PLAYGROUND BOSTON

Oldjack

“Love Me Or?”

Union Glory

© 2009 Self-Released

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Oldjack

I can’t believe this song hasn’t made Track Of The Week before now. This is easily the best song off of one of the best local releases of 2009! Oldjack has a residency at the end of every month at the Rosebud in Davis Square, Somerville. They’ve been inviting some of their favorite bands in town to play with them, and this Saturday night (8/28) is certainly one hell of a lineup! Check out the soulful sounds of Oldjack, the catchy pop rock of Brendan Boogie, and a special reunion set by retro indie rockers The Charms! This is a lot of great music for only $5, mark your calendars now and be sure to get down to Davis this Saturday!

Saturday, August 28th – Rosebud
21+ / $5 / Doors at 9pm

Oldjack

The Charms

Brendan Boogie (acoustic)

Stingray Body Art owner Scott Matalon, performing with his band Matalon at the Stingray 5th Anniversary Party at Harpers Ferry - Photo Credit: Scott Gacek

The Welch Boys – “Friend Or Foe” – The Welch Boys
(Stingray 5th Anniversary Party Headliner)

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The Welch Boys - Photo Credit: Scott Gacek

Thanks to Scott Gacek for the great photos! See more of his work at wickedcheapshots.com!

100th Monkey Effect

Old Crow & The 45’s

Matalon

The Welch Boys

Stingray Body Art

Harpers Ferry

Al Polk of Streight Angular, clearly shown here saluting the awesomeness of Playground Boston and all things PGB - Photo Credit: Justbill

Streight Angular – “Alright” – Alright EP

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This show at Harper’s Ferry served as a benefit for Ben Garceau, ex lead singer for Roman Traffic (formerly Gravehaven). A tragic accident Ben narrowly survived led to staggering hospital bills – by all accounts this benefit raised $750 to help him overcome his debt. The Garceau family is still accepting donations, if you’d like to contribute please visit this website.

The Luxury's Justin Day, very excited to get a feature in PGB - Photo Credit: JustBill

Saturday’s show was also the Re-Birthday party of local radio program Boston Emissions, hosted by Anngelle Wood. The show used to be part of the WBCN Sunday night lineup, but with the dissolution of WBCN approximately a year ago Wood took her show over to WZLX, and was celebrating her first anniversary at the new station.

Thanks to JustBill for the great photos! Check out Justbill.net for more of his work!

JustBill.net

Dead Cats Dead Rats

Streight Angular

The Luxury

Ben Garceau Donations

Boston Emissions

Harper’s Ferry

Mad Oak’s got another live session up, and once again it’s been made available for free download! Boston streetpunks Razors In The Night have been taking the world by storm basement by dingy basement, club by packed club, pit by ferocious pit. They’re currently recording a new full-length album, but while that’s in production they wanted to do something for their fans and give them some new music to hold them over until the new record gets finished up. RITN’s thunderous live set has been the stuff of legend in hardcore punk circles since they first broke out on the Boston scene early last year, with this new live album you can now check it out for yourself!

In late July RITN locked themselves in the infamous Allston recording studio to lay down a full set of raucous hardcore anthems with a few dozen of their friends. The purpose of the visit was to do a video shoot for their instant classic “Carry On!,” but while they were there Mad Oak master engineer Benny Grotto left the tapes running and captured the entire set! The video, shot by Mike Gill of Circumvision, won’t be finished for quite some time, but you can download all the audio from the night free of charge, courtesy of the good people down at one of the best studios in the city. The Live Album features all of the old favorites from 2009’s Carry On! EP, as well as a few brand new songs that will appear on the upcoming album! This is Boston hardcore in its most raw, primeval form – live, uncut, and with a horde of seething punks and skins screaming along to every word. If this doesn’t get your blood boiling then well, to put it bluntly, you’re a fucking corpse.

