COA / DFX / Cry Havoc / Neighborhood Shit / xForgiveness Deniedx / Foulfellows
Midway Cafe, Jamaica Plain MA 11/11/18
This is the second part of the tribute and charity show for Keith Brooks. Last night’s show was great, only reason it didn’t sell out was due to an on-line problem saying the show had sold out. But no problem today as this show is sold out and has another great line-up.
Foulfellows is the first band to play today. They’re a new band that I’ve reviewed and liked a lot on bandcamp but have never seen live. They’re a Boston hardcore “supergroup” containing members of Honest John, Words Of Truth and Sick Minds.
They’re much like Crosby, Still and Nash except their music doesn’t make me wanna vomit.
And I hear that Sean, their guitarist, organized this show- so big thanks to him.
Dan, their lead singer, was in Honest John (and Haggard Bastard, a Vermont band I loved) and he brings his intense, emotional vocals to powerful songs that reflect more an influence of early hardcore, pre- Co-Mags.
For me this band combines the best parts of Honest John and Words Of Truth and melds it into one orginal, awesome style. And I look forward to seeing them live soon again.
Next is xForegivenssDeniedx another band I haven’t seen before. They describe themselves, accurately, as hardcore/metal. This is a band more influenced by that metal Cro-Mags style. A band that Andy Bang might feature in his weekly “Bang Video Of The Week.”
This band does a great take on that style with guttaral, hardcore vocals along with brooding, metal guitars and do so within a rhythm known as 2-Step. (I started country line dancing in the pit during this but was, rudely ignored.)
Not my favorite style of music or dancing but another solid set.
Neighborhood Shit is next to decimate the ears and souls of the crowd. Their shit is a potent mix of hardcore punk, metal and power violence.
Alex, their bassist, has some kind words to say about Keith, between songs. Talking to Alex before the set he mentions to me that him and Keith never could agree on politics; but at the end of the day, as he said from stage he “still misses him every day.”
This is the second time I’ve seen this band in the last few weeks. And Miss Kendra informs me that two-thirds of this band are now straight edge.
I do note that this show, and their last, have been the strongest and best sets I’ve seen by them. Only proving that drinks and drugs do not make a great band, sometimes that happens in spite of it, but never because of it.
They play a set that is intense, dark, moody and exhilirating- all at the same time. Also, their songs are socially concious and sonically destructive and blows me and the crowd away. (And they play TNB’s Xmas Pizza Party here, Sunday December 23- shameless plug!)
Cry Havoc from Connecticut is up next and they’ve always been one of my favorite bands.
They play in a hardcore style that I’ve called “creative” or “progressive” which sounds like they’d be horrible. But actually, they sound great to me with songs that move along with chord drones, quirky rhyhmic changes and lead singer, Johnny’s, high pitched, nearly hyserically intense vocal delivery.
During the set Johnny mentions that they’ve played their song “Fuck White Supremacy” at every single one of their shows. And that the first time he met Keith, was when Keith came up to tell him, after a set, how much he liked the band and especially, that song.
I grew up in the seventies, eighties in Boston and at that time for a black person to wander into South Boston would be a black person with a death wish. And the fact, though decades later- Keith, a Southie boy, a conservative thinking fellow, would have such a different attitude!- just makes me love him more.
And I love the set that Cry Havoc just played so much! So much that I invite them to play my next Birthday Pizza Bash.
DFX is next and I’m told they’re a last minute add, and that they are a new band with some members of COA, and only have four songs!
They sound pretty good but what most impresses me most is that the lead singer, who’s standing in the pit, it supported by a crutch while his band delivers the short set.
I’m thinking, “Gee, I don’t if there’s a worse place for someone with a crutch, to be in the club right now but where he’s standing!”
Colin Of Arabia is up to take us out. I’m aware they’re one of the more popular local hardcore bands but the only time I’ve seen them before I was a little unimpressed.
But today I can see why they’re so popular, with their intense, maniac-lumberjack looking singer- who delivers great vocals. And a band that is more than able to help him chop away, at our tender ears, leaving them bloodied but leaving us thankful, playing their metal influenced hardcore that somehow, never looses the excitement, the looseness and the wildness of the original hardcore.
These two shows put on for Keith have been great. The lineups were so strong that I could easily imagine Keith setting them up.
And though he didn’t, it’s great that the friends he left behind, did so.
But now I’m thinking- he did set up these shows, after all.
‘Cause everything he loved and believed in was expressed and represented today, this weekend. Expressed and represented with all the bands and fans who showed up (I saw a lot of old, friendly faces!) And I don’t believe he’d change one bit of it.
Or maybe, he would change one thing. Probably, me writing about it. It might have made him embarresed, especially when I write this:
WE STILL LOVE YOU, KEITH!
(Slimedog)
