Thrash N' Bang!!!

Joe Wyatt’s Birthday Party
Hope & Her Husbands / Death Rattle / Cask Mouse / Surf’s Up, Spicoli
Midway Cafe, Jamaica Plain, MA 8/5/2012

So, I’m driving back from Mashpee (that’s not mashed potatoes with urine, it’s a town in Cape Cod) after visiting some friends over the weekend. They just moved back from Tex-ass where they execute people with I.Q’s of 61 and use a fictional character from the great book,( “Of Mice And Men,” by John Steinbeck), in a court, how to judge if people are “mentally impaired.” Ha! Ha! Seems to me that if the I.Q. level was an excuse for execution there, there might not be too many folks left after a while and wouldn’t that be a shame?

But this here is not a discussion of the death penalty, or the life penalty- life, a sentence worse than death! No, siree Bob, this is a birthday celebration for Joe Wyatt, fiddle player for Cradle To The Grave. What’s funny about this, is at least two of the bands tonight have deep connections with Cape Cod, which I just drove 80 miles from. I just should have stayed put!

But it’s very festive tonight. They have free sandwiches. They have free cupcakes, as well. When the metal band plays, confetti rains from the ceiling. Oh, and 50 Narragansett beers are being given away. I inform Jill, the able barkeep, that I’ve only had 13 so I have 37 to go but, I’m sadly informed it’s for the whole bar not per customer.

What makes the night fun, also, is that every band tonight plays a completely different style of music but everyone plays that style great…. oh, and the fifty Narragansetts.

Up first is Surf’s Up, Spicoli which is an instrumental surf trio just like the Ventures. Some might be unaware of who the Ventures are but along with the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Beach Boys and Supremes they are in the top five of best-selling artists in the sixties. Surf music was discredited by the hippies and died out until punk and new wave bands like Blondie, B-52’s and the Dead Kennedy’s help bring the influence back. I’m not sure if they’re doing originals as well, tonight, all I can say is that they capture the spirit and style of surf and for this I’m satisfied savoring their succulent symphony of sound.

Before the next band, they’re playing hank Williams, Sr. on the sound system who was just about the best gosh darn songwriter off all time. And it fits well with Cask Mouse, the next band to take the stage. Joe Wyatt’s playing fiddle, they have male and female vocalists, upright bass and play a traditional kind of country unlike the contemporary country pop crap that probably the people of Tex-ass play while they’re executing people. Anyways, a nice band of a style I don’t hear too often.

As Monty Python would say, “And now for something completely different,” as Death Rattle prepares to play. I talk to one of the guys before the set and he mentions how I didn’t recall much about their last show in the joint review we did, as I said, I was “too jagermeisted.” I make a point to stay alert, tonight. As they start the confetti falls as stated, it makes me think of a Tom Waits song with the line, “Let me fall out of the window with confetti in my hair.” The band plays more in a death metal than thrash style but this they do very well with a loud, growly singer. The last song they do is a cover of Pantera which I tell the band member after the set; so, proud of the fact that I’m coherent after their set and happy, yes, that I may evade execution, after all, in Tex-ass.

I believe Hope from Hope & The Husbands organized this show and I believe I’m not the only one having fun from the crowd’s reactions. Her band’s next and they don’t play surf, country or metal- just rock’n’roll. And tonight, Hope, a very demonstrative, effective performer is putting on a great show as well as her band. It’s kind of crowded so I’m watching from the side of the stage. During one song she has a kind of fake whip which she uses to whip some of the boys.

It’s a very festive, loud atmosphere and I don’t blame the crowd for not reacting when she does her song about her brother’s suicide. At one point she’s down on her knees and hits the microphone into the stage floor three times. And I think about a girl I knew mostly in the eighties and how I was told yesterday, by my friends, of her suicide a year ago.

They finish off the night, the barroom is wailing. The Narragansetts are stacked on the bar with all the folks chattering away. Jill’s plotting when she can sneak away for a smoke and I know I gotta split as it’s been a long day. It was a good night, a good set of bands. Cheers, to you Robbie (my friend) anyways.

(Slimedog)