RED BANK: BOSS SHOWS UP FOR WORK
Bruce Springsteen arriving at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank Friday.
LINCROFT: A JAZZY ‘TONIGHT’ SHOW AT CBA
Longtime ‘Tonight Show’ bandleader Kevin Eubanks is this year’s spotlight attraction at the annual jazz concert fundraiser at Christian Brothers Academy.
The recent graduation ceremony may have marched to the traditionally stately strains of “Pomp and Circumstance,” but adhering to a recently minted tradition at Christian Brothers Academy, the close of the academic session is being given a jazzy jam-session coda, courtesy of this year’s edition of the CBA Jazz Series.
Tonight, the 350-seat Henderson Theatre at the Lincroft school hosts the sixth annual entry in the fundraiser concert series, an event that appropriately enough stars the onetime leader of TV’s Tonight Show band, guitarist Kevin Eubanks.
FAIR HAVEN: SELDIN STORMS BACK AT 70
Shore music legend Stormin’ Norman Seldin returns to the scene of a legendary months-long stand when he observes his 70th birthday Saturday night in Fair Haven.
With all due props to Count Basie, he’s the “other” Kid from Red Bank, even if he’s long since earned a senior discount at IHOP.
To aficionados of the Shore music scene, Stormin’ Norman Seldin is still the same ginger-haired, piano-pounding prodigy (at age 13, the youngest person to become a member of the American Federation of Musicians) who’d staked out a career as a singer, bandleader, promoter and record label owner by his teens — and who, through his old combo the Joyful Noyze, introduced audiences to a bigger-than-life talent by the name of Clarence Clemons.
WEEKEND: FOOD, FISHING, AND FUNDRAISING
Authors May Becker, Susan E. Davis and Lisa Borders appear at libraries and bookstores around the greater Green on Saturday afternoon. Below, Michael Morch, Jennifer Grasso, Laura Gepford and Ian Brown-Gorrell head up the cast in Phoenix Productions’ staging of ‘White Christmas.’
The days and weeks leading up to Thanks Thursday and Black Friday buy us a little more time to approach the holiday season at our own pace… a chance to chill in the outdoors with a few more hours of autumn sun, or to head home and curl up with some comfort food and a good book.
Friday, November 15:
RED BANK: Or, you could just cut to the chase and surrender to Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, the season-closing musical entertainment from Phoenix Productions on the stage of the Count Basie Theatre. Come for tonight’s opening performance at 8 pm, and you’ll get more than just a jaunty romance-in-rhythm packed with Berlin blockbusters like “Happy Holiday,” “Blue Skies” and the title tune — you’ll get a shot at the traditional Phoenix 50/50 raffle and, as is traditional on Opening Night, you’ll get a first look ahead to the borough-based troupe’s 2014 season. Show continues through November 24; take it here to reserve tickets — and here for our feature on some exciting new developments at the Phoenix fun factory.
RUMSON: He’s fronted the 21st century edition of Blood Sweat & Tears; subbed for Belushi in The Original Blues Brothers Band; shared stages with everyone from Boy George to B.B. King, and toured the region’s roadhouses with his own Hudson River Rats (an upstanding organization that boasts legendary drummer Bernard “Pretty” Purdie). You might recall blues-rock belter and ace harmonicat Rob Paparozzi from those open-air Red Bank Jazz & Blues Fests of yore — but when Rob and Friends take it indoors to Barnacle Bill’s for some Friday night sets, they’ll be tearing the roof from the joint with a harpin’ helpin’ of houseparty hospitality, and the kind of star quality that keeps paparazzi flashbulbs a-poppin’.
M’TOWN: MIGHTY MAX GIVES BACK TO THE MAC
E Street Band drummer and Middletown resident Max Weinberg does it “talk show” style, in a benefit for the township’s Arts Council that takes place at the Middletown Arts Center on Sunday night, November 17. (click to enlarge)
Press release from Middletown Arts Council
On Sunday, November 17, the Middletown Arts Center (MAC) will host An Evening with E Street’s Max Weinberg to benefit the Middletown Arts Council, with the 7 pm event presented as a talk-show style question and answer format, followed by a VIP meet and greet reception.
