The BGN News Archive

Brian Wilson and John Lydon

Music fans of all genres mourned the death of Brian Wilson two weeks ago. The photo his family chose to post on Facebook was of Brian sitting in the park in the middle of Commonwealth Ave which was taken while he was in town for a concert (photo below).
A lot of people wouldn't think punk was compatible with music that was stereotyped as clean cut surf ... but punk can accommodate almost anything.

The Ramones played "Surfin' Safari", Jesus and Mary Chain did "Surfin USA" , The Queers sang "Don't Back Down"/"God Only Knows"/"Little Honda", The Vandals - "Kokomo", Psychic TV - "Good Vibrations" and Joan Jett with "Fun Fun Fun". We loved Brad Marino's Hot Rod tribute EP last year which had the Beach Boys "Shut Down" on it.

Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day released a cover of "I Get Around" the other week on Instagram. Billy Joe does it straight, here's a even more punk version by the Punk Rock Factory. Then there's the version Al Quint played on Sonic Overload 6/16 by Melt-Banana from Tokyo. They put "Surfing USA" through the punk/post punk wringer. Hear it below.

A little more info on Brian Wilson and some musician's tributes on the Parade website.

A few weeks ago Rick Derringer of the McCoys died. Here we have Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers covering that most covered song of the sixties "Hang On Sloopy". This is live from the 1980 Catalyst club in Santa Cruz, CA in 1980. On this recording is Greg Curly Keranen playing bass for the Modern Lovers and he died recently too. There's an interview with Greg on the JoJoBlog. This was taken from Trash Flow Radio 6/14 on WAIF in Cincinnati.

We were listening to the O'Brien's Spotify playlist where they select songs form groups playing the club. The name Meet You at Rogers caught our eye. We thought of Rogers Park in Brighton. The group is a Boston group so that could be the reference.

Their song "Choked Up" revealed a well-developed band although it seems they only started in 2022. They skirt a few genres but have a 'mainstream' feel to us - whatever that might mean these days.
The chorus is what hooked us. The lyrics "you don't phase me, 'cause you amaze me" emphasize the word 'you' each time and capture infatuation. Meanwhile the guitar has a unique edgy tone in that section too.

VIDEOS......

Great news, The Dogmatics, a Dogumentary is now on the Dogmatics YouTube channel. You can look at it anytime you want. Rudi Childs did a great job on this. He'd previously done a few other band bios so he knew what to do in the Dogmatics case. There are early recording of the band from radio shows and live shows. Thayer Street gets its due.
Blowfish is in there from a video taken in the 80's. He also serves as rock critic. This film has been shown all over the country in film festivals and won the band new fans. We wish more local bands would follow suit and document their careers like this.

Muck and the Mires are now stuck on a desert isle, but it's just a three minute song…a three minute song! The new vid for "Mary Ann Man" a song from their album Beat Revolution has the cartoon version of the group on Gilligan's Island insisting that when it comes to Ginger or Mary Ann as a fantasy girlfriend, they pick Mary Ann. And that's a song! Gilligan Island was on TV from 1964 to 1967. In the lyrics the singer says he's 'binging' on the show which is a decidedly later phenomenon.

Take a look at this vid from Alien Boys from Vancouver. It is twelve minutes long. It has a minute intro that you can skip because what you want to see is their live in the studio playing. This was shot in one take while being recorded. That album is Live at Rain City Recorders. The album version is on Bandcamp. We have that embedded below.

The group has been around since about 2016. The music is a combination of punk and hardcore and anything loud and unruly. They cover PJ Harvey's "Down By the Water". Once you see the video you know you want to see this group live. We saw them in 2019 at the Hong Kong.

RADIO......

On Skybar's 6/10 show he had hardcore group Already Dead in the studio. The group has their new 5 song EP I Think It's Time to Leave out now.. Skybar played songs from their first album Something Like A War from a year ago. They did a few songs live. Skybar delved into the bands history and influences. Hear the interview below.

