchestra Luna, in 1973], we were signed to Epic and I thought, 'Wow, this is easy'!"
There would, of course, be as many trials as triumphs through the decades, but at the moment, Berlin's basking in the latter. Tonight and tomorrow, dozens of local denizens -- old friends, proteges, rockers, multimedia experimentalists -- will pay tribute to Berlin and his vast, enigmatic catalog. Any version or interpretation of any song is welcome. (For a complete list of performers and show details, go to www.rickberlin.com). Berlin says he's ''incredibly moved that this many people want to take the time to learn something that's not theirs. That's a big deal."
In addition to writing songs -- he's always writing songs -- Berlin's now shooting a documentary titled ''Jamaica Plain-Spoken (Small Town America in the 21st Century?)." He has interviewed 55 people for the project, which he hopes to complete in two years.
''My favorite type of art to do is the stuff I know the least about," Berlin says. ''I never really studied music or piano for very long" -- he studied architecture at Yale University -- ''so I trusted my ability to make something original because it wasn't coming out of a school. I've watched so many movies -- most gay people watch too many movies -- but I thought, it's about time I tried to make one."
''Me & Van Gogh" is a tender, funny, moving, raw nerve of a record, set dramatically alight by nothing more than Berlin's starkly expressive voice and the Sandman piano. He sang and played at the same time with no overdubs.
''I wanted to see if I could actually make a record that had nothing else on it and if the songs could stand alone," he says. ''It's a private record, not a party record."
Conway, who coproduced with Tom Dube, urged Berlin to leave intimate, open spaces, hit fewer notes but emphasize dramatic chords, and stretch out. ''His piano and his voice dancing to their own time" is how Conway describes the recording sessions.
Indeed, the disc's dozen vignettes defy convention: Think John Waters and Jim Jarmusch crossed with Raymond Carver and Randy Newman. Tracks such as ''Criminal," ''Don't Talk About Joan," and, most powerfully, ''A Letter," are verite snapshots; plain-spoken portraits of human frailty, humor, and torment. Most of Berlin's material is grounded in real-life conversation, either overheard in the bustle and din of the everyday or aimed at him directly. Berlin estimates that roughly 90 percent of the lyrics in ''A Letter" come verbatim from correspondence a troubled young acquaintance sent him from prison.
''I met him, he was a hustler, and I picked him up more than once," Berlin says. ''He wound up in prison and wrote me this letter and I was so moved by it. I used his life." He guiltily calls his modus operandi ''vampiric." But isn't it the true storyteller who can recognize art in the ordinary, seize it, and create something special that captures yet transcends its quotidian beginnings?
This uncommon touch inspired the album's tenderly empathic title track.
''It's hard for an artist who has not succeeded in a financial way to not wonder about an artist like Van Gogh, because he was driven to do that work, he was going insane as he did that work, and his brother was the only one who bought anything. And now he's on every poster in every college," Berlin says with a bitter laugh. ''In Western culture, if you're not making money for somebody else, you're a flop. And I've never succeeded, I've never made any money doing this, ever. And yet, I'm so compelled to do it. I'm not at the level of Van Gogh, but I think about him."

Berlin to America: It's time we had a little Plain talk
June 19, 2005
Though most plans hatched in a dark bar seldom see the light of day, a documentary on JP proposed over pints at the Brendan Behan Pub has moved from wishful thinking to work in progress. Veteran Doyle's waiter Rick Berlin will add the new role of filmmaker to his arts resume as he and local musician/writer Todd Drogy work to complete ''Jamaica Plain-Spoken (Small Town America in the 21st Century?)," an oral history of the neighborhood that Berlin describes as ''the exact opposite of a gated community."
Hustling among tables at Doyle's last Sunday night, Berlin stole a few moments by the wait station to discuss the status of the project the duo plans to complete by 2008. With more than 40 interviews in the can, he lauded the openness of their subjects, who range from ''kids to old-timers, stockbrokers to struggling artists."
''It's amazing," said Berlin, 60. ''If you scratch beneath the surface of a banker or a barber, you're gonna find a story that will break your heart or inspire you or both. The whole red-state versus blue-state division starts to break down when you hear these individual voices. You realize that a blue-collar Republican's wish for his son isn't so different from a Democratic dad's."
After a moment's needling from a waitress for chatting during the dinner rush, Berlin continued. ''JP is a place where people will stop and talk with you, regardless of what your T-shirt says," added Berlin. ''Sure, JP has had some problems, but by and large it's working as a genuinely diverse neighborhood. Todd and I want to capture that and present it as a template for the rest of the country."
RON FLETCHER
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

By George, they've found their muse
By Ron Fletcher, Globe Correspondent - CITY WEEKLY | July 25, 2004
Art for art's sake? Not now. Not here.

