The BGN News Archive

Kilslug. Rico on right. First time shown in color.

Rico Petroleum (Maguire) died this week. He was as colorful and edgy as his groups, and what groups! The notorious Kilsug, Upsidedown Cross, the Groinoids and a founding member of SCREW CART. Rico has had health issues for a few years. His obituary is here

When we saw Rico we always talked about the photo story we did with Kilslug where we walked around Chinatown. He loved that day. Photos from that have shown up regularly through the years. Rico used to record outside of studios and release some of those recordings around. He did a lot of recording with Tontileo. They were a sympathetic creative combo and best friends too.

Mark Kennedy posted "Final Wishes" a song by Rico on Facebook. You can catch it on YouTube There are many more Rico songs on Mark's YouTube channel.

Rico was out in the clubs regularly through the years. He used to hang at Fathers Too and was at the Fathers Too reunion in 2007. Rico wrote up his Fathers Too recollections on that page also. There was the Kilsug reunion show at Church in October of 2007. And he was at the Arthur Freedman's Photo show in 2008 with his son Trevor. We see he also played a set with Psycho at O'Brien's in 2011.

The first time we saw SCREW CART was when they were playing Club Bohemia at the Cantab in 2016. The song "Cheese Wheel" stood out as it does to this day. Two thirds through the set Rico seemed dissatisfied with his guitar and in frustration put in down and walked off the stage and out of the club. We saw him later on the street outside. Just a punk thing to do.

On the SCREW CART FB page they clarified that Rico officially left the group 6 years ago but was on the recordings for "Mask Shammer" and "Anubis". Rico playing with Kilslug for the last time in 2011 on Sonic Lobotomy. Joanie Lindstrom played Kilslug's "Human Sacrifice" (2010) on her show in memoriam of Rico this week. That song shows the power and aura the group emitted. Here it is on YouTube.

Rico was also Miss Lyn's roommate on Mission Hill in the 90's. Rico will be missed!! Like everyone says he was a good guy!!

The people behind the resurrection of Great Scott have submitted plans on the new building to the City of Boston. Vanyaland had the details. They're gonna build a whole new building. O'Brien's will be located on the Cambridge St side. It will have the same 75 person capacity. Great Scott will have a 300 person capacity. There are four floors above the street level clubs with 139 residences.

The building will take 18 months to build and could start in as soon as four months. That means no O'Brien's during the building period. Where do you park? No answer to that.

This reminds us that we haven't heard anything about the Middle East becoming a complex with condos. That was in the news back in September of 2022. The story actually goes back to 2020.

Nelson Slater died this week (1/29) after a time in hospice care. Nelson was a high school friend of Lou Reed. Joe 'Count' Viglione brought Nelson to the Club Bohemia in 2014. We were at that show. We talked to Nelson about his album Wild Angel. Nelson said that Lou co-wrote most of the songs but gets credit on only one. The album is a well arranged singer/songwriter album. The Count brought Nelson back the next year at Club Bohemia again.

Sal Maida, the bass player for Milk and Cookies, a very early CBGB’s group (1974), died this week also. They were pop when everyone around them was punk. They have a Live at CBGBs 1975. Hozac Records published his autobiography Four Strings. He later went on to have a long career playing with: Roxy Music, Sparks, Ronnie Spector, Mary Weiss and Cracker. Story in Brooklyn Vegan. WFMU has some live embedded cuts of the group from 1978.

New band alert - Yes Nanny has Tai (Petty Morals), Cindy Vacarro (The Spoilers and BDSX) and Josh Pickering. They'll be playing the Abbey Reunion of course. and have a bunch of gigs coming up, check the gig listings below.

The Chelsea Curve will be playing in Las Vegas in March. They're part of the tour with English mod rockers Sharp Class. Cromm Fallon who are connected to Rum Bar Records and live in Las Vegas will be on the bill too. Event page

Cambridge Day newspaper reports that the beloved Somerville Theater and Crystal Ballroom complex is being sold. The good news is that the buyers are four long time employees who plan on continuing the status quo with no changes. The story in Cambridge Day.