The group has a show at the Cantab on June 29, Sunday with Stress Balls who w've talked about before. The songs on the EP are mostly short. As is usual, we like the shortest ones "I'll Go Mine" and "Sick Talk". All the tunes have a sense of musicality that isn't always found in hardcore. You can hear the words too that adds to its accessibility. It does that without losing the anger in the songs.

To hear the Rising show listen on WMFO on Tuesdays from 7 to 9pm, or go to the WMFO schedule page and hit Rising show on Tuesday at 7pm and then hit archive.

Joanie Lindstrom was off to France last week but she prerecorded her Late Risers Show. Each set had a variety of themes. In the 'new music' set she played Dirty Fences (from NYC). We had good memories of seeing them at the Allston Christmas Party in 2015. They had a seventies vibe to us then. Their Bandcamp page tags them as punk and rock and roll. The song "Running Again" has a lot to recommend it.

We love the band sound, the guitar riffs and the vocals. The song has a distinctive chorus. They speedily sing "I keep on , keep on, running again" four times. It sounds like the needle is stuck in the groove. They do that five times in the song. For relief the vocalist adds some high flying vocal turns that are cool too.

In France Joanie is going to see a local group The Human Toys. She played one of their cover tunes "When You Find Out" by The Nerves. We have that embedded below. They have a song about one of our fixations - Emma Peel. "The Emma Peel Explosion" is about being inspired by Diana Rigg's character. "Yesterday's Gone" is a stinging rebuke of people who are hanging on groups they liked thirty years ago. Gee, that can't be us, we're hung up on groups we saw fifty years ago. Hear there latest album At The Poor Cow on their Bandcamp page.

To hear Joanie's Late Risers Show go to the WMBR archive page https://www.wmbr.org/cgi-bin/arch . Hit the LRC show for 6/19.

PODCASTS......

On the 6/9 Sonic Overload show Al Quint started the show with Mission of Burma's "Academy Fight Song". To give you a dose of the hardcore that Al generously supplies once a week we will embed "Nuclear Tomorrow" by Direct Control.
There were to old radio standbys that we hadn't hear in a long time that we are going to pass on too. One is "Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag". That seemed so novel and fun in 1981. Same goes for "Tighten Up" by the Yellow Magic Orchestra in 1980. We finish with 7 Seconds from their rereleased New Wind album and the song "Change In My Head". Al's been playing that the last few weeks and it is excellent.

To hear the whole Sonic Overload show go to Al's Blogspot page.

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

The Dogmatics continue to defy expectations. They're riding a wave of creativity and output these last few years that usually mark a new band's career.
Their new song "You've Got What I Want" comes with the back story that it was inspired and written in the early eighties after seeing the Outlets for the first time at a show. Sure enough it sounds like a garage punk tune from that time period. It's a fast catchy buzz full of enthusiasm as if a band was discovering how much fun punk was.
The thing is that this was recorded NOW. This is the band forty years down the line and they have this punk spirit now. To go into a studio today and rip out an unconsciously free-spirited recording like this a super power.

That studio was Ed's Barn in Canton where a lot of good things are recorded these days. All that's needed from you is 1:35 and hit that play button below. The Dogmatics will have a new full-length album on July 18. They've had EP's lately, but this is the first full length album in forty years!!

The record release party is set for July 26 at Waltham's French American Victory Club.

It's been three years since Actor|Observer's album Songs for the Newly Reclusive. They have a new single titled "Found Wanting". To us Actor|Observer are the standard bearers for this intense emo hardcore genre. They always dig deep into the inner emotional core. The screamo vocals and pounding and scorching backdrop from the band hits hard. The closer you listen the more it affects you. The lyrics talk about a potential locked behind a door. There are lots of water metaphors, but here water does not seem to nourish.

It's really not fair, with the Peppermint Kicks you get two songwriters who know how to tickle your ears and prod you with musical tricks. Of course that's what they do mercilessly with "Radio Wam Bam Boom". Even before you hear the song the onomatopoeia in the title primes you for what's to come.

