Music, Stories, a little ebay
By Scott Shoger

Saturday night’s installment in the Kessler Concert Series — held in a well-appointed living room along Kessler North Drive — offered the Smithereen’s Pat DiNizio in a voluble, storytelling mood and locals Mars or the Moon in an acoustic format perfectly suited for a listening-room environment (all musicians have, of course, worked in rock formats, but that might have knocked the plates off the wall if they plugged in).

From the top, folk-rockers Mars or the Moon (guitarist Joe Hart, vocalist Lani Williams and percussionist Lenen Nicola) approached their opening set as an intimate, confessional forum, joking that the show should be an opportunity to air dirty laundry, and opening with a song named “Peace” with the helpful explanation that it’s actually about killing people (“pacifist aggression,” Hart called the schtick). The band worked through the majority of tunes from their album, “The Price of Love,” with a particularly lovely performance of the ballad “Hold Back a River.” Hart moved over to piano on “River,” despite some misgivings about working with an unfamiliar instrument and playing a part that he had learned for studio sessions over a year before and had barely played since. But it’s fortunate he did: The simple, rolling piano part accompanied Williams’ clear and pitch-perfect vocals perfectly, giving the song an added resonance (literally) that can’t quite be achieved against an acoustic guitar.

In the middle of their set, Hart mentioned that Pat DiNizio was upstairs bidding on a poster of the film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s “The Fountainhead.” These are the little details you miss at most other venues, unless you happen to be sitting in the green room and there’s free wi-fi. Once DiNizio made the trip downstairs, toting an electric guitar that he performed on solo for the night, he opened up a roughly two-hour set, which was about half music, half storytelling.
DiNizio has been touring living rooms across the country since 2000, when he figured out that there was a network of Smithereens fans that could rope in 50 fans and offer him a couch to play and sleep on. He first visited Jane and Steve Ruemmele’s living room in 2002, and they welcomed him back for the second installment before 60-something fans.

DiNizio gave a thorough explanation for all the songs he performed, and even some that he didn’t — a lengthy intro to the Smithereen’s Buddy Holly tribute “Maria Elena” (written about Holly’s widow) did not end in the song concerned. But, other intros were useful and fascinating adjuncts to some Smithereens classics. “Behind the Wall of Sleep,” DiNizio explained, was written about the jet-black- haired bassist for the all-girl Boston band the Bristols (and not, say, the Talking Heads’ stutter-stepping Tina Weymouth or Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon). “Afternoon Tea” took its name from a British china shop in the heart of Japan and lyrical content from a booking agent who died of complications from AIDS in the late ’80s.

The “Ozzy story” was perhaps the finest that DiNizio told, concerning an encounter with a Sabbath-era Osbourne in the late ’60s back stage at DiNizio’s high school (a high school that, oddly enough, used their entertainment budget for A-list rock bands). DiNizio asked Ozzy if he would play a certain song, and Ozzy responded that there was no fucking way they would play that song. DiNizio says he’s since vowed to “never shit on my fans the way that Ozzy shat on me.” And he didn’t: DiNizio took requests throughout the show and any diehard fans had the chance to approach him between sets.

Among many great things about house concerts (which will be elucidated in articles later this month by Nora Spitznogle and Nick Selm), simply the proximity to approachable and friendly artists might be the best thing for a music fan, or really anyone that would rather not be alienated from performers and artists.