Boston Band Crush – Show Crush

Every once in a while, when lurking on message boards or reading the comment section of a blog post somewhere, you’ll come across surly old Boston rock veterans who do nothing but talk about how much better it was in the old days. “Some of these bands are ok, I guess, but it’s not like it was when Gang Green was playing the Rumble” or “Yeah, the Sinclair will probably be nice, but it’s no Abbey Lounge,” stuff like that. That kind of talk is bound to happen, not everyone keeps up with what’s new, and once people stop going to shows and move to the suburbs, there seems to be some sort of phenomenon that arrests their desire to find something fresh, causing them to rationalize their new situation by convincing themselves that good bands stopped taking the stage when they stopped going out. It certainly doesn’t happen to everyone, and I hope it never happens to me.

If it were to happen, though, I know where my love affair with Boston music started. It was the halcyon days of the early 2000s when bands like Dear Leader, Taxpayer, The Information, and The Good North, Scamper, and The Sheila Divine were constantly playing around town. That was when I started going out to local shows and seeing bands that you didn’t really hear on the radio. In the years since, I’ve fallen in love with countless bands that I’d never have heard were it not for those first few, and for that they’ll always have a special place in my heart. That’s why I’m so excited to go to the Brighton Music Hall on Friday night; Dear Leader and Taxpayer will allow me to relive those days in a way that only music can. Aaron Perrino originally started Dear Leader as an outlet to release his own songs in the wake of The Sheila Divine’s breakup (spoiler alert: they got back together eventually), quickly expanded to a four-piece, and has recently expaned again to an eight-piece. The songs were incredibly strong to begin with, but doubling the number of players has allowed them to become even more fleshed out, more intricate and interesting than they already were. Taxpayer haven’t played in over a year, and only played a few times in the year leading up to that, so seeing them out is an increasingly rare treat that I don’t intend to miss. – Richard Bouchard  Boston Band Crush