One Rong Makes A Right
E takes the new album for a walk at Midway Cafe on Saturday, 8 June 2024.
Rong, Handsy, and Medical Maps miss Lenny in the opening slots.
The Jamaica Plain Music Festival is coming!
Also known as the JP Music Fest. That’s got more zing.
It will be the 12th edition, coming your way in September, and each year is organized with tender love and care by a neighborhood community that loves live music and knows how to have a good time. This is a bottom-up affair, by and for the people, and it needs your support.
If you missed the annual Smell The Love fundraiser, you can still donate below!
If you missed the fundraiser show in March at the American Legion Hall with Rick Berlin, Colonel Broccoli and the Legion Basement Band, and Fantastic Trees, you can still donate below!
And if you didn’t make it out to Midway Cafe on June 4 in time to catch the annual classic fundraiser John Casey’s JP Bar Wars, you can still donate below!
Do your part to keep Jamaica Plain fresh AND funky.
Medical Maps
Medical Maps served up four musicians on stage. But the first and last thing you noticed about the set was the hulking beast of a synth keyboard in the corner. A Rhodes 73 Mark II, which would put a good size dent in the skull of an attacking marauder, if swung with the proper force at the right angle.
Handsy
Straight outta Rhode Island! It’s Handsy, an indie rock quartet with quirky licks on repeat, controlled feedback sorties, and solid swagger in the rhythm section.
Rong
If loving Rong is wrong, I don’t want to be right. The post hardcore shouters sport a psych tang. Everytime I see this band live I appreciate the drummer more and more. Like they say on the Bachelor, “I apprishiate you.”
New album called Living Waters out from the band called E. The trio is a real bitch to Google until you figure out that you have to Google ‘a band called E’ instead of ‘E’.
E
The homemade gear of guitarist Jason Sidney Sanford always draws the eyeballs. His guitar looks like it was made by a southern “outsider” artist with welding skills who lives in a junkyard. It also looks like it might electrocute him one day. In fact, his amp, which may or may not have been homemade, broke down before the set and another musician on the bill was gracious enough to loan him a spare.
Thalia Zedek gets in on the Frankensteinery too. If you thought her guitar had more low end than normal, you were probably right. What looked like a bass pickup was superadded to her six-string with blue painter’s tape. Is that all it takes for a guitar to kick out more low end, or did she have some thicker, meatier strings in play?
Ernie Kim held down the drums and contributed as lead vocalist when the mood struck.
Photo Gallery
Mellow, Beatles’ psych-tinged popper.