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Lighthouse with Cam Ackland at the Lizard Lounge Photo: Blowfish

The Somerville Theatre is safe! The building that was for sale has been bought by a group that runs the theatre (CSB Theatres) and an unnamed donor. The will include the Crystal Ballroom and even Mr. Crepe in the same building. That’s good news for Davis Square too, as it will keep a big part of its character and allure. With the Burren also getting a reprieve, can we take a deep breath and relax for a while?
WBUR has the story. as does the Cambridge/Somerville Independent.

Now, that is over, but alas the latest news is that The Lizard Lounge is going to close. The Cambridge Common restaurant upstairs was going to close because the owner was moving back to Columbia. The Lizard Lounge owners are Charlie Christopher and Holly Heslop started the club in 1997. Christopher has health issues. No other club we go too has the atmosphere that the Lizard Lounge has - like photo to the right.
WBUR online goes into the history of the club.

We’re waiting to see what happens to Charlie’s Kitchen. They had a flood from a dishwasher malfunction that caused a million dollars damage. Even if it comes back, and there’s talk of that, it still probably won’t have bands playing like it used to. Those Monday band nights were often the only punk in town for many years. Cambridge Day writes about the closing.

Roger Miller is interviewed in Magnet Magazine. The interview focuses on Roger’s current album The Green Man. When talking about how Roger writes it often comes down to process and how that intersects with creativity. That’s the case here, and it’s revealing. The Green Man is a solo effort – Miller style. That means there is electric guitar, multi tracking, loops and lyrics from the journals that Roger has always kept.

For long time fans the absence of the band sound forces you to refocus on the more traditional song elements in the album. Roger said he’s been thinking more about singing lately. You can hear the results of that on the album. The voice is the main attention point. We've never heard Roger sing like he does on “The Queendom of Heaven”

. One of our favorite moments is the last minute of the album on “Recipe For a Dream”. Multi layered guitar effects take over the song and then echo laden singing repeats “recipe for a dream” as finally a low unearthly rumble takes over. It leaves you – out there! It’s pure David Lynch.

VIDEOS......

The Nervous Eaters have a video for their new song “Where’s Johnny Now” on Wicked Cool Records. Some live band footage is intercut with clips from Johnny Stool Pidgeon a 1949 film noir. The noir thing always resonates with the shady characters in Steve Cataldo’s lyrics. The live footage looks like it was shot at the Fallout Shelter in Norwood.

In the video it looks like Billy Loosigian does the first solo in the song which we contributed to Steve. Even in this video the visceral band performance almost overwhelms the video. That doesn’t happen often. The video was created by Vincent Straggas the director who did the current Boston punk film Life on the Other Planet. The Next showing of that is at the Plymouth Spire Center on November 13, with The Eaters playing a set before the film.

Rum Bar Records’ Cindy Lawson hit the target dead center with her protest album Long Live the Resistance about the troubles in Minneapolis. She now brings her outrage to the video for the song “Howard Zinn Died For Your Sins”.

She shows how she’s speaking for the people by having a whole string of individuals sing the lyrics to the song. It’s so powerful to hear them all say, “We were there!”. Cindy has successfully transmitted the anger of the song to the screen

Electric Johnson who are on Rum Bar Records has a fun video for their song “Frankenstein’s Island”. There actually is a movie titled Frankenstein’s Island.

The video is all clips from the 1981 B-movie. It's an upbeat garage tune with a neat riff and fast clips from the movie, which is so much more entertaining for its kitsch value than the actual story. The movie,Frankenstein’s Island, is available on the Bad Movie Channel (we kid you not) on Youtube.

Here’s an unusual video from Couch Dog an LA group. The song is “Rod Sterling”. It’s about the Twilight Zone host but we can’t catch all the words. We do hear the chorus “We don’t wanna go”.

They set up a punk progression that carries the song. The video/song has some Twilight Zone twists, like a section of silence and an extended ending riffing on the Zone’s theme song where the visuals zoom out to infinity.

PODCASTS......

Al Quint had a segment on his 10/19 Sonic Overload show that was in memory of Clif Hanger of The Freeze who died the previous week. It was comprised of twelve songs. Six of the songs were on Modern Method and two from Tang. He ended with “I Hate Tourists”.

