Local bands, start your engines. Nice, A Fest gets the green light, kicking off Thursday at Crystal Ballroom with Dutch Tulips, Haasan Barclay and more. What follows is three more days of indie music madness occupying Davis Square like an invading army, rolling through the end of Sunday.
With a bill counting up to 80 acts, you can describe Nice, A Fest with the same Italian phrase that my mother-in-law uses to describe her cooking: abbondanza! Abundance, plenty, a fullness. (I don’t know why she uses this word. Her family is from New Orleans. She is likely channeling the Barefoot Contessa.)
The festival hits climax on Saturday when music starts on separate stages around 1 p.m., carrying on until midnight. Don’t miss the add this year: an outdoor stage in the Grove Street Lot. What’s a summer fest without an outdoor stage? Nice, A Fest has got you covered.
With so much music firing off at the same time, you’re bound to miss a band here and there that you wanted desperately to catch. So it goes. Let your heart break in advance. Aren’t the most enduring of all your happy memories the ones that are underscored by a pinch of sadness, a dash of regret, a tablespoon of loss?
Eat, drink, and go see some live music in good health.
Hit this
Thursday through Sunday: Nice, A Fest (multiple venues, Somerville)
Four days of local, local, local music. If you don’t make it out to the music clubs as much as you’d like, make it out to this shindig. Catch every band you’ve been hearing about along with some new wild card favorites. And just a reminder, it’s called “Nice, A Fest,” not “Nice Fest.” We don’t know why either!
Sunday: Linnea’s Garden, The Worst, Mattias, CJ Honey (State Park Bar, Cambridge)
A four-stack of indie rock gathers to celebrate the new single “Cherry” by Linnea’s Garden. The band self-identifies as “glam punk you can dance to.” Most music is danceable, you just have to expand your definition of what counts as dancing. The Worst rocks with a touch of neo-grunge. Mattias just released their debut EP “Growing Old Is Getting Old.” And CJ Honey is healing their inner child one song at a time. As is often the case, admission is free at the Kendall Square spot, with a suggested $5 to $10 donation for the bands. Be suggestible!
Monday: Previous Industries (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
The hip-hop trio Previous Industries consists of Video Dave, Still Rift and Open Mike Eagle (who played The Sinclair last December). Three rappers, three school chums, three former Chicagoans, now vibing in Los Angeles. The group hit the ground running, signing to Merge Records, releasing a debut 7-inch in January and a debut LP, “Service Merchandise,” in June. If you know one of these artists, it’s probably Open Mike Eagle, whose art rap grind is just one of many irons in the fire. If you dig that grind, you’ll probably dig Previous Industries, which transplants OME into the group dynamic with loping rhythms, diverse legacies and old-school sensibility. New Orleans’ Cavalier opens.
Live: Grails, Soma at Crystal Ballroom
Camberville will never have its own Bourbon Street. We take too much satisfaction in our puritanical history. But Sanborn Court in Union Square was not a bad substitute Saturday. When live music’s playing at The Jungle and Warehouse XI, the bars are full and buskers are busking in the cul-de-sac, the spot flashes a Mardi Gras atmosphere.
Like New Orleans, Sanborn Court is a mix of traditions. Nothing so grand as French, Spanish and Caribbean – more like preps and townies.
On any given weekend night the preps arrive a little before dinnertime in button-down tops and slack or skirt bottoms. They enjoy a cocktail in the “street-art adorned space” of Backbar before adjourning to a local restaurant. Maybe the continental fare of the German-inspired Bronwyn, maybe the farm-to-table offerings at Field & Vine or maybe the old standby on the corner, The Independent.
The townies arrive early and late. They arrive early because they’re already here and have been for generations, observing the tidal movements of the university calendar as it washes coeds and young professionals onto their shores before sweeping them out to sea. They arrive late because they’re scurrying from work shifts across town to make the gig at The Jungle.
What’s the hurry? The $10 lineup was four bands long, featuring Island of Alaska, On Regret, No Detour and Cheese Pile, with music lasting until midnight. A heavy mixer of covers and originals that played out loud, hard and fast. Owner, manager and metalhead Sam Epstein served as the sound guy for the night, running bands through a brief sound check before they blasted off into the stratosphere.
In case you didn’t recognize him, he’s traded in his short-cropped “applying for a business loan” head of hair (see his profile pic at The Jungle website) for the long and lustrous curls of a rock ’n’ roll roadie. Much more in keeping with the general aesthetic of a club named after a Guns N’ Roses song.
Blink-182 is coming to Fenway, and hardcore devotees Cheese Pile won’t let you forget it. The trio played a set of pop-punk tunes inspired by their Californian idols while keeping up a steady stream of cheese-related stage banter. No Detour and On Regret have shared bills before. Sometimes it’s easier to book bills in tranches, chunks of bands at a time, especially within the same genre. (I’ve seen the same Cape Crush and Me In Capris show three or four times, with a rotating cast of add-ons.) As for the closer, Island of Alaska, what do the gamers call it when you have all the most powerful weapons in a shooter: “overpowered”? The band is high energy by design, but on a few of those songs the drummer was firing rocket launchers while everyone else was playing pickleball. Wowza.
All that and more amid the louche glamor of The Jungle, which is glamorous enough (or louche enough) to attract posses of well-lubricated patrons from the tonier establishments across the street. Preps and townies, melting into one pot at the end of the day. Everyone’s welcome at The Jungle, a truly democratic experience, and at the top of your bucket list at Sanborn Court. Laissez les bon temps rouler!
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
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