The BGN News Archive

Show for Staffy of the Marvels at Faces

"As many of you know, and maybe some of you don’t, Staffy lead singer for The Marvels has left the building. Our lord of chaos, high court jester and the muse behind The Marvels particular take on punk rock passed away on Wednesday July 16th from a massive heart attack in Portland Maine. One day short of his 46th birthday.

Yeah , way too young and too early…. In life he was usually late. Staffy was one of a kind. Brilliant, hilarious, infuriating, endearing, sweet, considerate, inconsiderate.. complicated. Most of us are. He was also one of the greatest punk rock singers to ever grab the mic in one hand, the crowds throat with the other and count to 4. The psychotic engineer at the front of the runaway train of The Marvels.

He never mailed it in.. not ever. He never backed down or gave an inch and with that sly smile and venomous leer me made damn sure to invite everybody in the room along for the ride. That Staffy will live forever. At this time funeral arrangements if any are with his biological family. But we are always been a tribe.. a family of beautiful misfits, and our community does this stuff our way - There will be a very special memorial show / punk rock wake on Saturday November 1st at Faces in Malden Mass.

Trust and believe it will be a banger. Thank you all for the outpouring of love for Staffy and the band this past month. It’s been rough and you’ve helped a lot.
With love, Zim, The Duchess, Niceguy Jimmy and JVK."

Yup we could not say it better!

To celebrate Staffy and The Marvels Rum Bar Records has done a service by releasing the Marvels second album Cheat to Win originally on Abbey Lounge Records in 2004 this version has a bonus Abbey Lounge Records flyer and advert from their time spent making music, records and memories with family and friends at The Abbey Lounge. Listen to the album on Bandcamp. We have "Drunk and Irresponsible" embeded below.

The memorial show for Staffy at Faces in Malden on November 1 is with The Marvels (with guest lead singer), Duck & Cover and The Black Cheers. TIX

The Nervous Eaters have released a new song!! " C.A.L.F.L.A." And what a recording!!! It takes a nanosecond to register that the Eaters are blasting it out without reserve. The recording sounds like all the instruments are red lined. A fast count off and a razor sharp toned riff starts a headlong rush that never stops, but then again it’s only two minutes long.

The chorus lets out a few very Ramonish “Let’s go” shouts. Love that! There’s no solo, there’s no time! It’s engineered for maximum excitement. This song is as hard and fast as any they have ever played. Next on the agenda is to hear that opening riff live!

The title is a shortcut for California, Los Angeles. Steve Cataldo says: "We still have memories of driving across the country, the road trip of a lifetime. Driving all night under the stars has always stayed with us. Taking RT66 when we could, we partied all the way, as you could in those days. The Nervous Eaters are bound for California again and soon. C.A.L.F.L.A. is our call sign west."

Then we see that there are some 1980’s unreleased tracks that were released on Bandcamp beside some of the Eaterville recordings. “Man’s Got A Right”/” No More Idols” were recorded at Perfect Crime Studios in Watertown. We don't remember ever hearing the song “Man’s Got a Right”. It's pumping with one of those sharp Cataldo solos.

This version of “No More Idols” is more revved up than other versions. They really have the foot on the gas pedal and the guitar work is insanely great. It’s a head spinning version all around. Listening to these two songs you can hear the same energy and speed that's in the new “C.A.L.F.L.A.” recorded 45 years later.

O'Brien's/Great Scott had a scare with the planning board stalling approval. That has been turned around with the large show of community support for the project. That is outlined in this Boston.com article.

They now have some dates. The construction/demolition will begin in March of 2026 and it is expected to be finished 12 to 16 months after that. The other three corners will also have new buildings all totaling 244 condos, 103 apartments and 22,000 square feet of retail…with only a handful of new parking spaces.

Another article.

We posted a new page on Facebook this last week- Songs About The Rat. We have a list of all the songs about The Rat ... that we could think of. We got the idea when we saw the new song “Kenmore, No More” about The Rat and Kenmore Square by Steve Geraci. We reviewed in the last BGN.

We came up with 10 songs and got reminded of three more. We start with "Let's Go To The Rat" by Willie Alexander and "528" by the Nervous Eaters. Here's our page: Songs About The Rat We are open to any new ones that anyone can come up with. Just hit the "contact us" link at the top of the page.

VIDEOS......

Weakened Friends have an album in the works. "Nosebleed" is the third single release from Feels Like Hell . The video for it is set in a fitness club. The song is about personal longing and that's transmitted very well in the video.

