A Moth To Flame
Saturniids at the Silhouette LoungeSaturniids flex stout bodies, wide wings, and antennae at Silhouette Lounge on Monday, 9 October 2023.
Black Beach, Astral Bitch, and Bad//Verb sandwich the four-stack bill.
Saturniidae are a family of the order Lepidoptera. We’re talking mostly (all?) moths here.
And you remember the old taxonomic hierarchy: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. (You probably recall the related mnemonic as well: King Philip came over from Germany stoned.) Saturniidae are halfway up the taxonomic tree, containing around 2,300 individual species of moths.
Wait a second! What’s this ‘D’ for ‘domain’ that’s been added to the taxonomy?
Since the 90s, or thereabouts, ‘domain’ has been included as the super-category over all, including kingdom.
Why the change? Apparently the guy responsible for the original system Carolus Linnaeus didn’t categorize bacteria properly. He smushed them together with another category of itty, bitty organisms called archaea because they looked alike according to the observational powers of science at the time.
The ability to compare organisms at the genetic level, however, revealed some radical differences between bacteria and archaea. Carl Woese gets the credit for discovering the differences in 1977. Radical enough to warrant a shift of the taxonomic structure to a “three domain” system, which Woese and others proposed in the 90s.
The three domains are: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya. The third domain Eukarya includes most of the organisms we’re familiar with from everyday life. Lions, tigers, and bears. Plants. Mushrooms. And all types of single-celled organisms.
Emperor mothThe enormous moths that belong to the family Saturniidae also belong to the domain Eukarya. Emperor moths, royal moths, giant silk moths, and more. Extraordinary species to be sure.
Gross too!
Let’s be honest. You wouldn’t want to be trapped in a closet with these huge, winged, creepy crawlies, however exquisite their ornamentation.
Shout out to Bill the Bartender for serving extra thin slices of lime on a Hump Night. “I only got four, got to cut ‘em thin to make ‘em last!”
Bad//Verb
Bad//VerbThe New England noise rockers Bad//Verb have a pair of backslashes in their name. We need a panel discussion on band nomenclature to help establish a rational naming protocol and procedure that will phase out the use of grammatical symbols. Bad//Verb will have a seat at the table. We can also invite Hey, I’m Outside to speak about commas. And Qu!et to discourse on exclamation points.
Astral Bitch
Astral BitchAstral Bitch arrived four-strong: two guitars, a bass, and drums. The protopunk psych rockers have been getting plenty of attention lately with a Boston Music Awards nomination for Best New Artist.
Notoriously a bullshit category because it doesn’t take much digging to find out that every “new artist” has been plugging away in some shape or form for years.
It takes a while to learn an instrument, write songs, all of that. What would a genuinely “new artist” sound like? Probably not good!
Extra points for the Dave Atell/Insomniac historical nugget delivered during stage banter. Apparently the comedian visited the Silhouette Lounge during one of his televised late night romps years ago?
Saturniids
SaturniidsYou want to call this psych jammer outfit a garage band because it has that free & fuzzed-out flavor. With five members, though, Saturniids probably couldn’t fit in your standard one-car garage.
Psych or not, there’s a good times, Sunday church, wholesome family band vibe to their music. Like it was the 1960s and “LSD culture” was taking over the mainstream by dint of reputation, rather than experimentation.
For all the giant lapels, jumbo silkscreened flowers, and “drug humor” flooding popular culture, how many Americans who considered themselves “hip,” “turned on,” and “tuned in” had actually taken the acid test?
A 1969 Gallup poll suggested only 4% of Americans had tried marijuana, never mind punched a ticket for an 8-hour ride. So there must have been this huge, drug-adjacent, fellow traveler contingent at the time enjoying a chemical-free, psychological kind of contact high. Saturniids have that vibe, which is great because their long, elastic jammery, pristine pop harmonies, and melody-forward groove needs a clear head to execute with precision.
Black Beach
Black BeachThe three-piece artrock outfit Black Beach brings No Wave energy. A lot of blues energy too, scratching just beneath the surface of their post punk aesthetic. Kind of a Jon Spencer joint, with less screaming, splitting the difference between Blues Explosion and Pussy Galore.
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