Comment on any Live Review in Reader's Respo™
Make sure you title your comment so we know what you're talking about.
You can also discuss local music 24/7 at The Noise Board

BRIEF AWAKENING, BETHEL STEELE
Midway Café, Jamaica Plain
3/12/09
Bethel Steele opens the night low-key with her acoustic guitar and sweet lyrical sanity. Her slapstick humor between songs breaks up the lack of instrumental variety, which becomes a little repetitious.
Brief Awakening, an all-female five-piece, is soothing and great. I am excited to see a complete set from them in front of a full crowd. Their songs are energetic, positive, and driven with substantial depth behind each note and chord. The layering of vocals and instrumentation is similar to Belle and Sebastian’s moodiness with a soothing taste, but Brief Awakening adds a gritty side that keeps me hanging on. Two radio ready songs, “Footprints” and “Recognition” are standouts and both can be found on their MySpace page. (Emily Smith)

ZAC TAYLOR & THE DRUGS
Café 939, Berklee College, Boston MA
3/03/09
The local rock scene has a love/hate relationship with Berklee and its guitar noodling prodigies-in-training, although arguably most of the time it’s just plain hate. However, thanks to Café 939, a new hip venue recently opened by the college, there is finally a club that allows its students to shine and show the world that there’s a whole lot more to Berklee than the guitar-wanking stereotypes. Tonight’s show is a perfect example. Zac Taylor and his buddies, the Drugs, can play astonishlingly well. Fortunately, their main focus is putting together some well-crafted songs rather than playing a series of unmemorable solos. This is not to say they aren’t afraid to dish out some impressive licks, but there is a whole lot more to this band. There is clever stage banter and interaction with the audience; they even bring up a horn section for the last few songs. It’s a great night! Café 939 is mobbed and everyone is jazzed up by the music and partying like it’s the weekend. I can’t believe its only Tuesday! Oh well, that’s college for you! (Kier Byrnes)

BLACK MOSETTES
Cantab Lounge, Cambridge MA
3/5/09
Props to Mickey Bliss—with the loss of the Abbey Lounge scene, he’s clearly doing his best to fill the void by booking a lot of great bands (many whom I associate with the Abbey in fact). And obviously one of his favorites is Black Mosettes—an eclectic soul/R&B/disco/rock act possessed of mucho charisma. Yeah, I’ve already written many a good word about ’em, but they keep upping their quality level, so you can expect many more good words to come. In the past, Rockin’ Ronnie Mosette and crew have strictly stuck to cover songs, but them days is gone. The set now features four originals (including the excellent “Central Park”), which seamlessly fit with the cover material—and that’s no easy task, given the varied stuff they cover. Let’s see you try to work out something that’s gonna comfortably sit between a funk/dance number and a psych/garage tune! All of which proves that Black Mosettes are both genius and psychotic. Either that or they’ve got a more finely honed sense of humor than the rest of the universe… (Frank Strom)

