Doing The Bare Thereminimum

Twig back on its hard rock grind at Midway Cafe on Saturday, 15 May 2024.

Metal Tiger on the 1s and 2s while Garrison Fortress makes sweet experimental love to the “aetherphone.”

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 won’t or 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.

 
 

Call it a aetherphone, a thereminophone, or termenvox. None of those names caught on like ‘theremin.’ The experimental post punk duo Garrison Fortress played around with a Moog model of the perpetually futuristic instrument in the opening slot at Midway Cafe.

Garrison Fortress

There have been rumors circulating on obscure message boards that some key players in the theremin manufacturing business are on the verge of shutting down, which could produce a theremin shortage in the coming years. Cursory research does not reveal any substantive source for this speculation, but let us know in the comments if you’ve heard differently, and link the info.

The magical instrument didn’t come out until the last part of the set – until then it was mostly a laptop/guitar affair, producing Revenge of the Nerds-style b-sides. Extra points for the massive merch table. One or both of the performers is a writer. A legitimate author or one of those scribblers that writes quick tales about steamy love affairs with Yetis? Bigfoot romance novels sell like hotcakes on Amazon!

 

Metal Tiger

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Metal Tiger rocked a DJ rig for a change-of-pace in the middle of the triplestack bill.

 

Twig

The four-piece hard rockers Twig might have been playing their first gig since a deep run into the semifinals of the Rock N Roll Rumble in April.

Rumble gigs are the sort where you go deep in your bag, trying to catch the judge’s attention. Saturday’s set at the beloved Jamaica Plain watering hole was a more relaxed affair. All the same headbanging tunes without having to wait for a verdict. By the way, it’d be nice if former Rumble contestants got a discount to all future Rumble gigs. Is that a thing? Why not?

By the way, Maine is the favorite non-Mass state of Heather Timmons, the Tiny Oaks booker at multiple joints around town. And the fire alarm was triggered at the start of the night, leading to a lot of perambulations around the venue by firefighting professionals and management.

How’s that for hard-hitting news? You heard it here first.

 

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