The band Melt – Lindsey Kit on vocals, Dan Inzana on Guitar, Paul Pipitone on bass, and original drummer Ben Thompson (Ben Lyons is on the CD) rocked Club Bohemia downstairs at the Cantab on April 18, 2014.
Melt took the stage at 10:21 pm opening with “Spiral” – something distinctly different after the Boney-M styled dance pop of the previous act, Dan Oulette. This was pure new wave ave in the new millennium – think The Rolling Stones “Sway” played backwards, solid and powerful with a great audience response. 10:30 PM the band went into “Leopard” – with a Kinks/Paul Revere & The Raiders chord-riff the drums, bass and guitar providing a frontal assault for Kyte’s vocals – think Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick meets Susan Boyle. Concise and smart hard pop with elegant guitar lines even sharper in the cement-floor confines of Club Bohemia. Kyte holds the notes extra high and long with drummer Ben Thompson pounding away a la David McLean of Boston’s legendary Boom Boom band. At 10:34 came “No Shame” followed by “Quarter To 3” (not the 1961 song by Gary “U.S.” Bonds).
“Supersonic” – track 5 from the band’s Armageddon Party CD was more boom boom sounds, and splashy quasi-psychedelic guitar grooving from Dan Inzana. Some of the foundation sounds borrowed from the Bob Ezrin production of Alice Cooper’s Killer lp. “Supersonic…histrionic…I don’t know which way to go.” Maybe a bit of the New York Dolls “Frankenstein” in there to boot.
“Bradford” followed at 10:46 PM, and the group dedicated it to the Boston scene’s fallen solider, Anderson Lyn Mar. The heartfelt vocal glided perfectly over liquid guitar. Melt is a perfect name for the music, a great Fender sound that cuts through the hard-hitting rhythm section.
A lovely cover of Portishead’s Glory Box changed the pace at 10:51 PM. Picture Marilyn Manson’s “The Dope Show” put in a dreamier state.
GLORY BOX Portishead
“Grind”, the eighth song of the evening at 10:55 PM had a sort of Tommy James “I Think We’re Alone Now” undercurrent, nuts and bolts no-nonsense rock. “Babble On” featured a repeating guitar strum line over a bit of jass fusion. The title track, Armageddon Party” (see video below from another show) was a cosmic assault, a bit more in your face than the CD rendition with “Draggin’ closing out the evning at 11:06, a bit of the Ramones’ “Blitzkrieg Bop” but tightly packed in the vacuum container with more Kinks/Paul Revere & Raiders power added to it. A solid night and a revelation as this is one of Boston’s best kept musical secrets.
This they achieved at Club Bohemia on a Friday night in April
Joe Viglione is the Chief Film Critic at TMRZoo.com. He has written thousands of reviews and biographies for AllMovie.com, Allmusic.com, Gatehouse Media, Al Aronowitz’s The Blacklisted Journal, and a variety of other media outlets. Joe also produces and hosts Visual Radio, a seventeen year old variety show on cable TV which has interviewed Jodie Foster, director/screenwriter David Koepp, Michael Moore, John Cena, comics/actors Margaret Cho, Gilbert Gottfried, Gallagher, musicians Mark Farner and Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad, Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals, political commentator Bill Press and hundreds of other personalities.