Razors In The Night – “Did I Stutter?” – Live At Mad Oak

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Razors In The Night – Live At Mad Oak
Download Link: 2010.07.22 Live at Mad Oak Live-to-2 Mixes.zip

The mp3 files aren’t labeled by song, so here’s the tracklisting for you to copy down:

1. Intro
2. Did I Stutter
3. Alcololists
4. Insufficient Funds
5. On The Outside
6. Carry On! – Intro
7. Carry On!
8. Jeff Allen – Intro
9. Get What You Give
10. Hate LA
11. Frustration – Intro
12. Frustration
13. Tuning to “D”
14. Hipster Holocaust
15. The Summers
16. Never Give In
17. Never Give In (Continued)
18. Skinhead Alright
19. Carry On! (Take 2)

Razors In The Night

Mad Oak Studios

Planetoid Singer/Bassist Locrius - Photo Credit: Scott Gacek

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Sidewalk Driver – “Dancing With Her Friends” – For All The Boys And Girls
(PGB Track of the Week #18)

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Planetoid – “Beyond The Black Hole” – Shadow Of The Planetoid
(PGB Track of the Week #26)

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Thanks to Scott Gacek for the incredible camera work! See more of his photography at his website!

Sidewalk Driver Lead Singer Tad McKitterick - Photo Credit: Scott Gacek

Thanks are also in order for local promoter Agent Bishop, who put together yet another incredible lineup of Boston’s best bands! Our apologies to Liptease and Gene Dante, who opened up the night in front of Sidewalk Driver and Planetoid, yet unfortunately are not pictured here (well, except for one picture of Gene at his best.) Check out the Agent Bishop Website for news on more great shows in the future!

Planetoid

Sidewalk Driver

Gene Dante & The Future Starlets

Liptease

Agent Bishop

Church

Gotta love shows at Charlie’s. Trashy distortion, tons of energy, a packed hallway of a room, watching the band through the mirrors since there’s 100 people between you and the ’stage’ – almost has the feel of a basement show, except a) it’s on the 2nd floor and b) you can get cheap-ass burgers and WAFFLE FRIES to go along with your cheap-ass beer. Charlie’s does live music every Monday, and they’ve got a great lineup tonight of some of the best psych-garage-rockers in town. Former PGB Track Of The Week honorees Thick Shakes will be joined by local garage legends Triple Thick, seriously spaced out space cadets Sister Spaceman, and psychedelic relics MMOSS (fresh off an appearance at last weekend’s wildly successful Deep Heaven Now festival out in Union Square). All lo-fi, all psychedelic, and all the reverb and distortion you could possibly ask for – what better way to cap off the weekend and ease back into the week?

Thick Shakes – “Baby, You’re A Starfish” – Ooh Mommy
(Full album available for free download here!)

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Thick Shakes

Triple Thick

MMOSS

Sister Spaceman

Charlie’s Kitchen

The Sheila Divine

“Like A Criminal”

Live – Reunion Show 12/28/07
Originally appeared on New Parade

© 1999 Roadrunner Records

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The Sheila Divine

So yeah, we know we usually pick a brand new song for the Track Of The Week, not one that’s been out for 10 years, but we couldn’t resist in light of today’s news. Boston rock veterans will remember the huge success experienced by The Sheila Divine on both a national and international level around the turn of the century, including a victory at the 1999 WBCN Rumble, radio hits, a record deal with Roadrunner, and nonstop touring around the world. The band broke up in April of 2003, lead singer Aaron Perrino going on to form the popular indie rock band Dear Leader. This track was originally recorded in 1999, however this particular version is taken from their sold out 2-day Reunion at The Paradise back in 2007. It’s probably the most recent recording of these guys available… until now!

Oh yeah, and if you’re interested in downloading this and other Sheila Divine live sets, they have tons of good-quality bootlegs available for FREE download at The Sheila Divine Archive, we highly recommend you check it out!

The Sheila Divine are back! Well, at least temporarily. They have a Boston reunion show planned for this fall (date TBA – we’ll let you know!), and they’re also in the process of recording their first album since 2002. UPDATE: The reunion show has been set for September 30th at Landsdowne Pub, presented by WFNX! They can’t do it alone though, and to that effect they’ve launched a campaign on the popular band-funding website Kickstarter to give their fans an opportunity to help them finance the new album! Basically what you do is pre-order the album, which gives them the money to record it, and then when it comes out you get your copy sent right over to you! There’s also the opportunity to get band swag, custom songs, meet-and-greet opportunities, and more – depending on how much you’re willing to donate to the cause!