Event moderator Tom Cunningham — host of the Bruce Brunch, which airs on Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. on 105.7 The Hawk Classic Rock Radio — will engage the audience in lively conversation with Weinberg, and show rare video footage from his star-studded career.
WEINBERG AGAIN DRUMS FOR A BUYER
A video listing for the Weinberg estate. Below, Max Weinberg at a Middletown planning board hearing in August. (Photo by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge)
[See update at bottom of article]By JOHN T. WARD
Four months after winning an OK to re-subdivide his estate, Bruce Springsteen drummer Max Weinberg has again put the Middletown spread up for sale.
And he’s dropped his asking price by more than 10 percent from a year ago, according to the Friday’s Wall Street Journal, which first reported the offering.
WEINBERG GETS OK FOR ESTATE CARVE-UP
Max Weinberg at Middletown’s planning board hearing Wednesday night. (Photo by Stacie Fanelli. Click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Turns out you can break the ties that bind.
E-Street Band drummer Max Weinberg barely persuaded an apprehensive Middletown planning board Wednesday to lift a deed restriction it had imposed eight years ago to prevent him from further subdividing his 16.2-acre Navesink estate.
Using words like ‘hardship’ and ‘discrimination,’ Weinberg’s team of legal and planning experts argued that the deed restriction, which Weinberg agreed to at the time, had stuck him and his family with an unfair burden.
WEINBERG DRUMS FOR NEW SUBDIVISION
The entrance to E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg’s estate on McClees Road in Middletown. Below, Weinberg at this week’s planning board hearing. (Photos by Dustin Racioppi; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Eight years after getting his knuckles rapped by Middletown’s foremost land conservationist over a plan to subdivide his estate, drummer Max Weinberg was back before township officials this week, asking for an OK to further slice up land that they once said should never be split again.
The timekeeper for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band and former Conan O’Brien sidekick is hoping to subdivide the 16.2-acre parcel on which his home sits so he can sell nearly half for development.
So Weinberg returned to the planning board Wednesday for a bit of déjà vu, asking the board to lift a deed restriction placed on his McClees Road property in 2003, when he and his wife, Becky, subdivided their 37-acre property into four lots.
“Times change. Economics change. Conan’s come and gone,” said his attorney, Michael Steib. “One of the decisions is to market this property. And they’ve learned a 16.2-acre parcel of property is hard to market.”
CLEMONS RECALLED AS A TRUE ‘BIG MAN’
Clarence Clemons, right, backs up Stormin’ Norman Seldin, behind the piano, at the Lock, Stock and Barrel in Fair Haven sometime in the late ’70s. (Photo courtesy of Norman Seldin; click to enlarge)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
He’d already soared into the music industry stratosphere alongside Bruce Springsteen when Clarence Clemons bumped into an old friend, the guy who helped get him his start in the Jersey Shore music scene, and asked if he could sit in, like old times, playing the saxophone.
The late-1970s encounter took place in Sea Bright, where Clemons had a home and was known for towing local kids around with fishing poles for some post-tour R&R.
And earlier this year, to celebrate his 69th birthday, Clemons bought a plane ticket for a longtime friend and former bandmate to fly down to Florida to sing at the party.
Clemons, who passed away Saturday from complications of a stroke, invested as much of himself in his friends and community as he did in his music, friends told redbankgreen in interviews this week, following the Big Man’s death.
Flags will be flown at half-staff throughout New Jersey in Clemons’ honor Thursday. A funeral service was held Tuesday in Palm Beach, Florida.
FOX: SPRINGTEEN & BON JOVI ARE FARMERS?
A report on Fox5 Wednesday tees up local rock stars Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Max Weinberg for “the huge tax breaks” they get for claiming parts of their estates in Colts Neck and Middletown as farmland.