There was a full bill set to play at Roggie’s in Cleveland Circle last Wednesday night. If you’ve been paying attention to Boston gossip, you won’t be surprised to hear that it didn’t happen. It’s been tough to report on because everyone you talk to has a source a couple of degrees away that says either someone was stabbed, or just beaten up, or something in an alley outside of Roggie’s and it got pretty much zero attention when it actually happened (late May?). While everyone seems to agree that this is a temporary shutdown, the bands scheduled had no advanced notice and as close as a few days before the show, members were trying to gather the details to know whether (and where) the show would be happening. Coach & Son’s Old Time Family Booking, who are relatively new to the Boston promoting game, would not let their show go out like that. The show went on that night and was held at The Shame Cube, a venue I can say nothing more about. Oh I guess I can say another thing about The Shame Cube, which is that there were time limitations on the space and so while the show may have gone on super late at Roggie’s (there were five bands total), the bands played abbreviated sets in order to accommodate. So keep in mind when looking at these Scribscrubz that Louis only had about 10-15 minutes to draw each band and he still killed it. And keep in mind that there’s only so much I can say in a show review. FALL RISK got up and played three songs of extremely tight punk. They describe themselves as “Heartfelt Punk,” and I’d say that’s a good self-assessment. Heartfelt in that you can imagine these songs are about someone and that there’s a good basis for each song written, nothing’s phoned in. But this isn’t Dashboard Confessional droning—it’s fast and chugging and the bassist was hopping all over the place (as they are wont to do, those bassists.) FALL RISK isn’t frivolous, but they know what needs to go into a show to get people dancing. God bless the opening band that can actually open a show: they were a great mean, median, and mode for what was in store for the audience in this full (but short) show. Sports., which, hey, fuck you for being so hard to track down online, are all about dat shouting. The music was straight out of the early 2000s (did anyone else buy those …Dragging The Lake compilations from Atticus? Sports. missed out on a perfect opportunity by about a decade), very Sugarcult or maybe a more subtle New Found Glory (guys, my punk references are pretty shoddy. I thought I’d just be reviewing Brendan Canning and The New Pornographers when I got into this bizness). But on top of this music, it’s pure and simple screamo. For what it was, it was really well executed and everyone was totally into it. They were having fun and this was a crowd that knew their songs and were shouting along with them. But my throat hurt from listening to it.
Roger, Yale, MA‘s lead singer and guitarist had a machine gun shaped electric guit. Can we talk about that for a second? It complimented his American Flag And Eagle tank top pretty well, but I feel like I had to mention it. Yale, MA is fun fast short rapid-fire guitar riffs and it’s definitely designed to be fun and loud and dancey and stop thinking, okay? The vocals got to a shouting as well, especially during Doo Wop, but it was closer to an Art-Brut-ish, and at it’s best, Talking Heads-ish talk-sing than a throaty scream. The other songs (all two or three of them) sounded more like Blink-182. I’ve already apologized for my dated references, I owe you nothing. It was super fun. The bands that preceded Vermont’s Tyler Daniel Bean were more apt to shout and go nuts, but he was more of the emo, slow, swelling end of the punk spectrum, which provided for some good contrast. The songs were much more serious, less stupid-fun than was to be expected from the previous bands. There was, however, a lot of reverence from the other bands for what he did, different though it was. Kittyhawk was very much the headliner, in that not only did they play last but they got time to play more than a couple songs. They’re the out-of-towners, coming from Illinois, so it was done out of respect for traveling, and also they’ve got a bit of buzz about them. They probably fit the least with what came before them, but they still fit. While the preceding bands were definitely straight-up punk, Kittyhawk had a poppier vibe toward the beginning and breaking out the punk a minute or two into each song. The instrument arrangement was drums, two guitars, and an organ which played bass parts most of the time, but occasionally broke into chords for a chorus. Check these bands out, ’cause they did all this themselves in the face of mild adversity and they’re also a bunch of great people.