Rock

Scruggs. The first time I saw Earl and Family was exactly four years ago, in back of a rural high school, right before the fireworks came on and sometime after the vegetable awards. It was the Wheatland! Sesquicentennial or Octo-something, a real celebration. People kept running up to the microphone and yelling "Let's hear it Three cheers for Whestland!" Meanwhile the local officer of the law--clearly the big man in town--was strolling around as everybody said hello Bill, he being an uncle or cousin to most of them. The Scruggs Revue was definitely the high point of the evening. They were using Vassar Ciements then, and were restricted to pretty straight bluegrass, and the wheatlanders impressed upon them to do "Salty Dog" twice. I wonder if they remember this concert. Since than the two main one, Randy and Gary (State is a minor member, have reached maturity. They could play and sing like blazes back then, but now they have a strong influence on their father, who faithfully rocks along of does his best to conform to whatever newfangled stuff the boys are into. He were sheepish long hair and display's peace symbol--probably a legacy them hit friend Seager rather than his own political fervor--on his gaiter strop. But the adds still when an old number comes up--he's still the Gibraltar of the band. And it's a fine band, particularly now that Randy has become as good a picker as Doc Watson: it gets awesome to think of where he'll he when he's more than a handful of years past his teenage. Gary, the bass player and singer, has a gritty, semi-Dylan voice that fits perfectly and unassumingly with fast-clip rock/bluegrass, but which in blues-ballads grinds to much--it sounds too hostile and allenated for mountainish music. Indeed, the whole band suffers when they bring out the electric blues. But this is seldom, and their original songs, as well as the old staples from the father of the Banjo (who even has one of the five pegs on the instrument named after him), make them one of the best acts around. At MIT's Kreage Auditorium tonight. I'm not sure what time, and may be you'll have more luck calling 253-232s for this little place of information than I've had.

Sugarleaf. Country Music Festival today and tomorrow in Kingfield, Maine, which is quite for north. Featuring Johnny Rodriguez (commercial junk), dick Cureless (the Dean of New England country music, specializing in trucking songs, with a voice so dead that it makes the back up voice in "Duke of Ear" sound like Tiny Tim). Waylon Janinge (the greatest of the Austin-based outlaw country singers), and Scruggs his own self. Tickets at Ticketron.