TNA Wrestling’s Kip James and ring diva Cherry — two people who once answered to WWE’s Mr. McMahon — are among the superstar attractions at a DOWNTOWN SMACKDOWN charity extravaganza, going on Friday at the Red Bank Catholic gymnasium. For details, CONTINUE READING after the story break.

RAISING THE BAR: Rasputina at the Wonder Bar. Consider the Wonder Bar, just off the Asbury Park Boardwalk on what was once called the Circuit. It’s a place that actually has more of a legit claim on Springsteen’s lore and legend than that box-that-Benny-built, The Stone Pony. It’s a beerbelly boite that was rescued from total oblivion by the TLC tagteam of Lance Larson and Debbie DeLisa, who nurtured it through uncertain times without a liquor license, and an eventual rebirth as a host venue for some highly satisfying rock shows. It even got repainted as an homage to the flakey glory that was Palace Amusements.

Like the Pony, the WB was shuttered for a spell, and admittedly nobody really knew what to expect when oceanfront developers Madison Marquette announced its return to active duty. But with Debbie and Lance having a role in things, the place has staked out an identity somewhere between the commercial pragmatism of the Second Avenue landmark and the quirk of the Asbury Lanes. It’s a friendly formula that picked up steam with their successful series of Doggy Yappy Hour sessions last summer, and this weekend it’s the eccentric that marks the spot, with a three-day interval that begins tonight with an appearance by New York’s chamber-rock children of the damned, Rasputina.

Fronted by cellist/ singer/ songwriter/ conceptualizer Melora Creager, the formerly all-cello ensemble ran  through numerous personnel before settling down into a liquid configuration of Creager, a second-chair cellist and percussionist. Together they vend a brand of ersatz Victoriana that would not be out of place at Miss Lizzie A. Borden’s tea party; interpreting Creager’s arsenic-and-old-lace visions which, on the most recent album Oh Perilous World, mix headline news with “the album’s overall narrative of Mary Todd Lincoln as Queen of Florida, with her blimp armies having attacked Pitcairn Island, where Fletcher Christian’s son Thursday emerges as a resistance icon.” Check the Stone Pony website for all ducats and details pertaining to this and other upcoming Wondershows.

While Sunday’s scheduled show starring former Bad Brains frontman HR got itself re-slotted to last night, November 19, there’s plenty more wonder in store for the weekend. Friday night sees the arrival of We Are Scientists, a band who, from the time they allegedly lied about being scientists, has turned compulsive lying (plus sardonic songcraft, sublime videography and a sometimes surreal website) into an artform itself. Big as they are in the UK, Chris Cain and Keith Murray are able to entertain you on a pleasingly modest and accessible scale here in the Colonies. Saturday finds the stage of the Wonder Bar put to work in service to an event called Reels and Wheels; a series of live concerts and a classic car show organized around the premiere screening of the trailer — at 15 minutes, more like a teaser — of Exit 102, the still-in-progress feature filmed locally by Red Bank-born actor and director Peter Dobson. Details here; more on this one tomorrow in oRBit.

Cello kitties: Chamber-rock bizarros Rasputina keynote a weird and wonderful weekend at Asbury Park’s Wonder Bar with a Thursday evening recital.

LIZA WITH A HE: A Slice O’Minnelli at McLoone’s. In a feature on cabaret impresario Bob Egan last week in oRBit, we mentioned that the piano-bar king has brought many of the leading ladies of showbiz to the space-age stage at Tim McLoone’s Supper Club, and tonight is no exception. Broadway veteran Rick Skye — a performer who’s worked with such characters as Dorothy Loudon, Neil Sedaka, Nathan Lane and Madame — channels living legend Liza with his hit show A Slice O’Minnelli. Described as “part send-up, part loving valentine,” it’s a retrospective that employs parody lyrics, “a smashing voice” and “a pair of unquestionably alluring legs.” Showtime’s at 8pm for the MAC Award-winning set, with dinner served before or after the show and an entertainment cover of $20. reservations for all events at McLoone’s can be made by calling (732)774-1155.

