The Takeaways / OTP / Poor Jeremy
Roggies, Brighton, MA 2/21/14
For those of you who are reading this from some sort of fallout shelter, desert island, or underwater alien pyramid, it has been ice-in-your-fucking-boots sort of weather in Boston lately. However, when the stand up bassist of Troll2 and bassist of The Takeaways invites you to a free show, you go, even if it means huddling under your (male) friends flower and lace festooned umbrella and walking over an hour from Huntington Ave. to the pizza place at the end of the universe. After stumbling in snow banks, soaking our shoes in a horrible game of ice or puddle (hint: its always a damn puddle), thinking we missed both Chestnut Hill Ave and later the venue, we finally arrived at what at this point needed to be the greatest (or at least warmest) ska show ever.
As I stood outside, clutching a cigarette in my cold dead hands, I watched the crowd file in. Basically if you saw Pat the Bunny play at the Middle East the last two times he came to Boston you will be able to visualize the crowd perfectly. Because excluding my feminine rain gear carrying friend, the band OTP, and I, every person in the basement of Roggie’s opened for Pat the Bunny at least once, and that includes The Takeaways and Poor Jeremy.
Poor Jeremy is a seven person ska/punk party from Boston. And yes, I meant to say party. They are the kind of band where the lead singer takes off his shirt two songs in, in a venue without stage lights and the whole band looks about one step away from falling off the stage (don’t worry though, Roggies doesn’t have a stage). They also play awesome, energizing ska music, because you know this is supposed to be a music review, not a laundry list of drawn out irrelevant descriptions.
After two conversations where I was mistaken for the recently shirtless lead singer of Poor Jeremy, OTP came on. Now, I got to be honest, normally when I go to a show, I go, buy some merch, listen to the bands, hop in the pit, get covered in other peoples sweat, go home, see Slimedog two days later, go fuck I need to review that thing, and then stay up late writing, and pretend I know something about music.
However, with OTP, about midway through their first song, the whole chaotic process got messed up as I stood there trying to figure out what genre this band was for the review. They weren’t punk entirely. They weren’t rock either. They weren’t blues, and they most certainly weren’t ska. they weren’t some esoteric, overly specific metal genre like stoner sludge, viking metal, or mid-fifteenth century war strategy metal. I pondered this for awhile, until finally my brain says, “hey these guys sound like Social Distortion. I like Social Distortion. I like OTP and… that. was. their… last… song. Shit.” But yeah, check out OTP, they’re blues-punk, and if that doesn’t sound cool, I don’t know what does.
Then The Takeaways, the happiest band who sings about suicide, came on, surrounded by all their friends, fellow musicians, and those two weird guys in the back who really love The Takeaways (one of those two was me). They kicked ass. They covered Bikini Kill and Bob Dylan. They played a ton of new songs. They set up a two hour show that I didn’t regret walking three hours back and forth to. And, they got Chris O’Grady into a mosh pit, and that is metal (well ska, but you know its just an expression). Also, they just put out a new album and are going on tour, you should check both out.
(Sam Malabre)
