Better Early Than Never

Muzzins hosted the Muzztival at Midway Cafe on the eve of New Year’s Eve, 30 December 2022.

A colorful cast of cohorts delivered exotic sights and sounds, including Jake Tringali, DJ Lightfoot, Pristine Christine, Punky D, and the electronic phantasmagoria of Digital Awareness.

A big bash the night before New Year’s Eve?

It’s an open secret that New Year’s Eve, the biggest party night of the year, always delivers the worst party. Some people think that a good party will relax, enliven, and entertain the partygoers. They have it backwards. It’s the people who make the party, not the party the people.

A fun group will have a great time on a deserted island with three coconuts, one thimbleful of tequila, and no music. A sour bunch couldn’t stitch together a few laughs with all the party favors and gewgaws in the world. New Year’s Eve is a sneaky magnet for sour bunches.

So what goes wrong? Theory: there’s too much tension built up in the previous year and too much pressure on individuals to release it according to a strict cathartic timetable counting down to midnight. Where’s the spontaneity? Nobody wants to be on the clock at a party. There’s a fascist odor to the proceedings.

The New Year’s hordes try to glaze over the tension with liberal amounts of drugs and alcohol. But it’s easy to overdo the self-medication, and the evidence is everywhere on the streets the next morning.

Artists, bands, show bookers and promoters know all of this and respond accordingly. Hump Day News has identified three main responses:

Do nothing. Let the night suck. Rope in a cheap lineup of anonymous DJs who don’t mind being ignored. Maybe people dance, maybe they don’t. But at least you booked the show.
Go New Year’s Eve-adjacent. The Muzztival takes this approach. People DO want to go out, have a good time, celebrate at the end of the year. But they don’t feel the need to synchronize their festivities with the rest of drunken humanity, fighting for cabs, and trains, and parking spaces, drinks, and a few minutes of “alone time” with a toilet. Instead, schedule your shindig in the general vicinity of the New Year. You’ll have more booking options and a more relaxed vibe.
Swing for the fences. Take on the challenge of throwing the best party on the biggest party night of the year. This is the most difficult route and not often recommended. The most successful attempts in this vein build on a pre-existing community to make the evening feel both intimate and over the top at once. Phish always had great success with their holiday-themed shows, including NYE. The jam band’s fanbase feels enough sense of investment in their community to show up among strangers and not be jerks.

Digital Awareness

The red jumpsuits from Digital Awareness were in the house, wiring the stage with glitched-out, psychedelic visuals while the crowd switched over from the earlier Hippie Hour stragglers, to the Muzztival masses in the late evening.

Credit the pair for being serious about their craft. The amount of hardware they installed for a few hours of music at a local dive bar was impressive. You could scale up their light show for much larger venues and they wouldn’t miss a beat.

It’s all about the matching onesies though.

DJ Lightfoot

A DJ set from DJ Lightfoot was the stir in the drink that got the musical portion of the evening started.

As mentioned above, a DJ slot on a NYE or NYE-adjacent bill can be a thankless task. But when you’re the only DJ for the night, you’re elevated by a specific task instead of just pasting up sonic wallpaper. In this case, the task was waving the green flag that the festivities had begun.

Jake Tringali

Poetry and a little queeraoke were to follow. Words were provided by Jake Tringali, inciting the audience to shine “as bright as the Citgo sign” in the New Year. Spoken word has always had a kissing cousins relationship with underground music.

In the salon-type format of the Muzztival, Tringali made for a nice interlude and/or big picture framing of what the crowd was celebrating on the eve of Eve.

In short, the promise of new possibilities.

Pristine Christine

Pristine Christine brought the fabulousness with choreography from the astral plain. Midway Cafe is no stranger to PC’s brand of burlesque stage show. You can catch the Punk Rockin’ and Pastie Poppin’ burlesque variety night at the Jamaica Plain club once a month.

Muzzins

The main act of the night and namesake of the festival Muzzins took the stage around midnight. The three-piece mixes performance art with straight ahead funk/punk gyrations. Maybe a little rap rock? The set kicked off with a “grand unveiling,” as lead singer and sometimes melodica player Rayna Jhaveri wormed her way out of a black garbage bag. The ritual seemed more at home in the darkness of a cozy club, rather than the broad daylight of summer fest SomerPride. A mix of covers, including Madonna’s “Material Girl,” and originals kept the audience on their toes. Jhaveri announced a new EP on the way, release date pending.

Punky D chilled things out to close the night. Not the final night of the year, though. When Muzztival ended there was still the better part of twenty-four hours to dream up resolutions. Less coffee, more exercise, and just the right amount of Muzzins. Happy New Year to one and all!