Boston Rock Photos And Stuff
How do you cap off a night that celebrated the release of new albums from Jenny Dee & The Deelinquents and Township? With an All-Star jam, of course…
Buttercup were wonderful at The Middle East Downstairs this past Friday night. The band kicked up the perfect blend of melody, harmony, grit and twang to help Pipeline! celebrate 25 years of bringing the best local music to the city’s airwaves.
Hot, loud, sweaty and a little rambunctious could describe just about any Dirty Truckers gig. Confining the band and their cohorts to Moe’s Lounge made it inevitable at Bands For Babs.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: any day I get to hear a Barbusters tune is a good day. Fit To Be Tied was back for another go at the Joan Jett catalog. They made me a very happy man (again). I’ll never tire of hearing this crew cover “Light Of Day” and “This Means War.”* Throw in an everybody-sing-’cause-y’all-know-the-words version of “I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll” and you have the perfect end to another night of revelry put together by Nicole Tammaro. Well done, everybody.
* I’m still waiting for Fit To Be Tied to cover The Hunzz’s “Rabbit’s Got The Gun” to complete the Joan-Jett-in-Light-Of-Day holy trinity.
Short set? Yeah, The Dirty Truckers got pinched. Still, I’ll take a short set over no set any day with these guys…
The Dirty Truckers were back in action Friday night. The band was celebrating the release of their new Tiger Stripes EP and the 7″ single for the song “Human Contact.” It had been a while since the last time I saw these Boston wranglers. I was starting to get the shakes. Their set at Radio was just what I needed. The Dirty Truckers blasted out one of the best sets I’ve ever seen them play. They played the new stuff. They played the old stuff.* They rocked the in-between stuff like nobody’s business. “Sea Pines” and “3 Weeks To Go” blew the doors off the joint.** They threw in a couple of covers to keep themselves honest. In the end, the ‘Truckers reminded everyone that they’re one of the best rock ‘n’ roll bands around, not that we’d forgotten.
* Including “Backpack” from their first record.
** Both off of 2008’s fantastic Loose In The Joints
Tom Baker is a pretty great songwriter. He knows rock n’ roll. It was cool to hear stripped-down takes on some of my favorite Dirty Truckers tunes.
Evan Shore also knows rock n’ roll. When he joined Baker for some choice covers (including kick-ass takes on Elvis Costello and The Knack), there was no way it wasn’t going to be fun.
In the grand tradition of Puppet Show and Spinal Tap comes Paper Airplane Fight and Mellow Bravo.*
* Yes, I know this wasn’t technically a Mellow Bravo show, but I didn’t know what else to call it.
Nicole Tammaro once commented: “Dirty Truckers shows are fun. Everybody plays. Everybody gets up on stage.”
The Dirty Truckers show at Radio was fun. Everybody played. Everybody got on stage.
Fit To Be Tied closed out the fantastic Joan Jett tribute night at The Rosebud with a set that included two Barbusters songs from Light Of Day.* I went into the night expecting Tom Baker and gang to play the title track (Mr. Baker’s regular outfit, The Dirty Truckers, covered this song at a Springsteen tribute show last year), but “This Means War” was a real treat. Close out the night with an drunken all-hands-on-deck version of “I Love Rock N’ Roll” and I’d say Nicole Tammaro did a bang up job putting this show together.
* Unfortunately, no one covered The Hunzz classic “Rabbit’s Got The Gun”. New mission for me: Orchestrate a Fit To Be Tied reunion just so I can convince them to play that song.