Tag: 260514

Awesome Aughts

Post-millennium All Your Friends party hits Nashua

While Napster and LimeWire were treating the record business like termites attacking a wooden house, some decent music came in the wake of Y2K. Late-’90s artists like Radiohead and Bjork inspired MGMT, Passion Pit, LCD Soundsystem and others to merge dance, melodic pop and rock in pursuit of a new sound.

Indietronica, as the loose subgenre came to be known, energized club New York City denizens throughout the 2000s. An upcoming event in Nashua will celebrate it with DJ music, multimedia and dancing. All Your Friends is the latest themed party to come from Brooklyn-based Burwoodland.

The company launched in 2015 with Emo Night Brooklyn and has added a half dozen more events since, including two that have recently been done in New Hampshire: Gimme Gimme Disco and a musical theater costume party, Broadway Rave. They also offer K-Pop and metal nights, along with one for ex-clubbers with kids that ends before 10 p.m.

Best friends Alex Badanes and Ethan Maccoby didn’t anticipate growing to more than 1,200 shows a year while recruiting close to 100 DJs to host events nationally. Or billionaire Mark Cuban making what Music Business Worldwide described as a “seven-figure investment” in the company in January 2026.

“Honestly, we were just looking to have a good time,” Maccoby said by phone recently. He and Badanes always enjoyed hosting parties before going to shows, but decided, “Instead of a pre-game at our apartment, we wanted to throw it at a bar, so that we didn’t have to clean up. Maybe they’d give us some free alcohol. That was really the main motivation.”

The very first Emo Night Brooklyn was held in early 2015 at the 100-capacity basement of the now-closed Cameo bar in Williamsburg. Hundreds of people showed up, and they were invited back. The next bash happened in the Cameo’s larger upstairs area. What began as a free party just kept growing.

All Your Friends, which debuted in 2025, is a fan’s effort.

“We started it because Alex and I also love this music, but we also saw that there was a big demand for it as well,” Maccoby said. “The first two events we had Passion Pit and Matt & Kim at the show with us. They put on a DJ set that was amazing; that kind of kick-started the series.”

“As millennials, we feel like we grew up with these artists,” Badanes told Paper magazine when the event launched. “I was at Berklee while Passion Pit was coming up in the early 2010s, and I still remember seeing one of their first Boston shows, how electric it felt, how new it all sounded. That era shaped so much of our musical identity.”

It became a quick success.

“We only just started like a little less than a year ago and we’ve had, I think, over a hundred or so All Your Friends events, many sold out, all around the U.S. and Canada,” he said. “It’s been really cool, and we’re now excited to come back to Nashua in May.”

The format is DJ-driven, but the production goes beyond a laptop and a speaker stack. Visuals are projected throughout the evening, synchronized to specific songs, and glow sticks find their way into the crowd. Still, they’re careful not to over-engineer the experience.

“We try to keep things raw and lightweight and just authentic,” he said. “Just come out to an affordable, awesome night, meet a bunch of other people who are into the same music.” Affordability is important; average ticket prices run between $20 and $30.

Attendees routinely rave about the events.

“People meet their best friends, their wives, their husbands,” Maccoby said. “People get engaged and we DJ their weddings. It’s really cool, the community these things create, because obviously music brings people together from all different backgrounds.”

All Your Friends
When: Friday, May 15, at 8 p.m.
Where: Nashua Center for the Arts, 201 Main St., Nashua
Tickets: $26 and up at etix.com

Featured photo: All Your Friends. Courtesy photo.

The Music Roundup 26/05/14

• Dolly smart: Since emerging from a hiatus in 2017, indie-rock stalwarts The Mammals are still going strong. Last year’s expansive LP Touch Grass Vol. 1 & 2 was a call to community for the activism-minded group, called “a party band with a conscience” by the Boston Globe. An upcoming listening room show benefits the local chapter of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. Thursday, May 14, 7 p.m., Stone Church, 5 Granite St., Newmarket, $25, stonechurchrocks.com.

