Seminal local 80s punk band Moving Targets closed out a hard-rocking, four-band afternoon bill on Sunday, 16 October at Midway Cafe.

Outside the day was bright, the air fresh, and the Jamaica Plain neighborhood full of the usual weekend soundtrack of dirt bike gangs popping wheelies past everyone’s front door.

But the hardcore horde could hardly hear such havoc above the indoor din of four-chord chaos. Already Dead, Bad Idea USA, and Shiny Beasts opened.

Bad Idea USA are regular giggers around town. If you hit this summer’s edition of Nice, A Fest, you might have heard them perform on Day 3. The pop-punk trio crafts up-tempo quick burners that sprint through their musical conceits faster than a cheetah on speed. You likely heard one or more tracks off their latest cassette Stay Nervous.

Lowell’s Already Dead shouted out their own recent release, the full-length My Collar Is Blue. The trio treated the crowd to tracks from the new album, along with unreleased material.

The band dials up a wide-spectrum of sounds beneath the general umbrella of punk vibrations. You have the straight ahead, chord-chugging punk progressions wrapped into three-minute ditties. You have the anthemic chorus singalong crowd pleaser. You have the too-SoCal-for-school rap-rock number, complete with guest rap. And you have bluesier, funkier tracks that are more hard rock than hardcore. All that and more tied up with a bow, neat and tidy, in under an hour.

More than a few hardcore OGs turned up for Moving Targets from the veteran look of the crowd. The North Shore band formed in 1981 and were local punk scene regulars during the 80s. 

Moving Targets’ visit to Midway Cafe on Sunday finds the band enjoying a second wind after some significant time off. The band got back on the road in 2018 for a European tour and back in the studio in 2019 and 2020 to produce Wires and Humbucker, respectively.

The Jamaica Plain gig is the fourth date in a current US tour that has them playing almost every day through the middle of November. Hard to imagine that Moving Targets’ human-pogo stick of a bassist will be able to sustain that same energy for that long. But getting in an early afternoon gig, instead of a late night slot, can’t hurt.