The other day, I got to the Central Square bus stop just in time to the CT-1 pull away.  It was sunny and warm for a November day in Boston, so I decided to walk to school. I passed by the Middle East and got a noseful of fresh hummus and pita bread. Then came the rack of dainty dress shirt and clay pots for sale at the Salvation Army. And of course, All Asia’s corner window full of posters of local bands, most of whom I know personally. As I neared MIT, another bus passed that I would have caught had I waited back at Central; but I knew where I was heading, and I got there just the same.

Maybe the Do-It-Yourself approach to being a musician is similar to strategizing how to get around Boston on the T. Maybe you don’t need a record label or major distributor if you find a way to do it all yourself. You’d save money, and you would get to relish the details of the journey—that is—if you have an idea of where you’re heading. And you get to experience whatever the music industry equivalent is of the walk across the Harvard Bridge over the Charles River, and see the rugby shirt-clad sailors fight the wind in their catamarans.

We’re at a time when the industry has such ebb and flow to it that you don’t know if catching a bus to where you’re going is a good idea. Maybe stepping on it means you’re a sell-out, and you’ve just surrendered all your control to the bus driver, who answers to the MBTA. But maybe trying to walk somewhere with your own two feet lugging your own bags will leave your body tired, and your spirit fatigued. There’s no way of knowing. But I guess if you have an idea of where you’re going—either way will suffice.

If you have any shows coming up or a new record you want to promote, please let us know. Then we can publish something like, for example, Zac Taylor and Johnny Nicholson are opening up for Nini & Ben’s CD Release show this Saturday at the Lily Pad. You see? It’s easy!

Have a great week.

Zac Taylor
Managing Editor

Greetings from the Bolt Bus. As if I didn’t spend enough time on the Internet, they have wifi on the bus now. I played at the Bitter End last night in Manhattan, and before my slot, some youngsters played a set. The first was this mini Tori Amos-esque pixie named Jen, who had just turned 16, and after her was a supposed 15-year-old Jason Mraz-in-training who didn’t look a day over 12. At any rate—they were both exceptional. Nice chord changes, emotive voices, interesting lyrics, and solid time—and they haven’t even been to a prom yet. Could you imagine if you had all your songwriting credentials under your belt during those pimpled and awkward years of your life? You’d have a whole John Hughes soundtrack on your hands!

A poster in the john. Why not.

I love New York City. I would love to live there—but I’m speculating as to whether or not it would be a good move right out of the gate. On one hand—opportunity abounds and the pizza rules, but on the other—it’s full of thousands of mediocre bands that think they’re the next Kings of Leon (and have the denim, hair, and swagger to prove it). Also—rent is not terribly musician-friendly, which makes me lean towards somewhere like Nashville. Do you want to move somewhere you can live, and then focus on your career—or do you want to go somewhere to focus on your career, and just figure out a way to scrape by when you get there? Heads, Nashville. Tails, New York…

Thoughts like these make midterms seem trivial in a way—but then again, this is what we signed up for. Figuring out how to study for that exam in between rehearsals and gigs will soon become figuring out how to pay rent after you just splurged on those new speakers. But let’s face it: you needed those speakers, and the landlord’s a pushover anyway

Good luck, study hard, and bundle up.

Zac Taylor
Managing Editor

Happy October, chums. Settling into new classes? Practicing your Phrygian chops? Getting your winter wardrobe ready? Keeping away from the unruly Red Sox fans? Cool. Me, too.

You know what’s funny? Berklee bands tend to invite mainly/only other Berklee folks to their shows. Not to say that you shouldn’t invite your Harmony class—but it’s important to remember that Berklee kids are NOT the norm, but rather a snarky little subculture Read the full story

Welcome back to school, my fellow music snobs. You may notice you’re reading this on a screen, as opposed to out of a newsstand, or off the restroom floor at the 1140 building—pretty neat, huh? Over the summer, we held some focus groups with students, faculty, and other people in the music/journalism realm, yielding hundreds of interviews to get some insight into what The Groove should be, and how we can be both relevant and vital to mainly the student body, but also the entire Berklee community. We couldn’t really do that with a biweekly print publication…

That’s where you come in. We’ve got this cool site now, so the vehicle is in place. We’re uploading the past several years onto our archive (The Groove was established in 1997, it’s going to take a while…), so you can scroll through old articles, leave comments, search for your band’s name, etc.

And as usual, we’re always reviewing shows, interviewing visiting artists and touring acts, and aggregating everything Berklee—but we need you to hip us to what’s going in your life, and your career. Bring us your CD so we can publish a review and you can post the link on your website. Tell us about your shows so we can add them to our calendar. We’d be happy to cover your endeavors, but if you want to buy an ad space, or know someone who does, click on the Advertising tab at the top of this page. Like I said—pretty neat.

Our office is located in the Student Activities Center. Come by and say hello, and I hope this semester is a productive and inspiring one for you.

