PLAYGROUND BOSTON

The outpouring of support for the victims of the disaster in Haiti from the veterans of the local Boston music scene has certainly been impressive, but there’s always more that can be done. To this effect, Jillian of One in a Million Media has put together a benefit show tomorrow night at the Middle East Downstairs featuring an outstanding lineup of bands, DJs, prizes, and more! Aloud, The Lights Out, and You Can Be A Wesley are all PGB favorites that have received plenty of coverage on this site (Aloud and TLO are also previous Track of the Week honorees). Pretty & Nice’s indie pop is just about impossible not to dance to, as are the vast array of songs spun by some of the most well-known DJs in town. This will be a great opportunity to catch some incredible music, and all for a great cause too!

If some of the best rock & pop acts Boston has to offer aren’t enough for you, there’s plenty more happening at this event. Several local businesses have donated some amazing prizes to be raffled off to raise additional funds for the relief effort, including Ace Ticket, Anna’s Taqueria, Rescue, and The Alter Eco. We’re talking tickets, gift certificates, merch, and more! Also, Special Ed & Charlie, formerly of WFNX’s Sandbox but now operating independently as The Empire, will be recording a podcast throughout the night. PGB always supports charitable benefit concerts, especially for such a great cause. It’s a lot easier to be so supportive, though, when a benefit is as packed with awesome-ness as this one. Rock out, dance, win prizes, party – but feel good about it because you’re helping out those in need! That’s what we call a good time – see you there.

• 7:30 – Doors
• 8:00 – 8:30 Michael V
• 8:45 – 9:15 Aloud
• 9:30 – 10:00 The Lights Out
• 10:15 – 10:30 Pretty & Nice
• 10:45 – 11:15 You Can Be A Wesley
• 11:30 – 12:00 Damien Paul
• 12:00 – 12:30 Repeat Offenders

Aloud

The Lights Out

You Can Be A Wesley

Pretty & Nice

DJs Michael V / Repeat Offenders / Damien Paul

Gillian Bowling Photography

The Empire

One in a Million Media

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New Years Eve in Boston is always a great night for music, and this year is certainly no exception! Problem is – how the hell do you decide between so many great shows? Well, we can’t tell you where you should end up, but we can try to narrow down the list a little bit and give you our top 6 picks for the best NYE 2009 has to offer. Why top 6? Well, to be honest, I couldn’t narrow this down to a top 5. I had enough trouble getting to 6 from 10, give me a break here! Just check out the list and try to get out to any one of these shows – you will not be disappointed! Best part is, every one of these events will leave enough left in your wallet to ensure you’ll have plenty to spend at the bar and forget about all those nasty things 2009 did to you! Happy New Year everyone, we’re looking forward to plenty more PGB madness in the new decade!

The Upper Crust, The Gentlemen, The Motion Sick – Church, 69 Kilmarnock St. Boston

The Upper Crust blew our collective minds at the P-Town Festival earlier this year. Powdered wig and breeches wearing fops rocking your face off with aggressive rock riffs and clever Victorian-era lyrics? Yes please! These guys simply have to be experienced – no amount of writing will give their shows full justice. They don’t play out so much anymore either, so this is definitely a treat that they’ve put this show together – especially considering what a great lineup they’ll be accompanied by! The Gentlemen, who celebrated their 10th Anniversary in 2009, will also be bringing their nonstop jam-packed set to the crowd at Church. Here’s another example of a band that doesn’t play around here too often, as all of the members seem to be knee-deep in side projects and rarely have the time to come together as the original band. Rounding out the bill is The Motion Sick – Boston indie-pop at its finest. These guys have had an incredibly successful 2009 – music videos, Dance Dance Revolution notoriety, The Phoenix’s Best Local Rock Band award, mentions by every conceivable Boston press outlet – you name it! They’re currently hard at work in the studio but are taking time off from recording to rock out for the New Year!

Tickets are $20 in advance, $25 day of show. Get tickets here!

Forgetful Jones & Three Day Threshold – Olivers @ The Cask n Flagon, 62 Brookline Ave. Boston

Team Shred’s doing it up right for the New Year. The local super-promotions team is taking over Olivers in Kenmore Square for an incredible night of rock. Forgetful Jones has a clear funky reggae imprint on their hard rock style, whereas Three Day Threshold has more of a roots influence. These genres may seem like a bit of a clash at first, but rest assured the two bands work great together and will combine to give your ears everything they could have asked for this holiday season. (Well yeah, they asked for Q-Tips too, but your mom got you those for Christmas.) FJ has been a PGB favorite long before this website even existed, and 3DT’s New Years shows have been the stuff of legend in this town for years!

