Thumbing through the local music listings, I came across an announcement of a Steve Morse tribute show at Regent Theatre on Oct. 26.
The event will mark one year since the death of the long-tenured, wildly prolific music critic who wrote for The Boston Globe, with a lineup featuring performances by Leon Beal, Danielle Miraglia and other local giggers whom Morse’s pen shined a friendly light on over the years. It will be an opportunity to celebrate the life of the critic, who is remembered as a kind of saint in the music scene.
You can join in the memorial fun at $29 for preferred seating or $49 for VIP/supporter seating (also known as the “front row”).
The art of hagiography is unlikely to join the ranks of the deadly sins, because it’s regarded as a laudable thing to recognize and celebrate saintliness. We all glow a little brighter basking in the borrowed light of somebody else’s halo. But what honest soul, Catholic or otherwise, would deny that something unsavory sits at the bottom of the glass of beatification?
I offer these thoughts having already written my own brief version of a Steve Morse hagiography. I was happy to do it. Because I knew that you could say nice things about him without forcing it. It’s easy to say nice things about nice people.
My overactive mania for critique forces me to recognize, though, the complex cocktail of the Steve Morse hagiography: one part good works, one part generational navel gazing, and one part quiet mourning over the state of journalism.
The good works are easy to recite. Steve Morse was a man whose considerable dedication to his profession was matched only by the warmth and generosity of his personal dealings with artists, fellow journalists and odd acquaintances. He covered rock star royalty for decades yet still found time to pen friendly paragraphs in support of local workaday giggers. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of under-the-radar musicians in New England who will never have words written about them that they treasure more than the lines written by Steve Morse.
As for navel gazing, the beatification of Steve Morse extends a certain generation’s (rhymes with “doomer”) time in the spotlight by lending an eternal glow not just to the man, but also to the artists, sensibility and era that he covered. People with sociology degrees tell us that the influence of any given generation ages out over time. But if your particular cohort commands a disproportionate share of the country’s wealth, it’s easier to dictate what gets remembered, what gets forgotten and what never sees the light of day in arts and culture.
In unrelated news, somewhere in Cambridge a giddy septuagenarian just added the final volume to his collection of first-edition Beatles records while local kids struggle to find one or two reliable and aboveboard DIY music spots where they can play the songs that are yet to be written (RIP Democracy Center).
Finally, the “quiet mourning” refers to what goes unspoken in the praise of Steve Morse’s professional output. Namely, that we won’t see another writer like him in the foreseeable future. Not because he possessed some inimitable bardic prowess. Rather because the fiscal constraints of journalism as a business are laced up so tightly in 2025 that you can’t find a newspaper to support even a fraction of what Morse was producing at the height of his powers.
There’s more money than ever flying around the hamster wheel of the U.S. economy, but it’s not ending up in the pockets of the people whose subscription dollars would support that kind of music journalism. There are thousands of Steve Morses waiting for their moment, which might never come. We hardly honor the man or his career if we don’t ask why.
That’s the cocktail in three parts. A bitter yet honest bromide. Drink deeply this Oct. 26.
Hit this
Friday: Jen Kearney (Lizard Lounge, Cambridge)
Visit the ruby-lit depths of Lizard Lounge to celebrate the release of Jen Kearney’s latest album, “Gas Station Poet.” Bob Dylan once made a very Bob Dylan remark: “You don’t necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they’re poets. I don’t call myself a poet, because I don’t like the word. I’m a trapeze artist.” Kearney’s laid-back mixture of soul, rock and R&B rhythms reflects the versatility of a musical acrobat, leaping from one set of bars to another. So maybe there’s a deep sympathy between Dylan and Kearney on this point. Or maybe she just arrives onstage smelling like a diesel pump. Kenya Hall, whom Rolling Stone called “a soul powerhouse,” opens.
Saturday: Battlemode, Mercy Ruin, Ultra Deluxe, Jade Weapon and nicoteens (Warehouse XI, Somerville)
A grab bag of a bill whose horses pull in the general direction of electronica. Mercy Ruin and Maryland’s Jade Weapon bring a grittier sound, while Battlemode and NYC’s Ultra Deluxe rock a smooth pop sheen. Pop punkers Nicoteens are a curveball in a lineup loaded with curveballs. But if there’s one common denominator in the Warehouse XI haul, it’s a touch of emo in mind, body and soul. A music community that emotes together, stays together.
Monday: Madi Diaz (The Armory, Somerville)
Whether she’s tickling piano keys or strumming the strings of an acoustic guitar, Los Angeles’ Madi Diaz crafts songs that cut straight to the bone. She operates in the spare and succinct cosmos of alt-folk balladry, wasting little time in exposing her heart to the world. But her emotional extroversions are balanced with a wisdom and wit that knows when to withdraw, concealing just enough to entice you to dig between the layers of meaning to find out what makes all this beautiful melancholy tick. Expect plenty of songs from her latest album “Fatal Optimist.” Opener Clover County, hailing from Athens, Georgia, brings some wispy alt-country flavor.
Live: Honk! in Davis Square
Honk! took over Davis Square on Saturday, part of a four-day celebration of activist street bands that stretched from Tufts University on Thursday to Harvard Square on Sunday. I made an honest attempt to write up the event like any average live concert, but found out that “covering the festival” in any conventional press sense, much like Hunter S. Thompson trying to cover the Mint 400 race, was absurd.
A riot of marching band extravagance clotted the arteries of every park, plaza and street with technicolored perambulations of brassy joy. Double-barreled tubas painted like dragons breathed fire down the boulevards. Bears played bass drums strapped across their hairy chests. Nickel-plated majorettes danced.
Wild children painted kites, furry marmots chalked the asphalt and well-dressed, synesthetic lemurs caught rhythms in the breeze with butterfly nets.
Beneath one white tent someone had carved a hole in the space-time continuum. Noisemakers from the beaches of Rio de Janeiro poked their heads through, declaring “Power to the People!” to a crowd full of Massholes sipping seasonal lattes.
For a moment, “with the right kind of eyes,” you could see all of Somerville pumping like hot steaming blood through the quadruple-valved circuit of Davis Square. Poodles, pugs and pygmies nipped at your heels if you stayed in one place too long.
I retreated, for safety’s sake, to the stolid confines of Mike’s Food & Spirits. The establishment, situated at a bend in the human river, offers the perfect vantage point for people watching. The proprietors had prepared for battle with a middling PA system that eternally blasted ’80s hits such as the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” and the theme from “Flashdance.”
Every countertop was covered with glossy flyers, taped in place, promoting the restaurant’s holiday catering service. Each time you put down your beer, or phone, you caught another glimpse of a glistening platter full of antipasto. It’s not even Halloween yet and we’re already being fed images of jolly St. Nick stuffing himself full of marinated olives, crusty bread and slices of salami.
Here comes the long strange trip of the holiday season, from pumpkins, candy canes to popping champagne corks, and I couldn’t be happier. What better way to announce its arrival than with a loud HONK!?
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
A stronger
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