We’ve barely scratched the surface of Friday here, so Continue Reading for a round of November 21…

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Janey Todd onstage at The Saint, where she’ll be returning for a special tribute show this weekend. (Photo by Brenda Wirth)

By LAURA SCHNEIDER

you said, “well, maybe later” but your good time came and went
you thought you could win but you lied when you bet
the acrobat flew on while you humped the safety net
and now all of your friends are the ones you just met

With lyrics like those, a songwriter doesn’t shoot any straighter than Janey Todd.  And little is more refreshing than meeting a talented artist who’s charming, grateful and downright humble.  But you’ve got to add complex to that list.  In person, Todd is unassuming, understated, and smiles a lot, but on stage, she spouts, “Oh, you know I love you like a heart attack / like an ax murderer who misplaced the ax / you ride me and you roll me and you try to control me / but you take me to places where I can’t look back.”

So who is Janey Todd, and why is she saying these things?

Although she’s now in her 50s (“You can print that,” she laughs), Todd’s been writing and playing music for only about ten years. But her way with words reveals that she’s been writing nearly all her life. In fact, she says she used to keep a dream journal and morphed it into a blog, “with the names changed to protect the guilty.”

She acknowledges that her lyrics have taken her places her guitar and voice alone might not have, and evoke comparisons to Lucinda Williams. “Janey shows such a pure honesty in her lyrics that most writers would be too scared to share,” says fellow Jersey songstress (and Columbia Records artist) Nicole Atkins. “She’s always been one of my favorite writers in town.”  In fact, Atkins guested on two tracks from Todd’s first full-length, fully-produced CD, Rusty Water, released last year on HeadShop Records out of Red Bank.

Shore area music fans will have their own chance to discover Todd — twice — on Sunday, November 23, first when she first joins a slate of singer/songwriter comrades at the Twisted Tree Café for a day of music dubbed “Twisted Todd.” Afterward, Todd will boogie on over to The Saint, for an event in honor of the late and dearly missed musician Jack Stock. Red Bank oRBit managed to flag down the busy musical force in the middle of a flurry of gigs promoting the release of her new single Dreamland.

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View master: Tim Cronin sets the stage for another Monster Magnet psych-out freakstravaganza. The Red Bank-based band is back in Europe, no less humbled and heavier than ever.

Editor’s Note: Red Bank oRBit asked Tim Cronin — long-time manager at Jack’s Music Shoppe, frontguy for The Ribeye Brothers, lighting/effects guy and all-around “Center of the Universe” for Monster Magnet — to weigh in with occasional reports from the road as he follows the borough-based Magnet on their latest jaunt through Europe. The band, led by Red Bank lifer Dave Wyndorf, has taken it across the pond for their first extensive tour in several years; catching up with their most fervent fanbase and investigating whether there is in fact something to the showbiz phenomenon known as The Hasselhoff Effect…

IV. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE

A day off at a Best Western hotel — actually just an O.K. Western — on beautiful Wolfblitzerstrasse. From our penthouse window some 300 floors up, we can see the many gloom factories that dot the hillside. Wiesbaden is Germany’s leading city for bad moods, black clouds and vague depression. The city’s motto, “When in bloom, we make it gloom,” sounds much more poetic when spoken in German.

On a typically cloudy, rainy, cold, fall day we played an old slaughterhouse — Der Schlachthoff. As it was Halloween there was a festive air about, and most of the audience got all costumed up, evidently as drunk Germans. Jim the bassist got dressed up as Jesus, but was mistaken for a guy in a dress.

Drunk German: What are you supposed to be?

Jim (looking Christlike even down to a crown of thorns and bleeding palms, courtesy of Hasbro’s “My First Stigmata” kit): Uh, Christ.

Drunk German: You look like a guy in a dress.