Both of the Pep Kickers, Baglio and Kopko, love the whole reality and magic of the sixties rock era. They capture a heightened hysteria in the music as the lyrics run down the love list. That includes: vinyl records, Ready Steady Go, transistor radios (both Catalin and Bakelite), Pirate radio, late night radio, Underground radio, AM/FM radio, With the Radio On ("Roadrunner"), skipping school, WBCN (broadcasting from the Pru), DJ Maxanne Sartori, NYC and LSUG (Little Steven's Underground Garage).

We loved all that too. It's sobering to realize that the glory days are gone for everything on that list except for Little Steven's Underground Garage. For two minutes you can get a feel for how magical it all was with "Radio Wam Bam Boom".

South Shore group Condition Baker have a new three song EP - Dethroned. It includes their last two impressive singles "Nerve" and "Dethroned" and added the new song "Cruel Devices". "Cruel Devices" doesn't rush. It starts quiet and only slowly begins to burn. As the lyrics ask "is there something wrong" the answer seems to be "everything is wrong" as despair seems to win. The band delivers a very dark backdrop at the end that delivers the message.
We have "Cruel Devices" embedded below. Go the Bandcamp page for the album.

How many times did we hear "Tugboat" by Galaxy 500 on the radio when it came out in 1988? A lot. We were glad to hear it again on a new release on Bandcamp. Galaxy 500 have a live album recorded at CBGB's. The title is succinctly CBGB 12.13.88. The record comes out in August. They have two songs streaming now on Bandcamp - "Tugboat" and "Parking Lot".
It feels so good to hear them now. It puts you in a dreamy place. The album will be officially released on September 5th 2025 on Silver Current Records.

Rum Bar Records has a retrospective of the group All the Madmen from CA. They are named after a David Bowie song and the music is very much influenced by Blowie. Listen to the voice and there is no mistaking it. This is a compilation of three albums. There are 37 cuts. There are 8 songs streaming on Bandcamp now.

All the songs rock like Mick Ronson era Bowie. There may be less finesse than the usual Bowie tune but that's because Madmen never let anything get in the way of a song's flow, once the song slots onto the track there's no stopping the momentum. There were a lot a nice moments in even these eight songs to recommend this collection.

The Fuzztones' Buried Treasure is being released soon on Cleopatra Records. It's an album of old songs, some recorded before, some altered and re-recorded. Right now they have one song on Spotify. "I Never Knew" is primo Fuzztones. It is organ drenched with a lurching fuzzed up chord progression plowing along. It is garage rock from the professionals.
Funny, when the Fuzztones started the garage rock they emulated was from two decades earlier. Now, they have been playing that same garage rock for forty years.

Stay the Course are a group from Wichita that were formed in 2015. They are described as easycore. That was a new one with us. Easycore combines pop punk melodicism with hardcore aggression. That does describe Stay the Course to a tee, or emo would do.

The song goes through a few paces. First a melodic section and then into screamo mode, they alternate that a few times. The last half has the vocals holding on to notes for longer than you would expect as the band is almost playing a drone. We found it very intense and the vocals have a lot of layers that add to the effect.

Len Price Trio has a new single out "Emily's Shop"/"I'm a Fake". The vinyl version will only be sold at live shows. It's a great combo of garage pop, mod, psych and Who influences. The group had a fondly remembered show at the Burren in 2023. Their album Misty Medway Magick is coming out in October on Wicked Cool Records.

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

June 26, 2025 (Thursday) Murphys Law, The Take, Duck & Cover at The Middle East 7PM doors. ALL AGES

June 26, 2025 (Thursday) Faster Pussycat, The Super Suckers, The Rumours, The Lonely Ones at Koto Lowell 21+, 6:30PM doors - FB page

June 27, 2025 (Friday) The Gruesomes (legendary Canadian garage punk band) , Muck & The Mires, The Chelsea Curve at The Middle East UP EventPage

June 27, 2025 (Friday) Rockin Bob Punk Band, Color Killer, The F.U.’s and from California, Stay Out at the Middle East UP, 8pm

June 27, 2025 (Friday) Better Late, Men & Volts, Hot Franks at The Square Root

June 27, 2025 (Friday) Wreckless Wreck Chords Presents Worm " SlaveDriver" Release Show with Ruffian Dick, The Woods, The Ungraded, The Wax Skulls at The C Note Hull. FB page.