Jack Byrd is a member of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. He now has an album with Little Steven. His first song released is a Coolest Song in the World. "Transistor Radio Childhood" has a little of a Springsteen spirit to it. It name checks a few things you might remember about listening to the radio in the sixties. You can hear the song on YouTube

VIDEOS......

It seems like The Dogmatics are being plagued by a band in England that have named themselves….The Dogmatics. Right off there are problems. The group has a song titled "Charm School Dropout" and it's been getting shuffled into The (real) Dogmatics digital streams. Our Dogmatics, always proactive, has posted a video about the situation.

An Iggy Pop CD plus Blu-ray called Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 2023 came out in January. The video of "Gimme Danger" off that Blu-ray was just released. There is a killer band behind Iggy that makes it even better. Iggy, older but still shirtless, sounds great. To the right is "The Passenger" from the same package. The CD/Blu-Ray on Amazon

The Mistons are a punk band from Portland, OR with a single "Bronze Age Collapse". It couldn't be about the real Bronze Age Collapse in the twelfth century BC, could it? Actually, it sort of is! That's what makes their video for the song so much fun.

They have low budget mock ups and cheesy film clips to represent the era. Did we mention it's also a dance? They are urging you to "do the bronze age, do the bronze age" over and over. Don't worry, it makes more sense when you see the video...sorry, no it doesn't. That is interspersed with low light live performance shots.
The singer goes a bit crazy. The music is minimal riff based punk livened up with some screams. The best part is at the three minute mark where they go bonkers and musically recreate the bronze age collapse seen in the video. Just lots of fun.

RADIO......

Brian Young on A Crash Course for the Ravers played five songs from The Fuzztones in connection with the movie The Fuzztones vs the World that played Thursday 1/6 at the Regent in Arlington. We liked that hit, we hadn't heard enough Fuzztones in the last few years. The Crash Course for the Ravers show is on WMFO 91.5 FM on Saturdays at 1pm.

After that go to the WMFO schedule page Hit the A Crash Course for the Ravers show on 1pm on Saturday, then hit the 'archive' button.

On the Rising show on Tuesday 1/28 Skybar had three members (Kevin, Chris and Kyle) of Oh the Humanity! in for an interview on the occasion of their new album Ground to Dust. They talk about how they take members' song ideas and add them together which results in different elements existing side by side that usually would not happen. We were struck by the matter of fact way they talk, next to the aggressive attack of the songs. They talked a lot about the six minute closing song "Ground to Dust". It's such an epic song, and it was nice to know they thought so much about creating it.

Skybar played a generous 7 songs from the album which is out in vinyl but it's sold out online. You can also get it from the band at the live shows. In fact they are doing a few shows to celebrate the new album- March 14th in Quebec at Turbo Haus, March 15th at Faces, and March 16th at AS220 Providence.(see the gig listings below)

Hear the interview below. They like the idea of an album as a unit and don’t like the whole idea of Spotify. Here is their FB page and their Link Tree page.

Skybar's Rising show is on WMFO 91.5 FM on Tuesdays at 8pm. After that go to the WMFO schedule page The Rising show at 8pm on Tuesday, then hit the 'archive' button.

Joanie Lindstrom did an anniversary show that was dedicated to the memorable shows she had seen at the Paradise through the years. As you can imagine that is quite a list. Some names: Cheap Trick, B-52's, AC/DC, Boomtown Rats, Echo and the Bunnymen, Buzzcocks, Ultravox, Datsuns, Devo, Adam and the Ants, XTC, U2, 999, Jam, Nico, The Damned, Van Halen, Iggy Pop and more. With the music, comes Joanie's stories. She has hung out backstage and at after parties with the groups.

On Joanie's 2/6 show she played Boston hardcore group The Promised End in preparation for their show at the new Salem club Moon Base One. That's an excuse to embed a song by them because we think that their album The Buried and the Broken is a much worthy piece of work.