• Local lights: One of the better About web pages belongs to Happy Just to See You, where the moody rockers list artists they’ve been compared to “by people of various levels of intoxicated.” It includes Counting Crows, Pixies and “this band from the 90s, I’m blanking on the name.” A release show with openers Megan From Work and Slim Volume celebrates a new album, Last Week’s Horse. Friday, May 15, 8 p.m., BAD BRGR, 1015 Elm St., Manchester, $10, evenbrite.com.

• Heavy music: Fans with VIP tickets to an upcoming show by post-metal rockers A World Worth Burning will receive a bootleg CD from their debut performance last November. The instrumental band, formed by members of Vigil, has an album due in June. A dreamy preview track, “Speak No Evil,” came out last month. Koga NH and Z/28 open the show. Saturday, May 16, 8 p.m., Terminus Underground, 134 Haines St., Nashua, $15 and up, newhampshireunderground.org.

• Old-timey: With a mix of bluegrass, old-time string band and blues music, Any Which Way is led by folk scene veteran Scott Heron with, according to Heron’s website, “a rotating lineup of stellar musicians.” A guitar, fiddle and upright bass rendition of the old standard “Walk That Lonesome Valley” is a tasty treat. They’re at a live music hub that recently rolled out a new food menu. Saturday, May 16, 7 p.m., Pembroke City Limits, 134 Main St., Pembroke, theanywhichway.com.

• Soothing duo: Musicians and friends Brad Myrick & Tom Pirozzoli share an afternoon of songs at an art gallery that’s not far from jazz guitarist Myrick’s home. It’s also where Pirozzoli, a folk singer and painter, has shown several works of art, including his still life “Kitchen Window.” Their duo show promises “spontaneous interplay, a touch of the world, and a whole lot of fun.” Sunday, May 17, 5 p.m., Two Villages Art Society, 846 Main St., Contoocook, twovillagesart.org.

Album Reviews 26/05/14

Toadies, The Charmer (Spaceflight Records)

I mentioned this album the other week in mindless passing, which is of course how I roll in the Playlist column. Mind you, for the record, the column’s review snippets reflect cursory, usually distracted first glances as opposed to overly long Pitchfork-style essay contest research; after all, the Playlist thingies mostly focus on advance singles, which often do suck, as any reader who has any musical taste whatsoever knows only too well. So yeah, I wasn’t impressed with this album’s title track, and am still not, but sure, there’s a lot here to like. If you don’t know, the band’s from Fort Worth, Texas, where they started as a late-’80s grunge act with a rugged, brazen southern twist, and they still have a pretty fierce following (which has nothing to do with why I gave this one a more thorough examination; that has more to do with an odd sequence of events). Any-freakin’-way, they’re usually accused of sounding like Nirvana (which I don’t agree with at all) or Pixies (slightly more accurate), but overall, I’d characterize them more as a three-way between Danzig, Pennywise and Pavement, the latter sound of which explains why I didn’t like the title track. Not exactly my jam, but on second glance it’s hard and raw and slovenly enough that I must dutifully rubber-stamp their hall pass. A-

Slim Volume, Off The Grid (self-released)

You know, folks, it’s about time I started getting some albums from serious local-to-NH bands like this one, who, like Lee & Dr. G (an arena-blues band whose album I reviewed last month), did a big album-release gig in Concord at the BNH Stage. I mean, not to make this column about me (which, OK, it really is), but yeah, it’s been very weird for me not to be inundated with promo stuff from local bands trying to get some love in this newspaper. Of course, I attribute all the shunning I’ve received to the fact that New Hampshirites have a fierce allergy to anything from Massachusetts, which includes me (I must admit the feeling’s been mutual for years, ever since the half-decade I spent in Portsmouth, N.H., where I was routinely exposed to some of the most boring fedora-hatted bar bands ever put together). So yeah, I’ve been snobby, but these guys, like L&DG, do have some potential to bring in some actual big-time record company interest (I mean come on, it happened in Seattle, so it conceivably could happen here). OK, anyway, these guys. Regular shows at Strange Brew in Manchvegas to start, where they refined their sound, which isn’t fedora-hatted at all but assuredly is deeply and accurately commercial. There’s some Tom Petty in their sound, which any idiot could identify, and some Michael McDonald yacht rock, but there’s also a northernized Kings Of Leon/Mumfords edge to it, some Minus The Bear, and (I could hardly believe this) songwriting that’s on the level of one of my favorite-ever Boston-area bands (sans the prog), The Vital Might (please go listen to their 2006 tune “Mist Of Crystals” all the way through, I beg of you, please do). These guys are right in the ballpark, and you absolutely must support them. A+