On the 10/26 Sonic Overload show it was all about Halloween Music. Our fave set was Showcase Showdown/”The Only Scary Thing About Halloween Is Your Fucking Face”, The Misfits/”Night of the Living Dead”, Dead Kennedys/”Halloween” and Lee Harvey Oswald Band/”Getting Wasted With The Vampires”. There’s plenty more hardcore Halloween sets in the show to enjoy.

One punk tune that stuck out to us was “You’re So Dumb” by the Nu-Viles from California. It’s a minute and forty seconds of a mad rant, “You’re so dumb. You got no brains at all. D-U-M-B”. Songs of unhinged anger work for us. Hear their three song EP titled Happy on Bandcamp.

Check out all the Sonic Overload shows on the web blog. https://sonicoverload.blogspot.com/ . Al has logged all the shows since 2009.

Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico rebroadcast an interview with Clif Hanger RIP of the Freeze that originally aired in January 2024. Clif makes the point that the band started in 1978 after punk started but before hardcore. That was the thing about the group they bridged the space between punk and hardcore in that period.

Clif recalls the exact moment he got into punk. It was hearing The Ramones doing “Teenage Lobotomy” at one of the early shows in Boston was at the Rat with the Outlets. Later the Freeze played with Lou Miami, Human Sexual Response, and Nervous Eaters and at one of the Rock and Roll Rumbles at the Rat.

Clif said he was going to write a book named Fictional Autobiography. He talks about the idea behind the song This is Boston, Not LA. There were many musicians who played in the Freeze through the years, Clif recons about fifty.

One of the main things we like about the Wormtown Underground Radio show with DJ L.B. Worm is the song mix of new, old and obscurities. That was the case with the 10/27 Halloween show or ‘mostly scary' as L.B. Worm described it.

New they had The Spackles/Spy in the House of Frankenstein”, Gene Champagne/”She’s An Atom Bomb”, Sapling/”Big Bang”, Cold Expectations/”I Live With Ghosts” , Lynda Mandolyn/”Let’s Hear it for the Monster Squad”, Tiger Bomb/”Scared of Heights”, Muck and the Mires/”Ghosts of Roky Erickson and Stupidity/”There’s a Ghost in My House”.

Old it was Alice Cooper/”Teenage Frankenstein”, Roky Erickson/”Night of the Vampires”, Kenne Highland Clan/”Reincarnation”, Scruffy the Cat/”The Ghost Song”, JJ Rassler and the Cuban Heels/”Casting My Spell”, Ramones/”Pet Cemetery”

It’s always a good selection of local punk and no wasted time on the Wormtown Underground Radio show.

NEW MUSIC/CD's ......

It seemed that the pre-single “Just Bent” from Boston's Massive Nightmare was very accomplished for a relatively new group of two years. But all the members have been in previous groups. Their new album, Ain’t My World, is very impressive.

The band has an alternative sound but amped up. The band sets up a thick churning bed of sound. It lifts all the songs to an exciting place. Our faves are “Ain’t My World” and “Up In Arms” but there’s a lot of good songs. This whole album is ripe for airplay.

The Spackles have a new four song EP titled Lettuce Rock. The title typifies their wry humor. In the song “Rats” they sing, “Remember the days before the rats/they were the salad days”. This makes us think of Ed “Moose” Savage’s “Iceberg Lettuce” song from decades ago.

In “Black and Blue” the protagonist claims to be “not dim” but they are sounding hapless at the least. The situation sounds comic but the “black and blue” phrase makes you wonder. The recording is earthy and tactile. The band has been together a while and sounds tighter than ever. The twin guitar lines shine and the drums and bass are always inserting character into all their lines.

We like “Rats” a lot because the drums/bass sound is uppermost in that song. We’ve talked about how we love “Bag of Bees” and here its sunny optimism plays off the dark humor of the other songs.

Before punk hit a lot of future punks were listening to glam rock. That was one genre that wasn’t wimping out like the rest. Rob Moss (of Rob Moss and Skin-Tight Skin) goes back to that 1973 era with “AM Gold (on the Radio)”. The song links in that AM radio with the glam and rock experience of the era. It’s almost hard to remember now that AM radio was where we were getting our rock in the early days.

The wonderful thing about “AM Gold” is that Moss makes it sound like a Slade song. Even listening closely it’s hard to nail how that is done. It’s the guitar tone and the drums obviously but there’s a few more tricks going on.