From Aaron Perrino, lead singer of The Sheila Divine:

“The goal of this Kickstarter project is to write and record an album streamed live to the internet with users having the ability to comment or participate in the piece of work.

I have been thinking about what kind of project I wanted to do next. Dear Leader has released a bunch of records and I was feeling like I just wanted to try something else for the next album.

We were asked to play The Crammerock Festival in Belgium and that sort of spurred us to actually make some new music. Seems like a good time to do it, and we are having fun playing the old stuff.”

Head on over to The Sheila Divine Kickstarter Page to see the list of Pledge Rewards and to learn more about the entire project, and to kick in some cash! The nature of the site is that the band only has 2 months to raise the funds they need, or they get nothing, and all donated money is returned to the donors. So if they can’t get the cash together within 2 months, we get no new album! Can’t have that! Follow this here link to Kickstarter and do it for the cause!

Friday the 13th is upon us again, and with it, the birthday of fast-on-the-rise local promoter Agent Bishop! To celebrate, Bishop has put together an excellently eclectic bill down at Church this Friday. You’ve probably heard us preach on and on about PGB Favorites Planetoid and Sidewalk Driver, and if not we’ll just let the music do the talking – check out these tunes here:

Planetoid – “Russian Space Solution” – Shadow Of The Planetoid

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Sidewalk Driver – “Tornado” – For All The Boys And Girls

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Sidewalk Driver at last year's Provincetown Rocks Festival - Photo Credit: Seth Drury

So OK, now you know all about the evil retro stoner-metal of Planetoid and the awesome glam-itude of Sidewalk Driver. Good, glad we got that out of the way. Those bands together on any bill would make for a pretty incredible night. But no, that’s not enough for Mr. Bishop – he had to add the consummate showman Gene Dante and his merry rockin’ band of Future Starlets, as well as Liptease, the living embodiment of a disco dance party, to start off the night. Now that’s a lineup!

Sounds good right? Now what if you could get into this show for free? PGB’s got you covered once again! Just send an e-mail to bryan@playgroundboston.com with the subject “LUCKY 13″ and you’ll be automatically entered to win a pair of tickets to the show! (We promise, we have better things to do than spam you. Seriously.) Winner will be selected at random on Friday afternoon – enter now!

Planetoid lead singer Locrius at Harper's Ferry - Photo Credit: JustBill

Friday, August 13th – Church of Boston
21+ / Doors at 8pm
$10 advance / $13 doors

9pm – Liptease

10pm – Gene Dante & The Future Starlets

11pm – Sidewalk Driver

12pm – Planetoid

Agent Bishop Productions

The Vandelles at PA's Lounge, part of the Deep Heaven Now Festival in Union Square, Somerville on 8/7 - Photo Credit: Tim Bugbee

Abunai! – “Tomorrow” – Mystic River Sound

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Abunai! were the organizers of the original Deep Heaven Festivals in the 90’s, but have since disbanded. They reunited for this very special occasion, the recreation of their beloved ambient/psych festival in a new time and place – Deep Heaven Now in Union Square, Somerville.

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Thanks to Tim Bugbee for his great work with the camera! Check out his complete portfolio at Tinnitus Photography!

Broken River Prophet at Precinct Bar, also part of the Deep Heaven Now Festival - Photo Credit: Tim Bugbee

Thanks also to Jinsen Liu of 28 Degrees Taurus for organizing such an amazing event! Deep Heaven Now featured 19 bands across 2 venues over the course of an entire day and night, complete with visual media to go along with the music! All this was happening while the Somerville Rock & Roll Yard Sale was going on right in the heart of Union Square in Somerville with even more bands playing – right in between the two venues! Unfortunately we were not able to get photos of Jinsen’s set, but that only serves as a testament to how successful the entire event was – by the time they went on both venues were so packed that it was impossible to get close enough to shoot them! Here’s looking forward to more similar multi-venue mini-festival events like this in the future!

BONUS: Check out some video of the Vandelles’ set from Phoenix Music Editor Michael Marrotta here!

Deep Heaven Now

Somerville Rock & Roll Yard Sale