Newspaper Wars

How about a slice o life, Worcester style.
We are served by a daily , The Telegram and Gazette, a weekly Worcester Magazine, an bi-montly, InCity times, and a monthly, The Pulse. In the interest of disclosure, Brian Goslow, Mininster of Culture, www.wormtown.org , and Wormtown scene supporter since day one, worked at Womag until he was let go last fall. He also was the creator of The Wormtown Sound Awards , a yearly vote on the best of what the local musicians offered that year. Now freelancing at both InCity and The Pulse, he's still at it. While at Womag, he ran the WSA's last year, and no mention was made about this years' when he left. Still wanting to do something he talked to The Pulse, and they decided to run with it renaming it The Worcester Music Awards. So ok, they dropped the Wormtown name but that's fine. The Pulse doesn't really cover the , oh how do we say this, the punk/alternative/ what's the label this year/ music in town. But they did have a piece about Danny Dummy's night at The Lucky Dog, so maybe they're trying. But it's more of a Hip , now, upscale , for Worcester anyway, publication. Like Stuff @ Night in Boston. You know, the pick - up bar scene. Pretty people, sometimes half naked.
So this week Womag announces The Turtle Boy Awards , named after the statue on the common downtown of a boy riding a turtle. I mean come on. A city of this size ,with the limited amount of clubs showcasing music and practicly no radio support needs two contests to compete with each other? Womag told me they had to get rid of Goslow due to $$$ constraints, and then they come up with this shit ? They already do an additional Best of Worcester vote already. Seems like they're into ballbusting now too.
Now over at InCity, the publisher is accusing the publisher of The Pulse of stealing 2000 copies of her latest issue that featured a story about the said Pulse Publisher. But that's another story. Oh, and they both use to work at Womag.
The Telegram had no comment.

LB Worm

http://www.worcestermag.com/archives/2006/01-26-06/index.html
http://www.thepulsemag.com/

Classic Ruins

Just when Jeff and I stated we we're changing our format, moving away from the "Live From" stuff, The Classic Ruins came to town and I had to break out the mini disc unit and capture it for you , the listener to enjoy. Along with whatever else we brought along it turned out well. So check out the latest.

http://www.wdoa.com/wormbros01212006.htm

LB

More Worms and Rants

Fresh editions of "The Worm Brothers" and "2 Hour Rant"... enjoy...

We interrupt jock foolishness to bring you rock and roll

There is a special place in hell for clubs that leave the TV's on while a band is playing, worse yet is projecting sports events behind a band while they are playing, unfortunately this was the case last night at Ralph's during the set of Classic Ruins. Yeah, I know a lot of people have to plan their whole lives around the marketing genius that is the NFL, but the NFL represents to me just about everything that is bad about this country. Jock-O-Rama Nation indeed. If folks wanted to watch the game there are other TV's in other sections of the bar.
Otherwise the Classic Ruins delivered a solid set, and Das Happening who I had heard a couple tracks from before and had really wanted to like, after about 4 songs everything started to sound alike, they were not bad, I just got bored quickly. The Lyres however owned the night, Jeff "Monoman" Connolly and his bandmates were hitting on all cylinders, and actually had people dancing. If you've got a broadband connection and Quicktime, check out short clips recorded on my digital camera of "Help You Ann" and "She Pays The Rent". Not exactly a hifi recording, but what did you pay to read this anyway?? We also have a few still pictures.
Speaking of, I've reorganized a bit of the WDOA pages that are a compilation of pictures taken at shows over the last 6 years. Everything 1999-2005 has been shuffled off to it's own page. While we start with a clean slate for 2006, of which last night's show is the first entry.

More Beer, More Rock and Roll

Another Life In the Foodchain is posted for your dining and dancing pleasure. I was supposed to go see The Preston Wayne 4 tonight at The Lucky Dog Music Hall but unfortunately their drummer came down with the dreaded Bird Flue or some equivalent. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see them back in Wormtown soon. In this edition of Life In The Foodchain, all sorts of the usual punk rock and rockabilly fun. Tomorrow night it's off to see The Lyres, Classic Ruins, and a band I've been meaning to see but haven't had the chance, Das Happening at Ralphs Diner here in Worcester, MA. Hopefully the idiocy known as NFL Football won't keep everyone indoors.

Das Etwas

The first "das Etwas" in 06 is up. Hope you like it. Let me know either way.
Heidi

Worm Bros Return!

Well after a 3 month break , anyway. So I thought I 'd try my hand at this blogging shit and if I'm lucky, Womag will lift this off the page and publish it without any compensation.
We dropped the "Live From Wormtown" moniker, opting to play anything that we think is cool, now, and hip, coming from Worcester, New England, and the world. Occasionaly, we willl still feature area bands when something important comes along. By no means does this mean we are abandoning the scene we've drawn from for the past 15 years, we just don't get out as much as we like to . We always tried to focus on local music especially Punk, Garage, and good ole' Rock n Roll. It just seems lately that our little scene has imploded on itself and we're just waitng for it to poke it's head up so we can pounch on it. Feel free to send anything you think would fit our tastes, and we'll do our best.
Some say Wormtown is, and should be dead. That it no longer serves as a proper moniker for such a city on the move that Worcester, Ma has become in the past few years. I say Bullshit! Wormtown never had anything to do with the city itself, but was just a flag to fly in the face of mediocrity. And besides, Worcester may be on the move , but it still trips itself up now and then. The airport brought back planes and only a few have been diverted to other locals due to fog. The big deveolpment due downtown to replace the Mall is dragging behind for some reason. Demolition was to commence in Oct 05, but she still stands today. They bulit a fine new Bus Terminal that has no busses, and are in the process of erecting a new hotel and courthouse which will have no parking facilitites, so you see, not all is perfect. And I like it when people get all upset about that little nickname. It's been around now for almost 30 years and shows no sign of disappearing anytime soon.
But what does that have to do with Music? Nothing . My point exactly. Add wdoa.com to you favorites, visit it often. It's one of the only places left where you'll hear the best in what our little corner of the world has to offer.

LB Worm

more web space = higher quality shows

WDOA.com's webhost Powweb has increased the amount of web space they give customers from 5GB to 12GB, so this means we will be tweaking up the bit-rate of our mp3 shows from 96kbps to 128kbps. While any mp3 format by it's very nature means compression it does make the audio quality (sorry we can't do anything about the content quality ;-) ) we are able to deliver be somewhere between FM and CD quality. Also it will allow our DJ's who want to do shows longer than our previously imposed limit of 1 to 2 hours the ability to do so if they wish.
-Mike

New Year, New Crap

I've squeezed out the first new show for WDOA of 2006. Also done some "cleanup" of our new shows page. Basically, if someone hasn't done a show in the last 6 months we threw it on the trash heap. Over the Christmas break we got our "Season's Greetings" from the folks at ASCAP , they have their hand out to the tune of $288, BMI will be hot on their heels looking for $295 this year. WDOA doesn't have any commercials and we just try to offset our expenses by good folks throwing a few bucks our way each year. If you want to see what the financial breakdown of our operating costs are for the coming year, they are available here If you wish to help us out, it's simple

Otherwise, The Worm Brothers have revamped themselves for 2006 and in preparation we've moved the shows from the last 4 years over to their own archive.
-Mike