The ink was barely dry on a recent column about Someday Fest helping to fill the void left by no Nice festival (and no Rumble!) this year, when Boston Calling posted via social media that it was taking a “gap year” in 2026. The situation had gone from bad to worse, the absence of the area’s major fest leaving us with an asteroid-sized crater in the middle of the music calendar.
In troubled times, insight into causes of distress can ease our suffering. But no such insight was proffered by Boston Calling. We were left to read the tea leaves, poking through the verbiage of a trifling social media post to understand why an event that makes fans’ hearts go pitter-pat and produces millions of dollars in revenue suddenly evaporated into thin air.
Credit mayor Michelle Wu for shedding some light on the matter during an interview with Mike Macklin on WBZ NewsRadio. Wu highlighted a few items of concerns that festival organizers had confided to her. The concerns included a potential “strain on hotel rooms and events and sponsorships” during a season in which the World Cup was coming to town and Boston was celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
The key item here is likely sponsorships. Ticket revenue alone does not make the engine purr. If Boston Calling faces too much competition for sponsorship money, the festival can’t get off the ground – at least not the type of festival in terms of scale and profitability that the organizers envision. That’s a shitty reality to face, and an unglamorous message to communicate to fans, so instead we’re all fed a cute phrase: “gap year.”
Let’s hope Boston Calling does, indeed, return in 2027: well-tanned, more thoughtful, full of a renewed sense of self and ready to hit the ground running. Whatever a “gap year” is supposed to do. Festivals are a business – but they also become an annual rite of passage for the young and young at heart, who’d be heartbroken if the Ferris wheel ride was coming to a stop.
Hit this
Sunday: Summer BCMFest (Club Passim, Cambridge)
The Boston Celtic Music Festival makes a special summer appearance at Harvard Square’s musical den of equity, Club Passim. There are plenty of trad folk acts on the bill, just like the annual January edition, but will there be folk dancing too? The one-day event is split into two parts. The first part is free and outdoors, featuring the music of Forsyth and the Clare Fraser Trio. If people want to shake a leg, there’s plenty of square footage on Palmer Street. The second part is indoors, closing out the evening with a mix of trad musicians playing Irish and Scottish tunes of yore.
By the way, have we lost the battle for usage rights on the word “trad”? When you read it in a traditional folk music context, do you nevertheless think of a blond-haired influencer, mother of four, wife of a hedge fund manager, living in an Orange County McMansion, scolding strangers on the Internet for vaccinating their children?
Tuesday: Dolphin Hyperspace, Evan Marien (Lizard Lounge, Cambridge)
Years ago a subgenre called “seapunk” launched itself as a gag, signifying nothing in particular besides a loose, pastel-colored, Tumblr-influenced aesthetic of aquatic-themed shitposting. The movement, such as it was, might have peaked with Rihanna’s performance of “Diamonds” on “SNL” in 2012. Bad habits die hard, though. Los Angeles’ Dolphin Hyperspace might be propagating a variant we can call “seajazz.” Electro-inspired adventurism that seems equally moved by the nu-lounge reappropriation of young acts such as Domi & JD Beck. Progressive jazz bassist and inventor of the hexatonic method Evan Marien will be wearing his swim trunks.
July 10: Wavves, Beach Goons, chokecherry (The Sinclair, Cambridge)
If you were listening to indie rock in the late Aughts or early Teens, there was no escaping the omnipresent hype tsunami of So Cal slack rawk darling Nathan Williams and his band Wavves. He was the prime mover of his own cosmos of pot, beach bonfires and detention hall doodles. He teamed up with Bethany Cosentino of Best Coast to form a premiere “it couple” of the era, a Beyoncé and Jay-Z meets Kurt and Courtney, with a dash of Thurston & Kim. Williams looked ready to take over the world as his major label partner Warner Bros. cheered him on. Ultimately, though, the tide went out and Wavves receded into an act of more modest proportions. Maybe there wasn’t enough room for musical growth with refried surf punk to justify the hype. Wavves has more than enough juice to fill The Sinclair along with fellow Cali crusaders Beach Goons and chokecherry.
Live: Colleen Green at The Rockwell
Colleen Green’s breakthrough album “I Want to Grow Up” turns 10 this year. In honor of the occasion, the indie rocker wore a birthday hat – one of those pointy, colorful cardboard numbers with a thin elastic chin strap – onstage June 24 at Davis Square’s favorite black box theatre.
Rozwell Kid, which also served as Green’s backing band, and Headband opened in support.
Green played the birthday album through, start to finish. In 2015 the release represented a leap forward for the artist creatively and professionally. It was her first album recorded in a studio with all (or at least some) of the bells and whistles, capturing her minimalist pop-punk style and blasé wit in high relief. Critics hailed a stoner chic icon in ascendance. The twist was that Green’s major motivation within the narrative of the album is to pull back from immature excess and, like the title says, “grow up.”
Reading through the old reviews, Ben Ratliff at The New York Times wrote an eyebrow-raising blurb. He praised the songs as having a “basic air of competence.” A basic air of competence! Hard to take that as anything but a backhanded compliment. Sure, he followed it up with “toughness” and “self-reliance,” but the snipery had already been sniped. It’s the Gray Lady, though, so you take what you can get.
All the critical handwringing is more or less in the past. Green’s last full-length album, 2021’s “Cool,” pleased audiences who were already fans but otherwise did not make the same splash as “I Want to Grow Up.” If she’s now embarking on anniversary tours, we’re firmly within her nostalgia era.
Fair enough. Green’s punched the clock at the indie rock factory for more than a decade, which is nearly a career in the dog years of underground music. She’s probably thinking about her punk rock pension at this point, and who can blame her? All part of growing up.
Michael Gutierrez is an author, educator, activist and editor-in-chief at Hump Day News.
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)3 nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.