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Hit the road
Music-industry insider Jodi Goodman leaves Boston, plus Fall for the Arts! and more

Jodi Goodman takes the show on the road

One of Boston’s premier club kids has left town. That may sound like a funny description of someone who was also one of the most powerful music-industry insiders in Boston, but Jodi Goodman was always a club kid at heart. And that hasn’t changed in all the years she’s booked clubs and then larger venues, first for the Don Law Company and then, after Law’s sale to SFX and subsequently to Clear Channel Entertainment, as vice-president of booking, the person responsible for venues like FleetBoston Pavilion.

This past Monday, Goodman took up a similar position at Bill Graham Presents in San Francisco — now another division of the monolithic Clear Channel. Goodman moved to Boston in 1980 to go to Suffolk University, but after a bartending gig at one local club, she quickly became a key player in the local rock scene, booking clubs like Storyville and Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Jonathan Swift’s and T.T. the Bear’s Place throughout the ’80s.

In 1989, she began working for Law, and that meant she might be involved in any number of venues — Avalon, the Orpheum, Great Woods (as the Tweeter Center was then called). During all that time, she maintained a sterling reputation both for her professionalism and for her downright likability — in this notoriously cutthroat business, it was nigh impossible to find an enemy of Jodi Goodman. When I profiled her for the Phoenix in 1993, local-jazz-scene maven Carolyn Kelley told me, "To be in the position Jodi is in and not be hated is in itself an achievement. . . . She also knows how to put the right artist in the right venue for the right money; she knows how to negotiate with presenter and artist. That’s a fine line to walk, and she walks it better than most."

So why is the talented, unhated Goodman leaving town? When I talked to her last week, she made vague reference to "various reasons" and then said, "I hate to admit it, but I’ve lost my patience for the cold; I’ve just absolutely had it." Last year she decided to do something about it. This past February, Goodman attended a conference in Los Angeles and put out feelers. And then Don Law — now CEO of Clear Channel Entertainment — told her about an opening in the legendary San Francisco office.

In San Francisco, Goodman (who will still hold the title VP of booking) will have an expanded territory, with the authority to book shows as far afield as Seattle and Reno. She has, of course, had a special perspective on the changes within the music industry. The Don Law Company’s control of the local music scene had always made it a lightning rod for resentment here, and that feeling was compounded in the sales to SFX and then Clear Channel. In addition to unprecedented control of the concert business, Clear Channel also owns stations in more than 1200 markets nationwide. So how did it feel from the inside to become part of Clear Channel?

"I guess when we were first sold in 1998 to SFX, that was, I think, for every Jodi Goodman around the country, pretty shocking — to suddenly become part of a corporation. Because all of us were very entrepreneurial, somewhat cowboys and cowgirls in the field and really shooting from the hip. And I think we all knew that was suddenly going to change. But what was interesting was that at the same time there were so many other changes happening as the entertainment business itself became corporatized that it was really inevitable for our end."

Goodman saw her day-to-day process change — more paperwork, more people to answer to, more conference calls. But she also found that she had more resources, a greater national perspective on the concert business, as she talked to Clear Channel operatives in Philadelphia and New York. "And they’re all experts," she says. "You can learn from your guys in New York, who can turn you on to music or upcoming bands based on the experiences that they’ve had. You’re outside of your cocoon."

But there’s no doubt that the business has changed. "Back at Storyville, if I wanted to have ’BCN co-promoting my show, it was solely my decision in how I was going to represent those artists and how I was going to present them. And now there are so many chefs, it’s unbelievable. The agencies have people who are marketing heads who have to approve of your plan. Everybody has an opinion, so the process has really gotten bloated."

Still, despite the frustrations, Goodman has never lost her taste for the business. In part that’s because, much to her surprise and that of her peers, Clear Channel never initiated any sweeping downsizing and consolidation of operations. "Inherently they understood that the talent lies in all the local people. And that’s made a big difference. I’m still dealing with all the same individual people, and they’re still dealing with me. And managers and agents are always saying that: ‘I may have an opinion about Clear Channel as a corporation, but at the end of the day, I’m still selling my show to Jodi Goodman, she still promotes my show the way I want it promoted. She hasn’t changed.’ "

And Jodi Goodman is still driven by the same excitement that compelled her as a kid in Riverdale to drive into Manhattan to see whatever shows she could. "The biggest thrill from day one to today is the show. When I’m at the show and I see a venue filled with happy people seeing their favorite artist, the charge is the same. So I’m driven day to day to bring the show. Get the show!"