June 27, 2025 (Friday) Crisper, Big Limo and Mad Painter at Jeannie Johnston's Pub

June 28, 2025 (Saturday) TREE and Incendiary Device at Brighton Music Hall - 6PM - TIX

June 28, 2025 (Saturday) Neighborhood Shit, The Neon Hookers, Gumskab, In Remembrance, The Blind at O'Brien's

June 28, 2025 (Saturday) Angry Trees, TELL, Jade Array, Hot Start at The Jungle

June 28, 2025 (Saturday) Mayhem in Manchester II with Worm, Street Trash, Presidential Disgrace, Tim Heist And the 456 at The Shaksheen Pub Manchester, NH FB page.

June 29, 2025 (Sunday) Worm, Cry Havoc, Rags to Stitches, Screw Cart, Hardwired at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

June 29, 2025 (Sunday) Frenzy Of Tongs, Scumbari, The Stress Balls, Angry Red Planet -at The Cantab, 21+ 8pm

June 29, 2025 (Sunday) Black Beach, King in Yellow, Parachute Club at Moon Base One Salem - sober space ALL AGES 1-5PM

June 29, 2025 (Sunday) Murphy's Law, The Take, Klaxon, Grip Bite at Alchemy. TIX

June 30, 2025 (Monday) Bunuel, Murderous Again (Lyndia Lunch, Tim Dahl, Kevin Shea), Today Is the Day, Spiritual Poison at Alchemy TIX!!

July 2, 2025 (Wednesday) Blame It on Whitman, Shark Earrings, Starfruit, and Care For - O'Briens

July 4, 2025 (Friday) Who Killed Spikey Jacket, Moose Knuckle, City Kings, Helldog - O'Briens

July 6, 2025 (Sunday) Martin Morrel and Fredette, The Weistranauts, Satch Kerans Band at The Midway for a matinee

July 6, 2025 (Sunday) Greg Norton, (original bass player of Hüsker Dü) and Büddies, Jon Snodgrass (Drag the River, Ft. Collins Co) and David Jarnstrom (Rad Owl, BNLX) and guest singers Scott Reynolds and Lenny Lashley playing songs and celebrating 40 years of Hüsker Dü! 

July 6, 2025 (Sunday) Evil Felipe, Dogcat, Party Mountain, Peach Creek at O'Brien's

July 11, 2025 (Friday) Casket Rats, All Sinners, Officer X, Phantom Rider at Ralph's Rock Diner Worcester - FB page

July 12, 2025 (Saturday) Girl with a Hawk, Linnea's garden, St Divine at The Burren

July 12, 2025 (Saturday) Plymouth Punk Rock Market At Mayflower Brewing Co  Noon - 5PM FB page.

July 13, 2025 (Sunday) New Bomb Turks, The Drowns, Gossip Collar, and Static Friction at Sonia

July 13, 2025 (Sunday) Corin Ashley Band, SCMF, The Chelsea Curve, at The Worthen Attic

July 16, 2025 (Wednesday) Jon Spencer with Tiger Bomb at Oxbow Blending & Bottling Portland, ME FB page.

July 15, 2025 (Tuesday) Alvilda, Brower, The Downhauls, The Crimps, Balloon Thief at The Middle East UP

July 17 & 18 2025 (Thursday & Friday) Ryan Packer Presents Mike Mccolgan and the bomb squad "Do or Die" in its entirety, Violent Way, The Welch Boys, Klaxon at The Middle East (Down) 7pm $30

July 18, 2025 (Friday) Goth Summer with Staring at The Sea and Gretchen & The Banshees at Koto Lowell

July 19, 2025 (Saturday) The Instamatics, The McCritters, Harry and the Hot Flashes, The Grommets at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

July 19, 2025 (Saturday) The Wynotts, The Haymakers, American Ocelot at the Square Root, Roslindale 8pm

July 19, 2025 (Saturday) The Stigmatics, Little Billy Lost, and Smitt E. Smitty & The Fezztones at KOTO in Salem, MA,

July 20, 2025 (Sunday) BAABES, Sourpunch, Euphemia at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

July 24, 2025 (Thursday) Rum Bar Records presents Summer Sizzler Vol. 1 @ The Square Root!! Featuring: The Spackles, The Hi-End, J Prozac and The Prozacs, TBA Special Guest Acoustic Opener!! Live Music Starts 8:00 PM Sharp!!

