Rick Berlin Songs With Subtitles

photo credit: Adam Wells

Alternating narrative from his memoir, The Paragraphs, with original song, legendary rocker Rick Berlin leapfrogs one after the other, book and music fitting, however obliquely, hand in a glove. Hilarious, disturbing, blunt and as honest as can be about his life and odd world over the last few decades, Berlin offers up an odyssey of song enhancing words and vice versa. Created from song fragments, The Paragraphs recalls a life of music, a relationship with the animal world, and a two-day meth-fueled road trip.

Berlin writes unflinchingly and with enormous heart about his family, along with acid trips, body parts, cats, music, sex, love, philosophy, and the vagaries of aginghes written more than a thousand songs, many of them image-rich portraits of people and places that have earned him comparisons to Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen.The Boston Globe
uncategorizablepart punk, part musical theater, part sentimental sap, part wordplay master. Gold.Amanda Palmer
Rick Berlin is a giant on the Boston music scene. His colorful songwriting and strong stage presence have influenced countless other artists since the early 1970sThe Boston Phoenix