Filmmaker/Actor/Musician/"not gay, but we have sex" Casey ReganI've learned a lot researching and reporting for this blog. I've built this collection of pieces out of nothing and wrote about what I love, music and art. Experience is the most valuable teacher and all you have to get some experience is do-it-yourself. It's meaning and benefits stretch beyond scene or group or culture itself. You don't need permission to live. You don't need permission to learn. If you have the right attitude, nothing can stop you. Do it yourself.
I've been so inspired by the art I've seen and the music I've heard that I have taken up my first love, music. I am playing bass in The BOOTS, a Mission Hill/Jamaica Plain band with rhythm and blues and post-classic rock n roll simplicity, somewhere between The Blues Brothers and The Bay City Rollers. We feature dreamboat Phil Wilcox on Springsteen-esque vocals and Air Castle guitarist Nick Hashem shredding on the guit-fiddle.
Keep an eye out for our gig at Hellgate at the end of the month.
I'm also playing guitar/percussion and vocals in the Emerson College-based outfit Charlie & The Dive Dolls featuring four lovely ladies and myself busting some heavy blues.
EP coming in October.
Hard work is rewarding no matter if you fail or succeed.
Applause, Applause, Applause for the Dirty Dishes. Boston's hardest working, perhaps most talented independent rock band. They are the hottest band on the local music scene, a group of Berklee kids recording music DIY. The term used to describe them is "shoe-gaze." What does that mean? I looked up the definition on the internet and I'm still not sure what it is. I truly on honestly think the Dirty Dishes are undefinable. They combine so many genres together, their definitions can and have only gone so far.
They soldiered through despite shitty sound, it buzzed and feedbacked all night and Jenny's vocals were muffled a lot. Drummer Mike Thomas yelled a crack about it. "Is there even someone running sound. Is this a joke?"
With this change in audio, you could hear each individual member of the band for how talented they are. Jay getting extra heavy by employing mutli-string bass "chords" as it were. Mike wrecks yet controls his drums like sage warrior defending his tribe. Jenny's footwork on the pedals and solo was off-the-charts as usual. Alex headbangs as the medula oblongata, the brain stem of the band.
They proved quite adaptable by the end of "Into Thin Air" playing with the feedback and grinding instruments on amplifiers. This show forced them to sound raw and forced them to be raw.
This time they were perched on an actual stage, as a band of this caliber deserves to be, a level above us. In my ideal society, talented artists are often held in the highest regard. This stage was in the Enormous Room, which is a bar-sized room, not that enormous, featuring expensive drinks, but a saucy back door that can be easily snuck in through. Follow the graffiti to your freedom.
Last week, I saw Steel Train at the Middle East Downstairs. They held there guitars tight to there chests and played them well. Fast rock, but not that much punk, too dramatic to be punk. They are kind of like the So-So Glos from Brooklyn and a pinch of the Arcade Fire. I'm getting bogged down in details, point is: They fucking rocked! There show had such a fantastic energy, everyone was rocking and rolling, have the best time, dancing so naturally it might have been a music video. My girlfriend and I met some young ruffian college kids as we were innocently gulping white wine on a parking lot outside as they indulged in tequilla, whiskey and pocket beers. We introduced ourselves. It was my girlfriend's idea. She's so friendly. I love her, btw.
We saw them inside, flashing their whiskey bottle. They saw me, remembered and offered me a swig. I took it. Later, I went to the bathroom and came back, seeing a big ol' security guard dragging all three of themm off holding the whiskey bottle in his hand. Boys were busted.
I danced with my girlfriend engaged a lot of ridiculous, grotesquely cute PDA. Like it said, the show had a great energy.
I saw my Dad's old friend and folk outlaw legend Steve Earle, trucking as ever, playing an epic acoustic set at the House of Blues. Phil, of my band The BOOTS, came and got to meet the mythical agitator with a backstage pass procured by my Pops. He still has not stop talking about the redemptive power of that meeting. He felt cleansed. My dad and Steve Earle rule. That's also what Phil kept saying.
Steve broke out classics like "Copperhead Road" and "Guitar Town" and more recent stuff from post-rehab Steve, like a personal favorite "South Nashville Blues" where the man plays some pretty intricate bending chords with a capo. He said after finishing, ripping off the capo "That song sounds a funner to play than it actually is."
He prefaced "City of Immigrants" by saying "This song is about the city I live but it could just as easily have been about this city" I feel a part of it, as I might as well be an immigrant, living in Boston from Chicago suburbs. Is that saying too much? Do you know what it's like? I feel like an immigrant, man.
He saved the best for last, playing his Emmy-nominated song from the HBO show Treme. It's about Post-Katrina New Orleans. Steve plays a street musician. He only had the greatest things to say about the city, and so passionately as well. He called it the heart of American music.
The man is an American legend, a man who journeyed to the edge of the dark side and almost dove in, but came out better than ever. Even he thinks he's making the best music of his career, and I would agree, so does fellow young person Phil. He's accumulating a new generation of fans. He's in a great stride. His greatest ever.
On the final hand, I went to he rawest, roughest, sweatiest, newest, most amateur show in a third level apartment on Ashford St in Allston last night. It was the debut of the buzzy power pop trio Suspicious Packages, featuring Brock Ginther and Casey Regan playing their hearty heart hearts out. They were both drenched in sweat rocking out. They sounded like if Dead Kennedys went foward in time and liked Primus a lot. Some of the faces Casey made, especially while singing, were so absurdly contorted. He entered a new level. The man is on most days an actor and a filmmaker. He can really cut loose. Keep and eye out for our comedy troupe Worst Birthday Ever. And our upcoming independent horror short Meat Me In Plainville, small town goes crazy after being cut off from it's main source of delicious protein....human meat.
I've seen a lot so far and I hope to see a lot more. I actually just aqcuired an unpaid internship at the Somerville News. I'm no longer just a boy, just a student, I'm a reporter.
This would be the part in the movie where the proud music quelled and I smiled into the camera.
You stay classy, Boston town
Steve
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