Borrowed Eyes took the stage around 9:20 or 9:30 pm with a round setup including a trumpet and trombone player, they were a eclectic mix of sound all firmly placed in America.  They seemed like an appropriate opening act for Cub Country and if they had been the only opening band I would have been delighted.  With Borrowed Eyes I could hear the singer and parse all the music without ear plugs, but something happened with the audio by the time Yoni Gordon and the Goods took the stage, something which seemed to get worse throughout the evening.  Again, Yoni and the Goods played music rooted in an America with a slight twang, absolutely what one would expect in an opening band for Cub Country, however, the audio had shifted and Yoni’s vocals were drowning in his guitar and bass and drums.  I have seen many great band’s shows suffer from a one note johnny sound guy, the worst being the consistently bad sound at the Belly Up in Solana Beach CA in the ’90’s.  Now don’t get me wrong he seemed very attentive stepping out from behind the board, listening, going back, appearing to move things, but the instrumentation just seemed to get louder and louder, leaving the vocals in the background and very hard to make out.  Yoni and the Goods finished their set and then The Big Big Bucks started, and “what the fuck?” was all I could think.  First off they had no business opening for Cub Country, despite well documented punk roots it didn’t work to have Bucks on the bill.  And secondly, they were just not right, The Big Big Bucks did at least three songs on which I’m pretty sure none of the band was in the same key!  This sort of “experimentation” coupled with skewed audio made for a cacophony of crap.  At least their set was short.
So now it is nigh midnight and Jeremy Chatelain and crew take the stage.  By now the thin crowd is even thinner, and it would have been nice to bring the audio down with less bodies in the room, and maybe the audio guy did but not much.  I was delighted by Cub Country, it was the old pros following the juvenile upstarts.  They had a job to do and they did it.  Jeremy apologized about the hour noting their appreciation for us staying as we probably had to go to work.  Cub Country’s set was smooth, if way too short, I wanted to hear more.  Jean and I even danced to one of the new songs, it must have blown the hipster’s minds who stood around almost too cool to head bob.  Professionals to the last, Cub Country played their set and all to soon the show was over with a twinge of sadness.  Walking out I thanked the band and they were genuine in there returned appreciation.  It had a soul, the music that is.

I blame the Middle East for stretching out the bill too far and too late for a Wednesday night, and having some sound issues.

Go see Cub Country in NYC tonight at the Cake Shop or Maxwell’s on Friday or both, praying for longer sets and early on times.

Outside the Lines Studios
70 Colby Street
Medford, MA 02130

Okay so let’s start this by saying I missed most of Big Bear’s set, but what I did catch sent me right back to the noise of my childhood and I could not help thinking this sounded a lot like Santa Cruz circa 1993–with much much much less plaid.  Not to say good or bad, just the kind of discordant soundtrack over cyclical vocals people were playing with in the bay area before the more melodic and directional music leapt the bridges and hit the mainstream.  They were loud, and maybe for good reason.
Next, Sunburned Hand of the Man, started their set with a kind of chanted ‘blessing’ by a black-dressed guy, bearded, ponytailed, and freaky.  The music then poured forth from two drummers and two guitarists plus gadgets.  The music was fine, and the attendees seemed in to it.  They were earnest, but something about them just bubbled-up anger.  Sunburned Hand of the Man, just made me mad.  And not mad, like ‘I just spent 10 bucks and these guys suck,’ but rather a profound visceral soul anger, that made me want to punch someone.  At a point in the set, after cruising along sans vocals, the greasy ponytail snaked his way through the audience frotaging his boozy cigarette stink on me and the Pabst swilling guy next to me, and up to the mic.  As soon as he started singing, more like chanting, my personal anger was hitting a tipping point.  When the bearded ponytail started taunting the audience to dance in post-punk high pitched vocal waves, I couldn’t take it anymore and shot through the audience and grabbed the first non-lethal thing from a sink area next to the band and poorly winged a plastic lid at the entranced band.  At this point I lost my cool totally and yelled at the band, spilling forth nonsense swear words, there bearded ponytail said something about my courage and handed me the mic into which I blew my voice out, I grabbed the bearded ponytail by the lapels and shook him, then sprang back and whipped off one of my flip-flops at a time and threw them at the band.  Regaining my senses for a moment, and needing my shoes, I hit the stage again to retrieve my sandals, which I did along with the poor guitar player’s last Sierra Nevada which he was willing to fight for, so I opened it for him and handed it back.  I’m not sure if this was what Sunburned Hand of the Man was going for but that’s what they did for / to me.
Last up, Onieda.  Onieda is a five-man crew powered by drums.  They sounded like the best soundtrack to the best car chase sequence ever, for an hour plus.  The rhythm holds the tonal drift in tight reins, and moves the transitions smoothy through waves of sound.  Some of their songs had vocals, but where neigh impossible to make out.  The end result was a power meditation, a loud trance state of muscle, poignant feedback and synthesizers, creating a ride more than a show.
Somehow by the time a got home I had torn the front open of my favorite pair of camouflaged shorts.

The English Beat and RX Bandits at the Somerville Theater.Really it should be, Dave Wakeling with awesome band of guys who play Beat and General Public songs, but DWWABoGWPB&GPS is a clumsy acronym.I was born at a very exciting and hard time. I remember vividly the first time I heard The Clash on some countdown show hosted by Casey Kasem. And I remember my friend Aron buying Special Beat Serviceon vinyl and sporting me a tape with its own special skip from the record. But, I was too young to have seen my favorite bands in the flesh, as I was growing up they were growing apart. Joe Strummer is dead, but Dave Wakeling is very much alive or so it would seem from his near two hour set at the Somerville Theater last night. He seems to have melted a bit, getting slightly shorter and wider since last I saw him in San Diego, but nonetheless, The Beat were there to play. His new band “The English Beat” (as far as I could tell he was the only original member) were first rate, and with the exception of one false start while the bassist was getting tuned up the set was tight. The crowd, even encumbered by fixed seats (which sucked), were with Dave and dancing the whole gig–the one exception (of course) was this older guy looking like the Colonel and his three boys, who had the seats in front of us, who barely moved, and Jean (my wife) speculated after the show, “I wonder how that happened, they didn’t seem be there for either band.” Which brings me to the RX Bandits, the opening act. Now I like eclectic, but RX could use some focus, some good ideas, but mostly muddy: hippy-ska-Police-like-meets-At-The-Drive-In-Greatfully-Deaded, “yeah our songs all do kinda seem like the same song.” Okay, this does seem like a feat, and they did have some really-in-to-the-band fans who danced, but maybe a re-tool, and less Tool might be in order, to make the little skin headed mod down in front kick-up his doc’s to them.All and all, it was great to see and hear, and made a great start to my traditional two weeks of birthday festivities.