~Zac Taylor

Managing Editor

By Zac Taylor

One of the perks of the editor gig is that I get to meet Australian pop stars named Lenka. After I spoke with her, I had a longer chat with her backing band, a bunch of hired guns from LA. The guitar player John actually went to Berklee for a couple years. “Don’t graduate,” he told me. “Everyone I know that graduated is not working in music.” He could tell I was young, impressionable, and pretty naïve as to how the biz really worked. “Don’t go around slinging your business card around, or giving everyone you meet your demo. That’s the fastest way to alienate yourself,” he warned. “The best thing you can do when you’re out of Berklee, is go be part of a scene somewhere, and accept that nothing’s going to happen for you, at first. Go to as many shows as you can, and get really drunk with people. That’s how you get to know them, and that’s how you get hired by people. It’s all about connections.” The rest of the band nodded in agreement as they unpacked their instruments and gear in front of the stage at Great Scott.

This ‘early alumnus’ went to Berklee from ’01-’04, and things have changed immensely since then, so the stigma around graduating is probably a moot point. But I thought long and hard about the advice towards ‘networking,’ and not coming across too business-minded and rubbing people the wrong way. I’m glad they told me that, because I was moments away from handing them my card, which reads ‘my name is zac taylor. i play the guitar’ (note the all lowercase font that denotes an immense yet nonchalant level of hipness).

Enjoy this issue, and we’re still reformatting a bunch of Groove sections and what-nots, so if you have any feedback or want to come high five us, we’ll be the ones in the office near the loft, making fun of your myspace page.

By Zac Taylor
Editor-in-Chief

“Merry New Year!” Eddie Murphy exclaimed in Trading Places. One my favorites. How was your break? Mine was way too long. I couldn’t wait to get back to the land of single degree weather, ii-Vs, and dreamers in tight blue jeans. You’ll notice this issue is a little different, as we teamed up with Heavy Rotation Records to promote an awesome show with awesome bands. It will sell out soon, so get your tickets now at the BPC.

Thanks to everyone who participated in that pesky little Groove survey that was on CampusCruiser last month. We got tons of great responses—some positive, others scathing, many just plain vulgar. Some of the most common suggestions were: printing in color, more satirical and/or controversial content, and creating a website. Some common criticisms were: political biases, overly positive reviews of concerts, not enough R&B coverage, poor marketing and distribution, and an overall lack of presence in the Berklee community.    We’ll be developing the website over this semester, and we’re going to start having featured columns about a variety of topics including but not limited to organic food, video game music, and jazz, and we’re certainly all ears to anything else YOU suggest and want to write about. Also, we’re making a section called ‘Out of the Pocket’ that’s basically a rip off of The Onion—so that’s something to look forward to. If you’re an Onion fan or just a plain old wiseass, please submit something humorous to us: articles, parodies, comics, cartoons, crossword puzzles, etc.    

Keep in mind, The Groove isn’t Berklee Today. This is your newspaper. A place for you to vent. A forum to advertise your shows. This is what future students will read when you’re famous. John Mayer wrote an article for The Groove when he was a student here about Valentine’s Day in which he used the term “bubble gum tongue.”

Our door in the SAC is always open to you, so come say hello sometime. Make this the semester when everything clicks for you. Make friends with some new students. Write songs with passion. Go see live music. Speaking of which, see you at the Heavy Rotations Show on February 4.

By Zac Taylor

Well, O.J. is finally going to jail, and Axl has finally released Chinese Democracy; snowflakes are falling outside The Groove office, and apparently in hell, too… We’ve all but made it to the end of the semester, and it’s been a fast one, no? It’s always a hectic last couple weeks, when you’re trying to cram in all of the proficiency material to make it look like you’ve been absorbing the material note by note in a practice room, upping the metronome 4 bpm each round.

Did you get to go to the James Taylor clinic? I wonder if people walking by on Boylston peaked through the windows to see the living legend sipping coffee on a stool, chatting about broken guitars and summering in Martha’s Vineyard. I can’t believe that one clown asked, “So is Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’ about you or what?” What a bunch of savages in this town. I stayed after the clinic and waited in line to meet James, and confessed to him that I regularly tell people I’m related to him, and that it was great to finally meet my long lost uncle.

The Groove has come a long way in the last several issues in my humble, biased opinion, but we still have a few bugs to work out and bars to clear. We’ll be developing the website over the spring semester, so if you know how to code HTML, or other such online flim flam, come talk to us. And come May, I’ll be out of this joint, off to a to-be-announced destination where I will wish I was still under the cozy blanket of music school, writing cheesy lyrics over clichéd cadences for Songwriting class and shredding through pentatonic scales.

I hope you all have an excellent holiday break, and get everything you want from Santa, including but not limited to Wall-E on DVD, Elixir guitar strings, and of course, your very own copy of the long awaited, soon-to-be legendary Guns ‘n Roses album, Chinese Democracy.

By Zac Taylor
Editor-in-Chief 

You know The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror” episodes they play on Halloween? The credits always had silly names for the writers like “Bat” Groening and James “Hell” Brooks. I thought about doing that for the Groove staff for this issue, but the paper comes out four days after Halloween, and it’s a pretty lame idea anyway. How about those baskets of candy that people would leave on their front porch with a handwritten note that said, “Just take One.” Seriously? You might as well put a sign in your front yard that says, “Please don’t roll my trees or egg my house.” I mean, seriously.

Read the full story