PLAYGROUND BOSTON

The Sun Lee Sunbeam - Photo by Liz Linder

Muy Cansado - Photo by Mick Murray

Sun Lee Sunbeam – “The Other Side Of The Wall” – unreleased

Sun Lee Sunbeam – “Bad Guys” – unreleased

Muy Cansado – “Not About A Girl” – unreleased

Muy Cansado – “Kiss The World” – Stars & Garters

All video shot by Mick Murray of In Your Face Photography, with editing credit for the ‘Beam vids going to Jessica Sun Lee. Gotta love those unreleased tracks! For more of Mick’s videos, check out his YouTube channel!

Sun Lee Sunbeam

Muy Cansado

Friday, June 11th – Rosebud Diner

Nice lineup here! Muy Cansado and Sun Lee Sunbeam are both PGB Favorites who’ve received plenty of coverage on these here pages. These guys rock out with the best of ‘em, and the two of them together on a bill at an extremely cool venue is an event not to be missed! This is Muy Cansado’s first show in months, as they’ve been locked up at Q Division hammering away at a new EP due out later this year. The 5 songs on the new album will be “Not About A Girl,” “Love & Fear,” “Sharpshooter,” “Giant,” and “Acquaintances” – and there’s a good chance you’ll be able to get a sneak peak of the new tunes if you get your summer lovin’ butts down to the Rosebud tonight!

Friday, June 11th – McGann’s Pub

OK OK to be fair, this isn’t really a flyer for this show so much as it is a listing for all the shows at McGann’s this month. However, its got Super Mario critters on it, so its going up on the site, dammit. Shows like this are helping McGann’s to gain notoriety as a quality music venue in this city. Artsy indie darlings The Hush Now have been exploding both nationally and internationally since their debut in 2008. They’ll be joined by the Hendrixian trash rock duo Kuuluuko, an incredible act in their own right! Also on this bill are The Susan Constant and El Fuego. But check this out – apparently a regular flyer wasn’t good enough for this show, so The Hush Now made a little video flyer with some artsy images and soothing music, to lull you into coming out to the show. Take a look!

Saturday, June 12th – Rosebud Diner

Rosebud’s got some great shows going on this weekend – isn’t it about time you checked the damn place out? Looks like our friends at Boston Band Crush have come up with another AWESOME idea for a show. This one strikes close to my Middle School soul (Even *I* had long hair back then. And yes, you’re right, it looked friggin’ terrible.) Rather than have a show full of covers of one specific band’s songs, the Mixtape series takes an entire year and lets bands cover whatever songs they like that came out at that time. Think about some of the albums that came out in ‘93 – In Utero, Vs., Siamese Dream, Rancid, Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We, Black Sunday, The Wedding Album, Pork Soda, Are You Gonna Go My Way, Doggystyle, Pablo Honey, Last Splash, 36 Chambers, Undertow – holy shit, right? They picked a hell of a year to kick off this series with! This show’s going to be great, especially considering they’ve tapped some of Boston’s best to do the performing – The Luxury, The Rationales, and St. Helena will be joined by the newly formed Exile in Somerville, featuring members of Apple Betty, Kingsley Flood, Dark Martini & The Dirty Olives, and Ashley from BBC!

Aloud with Muy Cansado – “Lola” (Kinks Cover)

Great show this past Tuesday. The Enormous Room is a very intimate place to have a show – close quarters, couches everywhere, small stage – and it made for the perfect environment for a little tour kickoff party. Muy Cansado opened the night playing some crowd favorites from Stars & Garters, as well as several brand new songs recently recorded in preparation of a new album release. They brought up Corey Blanchette to help out on guitar for a few tracks as well, adding a spacey element to their flippant rock style. Aloud played songs from their most recent full-length, Fan The Fury, which they are touring in support of. They… well they just flat out rocked out. I think I saw a few of the Enormous Room regulars pop in for what they thought was going to be a normal loungey smooth-house night at their favorite club, and promptly got their faces melted off by the quartet’s raucous vocal assault and blazing hooks. Here’s Aloud’s tour schedule, if you know anyone in any of these towns do them a favor and tell them to check this band out!

I’m going to let the videos speak for themselves. Each band brought the other band’s singers up for several songs to play together, including the above video featuring both bands belting out a great rendition of “Lola” by the Kinks. Thanks to Mick Murray for the great video footage, Enjoy!

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Muy Cansado

“Tu Eres Mala”

Stars & Garters

© 2008 Precious Gems

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Muy Cansado’s Website

The New Collisions - Photo by Seth Drury

Oranjuly

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Muy Cansado

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Hot Protestants

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The New Collisions

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The Luxury

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All Photos by Seth Drury

Muy Cansado – “Stockholm Syndrome” – Stars and Garters

The New Collisions – “Generations” and “Parachutes on the Dance Floor” – The New Collisions EP

The Luxury – “Nothing Comes to Mind” – In The Wake of What Won’t Change

(Complete with the original background video featured at their CD Release Party)

The Luxury – “Malcontent” – This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

(Featuring Christopher Pappas of The Everyday Visuals on backup vocals)

Thanks to Mick Murray for the videos! www.inyourfacephoto.com

Muy Cansado

The New Collisions

The Luxury

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This Thursday Playgroundboston.com, in conjunction with WTBU and Rocknrollboston.com, are taking over the Middle East Downstairs for a incredible night of rock with some of the best bands the local scene has to offer! We’re gonna keep it nice and cheap for you too – $10 gets you 5 great bands, but if you’ve got a student ID you get $3 off!

Check out the amazing lineup! We got The Luxury, who just this past weekend played to a crowd estimated to be in excess of 20,000 at the Boston Freedom Rally on the Common. We got The New Collisions, playing their first show back in their hometown after touring the nation with the B52’s and opening up for Blondie. Muy Cansado will be debuting a new drummer for this show, and they’ll all be joined on stage by the Hot Protestants and Oranjuly, two excellent indie pop bands. We’re looking at light shows, costumes, special guests, and plenty of other surprises all night long!

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Kinsgley Flood – It’s 8:36, and the job falls on Kingsley Flood to warm us all up for the night, and they kicked it off right with a slow, bluegrass-style ballad. The song, entitled, “Eventually,” featured frontman Naseem Khuri’s acoustic guitar and electric guitarist George Hall’s delicate-yet-shining lead lines, and the song had what I thought to be the best three-part vocals I’ve heard this side of the Mississippi.

For me what makes a great band is dynamics, and Kingsley Flood has it in spades. Consistently, for the first three songs, Hall’s guitar solos made the perfect transformation from background shimmer of noise and gentle countermelody into growling and blinding prima danseurs.

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