To hear Joanie's whole show go to the WMBR archive page and hit the Late Risers Show for Thursday 1/30 or 2/6.

PODCASTS.........

Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico in conjunction with Mike on the Mic show will have Tom Baker in the studio live on WMFO on Saturday February 15.

Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico had an interview with Canyons and Locusts members Justin Keane and Amy Young. A lot of the band's recordings have been done at New Alliance with Ethan Dussault and they give Ethan his props. They talk about their new release The Goal Gigolo which is a concept album. Get this; Justin had a dream, he threw in the details into Chat GPT and had that expanded the story and that morphed into the album. That's novel and a sign o' the times!

Sethyspice played the Ian Donaldson song "Just Another Rock N Roll Song" for the second week in a row on the Elastic Glam Show 1/31. We heartedly endorse that. We did another repeat or two on our own. That song captures the spirit of glam and the golden age when the singer would "glam, glam, glam the night away".

Other new songs were by Daily J with "Cheap Tequila Sunrise", Gyasi's "Cheap High" and three songs by locals Garden of Hedon. There were classics by Sweet, T. Rex, Roxy Music and Bowie.

On the 2/7 show Sethyspice played a Happy Birthday tribute to Woody Woodmansey the drummer in The Spiders for Mars.The songs were: U-Boat - "Star Machine", Holy Holy - ""With of a Circle", Arnold Corn - ""Moonage Daydream" and the Spiders from Mars - "Ziggy Stardust".
There were new songs by Crymwave, Sir Prize and the Tomorrow Nights, Ian Donaldson, The Black Keys and The Darkness. Then there was "Vampire Days" by Gene Dante and the Future Starlets. It took the Elastic Glam show to put Gene Dante in the soundscape that the group was made for.

On Sonic Overload on 1/27 Al Quint played a punk set that began with "Ain't Been to No Music School" by the Nosebleeds. For some reason that single was in all the bins in Boston/Cambridge record stores in 1978. It's gotten some attention in subsequent years. Al followed that up with Alberto Y Lost Trios Pananoias' doing the explicit "Kill" that got played on the radio back when it could be. That was followed by The Curse doing "Killer Bees" and finally the Rotters doing the classic "Sit on My Face Stevie Nicks". We have that set embedded below. That was what punk radio sounded like in its prime.

One local band Al played that we didn't know was The Touch Heads whose latest release is from 2019. Their Bandcamp page. We like the raging paranoia of "Walls". We have that below.

Another set that captured punk radio was the Vibrators - "Judy Says", Boomtown Rats - "Blind Date", Robert Johnson - "Wreck My Mind" and Elvis Costello - "No Action".

On the 2/3 Sonic Overload show Al began and ended the show with all Ramones doing "This Ain't Havana" of End of the Century. That was their fifth album in 1979. Their first was 1976. Al played a new local hardcore/punk group called Phagocyte. The song was "Rat Thing" off their Rat Thing EP of 2022. We have "Weaponized Incompetence" off their second EP below.

A Boston set included two Propeller artists; Lori Green with "Really Don't Care" and Christmas with "Dig We Must", both demos. We have those below.

You can hear the whole show on the Sonic Overload web page

Come are heading to Australia to do some shows: connected to that the Thalia Zedek was interviewed on Junkyard Podcast from PBS 106.7 radio in Australia. Thalia gives an overall history of the group. She details how hard it was to record some albums. Later after talking about the four groups she simultaneously in she admits she sometimes forgets how to play some songs she's written. The whole show can be heard here . They have eight well selected songs that span Come's career. We have the interview section embed below.

NEW MUSIC/CDs......

Paul Cripple of Regan Youth died last September. We interviewed him in 2014. The group's last album Life and Times Revisited, Volume III is now out. This album tells the story of Dave Insurgent, the cofounder of Reagan Youth and Paul's high school friend. The whole album will be released on February 28. The early single "Hapless Misfits" is a hardcore song with a difference. It feels like an autobiography that is fuller and more frank than you usually hear in any song. As befits this anarcho-punk band the song ends with an environmental plea. They are presenting the album as a concept album a la Tommy. This single does fit into that idea. We will be interested to hear the whole album.

