Put on your costumes and head over to PA’s Lounge tomorrow night, Oct. 29, for a Halloween cover show — it’s going to feel like taking a trip back to the late 70’s/early 80’s.

The lineup is as follows:

Megadeth (Mass Death)
The Sex Pistols (The Four Point Restraints)
Television (A Bit Much + School for Robots)
The Cure (Ruby Ridge, pictured above)

9pm, 21+, $10
PA’s Lounge
345 Somerville Avenue
Somerville, MA

–The Deli Staff

Local musician Audrey Ryan has written a book about the music industry and all the highs and lows of being a musician — networking, touring, and struggling to make a living. The Need To Be Heard is a book for and about DIY musicians — artists who do not have big support teams that consist of labels, managers, and lawyers. It is the story of a variety of artists, both known and unknown, all united by a burning desire to be heard. Through interviews with dozens of artists and people in the music industry, and through her own story, Ryan reveals that our experiences in this business are collective in our triumphs and struggles.

Head down to the Nave Gallery in Somerville on Saturday, Nov. 5 for the book release. Ryan will read excerpts from The Need to be Heard, as well as answer questions, and play music.

Lineup:

7:30pm- Guy Capecelatro III
8:15pm- Dylan Metrano reading + Tiger Saw performance
9:00pm- Audrey Ryan

Saturday, November 5th @7:30pm
Nave Gallery/ Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church
155 Powderhouse Blvd, Somerville MA
**FREE wine & snacks. $5 admission, book is $10

–Chrissy Prisco

There was a time, largely consigned to memory now, when lead guitar players were not like the rest of us. They were gods; long-haired supermen who strode over the sod with giant platform shoes, despoiling women and melting faces with equal impunity. Thunder crashed in their wake and lightning burst forth from their guitars. The plucking of but a few mere notes by an experienced lead guitarist was enough to summon beasts to defy description, demons from the very banks of the River Styx, and, in some cases, The Devil himself.

In recent times, the role of the lead guitarist has dwindled in much of popular music. Pot-luck dinners and intimate evenings have taken the place of conquest and pillage, and a typical axeman these days is undoubtedly more comfortable ordering a cup of organic fair-trade coffee than shredding for the future of mankind, atop a snow-covered mountain peak somewhere deep in the former Soviet Union. It’s deplorable.

That’s where Ellis Ashbrook comes into the fold…

Click here to read the rest of the Ellis Ashbrook show review by Andrew Jeromski.

deli: How did Baby Barnyard start?

Baby Barnyard: I started this project almost exactly a year ago (it’s a solo project) and I guess I really started it out of a sense of frustration with the music projects I was working with at the time. I played the flute for several years with two different bands (Trials and Tribulations and World’s Greatest Dad) and while I loved playing with both bands, they weren’t really creative outlets for me because I had very little involvement in the songwriting process, so I started writing songs on my own. I think I just needed the space and privacy to prove to myself that I could actually do it. .

Click here to read more of the interview with Baby Barnyard.

–Chrissy Prisco

The painstakingly adorable artwork scrolled across their banner, the references to comic book series and anime in the band name and song titles (the song Appa referencing the hybrid buffalo-manatee from Avatar: The Last Airbender); what was I getting into? I expected the music to go straight over my head when I first visited the Bandcamp of I Kill Giants. Instead, what I got was a catchy fast-paced EP that rocks and entertains like Trees, Houses, and Swallows, by Maps & Atlases, and lyrically cuts to the core like their prevalent influence of the experimental spoken-word styling’s of La Dispute.

The four-piece math-y jazz-rock band reigns from Boston. All members are students of Berklee College of Music and under twenty years of age. The band blends genres seamlessly, but at the core of it, one can’t help but rock out to the captivating hooks and bellowing chants. The changing time signatures, sporadic hits, and rhythms made me think critically about what I was listening to and did so with flying colors. It was the most fun I’ve had listening to an EP in a long time.

Covaleski may be the strongest track on the EP and certainly makes for a great intro with an instrumental blend math-pop guitar doodling, a few jazzy breaks, and a punk breakdown as the band chants the title of the EP, “Let it out!” Covaleski is then followed by the most exciting and accessible song, I Believe in Technology, A single-worthy song that I can see blowing up (if only they believed in singles), with a chorus that has been stuck in my head for weeks: “She holds the gun to my head/ And then she asks me/What do I do next?"/ But darling, I don’t know./ She pulls the trigger back / "You’d better tell me"/ I sigh and take a breath,/ "Darling please go home."

The album ends with the powerful track Balance, and right back where the EP started, with the band chanting, “Let it out,” as the raw sound of the tapping guitar riff slowly dies. With the band’s best work yet to come, one can only marvel at the sound I Kill Giants were able to
achieve with limited resources and funds. For now everyone should go download their album on Bandcamp. It’s free, but of course gives you the option to give them some cash to help support their music so they won’t have to “get through the week on twenty bucks.” Make sure to catch their show this Sunday, Oct. 23 at the Audio Jungle at 18 Pratt St. Allson, MA with the band Deadhorse starting at 6pm.

–Mike Giordano

How did the band start?

51 Shortfalls was started when Jon met guitarist Kenny Parker through a fellow musician. Jon was looking for a guitarist for another project he had started about a year before. They spent about a month at the Charlestown Studios jamming. The music that started pouring out of the old brick room was a very different feel than the project at the time and instead of catering to the present we felt like a fresh start was in order. They decided to find other musicians for our new sound.

Click here to read the rest of the interview with 51 Shortfalls.

Based in Salem, Massachusetts, Machine 475 is an artistic collaborative/electronica-based experimental band featuring live instruments such as sitar, violin, theremin, didgeridoo, vocoder, guitars, bass, and percussion over hypnotizing heavy house/trance beats and softer melodic/atmospheric beats. The next two Sundays in October, they wil be performing at Precinct Bar in Somerville’s Union Square.

Sun. Oct. 23 —  8pm, $7 cover, 21+. Jade Sylvan opens.
Sun. Oct. 30 — (special pre-Halloween show): 8pm, $7 cover, 21+. Claudia Varona opens.

–Chrissy Prisco

At first glance, the 11-and-12-year old musicians that comprise Fire & Spice may incite one to think of names like Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus. Think again.

The only thing this hard-rocking foursome from Haverhill has in common with the aforementioned pair of pop starlets is that they were all born in the 1990’s. The lads and lasses from Fire & Spice, when asked to share some of their influences, rattled off names like Rush, Slipknot, Rob Zombie and Kiss, surely more substantial fare than that consumed by the likes of Hannah and The Biebs, one should think.

In any event, these kids certainly don’t act their ages when on stage, and display a level of confidence rarely glimpsed in such youthful performers.

On October 7, the precocious young rockers made their Cambridge debut, playing an extended set at the All Asia (yes, really), and we were there, like the proverbial fly on the wall, to observe the proceedings.

Click here to read the rest of the review by Sharon Locantore and Andrew Jeromski.

UNregular Radio Presents: Claudia Varona (pictured above) & The Phobia this Saturday, October 15th at Church of Boston. This is an all ages, daytime, event. Doors are open to the public at 12:30pm. Tickets: $10 at the door//$8 tickets from the bands or by ordering online.

Lineup and set times:

1:15pm The Primacy Effect
2:00pm Surrounded By Holidays
2:45pm Thumbs Up Get Down
3:25pm Crashing Cars
4:25pm Claudia Varona & The Phobia

–Chrissy Prisco