Thank You, Alex Pickert
Dino Gala, Going222Jail, and Gollylagging celebrate three-way split Fauna at Crystal Ballroom on Friday, 24 February 2023.
Addie special guested in the opening slot.
“Thank you, Alex Pickert.” If you go to a few live music shows at small- and medium-sized venues in Boston and beyond, you’ll hear this phrase a few times, spoken through the mic onstage during odd moments in the set. If you go to a lot of shows, you’ll hear it a lot.
Who is Alex Pickert? He’s the current talent buyer at Crystal Ballroom, with an earlier stint in the same position with ONCE Somerville. He’s the winner of Talent Buyer of the Year in 2021 and 2022 at the Boston Music Awards. He’s the organizer behind Nice, A Fest. He’s the tireless cheerleader behind Get To The Gig Boston. He’s the drummer for 5ever.
Why are the musicians on stage so thankful? Well, it takes a lot of work to book and promote music. And it involves a little bit of gambling. The kinds of acts that Pickert books are often new: new bands, new sounds, new to the area, or new to performing to bigger crowds on bigger stages. Artists are thankful when someone takes a gamble on them, say, being able to make the transition from free basement shows to paying gigs at real venues with all or most of the trappings.
Never forget that the gamble goes both ways though. The artists have put in extraordinary quantities of time, effort, and sacrifice, gambling that their talent is worth “buying.” No doubt Pickert is equally appreciative of the artists he works with. But when you hear that phrase “Thank you, Alex Pickert” repeated for the third or fourth time in a show, with that Valley of the Dolls-inflection, you can’t help but think that someone’s got their thumb on the scale.
There’s something gratuitously performative about artists repeating the phrase from the stage. Most of the audience doesn’t know and/or doesn’t care what a talent buyer does. A shout out is nearly meaningless. So if the artist isn’t repeating the phrase for the sake of the audience, then it looks like a pure ego stroke for someone else. A kind of cringey public homage prostration spectacle ritual event. Did they have no opportunity before or after the show to deliver thanks in person?
All of this is to say that we should give more thanks, not less. And try our best to not let our gratitude calcify into a mechanical kowtow on the order of bestowing Music Publication of the Year on Vanyaland for the thirtieth year in a row. (Really?) It takes a lot of good people to put on a successful show: artists, bookers, fans, promoters, owners, managers, the box office, bar staff, door crew, street team, and more. Variety is the spice of life. The next time an artist is on stage at a Get To The Gig show, let’s hear them thank the coat check.
Addie
AddieAddie was the first of two alums from last summer’s Nice, A Fest, sandwiched between oldsoul and Children of the Flaming Wheel.
The band performed as a four-piece, delivering well-crafted propulsive altpop tunes. The project is the brainchild of Adeline Vamenta, who released her first full-length album Crater Lake in 2022.
All four band members opted for a dark blazer, white button-down look, which gave off a cool kind of Warhol-gone-corporate vibe. Very “we’re in a band.”
Gollylagging
GollylaggingThe second alum of last year’s Nice, A Fest was Boston’s Gollylagging. The three-piece offered a relaxed set of fuzzed out, high tempo post punk, sure to please fans of its 2021 release Ain’t That Just The Way!
There was a light moment at the outset when the band gave itself a “take two” opportunity after the intro song sputtered about fifteen seconds in. Gollylagging handled it with a laugh, and it was off to the races shortly thereafter.
Like most bands on the bill, they haven’t seen a room or a crowd that large too often. The crowd was ready for them, though, filling the pit in anticipation of some thrash sequences.
The band adopted an unusual stage formation. The guitarist and bassist turned inwards toward each other, establishing a closed hermetic triangle of rock, broken only by the gaze of the drummer looking straight ahead into the audience.
Extra points for the Cocaine Bear shout out. The promotional rollout of the film has unfortunately synched up with a spate of fentanyl-laced coke overdoses in the Boston area. But the Silhouette Lounge was still enjoying itself.
Going222Jail
Going222JailGoing222Jail were in good spirits. By the third slot of the bill, the crowd was warmed up and ready for the Bay State (Salem?) band’s brand of 80s-inflected, post-Pixies rock.
Their library isn’t deep, but every song they play bears the marks of thoughtful construction and powerful delivery.
The last time Hump Day News caught them live was at the Lilypad, opening for Dear Nora. It’s a great pairing in a lot of ways. The West Coast’s Dear Nora crafts deceptively simple pop tunes that sparkle like highly-polished gems. When you listen to Going222Jail’s EP Ragweed, you get a louder, noisier effort with an otherwise similar philosophy.
Dino Gala
Dino GalaCloser Dino Gala completed the triumvirate of contributors to the Fauna split. If you waited until the end of the night to check out the merch table, you were definitely too late to pick up the release. Though it’s not clear there were any releases to be had at the table the entire night.
Moral to the story: if you want to sell out your record, can’t hurt to have the Talent Buyer of the Year book a show to promote it. Who knows what that means in terms of dollars, but at least you won’t be sitting on a lot of inventory.
The crowd had built up a head of steam by late in the evening, moshing to even the lighter, softer moments of Dino Gala’s set.
One final shoutout to Digital Awareness, a team of hired geeks that make any event special with creative visual engineering and light displays. You can find them in red jumpsuits all over Boston and beyond, from Midway Cafe to the Crystal Ballroom. The team lit up the backdrop of the stage with algorithmically-generated glitch art. You half-expected them to shine a 50-foot “Thank You, Alex Pickert” display by the end of the evening. Thankfully, the moment never arrived.
Photo Gallery
Our neighbors to the North star at the 4th Wall.