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God Blast American Music: Bill Bateman, Phil Alvin, Keith Wyatt and John Bazz are the 2008 edition of The Blasters, and they’re coming to town this Friday.

 By TOM CHESEK

We got the Louisiana boogie and the Delta blues/ We got country swing and rockabilly too/ We got jazz, country-western and Chicago blues/ It’s the greatest music that you ever knew.  

                                             — From “American Music” by The Blasters

There’s many kinds of genius, and Phil Alvin can tell you about a lot of them — about how, as a kid growing up in Downey, California (home to the oldest surviving McDonald’s, and site of the first-ever Taco Bell), he’d be exposed to the finest practitioners of jazz, blues, C&W and R&B as they all passed through this crucial roadstop on the way to LA.

As time went by, Phil and his brother Dave even came up with a name that tied together all these many and various strains of musical genius — they called it American Music. Made sense as a concept, and as a song, and as the title of the debut album by The Blasters, the high-energy combo dedicated to playing these “howls from the desert” and “screams from the slums” that the Alvin boys formed on the cusp of the 1980s.

After a sweet few years for the band that saw them land a big-time record deal, cameo in movies and win over audiences of every conceivable taste and temperament, Dave Alvin departed for a solo career that still runs solid to this day. Sax guy Steve Berlin would decamp for Los Lobos; pianist Gene Taylor would move to Europe and form his own Blues Band. Drummer Bill Bateman, who got the cover of their third album all to himself, would play with everyone from Mick Jagger to The Cramps.

And Phil Alvin? Well, therein lies the more traditional definition of genius. The yodeling, yelping singer and musicologist might have downplayed the fact at first, but he’s a full-tilt mathematical wiz; a Ph.D in fact, with a Master’s in artificial intelligence on the side. It’s a pursuit that the frontman has applied to his passions for rhythmic patterns and raucous chaos theory — after all, what is the notion of American Music if not a sort of Unified Field Theory for the roadhouse?

With a couple of well-received retrospectives and a reunion recording to their credit, The Blasters are once again a full-time gig for Phil Alvin and bassist John Bazz, rejoined earlier this year by Bateman in a leaner, meaner lineup that’s rounded out by guitarist Keith Wyatt. Red Bank oRBit caught up with Alvin by phone in Detroit, during a tour that brings The Blasters to The Saint in Asbury Park on Friday night. Here now the news. 

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Emcee hammered: Laugh it up with funnyman TJ Del Reno, as he hosts the New Jersey Comedy Festival competition, coming Tuesday to Monmouth University.

Admit it, there was a time when you really thought you were funny. Maybe you’d crack up your friends at the coffeehouse with that “offhand” urbane quip that you secretly rehearsed for weeks. Or maybe you wowed ‘em on the house party circuit, as the guy who “would eat anything,” or whose “A” material consisted of pouring lighter fluid on your crotch and setting it ablaze.

Yeah, comedy — the boxing of show business; the great equalizer that allows a tanktown ham-’n'-egger like you a real shot at that brass ring. If you can’t be Conan O’Brien, you could always shoot for Vinnie Mazzeo Jr.

Now, thanks to Red Bank resident Dennis Hedlund, young and aspiring practitioners of the standup arts have a way to test their mettle; to prove that they’re not just funny because their friends told them so — a way to determine exactly whose comic kung foo is king.

Taking place at college campuses across the Garden State, the second annual New Jersey Comedy Festival is a competitive tournament whereby students with an aptitude for comedy as a career have an opportunity to grab five minutes of fame in front of a theater-size audience — with comic-pro judges choosing one or two finalists who earn the chance to square off in a championship round next month. It’s a series that began on September 16 at Montclair State, and it’s continued with shows at Rutgers, Rowan University, The College of NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson and, tonight, Drew University.

