Boston's Paradise Rock Club is a punk rock club. Filthy dark sticky almost a cellar effect, perfect for punk rock shows. A stage that's nice and low and a perfect balcony with proper wide stairs to get around on. Very narrow and toxic in odor.
This Petri dish of bacteria served up one of the most amazing and most old school punk show I have seen in decades within the set of the LA based band letlive. Vocalist Jason Butler is a man out of time. He is 1982 hardcore punk rock who showed up thirty years late. Pacing like a caged tiger and throwing himself on the crowd, jumping from balconies and at one point duct taping his head and screaming, he is proof that punk's not dead. It's not even dozing.
How appropriate that the band took time to do a sweat filled violent cover of Black Flag's "Fix It", the crowd may not have known the words but they weren't crowd surfing either. They moved but more of an old fashioned pit than the current scene offers. I have no idea why. Perched up on the balcony I expected this precise punk sound to evoke a slam dance circa 80's but instead it was more a fist pump sing along and there was no shame in that. Watching Butler in non stop motion was exhausting and even as the amps began to tumble the band played on.
Jason took a moment and stepped into a monologue on calling a man named Jason "a mad man" and to get over himself, and only at the very end of this speech did he proclaim: "I am Jason." They then tore into a hard thumping tune, proceeding with the seemingly unstoppable and incredible energy that left every crowd member in awe.
Oh right- I didn't mention the band did I? Two guitars, bass and drum and some of the best hardcore punk I have ever heard. A fast beat, ridiculous bass thumps and guitars that must have left their fingers bloodied.
I wish I had done more research on them prior to the show to have been familiar with their work. A huge disadvantage as I would have been shouting out lyrics like a crazy person. The energy of that room was so high it was more than contagious- it was frantic.
I am disgusted that I did not have a video camera with me but here I snagged a vid off youtube so you can hear them good and cleaned up!
The down side? Unfortunately, letlive. made it impossible to truly appreciate the brilliance of Enter Shikari (who we will have reviewed next). Shikari had a fantastic and personable set- but suffered from being outshined by their opener. The Maid of Honor outshined the bride.
If you ever have opportunity to catch this band live please do so. They are wonderful recorded but live is an experience that will take old time punks back in time and teach new punk upstarts how it should be done.