You can see Rob experimenting with his musical influences in his albums and split singles series. He’s doing it here in his solo material too and going to surprising places like glam.

Mad Painter is an outlier group. No punk or indie descriptors needed here. Mad Painter’s album Island Poetry take everything from sixties/seventies rock like Deep Purple and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. It’s the brain child of leader Alex Gitlin. Local legend Kenne Highland is on bass and Alan Haha on guitar.

It’s uncanny how they inhabit this genre. A lot rests on the song writing which makes everything sound so effortless and appropriate. The melodies are smooth. The arrangements close the case. The keyboards top all the songs. Kenne’s bass is felt as much as heard. His lines make all these mid-tempo songs move and never drag.

Our fave is “Two Horsemen” which has a jazzy lilt that reminds us of Brian Auger. The songs sound so familiar, as your mind flashes back to some Deep Purple tune. More than anything Island Poetry works as an album. It all clicks.

Rum Bar Records has another album album/artist that’s right in the pocket for the label. Tony Marsico and the Ugly Thingz has songs that would sound right at home on a Yellow Pills collection – meaning excellent 70s/80s pop. Tony Marsico was in the Plugz and Cruzados. He’s toured with Dyan, Neil Young, Ronstadt, Joe Ely and the list goes on.

“Bittersweet” opens the album and you think, boy that was a perfect tune, I’m coming back to that, then it’s the same for the next and the next. The first four songs are too good to be true pop tunes. The fifth song “”Shifting Heart” breaks the spell only because it rocks more. The sixth song “Burning Questions” is a garage sounding song with some classic buzzing fuzz.

It’s a bit early but the seventh song is the Ramones “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)” The album will be released completely on November . Right now “Bittersweet” is streaming on Bandcamp.

We were caught up in the song “Loving Kind” by Toronto’s Bad Waitress because the lyrics were so blatant. It turns out the whole album is that way. The dark and frank lyrics coupled with the goth sound take you to an intense place.

The first song “I Only Like You When I’m Drunk” starts with “You horrify me” and later , “I’m fucked up and in decline”. In “The Hunt” which is about a good relationship, we think, it’s still “The urge to kill, attack/Stab ‘em in the back/You can’t go back”. “The Hollow” repeats “God is dead…dead, dead, dead” . Even in “Galleria Shopping Centre” they make the mall sound dangerous. The lyrics “But I’m so high, I’m reeling” don’t sound scary but with the intense goth din coloring the soundscape it does seem scary.

We guess their genius is to make everything seem like a horror movie. We don’t think that is bad, it makes for a memorable listening experience. Dip in and see if you can take it.

Xray Xeroxx from California is puts out a steady stream of EP’s in a lo-fi style. It’s basically a one person operation. Now, there is a four song Halloween, or Hell-o-ween 2026, EP. Three of the songs are based on movies. "They're Eating Her, and Then They're Going To Eat Me," is based on Troll 2, "Boomstick," is based on the Evil Dead ,"Welcome To Oblivion," is based on Hellraiser.

We like the song not based on a film. “I Wanna Eat Your Soul” has a little Ramones sound to it. The monster here informs his victim about his soul, “I really wanna eat it/and you don’t really need it”. Now, the final twist, this EP on Bandcamp was posted on 10/28 and will be taken down on 10/31. We have “I Wanna Eat Your Soul” below.

Here's some good shows coming up ....

November 4, 2026 (Wednesday) Genre is Death, Art Gray Noizz Quintet, Gossip Collar at Deep Cuts, Medford

November 6, 2026 (Friday) Sweeping Promises at Deep Cuts

November 7, 2026 (Saturday) DITZ, Gloin, Dinos at O'Brien's

November 7, 2026 (Saturday) Flipper, SQRM, Facepaint, Lewd, Violent Protest at Ralph's Diner, Worcester

November 8, 2026 (Sunday) Unnatural Axe, Warthog, The Spackles, The Sonic Wavelength at The Midway MATINEE at 3PM

November 8, 2026 (Sunday) Cataclysmic, Pray to be Saved, Zipper, Cartridge, Sodrotter at O'Brien's

November 8, 2026 (Sunday) Galaxy Cake, American Ocelot and Crow Follow at The Worthen Attic, Lowell - this is an EARLY matinee show at 4-7

November 12, 2026 (Thursday) Silver Screams, Black Helicopter, Osis at The Square Root

November 13, 2026 (Friday) Another chance to catch the film Life On The Other Planet with the Nervous Eaters performing too!! at The Spire Center for the Performing Arts in Plymouth. FB page for info & tix.