July 26, 2025 (Saturday) Already Dead, East End Redemption, The Frenzy of Tongs, Circus Battalion, COB at The Midway for a 3PM matine

July 26, 2025 (Saturday) The Dogmatics Record Release Party with Black Cheers, Jay Allen and The Archcriminals, Last Stand, Gypsy Moths, Tom Baker and The Double Down, Stop Calling Me Frank and Band 19. At at the Waltham’s French American Victory Club- 3:30 to 11pm. Facebook event page.

July 26, 2025 (Saturday) Thrust Club, The Flaming Little Sh*ts, Ruby Grove, Tiffy at The Jungle

July 27, 2025 (Sunday) Threat Level Burgundy, Lefthand Hotdog, Pink Slip, Bad Idea USA at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

July 31, 2025 (Thursday) The New Bomb Turks, The Drowns, Gossip Collar, Static Friction at Sonia TIX

August 2, 2025 (Saturday) The Dwarves, Burn Kit, Scumbari at Deep Cuts TIX!! FB page

August 9, 2025 (Saturday) The McGunks, Voice of Dissent, The Graniteers, Ragz to Stitchez at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

August 9, 2025 (Saturday) Endation. Happy Little Clouds, Cold Expectations, Ex Hyena at The Jungle

August 9, 2025 (Saturday) Cocked & Loaded, White Dynomite, Brownboot at Faces

August 12, 2025 (Tuesday) The Massacred, Gossip Collar, Sympathy Flowers, Sin Offering, Uniformed Service at O'Brien's

August 15, 2025 (Friday) Futon Lasagna, Blackout Shoppers (NYC punk), Skum City (NYC Punk), Basics at Ralph's Rock Diner Worcester

August 28, 2025 (Thursday) The Murder Junkies, Scumbari, Moose Knuckle, Troll Milk at Alchemy Providence RI - FB event page.

September 5, 2025 (Friday) Tough Luck Festival (2 days!) Day One: Slow Joy, Trophy Wife, Actor|Observer, Exit 18, 5Ever, Sophie's Body - Brighton Music Hall TIX

September 6, 2025 (Saturday) Tough Luck Festival (2 days!) Day Two: Great American Ghost, Move, Euclid, Blood Tithe, Survive The Sun, Sevalynn - Brighton Music Hall TIX

September 7, 2025 (Sunday) Rock and Roll Yard Sale in Somerville Union Square FB page for more info vendors etc

September 13, 2025 (Saturday) The Del Fuegos will be playing the Belforge Art Center (Medfield) on Saturday September 13 at 3 to 7pm. Tickets are $30.00.

September 19, 2025 (Friday) Brad Marino , Chelsea Curve, Glimmer Stars at The Burren

September 21, 2025 (Sunday) Shonen Knife, Pack AD - All Ages at Sonia

September 27, 2025 (Wednesday) The Grip Weeds, Tiger Bomb, at The Burren

October 4, 2025 (Saturday) Soraia, The Cocktail Slippers, River City Rebels, The Chelsea Curve at The Midway 8PM

October 18, 2025 (Saturday) Al Barile Day at Roadrunner All proceeds to benefit Dana Farber Cancer Institute ... info coming...

October 30, 2025 (Thursday) Stupidity, Chelsea Curve, Little Billy Lost, at The Burren

January 27, 2026 (Thursday) Hooligan Holiday Boston with The Oppressed - ALL AGES show 7PM doors. FB page

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