We're always ready for a full scale Bubble Gum Music revival. It's our guilty pleasure. Gene Champagne from Canada who is on Rum Bar Records is doing his bit by covering the Ohio Express song "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy". He puts some punk and volume into it to beef it up. That volume against the sweetness is a nice twist to the Bubble Gum. Gene Champagne is playing a Rum Bar show at The Square Root 3/6 (see gig listings below)

Also over at Rum Bar Records - they are ramping up the promo machine for the next Slamdinistas album Wild & Restless. Their last album Shoot for the Stars was one of our faves in 2023. They have one song out now called "Oh Yeah". We love the singer Gabriel Johns. With a singer like that you're half way to success before you write the songs. The album comes out on April 25. That probably means we will get a few singles here and there to keep us hooked. You can preorder the album on Bandcamp.

Yet again it's Rum Bar Records, working up the new album Cryptic Numbers by Las Vegas rockers The Laissey Fairs. They have three songs streaming from the album now. There are more than a few groups doing the sixties thing but no one takes the deep dive like The Laissez Fairs. When you listen it seems like there are layers upon layers of sixties vibes resonating all at once. If you like acid psych, this is the group to check out.

It's Valentine Day this week and there are two songs that are aimed at the romantic day. One is Rum Bar Records again. They have plucked a song of The Shang Hi Los last album Aces Eights and Heartbeats. "Monsieur Valentine" fits the bill here. It's a good excuse to pay attention to the song again. Jenn D'Angora is so perfect playing the broken hearted with the 60's girl group voice and arrangement. Listen, enjoy, repeat.

Smitt E Smitty and his Feztone friends have their twist on a romantic song with "#1 Most Likely". The twist here is that the #1 most likely, is most likely to break his heart, make him blue, make him kneel down and cry, kill him with one look and put the devil in him. You know he loves her though! Smitty sings in a low Iggy Pop style vocal and the group slowly builds its rhythmic groove as the song goes on.

Here's some good shows coming up .....

February 11, 2024 (Saturday) Captain Easychord, Butterscott, Larry Newman, and Leon Rich - The Jungle  [6PM]

February 15, 2024 (Saturday) A V-Day Matinee with Muck & The Mires, The Carnivals, Stop Calling Me Frank - 3-7 at the Midway

February 18, 2024 (Tuesday) Coffin Salesman, Matt Charles, Connor Storms & His Bouquet at The Midway

February 21, 2024 (Friday) Far Above the Ground, The New Frustrations, The Associates at the New World Tavern, Plymouth

February 21, 2024 (Friday) Tsk Tsk Task, Gut Health, S.C.O.B.Y, Fat Randy at Moon Base One in Salem

February 22, 2024 (Saturday) Huck 2, The Stigmatics, The Thigh Scrapers at The Jungle

February 22, 2024 (Saturday) 10 Year anniversary show for Worshipper also with Summoner and Roadsaw at Widowmaker Brewing in Braintree Wood Rd. Eventpage

February 26, 2024 (Wednesday) M.O.T.O., Paint Fumes, Puke Pisstols (X-Fuzzy, Monsieurs/t Andy California, Adult Learners) at Deep Cuts in Medford FB page

March 1, 2024 (Saturday) The Relegated, Trusty Sidekick, Kermit’s Finge, Charmed & Strange at The Midway for a 3PM matinee

March 1, 2024 (Saturday) Zip-Tie Handcuffs, Dwelley, Clifford, Little Miss Echo - O'Briens

March 1, 2024 (Saturday) The Jacklights, Campsite (NY), The Burning Paris at Deepp Cuts Medford.

