Crystal Lizard Returns!
The Square Root in RoslindaleThe second gig of the rarely-spotted trio surfaces at The Square Root on Saturday, 27 May 2023.
Hammered Saint and Lenny Lashley’s Gang of One lay it all out on the table.
If you make it over to Roslindale, check out The Square Root. It’s a cafe that does all the coffees, beers, and food, and transforms into a music joint at nightfall.
We’re talking full-service music joint. It’s not just some fifteen year old (though he was there too!) shoving the extra tables against the wall to make room for a stage. The venue had a respectable sound system, attentive sound guy, and enough colored lights to set the mood. Just crank up the dishwasher to create a fog effect and we’ll really be cooking.
If all of the above sounds kind of like an unpaid advertisement, maybe it is! Smaller venues in Boston’s outer neighborhoods need their horn honked a little louder than usual if they’re going to get noticed in the hustle and bustle of the local music scene. It’s a big pond full of big fish, and it’s easy to get swallowed up.
But like the great Dennis Franz said, playing the police captain Carmine Lorenzo in Die Hard 2, “You are in my little pond now, and I am the big fish that runs it.” Who’s going to compete with The Square Root in Roslindale? The Irish Social Club? The “Top Ten Best Music Venues Near Roslindale” list doesn’t mention a single music joint in Roslindale!
Hey, fuck Yelp, right? Point taken, though, The Square Root is absolutely owning the local music scene with a calendar that doesn’t quit. Check it out! And if we’re overlooking some baller music joint in Rozzie, tell us we’re idiots in the comments.
Crystal Lizard
Crystal LizardThe power jazz/rock fusion trio Crystal Lizard is a rarer bird than the Kakapo. The appearance at The Square Root makes for its second live show ever.
Hump Day News caught the inaugural act at Midway Cafe by pure happenstance. Aye, ‘twas a summer’s eve in the Year of Our Lord 2022…
The level of musicianship was a distinct level-up from the usual line-up of Midway Cafe fodder. Who were these mysterious musicians with the phony sounding name?
Subsequent research concluded: on guitar, the Hero With A Thousand Bands Andrew Stern; on bass, John Sheeran, better known for his work in Township; and on drums, Gavin McCarthy, better known for his work with Karate, Swirlies, and local gigs with Thalia Zedek. Catch them, if you can.
Hammered Saint
Hammered SaintBoston’s Hammered Saint is a local punk four-piece that promises to “stomp your balls off.” They nearly made good on the promise Saturday night. But it was less about getting aggro, more about surfing the high seas of the corroded glampunk aesthetic.
The band lives and dies with its frontwoman and lead vocalist Emily Doran, who bit and clawed her way across the stage on twos, and threes, and fours, and nones for 45-minutes.
At one point Doran walked the mic out the emergency exit, regaling a sidewalk of local curiosity seekers. If there was a rock n roll glossary for what makes a wild set, she’d be ticking off the entries one by one. Where do we start? Rubber gloves, acrobatics, emergency exits, midset songwriting (and songlearning), cord wrangling, and more.
Behind the stage show bombast was a setlist of rock solid, four-chord punk bruisers. Meaty background vocal harmonies filled in the blank spaces when Doran turned her attention to crowd work. In this instance, putting the crowd to work filming their next video using the handheld devices of the switched-on fanbase.
If you caught some good footage that Hammered Saint can weave into their musical montage, send it to: hammeredsaintboston@gmail.com.
Lenny Lashley’s Gang of One
Lenny Lashley's Gang of OneGang of One is presumably Lenny Lashey’s wordplay on the band Gang Of Four. Though LLGOO performed at The Square Root with a gang of five. That’s two guitarists, one bassist, a drummer, and keys. So you figure that out…
The local rock n rollers are fronted by namesake Lenny Lashley, who crafts the kind of melodic proto punk ditties that HoZac Records loved to put out until it became a primarily reissue/bookpress outfit.
By the way, two of the five were Crystal Lizards, Andrew Stern (because why not add another band to the roster?) and John Sheeran. Is this the regular line-up? ‘Gang Of One’ sounds like more of a solo acoustic act. But the Roslindale show was definitely not the first time playing out for LLGOO, which had a gig not so long ago at the Lizard Lounge.
Another connection: rumor has it that Lenny came up with the band name ‘Crystal Lizard,’ which goes to show that AI bots like Band Name Generator will never replace the illuminated foolishness of the human imagination.
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Trace Mountains outlines summits at Deep Cuts.