November 13, 2026 (Friday) Still Sedated, Blitzkrieg, Queen Rhapsody at Thirsty First in Lowell

November 14, 2026 (Saturday) Hixxsgiving with Hixx, Zagnutt, Sex Zombies, Tj Welch & The Wasted at The Midway 3PM MATINEE

November 14, 2026 (Saturday) Bootleg Dan presents Glowbox, Girl With A Hawk. Anne Husick and Interstate Johnson at Under Bones, Davis Square

November 15, 2026 (Sunday) Stop Calling Me Frank, Ape Hangers, Dogmatics at The Midway 4PM MATINEE

November 20, 2026 (Friday) Minibeast, Thalia Zedek Band, Flying Vipers at O'Brien's

November 21, 2026 (Saturday) The Annual Women of the Pit Boston Winter Coat Drive: with Clock Out, Burn Kit, Josephine With a Cause, DJ Matawana at The Middle East UP - All Ages EARLY show doors at 12NOON

November 21, 2026 (Saturday) Spectacle, Modern Day Idols, Tad Overbaugh and the Late Arrivals at The Midway 3PM MATINEE

November 21, 2026 (Saturday) Who Killed Spikey Jacket, American Ethos, The War Lovers, ICBM at O'Brien's

November 21, 2026 (Saturday) Little Billy Lost, Typhoid Mary, Crow Follow, The Bicker Sins at The Midway 8PM show

November 21 & 22, 2026 (Saturday & Sunday) Allston's Makers Market is back! Gifts with actual personality. Quite possibly Allston's biggest-ever market taking place at O'Brien's and the former Stingray space

November 21, 2026 (Saturday) Tree, Inverter, Aces High, Bed of Razors at Ralph’s Rock Diner Worcester

November 22, 2026 (Sunday) Ghost Painted Sky, Bloodx3, Architrave, Hidden Fountain at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

November 28, 2026 (Saturday) Joe Gittleman & Friends, Diablogato, Mark Lind at The Middle East UP All Ages

November 28, 2026 (Saturday) K.C.U.F., Unseemlier, Today Junior, Grub Lord at Deepcuts Medford

December 4, 2026 (Friday) Under The Influences (Social Distortion Tribute) with BOLLOCKS (Sex Pistols Tribute) at The Midway 9:30PN show

December 4, 2026 (Friday) American Ocelot, Girl with a Hawk, Lovina Falls and The Day Lilies at Deep Cuts, Medford- music at 8pm

December 5, 2026 (Saturday) Michael Kane & The Morning Afters, Perfectly Lethal, Perpetual Stu at Faces Malden

December 5, 2026 (Saturday) Bootleg Dan presents Tom Springer Band, Spackles, Amanda White Band at Under Bones, Davis Square

December 12, 2026 (Saturday) Crow Follow holiday show with Crow Follow, Adi Sun solo, Randy Black and the Heathcroppers, Joanne the Band - at Underbones

December 12, 2026 (Saturday) Stop Calling Me Frank, The Wynotts, Galaxy Cake at The Square Root

December 17, 2026 (Thursday) Christmas Party with Kenne Highland's Air Force, Still Sedated, Jay Allen, Mickey Bliss (psst, it's his birthday) at The Jungle

December 18, 2026 (Friday) Lydia Lunch special guests Cryin Caleb, Matt Nelson and Tim Dahl at Koto, Salem - FB page

December 31, 2026 (Thursday) New Year's Eve Show with Salyse, On What You're On, Kier Byrnes & The Kettle Burners, Hambone Skinny at The Jungle TIX!

January 21, 2027 (Thursday) Dead Pioneers, Neighborhood Shit, Dizeaze, Cartridge at Sonia

January 24, 2027 (Sunday) Screw Cart, Sourpunch, The Wynotts, The Lansburys at The Midway for a Matinee at 3PM.

February 7, 2027 (Sunday) Martin/Morell and Fredette, Freeloader, American Ocelot at The Midway , a Matinee at 4-7

CONTACT US AT....misslynbgn@yahoo.com

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