March 6, 2024 (Thursday) The Avengers, Lupo Citta Middle East UP 7PM. FB page

March 6, 2024 (Thursday) Rum Bar Records Rumble at The Root!! Brad Marino "On The Brink" Album Release Party, Brad Marino Band, Gene Champagne Band, Tom Baker's Double Down at The Square Root

March 8, 2024 (Saturday) Pledge Pins, Whyte Lipstick, Andy California, Stress Balls at The Midway

March 8, 2024 (Saturday) Abbey Reunion Show with Yes Nanny, Eric Salt & The Electric City, The Grownup Noise at Sally O'Brien's

March 9, 2024 (Sunday) TREE, Drained, Outlourdes, Far Too Late - 3-7PM Matinee at Alchemy Prov RI

March 9, 2024 (Sunday) The Surfrajettes are at Taffetta Music Hall in Lowell, MA TIX

March 10, 2024 (Monday) The Surfrajettes and The Black Widows are at Alchemy, Providence RI

March 12, 2024 (Wednesday) Bestial Mouths, Gossip Collar, DJ Vamp Daddy at O'Brien's

March 13, 2024 (Thursday) American Ocelot, The Haymakers, Lonely Leesa and The Lost Cowboys, DJ Sherman spinning - MIddle East Up 6:30-11:30PM

March 13, 2024 (Thursday) Oh The Humanity at Mulligan's Biddeford, ME.

March 14, 2024 (Friday) Permanent Blue, The New Noise, Return Address at Moon Base One Salem

March 15, 2024 (Saturday) Oh The Humanity!, One Fall, Little Low, Sky Tigers - Faces Brewing, Malden

March 16, 2024 (Sunday) Punk Matinee! The Callouts, Oh The Humanity!, Structure Sounds, Follow Thru at AS220 Proovidence - 3PM!

March 21, 2024 (Friday) Crush Depth, Threat Level Burgandy, Sound Advice at  The Jungle

March 22, 2024 (Saturday) Somerville Record Fair - Local and regional record dealers from around the North East are bringing out thousands of vinyl records and CDs for your digging pleasure. 61 tables of vinyl records and CDs.at The Holiday Inn Washington St Somerville $5 admission - 9AM-5PM - FB event page for more info

March 22, 2024 (Saturday) Actor/Observer, Old Soul, Girih at Deep Cuts, Medford, 7PM

March 22, 2024 (Saturday) The Agents, Brunt of It, Nick & The Adversaries at Faces, Malden - All Ages 8PM - FB page.

March 23, 2024 (Sunday) The Mess Around at its new home - The Square Root 4-6PM

March 29, 2024 (Saturday) The Marvels Reunion!!!! with The Downhauls, Bad Terms at Deep Cuts Medford TIX

March 29, 2024 (Saturday) Guilloteenagers, Hambone Skinny, Screwcart at The Square Root

April 5, 2025 (Saturday) Weigh Boat, RoseR, American Ocelot, Jennifer Tefft and The Strange at The Midway

April 11 - 13, 2025 (Friday-Sunday) Dark Spring Festival at The MIddle east Up - check out the Event page here.

April 17, 2025 (Thursday) Dead Boys with Richard Lloyd (Of Television) at Deep Cuts, Medford, MA, 7pm

April 19, 2025 (Saturday) Gang of Four at The Crystal Ballroom, Somerville. Tickets.

April 24, 2025 (Thursday) Christian Death at Deep Cuts Medford 7-11PM

May 4, 2025 (Friday) One Fall, DNA's Evolution, Type 66, The Mighty Suicide Squirrels at The Middle East UP

May 11, 2025 (Sunday) The Queers at The Middle East UP

May 16, 2025 (Saturday) The FUs, Arctic Horror, Deprogrammer Cult, The Angry La's (Formerly GIVE UP!) at KOTO Underground, Salem:

June 27, 2024 (Sunday) The Gruesomes, Muck & The Mires, The Chelsea Curve at The Middle East UP EventPage

CONTACT US AT....misslynbgn@yahoo.com Send us your gig listings, your anything else you've got!! You want your CD reviewed?? Contact us for that too.