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• This Friday, May 15, will bring with it a host of new albums, as nearly all Fridays do. But this Friday is a special one, given that college graduation season is starting to heat up, meaning that it’s time to have ChatGPT tweak your Claude-written resumé, so your Gemini AI can “target” jobs that are nearly all just fictitious “roles” created by corporate AIs for info-gathering purposes so they can send you car insurance spam, don’t you feel sooo special, in these final days of the human species? I sure do, but we’re not here to talk about that because too depressing, let’s just instead talk about all the recent music-release news that public relations AI bots have sent to my emailbox, like for instance Same Fangs, the new album from Wolf Parade/Moonface singer Spencer Krug, from Canada! Krug claims that the test-drive single, “Timebomb,” is “a song about a song about a band on tour, or rather, about the failed revision of that song, upon sadly realizing that its original message no longer rings true,” in other words it revolves around total bummer subjects, so the tune’s bummer vibe is apropos: The slow, redundant three-chord riff that composes 90 percent of the song is played on a piano with the distortion level set to Melvins, which actually makes it sound a lot more interesting and dangerous than it is, and so it actually works pretty well. Registered weird person Elbow Kiss guests on the track, which makes it a little less boring, but the net effect is like listening to two giant clams discussing their favorite acts at this year’s SXSW conference. That’s not necessarily to say I didn’t like it; I’ve heard a lot worse in just the past half-hour.

• OK, help me out, twerker people: Drake, is he in or is he out? My AI is waffling on the subject, so let’s please just move along to his new record, which is totally-not-ironically titled Iceman, like the book about the mafia contract killer guy! No, I’m sure it’s all just a misunderstanding, and besides, the publicity stunt meant to announce the release date of this album (yes, it’s officially been termed an album and not a mixtape) was a master stroke of nonsense that tapped into a rich vein of stupid in the corporate rap-pop world: Drake rented a hotel parking lot in Toronto and had a 25-foot wall of actual ice built there, and when it was finally melted by Toronto firefighters who were sick of getting yelled at by people who wanted their parking spaces back, there it was, the release date, May 15 (not to be out-stupided, Pitchfork interviewed an actual quantum physicist to predict when they’d be able to read the date)! Will this get any stupider? Yes, it is safe to assume so.

• Oklahoma-based emo-indie rockers All-American Rejects release their first album in 14 years, Sandbox, this week! The title track is catchy and weird and Van Halen-ish, and the video is even cooler, with fake Muppets committing R-rated acts of violence on the band. I approve of this message.

• And last, it’s Florescence, the new LP from British singing-songwriting waif Maisie Peters, who’s often described as sounding like Taylor Swift, which she doesn’t at all on this record’s first single, “Kingmaker,” more like a tween trying to sound like Gracie Abrams really. Mindless pastel patter for people who loved the Juno soundtrack.

Featured Photo: Slim Volume, Off The Grid and Toadies, The Charmer

Superman Cocktail

This drink is all about appearances. It is over-the-top to the point where it feels like it’s missing its sparklers, three paper umbrellas and a peacock feather. This might be the most visually impressive drink you’ll ever make. Our hero — or superhero in this case — flirts with being just a little too much — too sweet, too boozy, too good-looking — but ultimately looks too good not to drink.

  • 1 ounce kirsch, a high-octane Dutch cherry brandy
  • 1 ounce coconut rum
  • ¾ ounce grenadine
  • ¾ ounce blue curacao
  • 2 ounces plain seltzer or club soda
  • Regular ice cubes
  • Crushed ice or pebble ice

Tajin powder for the rim – this is a spicy spice flavored with chili and lime. It will help cut through what might otherwise be a very sweet drink.

