Welp. We kinda backed ourselves into a corner doing a Week 1 Rock & Roll Rumble live recap (Read it here) and thinking it was possible to skip doing the same for Week 2, right? Look, we’re not going to sugarcoat it for you. You missed some gems if you decided to stay home when the Preliminary Rounds of the 2024 Rock & Roll Rumble from Boston Emissions wrapped up, okay? And that’s alright since you have us looking out for you in a grand way with this live rundown of what happened across Nights 4, 5, & 6 of the annual Rawk Fest. So with that, sit back, relax, and let us regale you some more of what went down over at Middle East Upstairs in the hopes that you’ll be purchasing your tickets to the Semis at Sonia as soon as you finish reading! Do we have a deal? And again, links to our preview posts in the corresponding headers so you can grab all the pertinent music and more from these killer local artists.
[Read more…]Singles! DiabloGato, “Lost Highway”
Boston + Rockabilly= Amazing?!?! Who’da thunk that? Well, obviously DiabloGato did with their robust Rawk that astounds by aurally awarding your earholes with the sounds you’re treating it to! Did that make sense? Well, neither does David Lynch to many which is quite the coincidence as DiabloGato has chosen that particular auteur to pay tribute to in their latest video for the aptly titled “Lost Highway”!
[Read more…]RNRF X Rock & Roll Rumble: Week 1 Preliminary Round Live Recap
We were initially planning to go all loosey goosey (An actual official term, by the way) with live coverage of this year’s Rock & Roll Rumble which basically amounts to a maybe we will/maybe we won’t mentality following our annual preview pieces of the Boston institution. Then we took some time to process what we witnessed and thought “Oh, fuck it!” and decided to dive in with one big mega post of all of Week 1’s treasures (Hyperlinked headers to our preview posts so you can find all the pertinent band links and music). So enjoy? And SPOILER ALERT: We will be mentioning the winners here (Dubbed in the appropriate regional dialect as “Winnahs”) in case you haven’t had a chance to catch up on your DVR yet.
[Read more…]Singles! Jennifer Tefft & The Strange, “Going Out”
From the moment we heard “Caffeine”, we were intrigued by the type of Rawk that Jennifer Tefft & The Strange were bringing to our ears. Timeless but tantamount to the ’90’s in a grand way at times, Tefft and company create a sound that’s both cathartic and crushing for a new Alternative that continues on latest release “Going Out”.
[Read more…]RNRF X Rock & Roll Rumble: Week 2, Night 6
The end is nigh! Yes, you read that right! Following these last 4 daring artists, the stage will be set and whittled down to just 6 who will battle it out over at Sonia in the Semi-Final Rounds before the Grand Finale this May the Fourth. Do you have a favorite yet? Well, hold off just a little while longer and sit right back and you’ll hear a tale… of the last four artists to take the Preliminary Round stage at Middle East Upstairs on April 13th:
[Read more…]RNRF X Rock & Roll Rumble 2024: Week 2, Night 4
Week 2 of the Rock & Roll Rumble starts NOW! Well, for us and in the interest of this posting it does but in actuality it starts on Thursday, April 11th back at Middle East Upstairs with the first 4 of 12 fresh bands scheduled to appear during the final Preliminary Rounds. Are you sad that the rounds are almost over? Have a favorite yet? Well, here’s some more fodder to confuse and confound all those decisions you thought you already made:
[Read more…]RNRF X Rock & Roll Rumble 2024: Week 1, Night 3
Moving right along aaaaaand we’ve made it to the end of Week 1 and the competition is already FIERCE! On this particular night we’ve got veterans of the Boston Music Scene battling against relative noobs (Read: novices) that still sound like they’re 4 albums deep only a few years into a burgeoning career. And with that said, we present the 4 bands representing Night 3 of the 2024 Rock & Roll Rumble:
[Read more…]RNRF X Rock & Roll Rumble 2024: Week 1, Night 2
We made it through Night 1! Or we will. For now, we’ve just made it through the first post about the Preliminary rounds so there’s a long way to go both in our postings and in, y’know, the actual shows that have so much behind the scenes work put into them ahead of time (Thanks, Anngelle Wood and Boston Emissions among others) before bands even hit the stage. Like they will once again at Middle East Upstairs on Friday, April 5th (See what we did there???) Anyway, our purported cleverness aside let’s see what Night 2 holds:
[Read more…]RNRF X Rock & Roll Rumble 2024: Week 1, Night 1
Can one have multiple “It’s the most wonderful time of the year…” parts of a year? Like, we dig the hell out of October. Because Spooky Szn. And November. Because it’s our (Read: RNRF) birthday month. So, Fall in general. But this sweet spot in in April when the Rock & Roll Rumble returns and Salem Horror Fest is right around the corner is quickly becoming our JAM!
[Read more…]Zeph Courtney: A Rock And Roll Fables Conversation
It’s been a banner week and a half or so for us in terms of some of our all time favorites seemingly coming out of the woodwork with unexpected new material. The most surprising of those has to be Boston’s Stompbox who is just about ready to not only re-release their debut Travis for the first time ever digitally (With loads of bonus music) but also drop their first batch of new material since 1994’s Stress. That’s right, kids, 30 years. Being one of our bucket list Boston bands since we never got a chance to see them back in the day (We’ve since ticked that, ahem, box when they played the Boston Rocks For Julie Duffy shows in 2021), we jumped on the chance to review the new EP called Final Summer a little early and thanks to drummer Zeph Courtney that became a reality (You can read what we thought of that here). While we had Courtney on the line we thought it’d be silly not to catch up on all things Stompbox and, luckily for us and you, he obliged:
[Read more…]