On Tuesday night, the Comedy Festival comes to Monmouth University for the first time in a round of competition hosted by professional standup and frequent Festival emcee TJ Del Reno. And, on December 6, the Pollak Theatre on the West Long Branch campus is the setting for the main event — the NJCF Finals, with the winning entrant awarded a scholarship to the Manhattan Comedy School, plus a gig at the Catch a Rising Star comedy club in Princeton.

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Staind class: Leaving their mark on Asbury Park.

Sure, you pretty much know what to expect when Staind plays Convention Hall on Saturday night — a vague feeling of disengagement and those trademark muddy acoustics that no amount of boardwalk reno has yet addressed effectively. It’s a whammy that might have proven fatal to your typical millennial band (vocals WAY up front; instro reduced to a characterless hammock of strum), but as the boys who brought you “It’s Been Awhile” remain popular enough to play the halls, who are we to opine. Fellow travelers Seether and Papa Roach open up; doors at 6:30pm and tix ($47) gettable right here.

HUNCH OVER: Hunchback and The Ergs at Asbury Lanes. Hey, garage bands come and go with the frequency of — well, anymore, department stores, furniture chains and major financial institutions. Generally not an occasion for tear-choked auld lang synes, but when the bands in question have been an integral part of a scene since said scene’s inception, chances are somebody’s going to get all elegiac about it.

A pair of NJ punk combos whose destinies are as intertwined with each other as they are with the majestic Asbury Lanes — where each established an early residency in the weeks following the atom-age alley’s evolution to the bitchin’est of popcultural bomb shelters — Hunchback and The Ergs have chosen this Saturday as an officially announced retirement party, marking the date with not one but two nearly sold-out concerts at the Lanes.

With a door time of noon, repeat, NOON, the first, all-ages affair  is offering “very few tickets released at the door,” while the late-nite show (doors open 10pm) is open only to ages 18 and over, and has sold out well in advance. As the Lanes e-mail blast asserts, “If you think that you can get in because you know someone that is in the band, or that works at the Lanes, we are sorry… we will be no help to you.”

Hunchback and the Ergs — two bands, one long goodbye at the Lanes on Saturday.

POWER GRAB: Tyrone Power Night at Stephen Crane House. Movie night at the Crane House doesn’t sound like a very high-impact way to spend a Saturday evening, and indeed, it’s a lot like watching DVDs at home — were you to live inside an historic Victorian-era cottage once inhabited by a famed 19th century author. Present day owner and curator Frank D’Allessandro, a passionate proponent of classic Hollywood filmmaking, has expressed a desire to assemble a tribute to smooth-yet-edgy leading man Tyrone Power — and as Saturday marks the 50th anniversary of his passing (on the set of Solomon and Sheba!), there’s no time like the present.

If you’ve at all got a yen for Power, you’ll want to arrive by 5:30pm for a rare look at Nightmare Alley, the 1947 film noir starring Tyrone as an oily con man who climbs his way from the geeky underside of carnival sideshows to the grifting of rich widows via a phony psychic shtick. We promise you that no one who’s ever seen the ending of this one has soon forgotten it! Then, at 7:30pm, Power rides again as the Batman of his day in The Mark of Zorro. Seating is limited, so call (732)807-4052 to reserve; donations are welcomed and will be dedicated to the Asbury Park Little League.

Then for extra credit, try to track down a copy of our favorite Power flick, the nearly forgotten Abandon Ship!, in which our guy, as an officer in charge of a desperately overcrowded lifeboat on the high seas, becomes a cruel god with the authority of life and death.

NEVER SAY YES: Howe, Squire, White In the Present at Paramount Theatre. Of all the bands from the classic rock era who’ve become little more than trade names by this point, surely Yes has had the busiest revolving-door personnel department. With bass player Chris Squire the only constant from the original 1960s lineup — in fact, they’re not even allowed to use the Yes name unless he’s involved (recall Anderson, Wakeman, Bruford and Howe) — we’ve seen ‘em come and go and return again, reunion after reunion. And it was the umpteenth reunion tour (including a scheduled stop at PNC Bank Arts Center) that got canned last summer when Jon Anderson, the angelic voice of nearly all their studio epics, developed acute respiratory problems.