Weakened Friends seem to have it all down. Singer Sonia Sturino naturally has a voice that transmits emotion and longing. Their songwriting clicks with their subject matter.

Juliana Hatfield has a new song/video titled "Scratchers". The song is about gambling and the gambling mindset. The video shows people going at their scratch tickets, a sight that is so common that it has become invisible. We don't question it anymore. Hatfield puts the spotlight on it and the hope and reward it offers. The song is from the upcoming release Lightning Might Strike on American Laundromat Records.

Intense Energy The Sounds of Skateboarding is a new documentary on the way that focuses on the intersection of punk music and skateboarding. Produced by Trust Records and directed by Coan Buddy Nichols the film features legendary skateboarders and musicians, tracing the cultural evolution through different eras of skateboarding.

Netflix has a Devo documentary We Are All Devo, playing now. We always thought Devo was a big success, they had hit songs, played large halls and were on TV here and there. Every member of the group, however, seems to be sour on their whole experience. The record company never understood their music and the public never understood their devolution theory. Then it seemed their career ended before they wanted. These are not happy campers.

We always loved them and loved the music. Even their devolution theory seems more real than ever these days. The movie Idiocracy from 2006 took on their theory.

We got to know Cindy Lawson from her album on Rum Bar Records. She has a new single/video for ""The Reckoning" which is on Hygh Tension/Virgin this time. Cindy was part of the'80s Minneapolis punk scene with The Replacements and Soul Asylum. We like the small club scenario of the video. She's got the attitude, "karma's a bitch, but so am I" she sings.

RADIO......

On Skybar’s 9/16 Rising show he had a few guests. The first was Carissa Johnson who is now splitting time between Boston and Brooklyn, NY. They played her next single titled “Millennium”. Carissa did some live songs in the studio. She also revealed that she paints skate boards and is using that to promo her next album.

Next up was an interview with the Glimmer Stars. They talk about how they got involved with Lou Mansdorf and Rum Bar Records. They have a new album coming out in November. The group was playing The Burren.

Then it was a third interview with Jay Allen and Tom Baker. They talked about The Mess Around and it’s future plans. Jay played “Chopped Liver” in the studio. Jay and Freeloader will be playing Underbones – that’s the music room below Redbones. Tom discussed his next recording session and did a few songs live.
There’s a whole lot of talking and info on this show.

To hear the Rising show listen on WMFO on Tuesdays from 7 to 9pm, or go to the WMFO schedule page and hit Rising show on Tuesday at 7pm and then hit archive.

PODCASTS......

Blowing Smoke with Twisted Rico has Johnny Angel of Thrills and The Blackjacks in for an interview. Johnny moved to LA a long time ago, because of that he can articulate the difference between the Boston and LA scenes and he does that.

Johnny lived in Waban and Wellesley before moving to intown Boston. He got into bands immediately. He makes a point about how small the scene was in Boston at the beginning with just a few hundred people. The Ramones were a real turning point in music for Johnny. Thrills was his first group but he did fill in bass chores for Marc Thor and Tracks before that.
Thrills never went beyond local fame and Johnny thinks it was because they were straddling punk and pop without being either. A move to NYC for 6 months didn't work.

There's a point were Johnny runs though short descriptions of all the local groups. He nails it too. Then he tells the tale of the Blackjacks and talks about the origins of one the greatest oddball Boston groups ever - The Swinging Erudites.
Johnny has been a talk show host and a music reviewer in LA and he goes over some of the high points on those. He has a fabulous story about Skip Spence of Moby Grape.
There's even more! Johnny has a lot to download and he's a good storyteller.

The Elastic Glam show had not only tons of glam but even some Jaws talk on the 9/12 show. Sethyspice talked with Michael Sterling, the builder and owner of a replicate ORCA boat, the famous boat from the Jaws movie. That was followed by a Queen song "Seven Seas of Rhye" followed up by a collaboration of The Struts and Brian May on "Could Have Been Me".

Sethyspice then played a very interesting, and some would say disturbing, song. There is a lot to unpack in "Bread Butter Tea Sugar" by Wolf Alice. Here's an article that will give you some info. Then more new glam with The Last Dinner Party, Bobby Dazzle, The States, Creem Circus and Gyasi. Locals get represented with "Tonight" by Little Billy Lost.

There was the usual pile of hardcore on the Sonic Overload 9/15 show. We have two songs to share: Deadline (from DC) doing "I.C.A." We like this because it repeats the line "we don't care" with increasing hysterics and that's punk right there. You can hear all 59 seconds of that below.

