All The Ages

No punk too old nor too young for a matinee at Midway Cafe on Saturday, 15 April 2023.

LoboHombre close out the four-stack bill.

All the ages. For real. There were kids in the Jamaica Plain watering hole so young that TikTok will be banned before they ever get a chance to post embarrassing reels of themselves dancing in the mirror.

That’s the charm and great possibility of the “all ages” matinee. It can be a musical gathering of all the generations.

In truth though it’s the possibility that’s not often fully realized. Unless a k-pop act is making an appearance, all ages shows are usually the same 21+ crowd.

Not so on Saturday afternoon at Midway Cafe. Old and young, drunk and sober, united to celebrate punk rock throughout the decades.

The bill had the feel of a family reunion. The older types posted up in a comfortable spot, not planning to move much. The kids, grown so much since the last time you saw them, you barely recognized them as they crawled around the joint. The parents spent half the time keeping track of the kids and the other half not giving a shit, zoning out, enjoying a cold beer.

Maybe there was an argument or two? Nothing so bad that fences couldn’t be mended in time to do it all again the next year.

Color Killer

All the ages. We’re not kidding. Color Killer is a pop punk trio from Marlborough. There can’t be a single band member in high school yet. What of it? They played the same string of covers that punkers twice their age are still hammering out: hits from Screeching Weasel, Blink-182, and more.

You can catch them on April 23rd in Holyoke, playing a tall bill topped by Gang Green, remnants of which popped up for a cameo at Midway Cafe not too long ago.

Shout out to the roadie crew. Friends, family, or friendly family? They loaded the little rockers in and out in the blink of an eye. And extra points for staying to support the rest of the bill. You could imagine the family packing up and heading home at the earliest opportunity. What are you going to do with your kids for three hours? Trade off buying rounds? But most of the family circus stuck it out for the headliner.

Pint Killers

`Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Paul Gauguin, MFA Boston)`

The four-piece Pint Killers played loud punk rock with a dedicated vocalist roaming the stage like a pissed off Tasmanian Devil. A weird visual tableau played out as one of the youngest kids in the joint found a seat stage right while one of the oldest grizzly bastards in the joint took a seat stage left. If you shot it right, it had the accidental sublimity of the famous “Mayhem In Manchester” photograph. If you shot it right…

Shuriken

The three-piece punk ensemble Shuriken from Connecticut dedicated a song to Art during the set. So you could say all the stages of life, young, old, and even deceased, were represented at the all-ages show. The band crafted a rumbly kind of bluesy surf punk with shades of The Bangles on one “Walk Like An Egyptian”-adjacent track.

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LoboHombre

LoboHombre are regular giggers around town. You might have caught them in the back room at Silhouette Lounge and elsewhere. The Boston four-piece played a mix of bilingual punk rock originals, including a ripping version of “Soy Feliz.”

Not all closers on matinee bills bother to treat the spot like a headlining slot. But LoboHombre did in all the right ways, shouting out the earlier bands, giving everyone their money’s worth, and summing up what was great about the afternoon: all-ages shows build music community, from young to old, and music community is a lot of what the punk scene is about.

Sure, it’s a little weird to knock back your third (fourth?) tallboy in front of strange children who won’t be of drinking age for more than a decade. But that’s a “you” problem, right?

Salud!