— Jon Garelick

Peggy Seeger correction

Our Fall Preview look at upcoming folk-music concerts misstated the date and venue of the Peggy Seeger show at MIT. Seeger will perform on September 25 at the Wong Auditorium in MIT’s Tang Center, 2 Amherst Street in Cambridge, at 7:30 p.m. — not September 23 at MIT’s Killian Hall. The concert is free and is part of a Seeger residency at MIT September 23 through 26. For more information, call (617) 253-8844.

Bucks for bards

The Huntington Theatre Company awarded its first Stanford Calderwood Commission for New American Plays to nationally known scribe Jon Robin Baitz (Ten Unknowns, The Substance of Fire). The money was earmarked for his new play about a Wall Street powerhouse with skeletons in his closet, The Paris Letter, which was to have been delivered next month. Perhaps because that opening has been postponed to make room for Tony winner Nathan Lane’s much-touted turn in Butley, the new Calderwood Commissions, which were announced last week, are not attached to specific works but intended, according to Huntington spokesperson Dina Croce, to create a "writers’ salon" that will include workshops and readings of new work.

Doing the Gertrude Stein thing, courtesy of the Huntington, will be promising Boston bards John Kuntz, Melinda Lopez, Ronan Noone, and Sinan Unel, worthies all (though a collaboration is frightening to contemplate). Announcing the awards, the Huntington’s Norma Jean Calderwood artistic director, Nicholas Martin, said, "With this commission, we begin to fulfill our promise to provide a home for local writers" — a home that will take concrete form a year from now when the two new theaters being built for the Huntington and the Boston Center for the Arts in the Atelier 505 luxury condominium project adjacent to the BCA, the 360-seat Virginia Wimberly Theatre and the 200-seat Edward and Nancy Roberts Studio Theatre, open for business. Until then, everything Huntington seems to be named Calderwood.

Bucks for artists

The Boston-based Tanne Foundation, which was founded "by an artist in 1998 to enrich the artistic experience and broaden horizons for artists and audiences alike" has announced its 2003 awards, and among the five recipients is Oni Gallery director Lydia Eccles, who’s described as "a conceptual artist who explores the effect of technology, especially media, upon psyche, social relations, and life systems. With aliases such as Buffalo Gals, Unapack, and, currently, Universal Aliens, Eccles is confrontational and symbolic." The Oni Gallery is a not-for-profit experimental space on Washington Street in Chinatown that’s become a center of significant art and performance activity. A total of $40,000 was awarded to the five artists.

Fall for the Arts! (continued)

An update on Fall for the Arts, which we mentioned in this space back in the August 22 issue. The entertainment for this September 30 event at the ICA will include songs from the Lyric Stage production of Howard Crabtree’s When Pigs Fly and music by the Tarbox Ramblers. The groups that will be hoping to promote themselves (and why not) are the cream of the Boston area’s performing organizations: the American Repertory Theatre, Boston Ballet, Boston Lyric Opera, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, First Night, the FleetBoston Celebrity Series, the Handel & Haydn Society, the Huntington Theatre Company, the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Lyric Stage Company, the Museum of Fine Arts, North Shore Music Theatre, the Peabody Essex Museum, the Wang Center, and World Music. The event, which takes place from 6 to 8 p.m., is still free and open to the public, but the organizers are requesting that you RSVP to (617) 937-5987 so they’ll know how much food to prepare. If nothing else, it’s an easy way to collect season brochures, and in the process you can enjoy an glass of wine, have any questions answered (what kind of discounts do they offer; are there ushering opportunities), and get a free look at the ICA’s new show, "Splat Boom Pow! The Influence of Cartoons in Contemporary Art." The ICA is at 955 Boylston Street; call (617) 266-5152.

Speaking of discounts . . .

If you’re a first-timer, you actually have two chances to get discounted subscriptions to Boston Lyric Opera’s "Italian Season" (Verdi’s Rigoletto, Puccini’s Tosca, and Mozart’s Cosí fan tutte): first at the above-mentioned Fall for the Arts! and then at the Museum of Fine Arts’ October "First Friday," which falls on October 3. At both events, there’ll be, in "select sections," $100 subscriptions (25 percent discount) for first-time subscribers. For more information, call (617) 542-6772 or visit www.blo.org.

And speaking of promoting . . .

It is, of course, the nature of organizations to tell the public they’re doing well (unless they’re looking for financial support), but to judge from just one weekend, we’re not surprised to hear that Jacob’s Pillow enjoyed record ticket sales in 2003. Nacho Duato’s Madrid-based CND2 (his Compañía Nacional de Danza’s second company, like Boston Ballet II) was sensational on the Ted Shawn main stage, and Buglisi/Foreman Dance, from New York, was more than creditable in the Doris Duke Studio Theatre. The season was also notable for the 50th anniversary of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the 25th of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.

 


Issue Date: September 19 - 25, 2003
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