Pretty Rotten opens at The 4th Wall on the eve of Christmas eve, 23 December 2023.

Safety Meeting and JVK close out the pre-Xmas celebration.

Digital Awareness in the house.

A little more than a month, five shows, around seventeen bands and/or artists. That’s a lot of water under the bridge already for The 4th Wall, the DIY venue in Arlington, operating out of the Capitol Theatre.

There was talk of some shows being re-housed at the venue after a Boston Globe piece brought a little more attention to other DIY venues than they were prepared for.

One or more locations went into temporary “hibernation.”

So maybe what we’re seeing is a blip on the radar, an outlier, and bump due to contingent circumstances.

Or maybe it’s the new normal? It would be great to have another stage putting on music along Massachusetts Avenue. And this one’s got all types of amenities to boot – popcorn, candy, soda, beer, and a pizza place next door – plus a lightshow regularly provided by Digital Awareness.

Speaking of pizza, the restaurant location next to the theatre is a simple counter service version of Otto’s. It’s a chain you can find at at least three locations in the greater Boston area: one in Brookline (across from Coolidge Corner Theater), one in Harvard Square, and one in Arlington (next to the Capitol Theatre).

In general, solid pizza! Although some locations are better than others. The Brookline location gets the Hump Day News seal-of-approval for being the best of the bunch.

Shout out to Otto’s Pizzeria.

Extra points to the Capitol Theatre for hosting a holiday craft market along with the show Saturday. A real gift to last minute shoppers.

Pretty Rotten

Have you given up on guessing who the headliner is based on where they’re positioned on the bill?

There’s a certain tradition (not that tradition matters much, but let’s explore this) that stipulates the first act listed on the bill is a headliner and performs last. So on the following bill:

Band A // Band B // Band C

Band A would be the headliner and play last. Band C would open. Band B would be planted in the meaty middle.

On the show poster Pretty Rotten was billed first, which suggests they’re headlining and playing last according to a certain tradition. Instead, they opened. A jammy, bluesy trio with plenty of improvisational flair and Southern rock edge.

This is a band that loves what French cycling calls the faux plat, or “false flat.”

In cycling a false flat occurs on mountain stages where the route climbs and climbs upwards until it hits a flat section at high altitude. The rider, exhausted from the effort, rejoices at the easier section, and maybe thinks that they’ve reached the mountaintop.

Not so fast! The false flat comes to its own conclusion and, like Pretty Rotten eyeing each other at the tail end of passages, resumes its climb up the challenging terrain.

You could tell when the band was prepping for another assault on the mountain. All eyes would turn to the drummer, who’d indicate this or that pathway based on a wink, nod, or bob of the head.

Shout out to the saxophonist and guitar soloist sitting in on the set. One-off jammers or new regular members?

Safety Meeting

There’s a second model for organizing lineups with the headliner opening that you see sometimes. It was recently used at a Third Thursdays with James Blood Ulmer, a jazz great who played with Ornette Coleman and more.

Blood was the big headliner, and he was also 83-years old. Great show, but you wanted to get him in & out as quickly as possible before he needed another nap. Kidding aside, James Blood Ulmer stayed through the whole show, watching the “opener” play second…

On either model, Albany’s Safety Meeting makes sense in the second spot. (Hey, weren’t the Snorts from Albany too?)

A rule of thumb seems to be to never make the out-of-town band play last. They’re presumably tired from the road and it’s too much of an ask to make them go late. And you might ot want to put them first either – given them time to shake off some road weariness, get set up, grab a bite, whatever, before their set.

The trio from New York state revolved around two main poles of music. One pole was a kind of bluesy grind. The other pole was classic basement punk.

They traded time between the two sounds, and occasionally interweaved them like Jon Spencer’s Blues Explosion minus the Elvis voice. Shades of Natural Child with just a tinge of irony on their punk appropriation of classic blues grinds.

JVK

Did you catch this band at Hope Fest?

JVK performed as a five-piece in the closing slot on Saturday night, which might have wandered into Sunday morning or thereabouts. When a show is scheduled to start late, it’s scheduled to end late. Duh.

Not a bad thing – it’s nice to have venues around town that have late shows. It means that everyone with weirder working hours – not your 9-to-5ers – has a better chance to arrive in time. O’Brien’s Pub offers late shows, sometimes Midway Cafe (and they always go late anyway), and even places like Club Passim might offer an early and late show to capture every kind of crowd.

The band kicked out the pop punk jams with a little metal flair. The dedicated vocalist lets them go a little deeper, extending your standard ditty into a ballad with more epic qualities.

Possibly a new single called “Body Double” dropping shortly?

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