In Memory of Artie

Tongue Love returned to Jamaica Plain for a matinee show at Midway Cafe on Saturday, 17 December 2022.

Bad Neighbors, The Roland High Life, and Born October 4, 1998 opened. The Autnauts were a late cancellation.

A beat-up blue van pulled in front of Midway Cafe on Saturday afternoon. The driver parked snug along the curb, took the key out of the ignition, and exited the van. He wasn’t there to unload music equipment for the matinee show because the only thing the driver held in his hands was a pint-sized topiary. Who was this man, with long white hair, jean jacket, grizzled chin, connoisseur of wild nights and tough mornings, holding a house plant?

He was a friend of Artie. Just the Saturday prior, Midway Cafe regular Artie suffered a medical catastrophe. The Jamaica Plain spot posted the following message at the counter:

“Support Our Friend Arthur’s Family:
On Saturday 12/10 our friend and community member had a medical event which left him unconscious and in the ICU. On 12/13 neurological testing determined that his brain was unresponsive.
Arthur has been a beloved friend. A true firecracker, he gave us all shit when we deserved it, support when we needed, a laugh at the best (or worst) time, and love all the time. We will never forget his friendship and impact. The Midway, JP, and the world, are a little darker today without his shine.
Please consider a donation in his memory and to his son Tyler to be used to help with any expenses, to memorialize Art, and to support his family.
Fare you well, we love you more than words can tell.”

"What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, / That he should weep for her?" We have so little control over who loves us, or whom we love in this life. What’s best is to show love, compassion, and care for others wherever you find them and wherever they find you, whether it’s home, office, or a “third place” like Midway Cafe.

The long white-haired driver had the look of a fellow traveler who might’ve known Artie in one or more of those spaces. Maybe they feasted on chicken wings at a Super Bowl party Artie hosted. Maybe they bitched about their boss while cohabitating an office during some forgotten career path. Maybe they shared beers over loud music at Midway Cafe. Or maybe Artie barely knew him at all, but he knew Artie, and that’s what mattered.

The music at the matinee show started up while the driver completed the mourning ritual. Walls of pop punk distortion and a too generously-mic’d bass drum. He arranged the topiary along the right side of the sidewalk shrine, got lost in thought, found himself again, and returned to the van. When the light turned green the driver slid back into traffic, and disappeared, as the band played on.

Born October 4, 1998

Born October 4, 1998 performed a solo acoustic set by Eme Caparas. The Rhode Island-based artist crafts complex finger-picking folk numbers with a vintage throwback quality. Think of the storytelling of Don McClean, the surrealism of Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens), and the vocal chicanery of Buffy St. Marie.

A few of the songs needed a little more time in the practice room, but the singer-songwriter had a light and breezy stage banter that smoothed out the wrinkles in the set. Caparas confessed that he had a “big fixation of weird masculine stories” – presumably stories like the ones about his avowed musical influence and doomed poet-hero Elliot Smith. Shades of Derek Johnson.

Side note: Caparas’ moniker is designed to irritate writers and editors. The presence of the comma within the name ‘Born October 4, 1998’ is a real wrench in the gears of a well-composed sentence. But pop music is full of grammatical and typographical oddities that artists use to make themselves stand out from the pack. What can you do?

The Roland High Life

The Roland High Life served up high-energy pop-punk that was amplified just a bit too aggressively. Members of Tongue Love planted in front of the main speaker, stage right, were in danger of cochlear collapse as the bass drum dug one inch deeper into their skull with every downbeat. Regardless, the four-piece plowed through a tight set that evidenced a lot of cheap domestic brews under the bridge. Shades of The New Noise.

In 2022 the band collected its recordings into an anthology with selections dating back all the way back to George W. Bush’s second term. Remember when fighting the “war on terror” was a thing?

Bad Neighbors

Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Bad Neighbors made the matinee a truly New England affair. (What’s the record for the most states represented in a single Midway Cafe bill?) The rootin’, tootin’ four-piece from the Granite State served up roadhouse rock n roll with a FM radio playlist vibe. Shades of The Cowboy Boys. Shout out to the booster club in back that made the trip to cheer them on.

Tongue Love

Closer Tongue Love is no stranger to Midway Cafe. The band played the matinee show there in November, and has been regularly gigging in the Boston and greater Boston area. Don’t pin them down to one sound, their live sets are fairly expansive within the guitar-driven rock n roll idiom. Garage, punk, power rock, psych, or they’ll pull out a saxophone for another sound altogether. If the Bandcamp page for their EP Rubchinuk self-identifies as “bedroom pop,” it’s for the same reason that every bedroom pop act calls itself that: entry-level production.

Not that you’d want to clean up Tongue Love’s sound too much. There’s a nice Girls-esque grittiness to the aesthetic that you’d miss if you dialed up the production quality too much. Say, dialing up to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-level when Broken Dreams Club (or even Album?) was just right. A little more polish, though, would really make the nuances and genre adventures of their sound pop.

Will that polish ever get applied? No one can know for sure. Bands come and go. Hardly any groups have the longevity of a group like The Roland High Life. Hardly any musicians have the stamina to keep hitting the live stage after all these years like Bad Neighbors. There are so many songs that live in half-written form, in the back of the mind, on the tip of the tongue, that die before they get a final draft, never mind a performance. But it’s a waste of time to mourn what never was, when there’s so much good music under the sun that is and was and always will be.