Undaunted, the prog princes — including signature guitarist Steve Howe and longtime drummer Alan White — have reconvened for a tour of slightly smaller venues, this time minus an official name (”In the Present” could refer either to the band or the tour) but plus a couple of distressing latterday trends: the second generation bandmate (new keyboardist Oliver Wakeman is the son of golden-years guy Rick) and the singer culled from the world of cover bands (newcomer Benoit David performed in a Yes tribute for years). Guess that makes them their own number one tribute act; the band as it stands comes to Asbury’s Paramount on Saturday night. Tix for the 8:30pm show (as much as $150 per) available here.

Believe it or no, it’s about more than just Saturday night in Asbury Park; if you don’t believe us, nuzzle the “Continue Reading” button and all will be revealed…

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Horton He’s a Hoot: The rockabilly tang of the right Reverend Horton Heat returns Shoreside this weekend, as the Texas trio rides the Stone Pony, if you know what we mean.

Relax; you haven’t stumbled into a negative reality inversion. It’s still Thursday, and beginning today we’re posting Friday’s roundup of events a day ahead of time — the better to help you make a plan; see what’s out there; digest the necessary factual roughage. Don’t you wish everyone thought of you that way?

BREAKFAST EPIPHANIES: Wake Up with Dr. Raj at the Fromagerie. Here at the oRBit desk we’re not exactly accustomed to rolling out of bed or off couch anytime prior to Judge Judy — but we have it on good authority that this ritual known as “breakfast” isn’t only served at 2am inside the Broadway Diner. We also understand that executive chef Eric Hara and his kitchen krew at Rumson’s David Burke Fromagerie have been putting a city-slicker sophisticated spin upon the rustic country-classic foundations of traditional Sunday brunch — and this Friday the Fromag’ opens its doors extra early — 10am, to be precise — for a special breakfast event.

Guest of honor at the morning meet-and-eat is Dr. Rajiv Tony Juneja, MD, MS — a/k/a Dr. Raj of the Ask Dr. Raj online advice column. A specialist in addiction services and an experienced public speaker on topics pertaining to mental health and self-awareness, the psychiatric professional will address the event and take questions from attendees. It’s a presentation of the Monmouth County-based nonprofit organization Prevention First, and reservations ($25) can be made by calling (732)663-1800, ext. 219.

Online advice columnist Dr. Raj is the special guest for breakfast at David Burke Fromagerie in Rumson this Friday morning.

RED PANTS SOCIETY: Reverend Horton Heat and Nashville Pussy at the Stone Pony. With its stripped down, three pronged attack and wall-climbing stage hijinx, the Texas trio known as Reverend Horton Heat has often been pegged as every unprofitable thing from “cowpunk” to “psychobilly” — and while they can speed their way through a setlist of cool covers and great American novelties like Big Dave Dudley poppin’ Enerjets, there’s more to this band than’s dreamed of in your philosophy. Frontman Jim Heath is possessed of a smooth vocal style that covers all the country bases from Opryland to ornery, and the band’s versatility — think of them as the midpoint between The Blasters (who come to Asbury later this month) and The Cramps — makes them every bit as at home inside a crazy house like the Asbury Lanes, as in the much more reverential Pony.

The folks in Nashville Pussy, on the other hand, remain the kind of friends even Leatherface wouldn’t bring home to the family table — even long after the departure of Amazonian bass player (now respected fashion designer and mom) Corey Parks, who terrorized the Brighton Bar in a famous gig around the turn of the millennium. These days the Atlanta-based quartet have the Devil’s Rejects thing down to a science; without a whit of “country” in their sound but of course infinitely more country (and Bayshore) than any cowboy-hatted creation of the Music Row cannery. Doors at 7pm; tickets for what promises to be memorable two-fer, right here.

