Boston-based Counter Intuitive Records has a lot to celebrate lately. The label, founded by Jake Sulzer in 2015, is coming up on its 10th anniversary in September. And when it’s time to cut into the anniversary cake, they’ll be enjoying the sweet confection from within the confines of their very first physical store at 358A Boylston St. in Brookline. A record shop that also trades in the retro video game craze.
The party starts early with a slate of shows, hosted by the record label, at Warehouse XI and The 4th Wall over Valentine’s Day weekend. Looks like all three shows might be sold out already? You can try your luck online.
The bands in the weekend lineup, featuring Origami Angel and Prince Daddy & The Hyena, current and former artists at the label, speak to the prevailing taste at Counter Intuitive. A little pop punk, a little emo. Said Sulzer: “I won’t shy away from the fact that we are a label that people will associate with emo/pop punk first and foremost, and I am proud to be a small part of the modern wave of the genres.”
But the founder was also quick to avoid putting the label “in a box.” The current roster, adding up to a little over 20 artists, spans a variety of genres within the indie music space, including the popular ska outfit Skatune Network. It’s geographically diverse as well. Recent signed Yawner hails all the way from Madrid.
If there is a secret to surviving a decade as a small business, it might be the “keep it simple” philosophy. Said Sulzer: “I always say that our job is to identify something that we can do for an artist that either they can’t do on their own, or we can do at a higher level. This could be anything from manufacturing/selling product, promotion, [or] behind the scenes logistics of running a band.”
Identify a need that is not being met. Meet it. Make a little coin in the process. Rinse and repeat. Sounds like a plan, nothing counterintuitive about it.
Hit this
Saturday: Party Mountain, insplainsight, Three Mandareens (Lilypad, Cambridge)
A pop punk triple stack, co-presented by Dud’s Dungeon and Digital Awareness. It’s a Valentine’s Day Weekend love connection that will make your heart go pitter pat.” Digital Awareness was written up in these pages last week for their superlative light shows. Sounds like they’re leaving the retro rig at home and just doing some co-promotion for this gig. All the ticketing is being handled through Venmo, which is par for the course with Dud’s Dungeon. The DIY outfit organizes shows regularly on the South Shore, but has been known to throw local shows on special occasions.
Sunday: The Bad Plus (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
It’s an unusual band that chooses to release more than one self-titled album. But that’s what jazz outfit The Bad Plus did in 2022, putting out the second “The Bad Plus” more than two decades after the first “The Bad Plus” (which appears to have been renamed “Motel”). Does the second coming-out party mean we’re in a new era of The Bad Plus? Mainstay members Dave King (drums) and Reid Anderson (bass) sum up their artistic credo as: “Evolution is necessary for life and creativity.” Lately “evolution” means swapping in new faces with Ben Monder on guitar and Chris Speed on saxophone. The sound on their latest LP “Complex Emotions” (2024) is a more mature version of the jazz outfit than the one that covered “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and bragged about being the “loudest piano trio ever” years ago. But they can still make a racket when they want to.
Wednesday: EveryDejaVu records presents PIECES vol iii (Lizard Lounge, Cambridge)
Local label EveryDejaVu is puzzling together another edition of Pieces. The event calls back to its very first release in 2015, a beat tape compilation. Since then the label has put out music by dozens of artists, making its ear for talent felt in the local music scene. Not just through its record releases, but also for what’s happening at the in-house blog, a must read. There’s no single profile for an EveryDejaVu artist, but the bill for Pieces vol. iii give you as good a sense for the range as any. Lavagxrl, Dear Dea, Mingko, Chaiah and a DJ set by lilith. Pop, electronica, rock, soul, RnB, a little hip-hop. The hearts and minds at EveryDejaVu, like label founder Ryan Magnole, aren’t into dogma and purity tests. Just good music.
Live: We Black Folk Fest at Club Passim
The start of Black History Month saw the return of We Black Folk Fest to Club Passim. The two-day festival welcomed new and returning faces into the lineup, celebrating black contributions to the folk music tradition.
Highlights aplenty: Chris Walton’s sparkling fretwork, matched by the melancholy beauty of a song dedicated to his father; Kemp Harris’ “Edenton,” a keyboard-driven ballad about false nostalgia for a childhood hometown in the civil rights era, where “everybody knew their place”; Devon Gates, who switched from the usual stand-up bass to a electric model slung gamely over her shoulder; and Naomi Westwater’s crowd work, not forgetting to get the “folk” involved at We Black Folk Fest.
Musician, educator and local man about town Cliff Notez served as host. There’s a professorial air to his style of presentation, which revealed itself in micro discourses between sets. One such discourse recounted the story of Lesley Riddle, a black musician. Riddle, a “human tape recorder” and finger-picking innovator, traveled the Appalachian Trail in the early 1930s, collecting local folk tunes and sharing them with fellow traveler A.P. Carter.
The Carter Family went on to find great commercial success as white avatars of the traditional folk and country music collected on those trips, scoring a number of hits with songs originated in black Appalachia and transcribed by Riddle, including “Cannonball Blues,” “Hello Stranger” and “Bear Creek Blues.” By all accounts, the Carters were the first megastars in a country music scene that was ready to explode in popularity.
Riddle, on the other hand, fell into obscurity. The black musician who had laid the foundation for a profitable and white-dominated, music industry across folk, bluegrass, country, Southern Gospel, pop and rock genres, sold his guitar by 1945. And he had been dead 14 years by the time releases such as “Step By Step: Lesley Riddle Meets The Carter Family: Blues, Country & Sacred Songs” (1993) began to acknowledge his influence on popular music.
Did you get all that? No worries, there’s no quiz at the end of the month. Just an invitation to recognize historical erasures where you see them and to learn more about black history, which, rest assured, is American history, despite what you’re hearing out of Washington, D.C., these days.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
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