OVER A CARBOARD SEA, THE LIFE PARTNERS, HANIFA WASHINGTON, PANDA BANDITS, JOHNNY FOUNTAIN
Johnny Cash Tribute
Space Gallery, Portland, ME
2/26/09
Today is Johnny Cash’s birthday, and the Space Gallery is throwing a party in his honor. They even have a giant birthday cake, which is free for all who stay for the live music. They begin the event by playing a documentary about Cash to a packed house. I show up just ten minutes before it begins and have to stand for the entirety. This viewing is a freebie, but after the film, the room is cleared out and then eight dollars is taken at the door. This is a fair price because nineteen Cash songs are covered by over a dozen different singers and bands between 10:00 pm and 1:00 am. Of the acts, there are five that stand out to me.
The first act of the evening is Johnny Fountain, who stands center stage with his acoustic-electric guitar and is flanked by a drummer and a stand-up bassist. They perform “A Boy Named Sue,” and I’m impressed. Not only does Fountain move his whole body as he gets into the rhythm of the song, but his voice is crisp and deep. The entire audience is engaged and singing along. Johnny keeps with the momentum of the tune pretty closely, but chooses to disrupt the exactness as he belts out the last line—instead of saying that he’ll name his son anything but Sue, he says “I’ll name him Sue, I don’t care.” This tears a rip in my heart and I long to hear the original lyrics. However, Fountain does do an outstanding job throughout the rest of the song so I am not too upset with him.
The second band worth reviewing here tonight is the Panda Bandits, who ironically are the second band to hit the stage. This nine-piece band is insanely energetic. They’ve got two hand drums on stage left, a tambourine and a bass on stage right, an acoustic electric guitar in the back of the stage, and then the lead singer at center stage. Their cover of “Drums” is a cultural experience in itself. They fill the room with the pounding of drums, the stomping of feet, and backup vocals from the whole band. The lead singer gets so into the lyrics that his face mirrors desperation and his body is like a fish gasping for water. I mean this in a great way—Cash’s lyrics are heart achingly troubled. The singer tells us they were an “imaginary” band until tonight. I vote for them to remain a “real” band.
Hanifa Washington walks onto stage with bare feet, a white, free-flowing dress, and a contagious smile. She carries an acoustic-electric guitar and after a little bit of chit-chatting with the audience, she begins to play “Lady in Winter,” which Cash covered. She’s got enough soul in her voice to get anyone into heaven, and her unwavering control over her guitar is breathtaking. I want to stop the Cash tribute right now, and ask her to play for the duration. Since that’s impossible, I just soak up each and every chord she plays and each note she hits. The audience is hearing real down-to-earth talent, and as I look around the room, I see people nodding to each other in approval. Her profound stage presence, her laughter between lyrics, and the way she captures the audience’s attention has me wondering where she’s playing next.
Rustic Overtones and Paranoid Social Club fans are thrilled tonight as former band mates Dave Gutter and Jon Rood take the stage (yes—they were in both bands together) wearing black suits, which sets them apart from the other performers. Gutter reveals that the duo is called the Life Partners. As they begin to play Cash’s song, “When the Man Comes Around,” Gutter strums his acoustic guitar and sings lead vocals, while Rood plays the upright bass. Because there are so many variations to Johnny Cash’s songs here tonight, from soul to folk to rockabilly, and from mediocre to incredible, I feel very confident in saying that this band is by far the most solid sounding and polished band here. It is evident that the members of the Life Partners are anything but new to live performances. To put it simply, they are outstandingly professional.
Over a Cardboard Sea is made up of Timothy Findlen on ukulele and vocals, Jimmy Dority on accordion and vocals, and Rachel Miller on vocals. They are singing, “There’s a Mother Always Waiting For You At Home, Sweet, Home.” The band tells us that this was the very first song Johnny Cash ever learned, and was taught to him by his mother. This band emulates the kind of music you might hear in the early 1900’s. This is attributed to the finger picking on the ukulele, the fast moving fingers on the accordion, and the collaborative vocals. They also create this ambiance with their comical, but melodramatic facial expressions and the older generation type of clothes they wear, (like the threads you would see in a picture of your grandfather in his early thirties.) The audience is completely quiet as they perform because they’re more than singers and musicians, they’re true entertainers. (Jill Harrigan)

TONY JONES & THE CRETIN 3, THE JERKTONES
Club Gallery, Providence, RI
3/13/09
Friday Night Decadence at Club Gallery (holds about 200) is a monster mash-up of bands ranging from EBM (electronic body music) to electro, gothic to horror punk. On Friday the 13th I check out the din of horror-garage punk band the Jerktones, along with punk rock purists Tony Jones & the Cretin 3.
First, on the decks spinning, is a promising young disc jockey, DJ Skunk, who pirouettes in his creepers between the Damned, 45 Grave, and Richard Hell & the Voidoids.
The Jerktones take the stage, complete with blood-soaked shirts and zombie war face paint. Much of the undead crowd has come to see the band’s new singer, Coffin Joe a.k.a . Joe Yglesias. A Providence punk scene icon, Coffin Joe realized his burning ambition was to get away from the long hours at his shop, Evolution Body Piercing, to pursue his singing again. With Dead Jenny on bass, Pirate Hamster and Dan Jerkins on guitars, and Just Tom on the drums, Coffin Joe belts out a buried baritone on songs such as “Lady Frankenstein,” “Brain Eating Zombie Girlfriend,” and my favorite “Goin’ Back To Kreepsville.”
Next is the former Jerktones’ vocalist and his new three-piece Providence rock ’n’ roll band with a vintage punk/garage/psychobilly sound, Tony Jones & the Cretin 3. Jones is on drums and sings a meatloaf of unrequited lust in “Leather On Leather,” a simplistic back-bone drum beat of “gimme leather on leather/ I want leather on leather.” The band’s lead vocalist/guitarist Joey the Butcher (who also plays in the Knightsville Butchers) performs a thug like cover of the Ramones’ “Chinese Rocks,” with such candor, any lil’ Cheetah flouncing around the club would surely move out of the way. A video is shot of this performance and can be seen on YouTube. (DJ Matthew Griffin)

Comment on any Live Review in Reader's Respo™
Make sure you title your comment so we know what you're talking about.
You can also discuss local music 24/7 at The Noise Board