PLAYGROUND BOSTON

Click here for Noah’s Day 2 recap

Click here for a complete listing of bands and venues participating in the festival!

Festival still seems to be going pretty well. My only real complaint so far is the scheduling. Bands are getting their set times pushed back, changed around, etc. The schedules will at least tell you what band is playing where, but the when has kind of been up in the air. That’s frustrating for me as a spectator, I can only imagine how annoying that is for the bands themselves. Hopefully that’ll be a little better tonight, I’ll keep you posted. Other than that everything’s been good – and the sound in the venues I was at was definitely better across the board last night than it was on Wednesday. Alright, anyway, on to the tunes…

Venue: The Vixen

Scene: The Vixen was pretty dead tonight, to be honest. Still had great sound, and an excellent lineup, but for whatever reason there were not nearly as many people there as there were at Good Times throughout the entire night. Meh, their loss, because I caught some great music there!

Bands: I swung through early to try to catch Conservative Man since I had heard a lot about them (thanks for the heads up, Jason!). Unfortunately I only caught a song or two, but they had an interesting and original sound. One of the songs had a spacey psychedelic almost Brit-poppish feel to it, whereas “Television,” the song they closed out with, was much more of an electropop dance tune. The singer was definitely channeling Damon Albarn from Blur and he was nasty on bass too. They’re a 3 piece – bass, synth, and drums – no guitar! It was a little weird to see this style of band without a guitar, but they certainly pulled it off. Jason Dunn from the Luxury told me that they actually used to have 2 guitarists, but honestly I don’t even know where they would have fit in with the songs they were playing. When they were packing up after their set I saw the keyboardist putting away a keytar– been a long time since I’ve caught a band that used one of those, sorry I missed it. Conservative Man will be playing again on Saturday at 6pm at Good Times, I’m gonna try to catch their whole set down there.

I came back to the Vixen later for The Luxury’s set, but again I was only able to catch the second half or so since the Lights Out were playing at the same time. I know they’re playing Good Times on Saturday at 11:30, so I figured I’d catch them then instead. As it turned out, the sets were staggered enough that I got to run over and see a bit of their performance last night anyway. Problem is, they had finished most of their originals by the time I got down there and had moved on to covers. Hey, at least they do their covers well. They did a great rendition of Tears for Fears’ “Head over Heels” (don’t lie to yourself, you love this song), and followed it up with an ass-kicking version of The Who’s “Pinball Wizard.” I’m a sucker for The Who, so I was loving it. They got back into their originals after that – played some songs off of their new record In the Wake of What Won’t Change – I definitely recognized “Straitjacket,” which featured Jason jumping into the crowd and running around ripping up his guitar. They closed out their set with their hit off their first record, Malcontent. Check out the music video for the song, it involved sock puppets. Honestly. I wouldn’t lie about sock puppets. Anyway, they put together a tight and well-constructed set (as always), and I’m really looking forward to catching them again on Saturday – this time for the full set.

Venue: Governor Bradford

Scene: Wow. So the venue for the festival is in their dark and somewhat dingy basement, because upstairs they feature nightly Drag Karaoke, and the ladies(?) will not be denied. Basement wasn’t too bad though, they had the band setup right by the bottom of the stairs and a bar down there as well. The place was pretty small though – I’m not really sure how they’re going to fit bands like the New Alibis in there tonight, I just saw a single guitarist and I still almost tripped over his cord on the way in. We’ll find out tonight!

Bands: Well, just one band. Actually just one guy. And I only caught part of his set. Bill Dwyer was pretty damn nasty on guitar though, I wish I had been able to see more. I don’t know if he was singing at all, for the songs I caught it was just him shredding. The venue ended up having to cut him off, he was jamming out and I guess he overextended his set time. He had a great flange-y sound, and he definitely had the best way to end a set I’ve seen all week – threw his guitar down, did a somersault on the ground, popped up and hugged his mom. Good stuff. Dwyer’s not going to be playing any more at the festival, but his band 66 Breakout will be at the Cantab on August 7th.

Venue: Good Times

Scene: Yup, back to Good Times. I’m liking this place – cheap beer, nice outdoor area to smoke in, and they’ve had some of the best bands in the entire festival lineup. The ladies we were with were certainly loving the bartender, the guys… well, I’m sure there were at least a few guys there who were loving him too… Sound was SO much better tonight than last night, especially once they turned everything down a bit. Maybe I’m getting old, but that shit was just way too loud earlier in the day.

Bands: The Lights Out kick ass. There, I said it. If you haven’t seen them yet, do so as soon as you can. If you’re down in P-Town, they’ll be on the main stage at the Vixen tonight at 8:30. If not, be on the lookout for their CD release party sometime this fall – we’ll let you know once the date’s all set… or you can catch any of their shows this summer, they got a bunch of them. They actually kicked off their set with one of their brand new songs, the first time they’ve ever played it live. It had kind of a Fortunate Son type intro, and then broke into their usual pop rock style. I liked it, I’m definitely looking forward to their new album. They actually played one more new one – honestly I don’t remember too much about it but I had “monster ballad” written down in my notebook so that’s usually a good sign. Guitarist Adam Ritchie was running around the crowd slamming on his guitar during the ‘be sad for rain’ song – one of my personal favorites by them even though I can never remember the freaking title. In all honesty, I think its between The Lights Out and the Upper Crust for the most polished, enjoyable, and flat-out rocking set of the festival thus far. There’s still some great bands to come, but so far these guys have been the best.

Alright, time to head back down and do it all over again! Looking forward to catching the New Alibis tonight, as well as Sidewalk Driver, the Shills, Vital Might, Taxpayer, and a hell of a lot of others. Sun just came out too, its been  fucking nasty all day so I’m pretty excited about that. We got Seth Drury here to take pictures for us this weekend so we’ll finally have some great shots for you to check out. Provincetown on a summer weekend – this should be interesting…