The Peasants / The Brigands / The Jack Bennies / The Damned Nobody
Midway Cafe, Jamaica Plain, MA 12/3/16
Samm Gunn’s the name. I’m a private eye. Usually I have more typical cases to handle. Like getting the dirt on cheating husbands or finding drug-addled youngsters for teary eyed parents. But when times are slim, I sometimes find myself doing something beneath me, like I am today, filling in for the Trash and Blank boys.
Now, Andy’s serving hard time in a Kentucky institution due to fraud on facebook (serving the time for Scumdog’s misrepresentations.) And Scumdog, right now, is being held on a theft charge- seems he thought, in keeping with the holiday spirit, to steal one of the Salvation Army’s pot of loot. So I’m here to do a report at the Midway Cafe.
Funny, they don’t serve coffee here, but after checking my coat and fedora with the hat check girl and ordering a martini from the cute waitress, Jill, I notice a one man band onstage.
Seems he goes by the name of The Damned Nobody. He plays a bass drum with one foot and a snare with another, strums guitar with his hands and either sings or blows harp with his mouth. What he does with his other appendage, I couldn’t sort out. But it does seem this fellow likes to multi-task.
Highlight of his performance would be when he gets, during a song, the entire ballroom to scream “Hallelujah” along with him.
That is everyone, except me.
That’s because I’m taking notes, and though I feel he’s pretty good for an acoustic act, I’m notifying the musicians union that he’s denying some lucrative money to some deserving musicians.
The Jack Bennies are up next. I hear that Scumdog’s thinks highly of this band but I make a promise not to hold that against them.
I’d say Scumdog thinks highly of everything as he seems to always be under some kind of illegal narcotic. Though, I have no evidence to support this, merely going on the way he writes.
But The Jack Bennies are a just a bunch of clean living, clean cut boys from Brooklyn, New York. They call themselves pop/punk garage and that fits. You could also call them the craziest, fun loving, most high energy band around and you’d be right on the money with that.
They start off with “What You Want” which is pure, garage rock heaven and plow through a set that is loose, wild, careening in abandon. Experiencing their set is much like riding a roller coaster that somehow, catches on fire and then flies off the track into the haunted house.
The singer strikes an intense, dramatic figure- always clutching a beer and sometimes, two- sounding like Jim Carroll with a mixture of Handsome Dick Manitoba and Stiv Bators in stage presence. The guitarists frequently fly off stage and roll around and interact with each other while the rhythm section just roars and bashes away, unconcerned with innocent bystander casualties.
I’m glad Scumdog is in jail. It serves him right for missing one of the best sets of the year he would’ve seen. And thumbs up to the singer for wearing a “Free Pussy Riot” t-shirt. Those commie bastards want to suppress American punk and rock’n’roll.
The Brigands are the next orchestra to play. They describe themselves as “Boston garage rock” which is pretty much what the late seventies/eighties Boston punk scene was.
I know because I was there along with Scumdog and Andy. ( I didn’t know them at the time.) And, as I recently found out, along with Dennis Leary. And this band plays some mighty fine, mighty fun, punk’n’roll garage pop.
Highlight of their set is their cover of the early Boston punk band, La Peste and their song “Better Off Dead.” Which happens to be Andy’s favorite local song.
The Peasants are up to take it out. My informants tell me that Pete Cassani, the guitarist/vocalist, has been in tons of local bands. I remember him from the great AC/DC tribute band “Beefy DC.” And the drummer, Steve Hart, goes way back to bands like The Outlets.
First thing I notice is how solid the drummer is, you won’t find a drummer as tight or “deep in the groove” as this. But I must report back to the boys that this is not punk but excellent pop/rock.
I like the song “City Waitress,” about the writer’s lust for one. “You spend too much time on your feet/ I would like to see you horizontal.” And “Homeland Security” about killing an innocent person and then going home scot free.
Not the type of fare for the Trash and Burn reader, but good stuff, nonetheless.
So I put my last cigarette out in the ashtray. Tip the coat check girl. Say goodbye to Derek, the dapperly dressed doorman and tip generously my vivacious waitress Jill.
I go to use the lavatory once more before leaving, there I run into a couple of the lads from The Jack Bennies. We talk about the importance of being sober and drug free in the modern world of America. The modern world of America that seems poised to take a detour fifty years into the past. A past that my character, I mean, that I am still living in.
I feel the young have their heads on straight and are capable of making a great future- rise up, stand up and join together.
Don’t let the jokers from my day, steal it away.
(Samm Gunn)