Not your cup of Texas tea? Punch “Continue Reading” for something a bit more civilized, if still beastly and bloody…

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King of the piano bar Bob Egan is pictured at left, with Rick Skye in character for his show “A Slice O’Minnelli.”

By TOM CHESEK

“After the third flood,” Bob Egan explains, “we needed to rethink what we were doing.”

Such a statement would appear to position its speaker somewhere between New Orleans and Old Testament. In actual fact, it’s a reference to Odette’s, the popular bar and restaurant in New Hope, PA  that closed in the summer of 2006 after being severely damaged by an overflowing Delaware River for the third time in less than two years.

To the Bucks County-based Egan, Odette’s had been the place where he perfected his “sing-along piano bar” act; the host venue for his acclaimed series of Cabaret showcase nights. Still, New Hope — home to tea dances and suburban biker clubs; year-round Christmas shoppes and bondage boutiques — has been known to shake off the effects of many an ill wind. Word has it that Odette’s will rise again, literally — as plans for a 2010 reopening call for the historic 18th century structure to be jacked up several feet above its previous perch.

In the meantime, Egan expanded his wedding and event business; inaugurated regular gigs in places like Stockton and Bernardsville — and searched the region for a suitable alternate base of operations; the eureka moment coming when he caught the cusp of a new and busy era in Asbury Park.

Since July, Egan has served as frequent performer, accompanist and something of a guest impresario at Tim McLoone’s Supper Club, the shiny new Boardwalk boite situated (safely above the pounding surf, we trust) on the second floor of what had long been the iconic “Howard Jetsons” across from Convention Hall.

McLoone, the legendary local restaurateur, veteran keyboard man and founder of Holiday Express, undertook his first foray into the Shore’s most musically minded town with the aim of presenting “some pretty serious entertainment;” augmenting his own Shore-pedigreed slate of sounds with a chance for Egan to book each and every Thursday night. It’s a newly minted “Cabaret Night” tradition that’s paid out some pretty eclectic dividends, and one that continues through the coming weeks with offerings that Egan affably describes as “sit-down-and-shut-up shows, versus get-up-and-dance.”

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Jersey Shaw: Grace Gonglewski and Dana Acheson are among the stellar ensemble in Two River Theater’s production of HEARTBREAK HOUSE. (Photo by T. Charles Erickson)

HOUSEBROKEN HEARTS: Heartbreak House at Two River Theater. In an interview here on oRBit last week, Aaron Posner, Artistic Director at Red Bank’s Two River Theater Company, characterized  Heartbreak House as “a very mysterious play; not an easy read…but when you see it performed, then you get a sense of how funny and how clear it is.”

Ideologically charged and loaded with language — yet funny as hell in places — George Bernard Shaw’s sniping satire of upper class twittery on the eve of the First World War opened this past weekend for a run that continues through November 23.

Any play that aims a cannon turret at the back rows of the auditorium can’t be accused of going easy on the audience, and if set designer Tony Cisek’s gigantic mountain of furniture reminds you of a wayward battleship, then you’re down with the critics and scholars who see the titular English country house as a stand-in for the fading Empire’s drifting ship of state.

In a week in which the women are wowing them on local stages, it’s Dana Acheson (as unflappable flapper Ellie) and Grace Gonglewski (as the battily Bohemian society dame Hesione Hushabye) who vie for the center square of this strangely constructed black comedy. The ladies are given quite a run of it by fellow cast members Kenneth Albers (bringing real authority to the philosophical musings of ancient mariner Captain Shotover) and, most amazingly, Christopher Donahue — whose grunting caricature of a hated capitalist is illuminated by his deft delivery of some self-dissecting monologues, to the point where the actor fully has the sympathetic crowd eating out of his hand by evening’s end. Tickets for Heartbreak House are $34 - $58 and are available by calling TRTC at (732)345-1400, online or by visiting the Box Office at 21 Bridge Avenue in Red Bank.

Some of our favorite women are up to some interesting things in the days to come; Continue Reading and use as directed…

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