With the Democratic National Convention around the corner and November elections nearing, many Boston artists have shifted their attention from navels to more public centers.
Museums, galleries, pubs, clubs, theaters, and street corners across the city are providing the settings for works of art that range from canvas to comedy, protest song to satirical sculpture. While most of the works lean left and aim to issue George W. Bush a change-of-address card this fall, motive and matter remain as individual as the artists. City Weekly caught up with a few artists to discuss message as well as medium.
"Just about every artist I know is liberal," said singer-songwriter Rick Berlin, an elder statesman of the Boston music underground and longtime Doyle's waiter. "It has something to do with moving beyond the black and white. To write or paint or sing about someone struggling to find love, a job, some peace or sense -- that's the other side of the political coin."
Berlin has spent the past few months working with area artists and activists to pull together "Boston Tea Party 2 -- Drum Beat around the Bush," a night of music and performances that takes place Friday in Jamaica Plain at the Milky Way and June Bug. Baton twirlers, dead-ringers of presidential wives, and candlepin rollers "Bowling To Beat Bush" will join area musicians to give the evening a carnival atmosphere, said Berlin.
"This is fun, but serious fun," said Berlin, who expects the event to raise from $5,000 to $10,000 for MoveOn.org, a progressive online organization that calls itself "Democracy in Action" and claims 2 million members.
"We pretty much know how Massachusetts is going to vote," said Berlin. "It's the swing states we're worried about, and MoveOn.org looks like the best way to make a difference there. Still, this whole effort is more about 'we the people' than 'he the candidate.' "
Providing "the people" with a chance to pick his brain on issues ranging from the war on terrorism to Janet Jackson's breasts, George W. Bush stood front and left-of-center before an unsympathetic audience of some 50 Cantabrigians last week. Well, not Bush exactly, but actor Ian Maxwell MacKinnon as a Dubya-doppelganger, fielding questions that moved from the ridiculous (Is mustard a vegetable?) to the paradoxical (How does denying liberties via the Patriot Act preserve our liberties?). The opening salvo in Zeitgeist Gallery's "13 Days of Creative Dissent," MacKinnon's performance transcended cartoonish parody to achieve a provocative, unsettling humor. Blending swagger and earnestness, arrogance and inarticulateness, he treated the crowd to a pretzel logic that twisted into curious conclusions.
He quelled concerns about checking library records by noting that fewer and fewer Americans are reading books today.
Asked if the United States was a unilateral force gone amok, MacKinnon's expression moved from blank to distant to solemn to bold.
"Right after 9/11, I said one thing and I'll say it again: God is not neutral. God takes sides," the gray-suited actor told the shorts and T-shirts crowd sweating out the humid night in the First Church of Cambridge hall. "Unilateral? We have 30 countries. So, if you want you to call that one side, you can. I call it a -- a 30 side -- with God on it."
Then came references to the Old Testament to explain why his tongue lacked the silver of his spoon.
"It's like Moses when he went up to the mountain. Moses said, 'God, I am not eloquent.' And God made Moses his spokesman," said MacKinnon's Bush, with a need-I-say-more smile.
After the show, MacKinnon appeared backstage in a black T-shirt that read "Elect Better Actors," a slogan he used for his unsuccessful run for a seat on the Cambridge City Council in 1997 and the title of a manifesto that won a national competition last year.
"We shouldn't use theater simply to get elected or simply to criticize government," said MacKinnon, without a trace of the Dubya drawl. "We should be using theater in an overt, conscious way to illuminate issues. The Republicans, the Democrats, the activists -- each could have their own troupes and fight it out through theater rather than endless talk from a podium. Give the people short plays. If you can watch 'The West Wing,' why not a play?"
MacKinnon will perform "The Apotheosis of George W. Bush" Tuesday night at the Zeitgeist Gallery. Still, he relishes the chance to retire his Bush for reasons political as well as physical and social.
"The no lip thing and that weather-beaten brow/squinty thing have given me a headache at times," he said. "Worse, sometimes I'll be on the T and the mere thought of Bush will make my face turn into his. So, there I am, looking like I'm clueless and vain. Then I'll catch myself, and wonder, 'Oh, my God! Did people see my Bush face?' "
The Bush face depicted in Chris Shaw's sculpture "Santo del Norte" wears a solemn, sanctimonious expression as it gazes heavenward. Part of a traveling exhibit of paintings and sculptures titled "War is . . .," the cross-bearing winged icon sports an ornate red, white, and blue cape and has a gilded oil-well in lieu of a heart. Talons not toes jut beyond the edge of the pedestal, holding arrows, not olive branches.
Shaw credits a recent trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, for his variation on religious sculpture.
"We'd like to think we're so rational in this 'democracy,' " said Shaw, "but very close under the surface you see the medieval currents, the superstition, the religious fervor -- especially with this administration."
Shaw, like Berlin, senses a shift in the political winds as people, not PACs, vote with dollars. He cites Howard Dean's fund-raising and Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" as evidence of the emergence of "a non-corporate" point of view.
"For too long, something has been lacking on the left in this country," said Shaw. "We're too understanding, and too often we don't make a stand. America needs its 'Guernica.' That's our push with this show."
Neither Shaw, Berlin, nor MacKinnon see themselves simply preaching to the choir.
"Well, the choir is never the same choir twice," said Berlin.
"We're not preaching to the converted," said MacKinnon as MacKinnon, "we're addressing the converters."
For information on "Boston Tea Party 2: Drum Beat around the Bush" visit: www.rickberlin.com/playing. For details on "The Apotheosis of George W. Bush" and "War Is . . ." visit: www.zeitgeist-gallery.org. Ron Fletcher can be reached at fletcher@globe.com.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.