Feeling a little greedy this New Years Eve? A killer band lineup just won’t cut it for you? Well then, the party at Olivers will also feature a free champagne toast at midnight, a free buffet from 8-9:30, and drink specials all night. STILL not enough? How about some free hockey ticket giveaways going on all night? They’ve got tix for the Winter Classic at Fenway Park, the Legends Game, and the big BC-BU game coming up as well!

Tickets are $25 at the door. Tickets are no longer available online in advance, however there will be plenty of tix at the door if you want to just show up.

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Our lovable local scene looks to be well represented at the CMJ Festival down in New York this year. For almost 30 years CMJ has been an annual showcase of some of the best emerging musicians and filmmakers in the world, taking place across the entire city in over 75 different venues. This year’s festival will take place from October 20th through the 24th, so we here at PGB thought we’d clue you in on what Boston bands will be playing so you can start planning your schedule and making your travel arrangements now.

Early registration for the festival ends on October 18th, so make sure to get on over to the CMJ website to pick up tickets as soon as you can! In addition to early registration specials, CMJ also offers discounts for students, industry professionals, and groups – check their site for more details. The set times and locations for many of the bands are still being confirmed, but we’ll do our best to keep you posted as to when our local heroes will be performing as we hear about them. Without further ado, here’s our listing of Boston’s representation at this year’s festival…

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All Photos by Seth C. Drury!


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Hallelujah the Hills‘ 2nd full length album Colonial Drones was released earlier this week on Misra Records. It is a dense and hazy, lo-fi affair, driven by spiraling melodies and thumping percussion. A whirlwind of cello, horns, drowsy keys, crunchy guitar and rumbling bass, the 13-track disc bites, soothes, becomes unhinged and crescendos masterfully throughout.

On “Blank Passports,” the band steers straight through a 4-minute build, while “Oxus Pagoda” dances in and out of its halcyon melody. The song “Variations On The Grand National Championships” rides out most pleasingly on the steady waves of Mathew Glover’s rolling drums. Meanwhile, Ryan Walsh’s lyrics read like a vaporous cloud of dreams, politics and love, somewhere between poetry and a stream-of-consciousness journal.

With noisy production and far-away sounding vocals garnished with harmonies and whistles, Colonial Drones drips of all things indie (minus the irony), thus fitting snugly in the present musical vogue- an album truly of the late 2000s. A mix of bitter and sweet with a hint of earthiness, I see it being the perfect soundtrack for the upcoming crisp fall evenings.

Hallelujah Hills is playing their Boston CD release show this Saturday, 9/26 at Great Scott. They are joined by rising stars You Can Be a Wesley and The Big Big Bucks. Don’t Miss it!

Hallelujah the Hills
You Can Be a Wesley
The Big Big Bucks

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Photo by Pete Legasey

You Can Be A Wesley

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Casper And The Cookies

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All Photos by Pete Legasey

www.myspace.com/youcanbeawesley
www.myspace.com/casperthecookies

Photos by Pete Legasey

I’ll be honest: I think it’s stupid when a band uses a complete sentence for their name.

I’m not saying it’s rational. I just do. I don’t even like it when they use three quarters of one (Sorry… The Accident That Led Me To The World).

Bands named with a short sentence – like God Lives Underwater and, yes, You Can Be A Wesley – are minor offenders. Still, it’s probably for the best that I first saw YCBAW (is it okay to refer to them as Yak Baw?) play before I knew what they were called. It was at a basement show in Allston in April of last year. I was there to see the Eskalators, a 50-or-so-piece band from Brooklyn that includes my pals Dan and Guia and, despite the name, is not a ska band. Now, at that time, the only band I wanted to hear anywhere was Super Junky Monkey, so I was only half paying attention to the Wesley’s, but they were at least solid enough that I gave them a closer listen on yonder myspace page.

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Photo by Caroline Bridges

Televandals teamed up with Illius Rock last week to film their first music video and headline a show rounded out by You Can Be A Wesley and Herra Terra at the Middlesex Lounge in Central Square. Plus there was free Maker’s Mark whiskey. Delicious whiskey. Oh, and the show itself? That was free too.

You heard that right. Free music, free whiskey and the opportunity to have your groovin’ self immortalized in a music video? All on a Sunday night? Sign me up.

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