The group CNTS (From LA) had "Thoughts & Prayers". We were wondering what that would sound like. Well, it's way intense. It's a reminder, if you need it, of how music can shake you up even when you don't exactly what they are saying.

Al Quint never just colors inside the lines. This show he even played some Aerosmith and Foghat. He also plays a lot of local post punk. He also played locals Vitamin doing "Sarah's Brid" and Someone & the Somebodies with "People Are Dumb", two good examples of Boston post punk. You don't usually come across these. We have those songs embedded below.

You can hear the Sonic Overload shows on the web blog.

NEW MUSIC/CD's ......

Duck & Cover have done a service with their new release No Hounds In The Cluster. The group has released songs regularly, even through covid, but it's all been EP's. What they've done here is expand the last EP with 9 more songs. The extra songs are from two earlier EPs, three digital singles and one unreleased song. That unreleased song is "What Is Life". We've heard them play that George Harrison song live - that will be great to have.

The beauty here is to have all these songs on one album…and available on CD. Even just hearing the 5 songs streaming on Bandcamp now is a treat. "Bored In the City" is the best local rush of punk we've enjoyed in a while. "Girl From Nowhere" off the Trash-Fest EP has so many great moments. The singing (the way Chris pronounces "popular") , the drums, the twin guitar breakout and the way they do a Ramones copy at the 48 second mark (and then, just for 10 seconds).

It's another split single from Rob Moss and Skin Tight Skin. This time the other artist is Eytan Mirsky from NYC. Mirsky's "Good Hair Day" was originally a power pop tune. Rob Moss toughens it up with distorted power chords and adds attitude. He brings in Saul Koll (The Lovesores and The Guerrilla Teens) to play lead guitar. At the tail end of the tune the band quotes "Anarchy In the UK" and that's a fun twist.

Mirsky does his power pop magic on "What Happened (To the Rock and Roll)" and it works great. Hearing the Skin Tight Skin's version one wouldn't have the insight that the harder song would translate to power pop. That's part of the fun with these split singles.

Who else could do a song like this? Stop Calling Me Frank has a fun stomper extoling the virtues of Market Basket. "MB Anthem (The Market Basket Song)" doesn't take a side in the current shake up in the company but SCMF makes it known that they support Arthur T. Demoulas. The song is more focused on the lines and everyone going at the same time to the store - real people problems.

The song has punch and drive. They have the rhythmic groove go extra deep with the sax digging in the whole way. Singer Lenny again proves his worth with a performance that only he could do. The song is a compact 1:40 but you will be singing "at the Market Basket" forever. The song will be released on September 26 on Rum Bar. See the Stop Calling Me Frank Bandcamp page.

Figures On a Beach were a band from 1981 to 1983. They started in Detroit and ended up in Boston. That's how we got Anthony Kacznyski, Smitt E. Smitty and Chris Ewen on the Boston scene. Soundgarden Records just release their song "Play" that was recorded in 1991 at Q Division.

The recording is so clean, it sounds like it was recorded yesterday. Kaczynski adds so much with his voice ... some things never change. This is a reminder of how good this band was. No small mystery why they opened for OMD, Ministry, The Teardrop Explodes and Adam Ant. You can read some more about this at Knyvet.

We've been thinking of Kenmore Square lately because of our Rat/Kenmore song page. When we saw the album cover of Payback is a Bitch by C4 on Triple B records we wanted to post it. It shows a trashed Kenmore Square with the Citco sign still up there, like maybe someone (the nude guy in the middle) was pissed enough about what Kenmore Square became that they destroyed it.

There are lots of expressions of frustration and anger on the album. We had a hard time deciding which song to feature. "Fuck It All", "With Hate II", "Cry About It" and others were good, but we are going with "Stay Away From Me". We think all the songs tap into some real situations.

Radioactivity are from Denton, TX. They have some ex-members from the Marked Men. (Album on YouTube ). "Time Won't Bring Me Down" is the title song of the forthcoming album. It's a garage rock and punk combo. Even though the sound has an edge to it, it also manages to also carve out a mood. The guitar wall of sound gets your attention, but you still can hear the detailed bass work insistently carving out its niche.
This got to us. We listened it to it more than a few times.

We like Problem Patterns from Belfast, UK because they sound so primal punk. There is lots of humor on this six song album. Even when we don't get most of the words just the title of the song "Classic Rock Has Become My Prison" tells you what you have to know.

The title track "Boring Songs for Boring People" repeats the title for a whole minute, sort of proving the point, and that's after repeating "Bone Idle" for a minute in the previous song. They also spell out "Bone Idle", to reinforce it, and get increasingly frantic as they do it.

