The Phoenix

There were underground newspapers in Boston.

There was the Boston Phoenix and the Village Voice in New York and the New Times here.

And what happened in that tour was they would just say, Rolling Thunder is going to be happening here tonight.

Yeah.

It's Kim Deal of the Pixies.

She joined the Pixies in January 1986 after seeing an ad in the Boston Phoenix.

She couldn't play bass at all, and she was only okay on guitar, but she went to the audition anyway after boring her sister's bass.

She got the gig, and at first, she adopted the stage name Mrs. John Murphy.

And today he produces Jazz in the New Millennium, a weekly hour of radio syndicated by the African American Public Radio Consortium with a companion book of the same name.

Bob Blumenthal has written about jazz since 1969, including two decades with the Boston Phoenix and 13 years with the Boston Globe.

He's the author of Jazz, an introduction to the history and legends behind America's music, and Saxophone Colossus, a portrait of Sonny Rollins.

Bob also sits on the JJA board, where he chairs the book committee.

I always say all it takes is an understanding spouse with a health plan.

But so my example doesn't really fit with people, but it does mean that there was space to navigate, at least for me.

with being local all this time, and yet having emerged from what I used to call the Boston ghetto, you know, for five years of writing that nobody ever saw, and the majority of what I've written, people outside of Boston have never seen, that thanks to a record producer who lived in New Hampshire and read my stuff, And a Boston Phoenix editor who went to Rolling Stone and said, well, I'll try to get you in there and did.

I kind of became more than a Boston critic.

Exactly, exactly.

But in the Boston Phoenix, Janet Maslin approached these complaints from another angle.

I like this take.

Quote, Brooks's direction is TV skit conventional enough to balance out the wild range of his material, she wrote.

Like I didn't see Halloween in the theaters because I was too young, but I was fascinated by it.

I would, I would stare at the, you know, in Boston, we had this, you know, a periodical, the Boston Phoenix.

And I would go to the, I would read all the reviews and I was a horror movie fan, even as a kid.

And, I would go and stare at all the posters that they would print in the back.

It's very interestingly decentralized because you're absolutely right.

One of my mentors in Boston theater, Jim Torres, used to talk all the time about back when there was the Boston Phoenix and the Dig Boston, all these different reviewers in print, the Boston Metro.

All the old

weeklies are all gone.

He brought his trademark quick-thinking and level-headed approach to the recent debate between Governor Maura Healey and her challenger Mike Minogue, and also to the U.S. Senate debate featuring incumbent Ed Markey and his challenger John Deaton.

Now, I know Jon from his days at The Boston Phoenix, where he was our political columnist.

His Keller at Large remains one of the longest running political franchises in local television.

Boston Magazine twice named him best TV political analyst, and he's won a boatload of New England Emmys.

Something about that that even the best print journalism at times can't quite match.

Now, you and I had a significant background in newspapers.

In fact, I believe you were at The Newton Tab before you even came to The Boston Phoenix-

Yeah

I snuck in.

I said I was a reporter from Boston Phoenix.

And nobody cared about me.

Were you a reporter for the Boston Phoenix?

Yeah.

I had a camera.

But I got in anywhere.

They just let me in.

[laughs] I didn't have, um...

I was in a dance class and my teacher said, uh, "I read about you in the Boston Phoenix." And I was like, "Oh, that's not me." She was like, "Oh, it must be another Liza Lentini then [laughs] who has a play in Boston."

Yeah.

And I was like, "Oh."