It’s the last weekend in April, and there’s plenty of rockin’ left to do. Not only will the Rumble be crowning a new champion, but BUFU Fest at the Cambridge Elk’s Lodge will showcase two days worth of new bands from Boston and beyond. More
Archive Mean Creek
Most bands at South By Southwest have something to prove, blitzing through three twenty-minute sets a day, in between breakfast tacos, in order to get their music into the ears of a bunch of people who’d never heard of them before. Others park the band van somewhere south of the river, get plastered on Shiner Bock and try not to wind up in a headlock from the burly ex-biker bouncer at the Parish or Swan Dive so that they can watch their former touring buddies smash their guitars to pieces. More
It’s the first weekend of 2014, and why not spend it with some righteous local music? Don’t let that snow stop you, folks — unless, of course, it’s too dangerous to get out to a club, in which case, stay home. More
Just because it gets dark early now doesn’t mean you have to go to bed. This weekend is actually a particularly good one for seeing some live music. Whether you’re discovering new bands at a two-day underground music festival, checking out one of Boston’s best rappers, or getting low to the DJs of Soul Clap, there’s too much to do to just sit home and complain about stuff. Avoid being lame and go see a show. More
One infallible truth remains at the close of 2013’s music festival season: Geography’s a bitch. Events like South by Southwest or CMJ Music Marathon, which started last week in New York City and wrapped on Saturday, drive this point home at 80 miles per hour, as rushing to every set you want to see results in some maniacal game of venue hopscotch into the wee hours of the morning on a Wednesday. It’s tough and gets better with practice, but at the end of the day, a successful CMJ experience is one where you were able to discover new favorite bands while revisiting your favorites, where you walk away with an iPhone full of notes to yourself, lyrics you found inspiring, or a new act from Australia you’ll keep tabs on until they roll through the US again. These are a few of our favorite things from CMJ 2013, and they were well worth lapping between Brooklyn and lower Manhattan over the course of the past few long, loud days. More