Guilty pleasure | 5 years ago | May 25, 2001 | Mark Bazer interviewed porn king Ron Jeremy about his upcoming show at the Middle East.
“Alas, Jeremy’s most popular feature won’t be on display this Friday, when ‘Ron Jeremy’s Sideshow’ arrives at the Middle East. But he will be performing his Borscht-Belt-meets-Boogie-Nights stand-up comedy routine, and he’ll be supported by girls, girls, and more girls: oil-wrestling girls, girls participating in a banana-eating contest (for the boys, there’s a cherry-pie-eating contest, with the pies conveniently placed between the legs of, yes, girls), and punk-rock-playing girls dressed up in Catholic-school uniforms. Needless to say, there will be audience participation.

“ ‘We go to the extent that the law will allow, … That way people are getting the skimpiest show possible. In other words, if a club will allow topless, we’ll go topless. We had a few clubs in the Midwest where you can go nude. We went nude. Not me. Lord knows I’d wipe out the front row.’

“Blame it on the Blue Laws, but no one will be taking off any bras or panties at the Middle East. Still, Jeremy seems, if not orgasmic, then excited about coming to town.”

The one that got away | 10 years ago | May 24, 1996 | Matt Ashare mourned the loss of local rock promoter to a New York club.
“Rock-club booking is a relentless, unforgiving, nerve-racking enterprise that rarely offers much in the way of glory. But McDonald, who handled the booking at the Tam for three years before taking the job at T.T.’s, has distinguished herself as one of the Boston scene’s finest. Some of her coups: gigs by Joan Jett with Evil Stig, Social Distortion, the Muffs, John Cale, Thurston Moore, Boss Hog, Lydia Lunch and Exene Cervenka, Bikini Kill, and Son Volt — all performers that probably could have filled larger rooms. And she’s had a knack for zeroing in on promising local talents like Jen Trynin, whom McDonald was aggressively booking long before there was even a local buzz around her name. Trynin returned the favor by celebrating the release of her debut Cockamamie (Warner Bros.) at T.T.’s and by playing a sold-out, two-night stand there after her first national tour.

“There’s no word yet from T.T.’s regarding how they’ll handle the departure.... One thing’s certain: whoever replaces McDonald at T.T.’s will be taking on the responsibility for a room that’s come a long way since September of 1994.”

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Love me new | 15 years ago | May 31, 1991 | M. Howell broke down Paul McCartney’s latest acoustic record.
“Paul McCartney’s new Unplugged: The Official Bootleg (Capitol) is a fan’s dream. And yet, even with millions of albums sold, record-breaking attendance for live shows, and true super-star status, McCartney remains underrated.

“Part of this predicament is unfair and beyond his control, a product of our impulse to ‘choose sides.’ To many, he has always come in second to John Lennon — improbably for the five years that Lennon retired from making music, and irretrievably now that Mark Chapman cast the final vote, making Lennon #1 with a bullet....

“On Unplugged, he damn near fulfills the dream of every one of his longtime fans (especially the female ones): Paul McCartney singing in your living room....

“Along the way, McCartney makes an eloquent case for some of his maligned solo work. When McCartney came out 20 years ago, its songs seemed fragmented and slight, particularly following Abbey Road. Unplugged — and two decades — gives us a chance to rediscover their virtues: simplicity, family, childlike wonder, not as a retreat towards infantilism, but with an appreciation that it’s not a bad place to be at all. ‘That would be something,’ McCartney sings sweetly, and it truly is.”

A con for a con | 20 years ago | June 3, 1986 | Jim Schuh reported on a bizarre forgery case involving Scientologists.
“Back on the morning of June 7, 1982, a man walked into the New York branch of the Middle East Bank on the 25th floor of a Madison Avenue office building and tried to deposit a $2 million check. When he balked at producing identification, bank officials refused to take the check. The man, a native of the United Arab Emirates, left without completing the transaction.

“The check, written on an E.F. Hutton money-market account handled by the Bank of New England, was a forgery. Although attempted bank fraud of that ilk is not particularly unusual, this particular incident triggered a complex, bizarre, and, at times, vicious battle that shows no signs of abating nearly four years later.

“The forged check had been written on the account of L. Ron Hubbard, reclusive founder of the Church of Scientology, who died last January. No one has ever been charged publicly with that attempted fraud, which Scientologists have come to regard as the most brazen of assaults on their religion and church....

“To gather evidence in the case, the Scientologists offered a reward of up to $100,000 for information leading to the conviction of those who had tried to pass the bogus Hubbard check.”