They have Matt Korvette from Pissed Jeans as a guest on one song. The project has an excess of punk spirit that warms our hearts.

The Mendozaz are from Toronto. Just the title of their album shows they have a sense of humor - The Completely Fictional History of This Great Nation of Canada. The first song on the album is "Fuck You: The Musical" and they go from there. There is a song about a shark attack, another is titled "An American Werewolf In London, Ontario"

The one song that is streaming on Bandcamp is "Late Stage 12 Gauge". That's not a regular shotgun wedding scenario. In this the wife doesn't want another guy to hang with her husband in the man cave, and she has the shotgun. We think that's it.

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

NOTE: We had a computer flub and our listings got erased!!! We will update in a week.

September 23, 2025 (Tuesday) Bad Idea USA, Kids On Fire, Mk Naomi, Autumn Astronauts at The MIdway 7:30

September 26, 2025 (Friday) Tad Overbaugh Record Release Pary with Modern Day Idols at Sally O'Brien's

September 27, 2025 (Saturday) Futon Lasagna, Skaleton Crew, Threat Level Burgundy, So Many Dangers for a 3M matinee at The Midway

September 27, 2025 (Saturday) The Angry-Las play one of two final gigs before their singer departs for California!! Angry-Las, In Shreds, Gozerian, Letterik at The Midway The Angs play 3rd of 4 bands. FB page

September 27, 2025 (Saturday) Kingpin, The Long Wait, Wire Lines, DJ Vivid Oblivion at Deep Cuts FB page

September 28, 2025 (Sunday) Allston Village Street Fair Festival - On Harvard Ave, Six blocks of entertainment. Music all day - noon to 6pm. Bands include Blindspot, Zip Tie Handcuffs and Children of the Flaming Wheel. All bands and tiems listed on website Facebook page.

September 28, 2025 (Sunday) Coffin Salesman, Daphne Blue Underworld, Connor Storms & His Bouquet for a 3PM matinee at The Midway

October 4, 2025 (Saturday) Soraia, The Cocktail Slippers, River City Rebels, The Chelsea Curve at The Midway 8PM

October 4, 2025 (Saturday) Plymouth Punk Rock Market At the Mayflower Brewery Plymouth. FB event page

October 11, 2025 (Saturday) The Downhauls, Roxy and The Crisis, Gene Dante and The Future Starlets at The Middle East - Up - 8:00PM All Ages

October 11, 2025 (Saturday) Lyres, Mal Thursday Quintet, Tiber Bomb at VFW 6859 in Portland, ME check FB page for location directions

October 16, 2025 (Thursday) Moving Targets celebrate the release of their new LP and are hitting the road with Atlanta based melodic punkers in Billy Batts and the Made Men, with special guests Spiller 

October 18, 2025 (Saturday) Al Barile Day at Roadrunner All proceeds to benefit Dana Farber Cancer Institute ... info coming...

October 19, 2025 (Sunday) The Sound Cove presents the first ever Super Sonic Showcase with The Chelsea Curve, Cold Expectations, Speed Fossil, Happy Little Clouds, Corin Ashley and Eric Barlow at The Burren this is an EARLY show 2- 5:30PM. FB page.

October 25, 2025 (Saturday) The Annual Wreck-o-Ween hardcore/punk/thrash fest.at the C-Note, Hull Angs are playing as part of the annual Wreck-o-Ween hardcore/punk/thrash fest. More details TBA

October 25, 2025 (Saturday) An International Garage Rock Shakedown with Stupidity, Muck & The Mires, The Chelsea Curve, Pop!, at The Stone Church Music CLub, Newmarket, NH FB page.

October 26, 2025 (Sunday) Galaxy Cake, Pleasing Terrors, American Ocelot at The Jungle EARLY show 5-8PM

October 30, 2025 (Thursday) Stupidity, Chelsea Curve, Little Billy Lost, at The Burren

November 14, 2025 (Friday) Steve Conte, Muck & the Mires, Gene Dante & the Future Starlet, Pink (acoustic) at Deep Cuts in Medford FB page.

December 4, 2025 (Thursday) Agnostic Front, Raw Brigade, Violent Way at The MIddle East Down

January 24, 2026 (Saturday) Hooligan Holiday Boston with The Oppressed - ALL AGES showat The Middle EAST 7PM doors. FB page

CONTACT US AT....misslynbgn@yahoo.com

We had a computer flub and our listings got erased!!! We will update in a week.