Rim a rocks glass. Run a wedge of lemon or lime around the rim of the glass, then turn it upside-down and swirl it around Tajin that you have sprinkled on a plate. The spice will cling to the citrus juice and give you a rim of flavor when you sip your drink.

Carefully fill the glass about halfway with crushed or pebble ice, making sure not to knock any of the spiced rim loose.

In a cocktail shaker, combine regular ice, the brandy, the rum, and the grenadine. Shake thoroughly, then pour over the ice in your rocks glass, keeping straight to the middle — again, so you don’t mess with that pretty rim.

In a mixing glass — this could be an actual mixing glass or a largish measuring cup — stir the blue curacao, seltzer, and more regular ice. This will combine them without the seltzer losing its zip. Gently pour the blue mixture down the center of the drink, straining out the ice in the mixing glass. Because of the gas bubbles in the blue mixture, it is not as dense as the red mixture, and will rest on top of it in a separate layer, if the superhero bartender gods are with you.

If you’ve ever eaten chunks of mango or pineapple on a skewer that have had Tajin or chili powder sprinkled on it, you’ll notice a similar vibe to this spicy/sweet cocktail. The drink itself might have been too sweet, but lightening it up with club soda and replacing the sugared rim with Tajin has brought the operation back within operating tolerances.

Featured photo: The Superman. Photo by John Fladd.

Enthusiast & professional

Northeast Coffee Festival spans the coffee spectrum

Karen Bassett is the owner of Wayfarer Coffee Roasters in Laconia. She is also the director of this weekend’s Northeast Coffee Festival in Concord.

“This is actually Year 5 [of the Festival],” she said, “but it is the third year in Concord. The Northeast Coffee Festival is a hybrid-type event which brings both coffee professionals and coffee consumers together. It’s a two-day festival in Concord. There are two parts of the festival. One of them is the outdoor Community Market, and that is free and open to the public. It includes over 30 vendors, so coffee, tea, some pottery, some community vendors. We also have a massive main stage right on Main Street for a live music series; there will be live music and DJs all weekend. We have food trucks. We have a beer garden. We have an outdoor demo stage for coffee demonstrations, which is really cool. So that’s all outside and free and open to the public.”

The other half of the Festival, Bassett said, is designed around the interests of coffee professionals and avid amateurs.

“On both Friday and Saturday,” she said, “the other part of the festival is our educational programming. We have brought in 55 speakers from all over, really all over, lots of New England coffee and tea professionals, and have curated an educational series of workshops, panels, small group discussions, demonstrations, hands-on learning across seven different workshop tracks. We have workshop tracks about roasting, cupping (which is coffee tasting), sensory, espresso and tea. We have a panel track and then we have a ‘Beyond the Cup,’ small kind of casual conversations on a specific topic. It’s all pretty incredible.”

Bassett said the Coffee Festival’s organizers have made it a priority to be inclusive.

“There’s some high-level education,” she said, “but there is something for everyone, no matter where you’re at in your coffee journey or tea journey. Each workshop is indicated if it’s for beginners, intermediate, or advanced coffee drinkers. So you can curate a choose-your-own-adventure-style workshop.” It’s set up for professionals who are producing coffee, she said, but also for enthusiasts who are drinking it, and some people just like the concept of coffee.

“That’s what makes this festival really unique and special. Many industries have their own trade show, you can go and you can be in a convention center with thousands of vendors, And while that certainly has a place, this festival’s mission is to bring coffee and community together. And so we’re really trying to form real connections and provide opportunities to network between coffee producers, coffee importers, coffee roasters, and tea as well, of course. And baristas and people who just love coffee. So it’s kind of spanning that whole supply chain all the way like from the seed to cup.”

Some of the most popular sessions each year, Bassett said, are advanced latte workshops. “That’s always super well attended,” she said. “That’s the fun — you see on social media, people pouring these beautiful designs in their lattes. That just kind of brings people from all across. the industry. That’s a lot of fun, especially for baristas and consumers and people who visit local coffee shops. We also have sessions on how to brew better coffee at home. I think that one’s a great one for someone kind of entering this and maybe like, ‘oh, I don’t know what ones are for me.’ That one’s a great one for people to come to. The list could go on and on. If you’re a cafe owner, there’s a lot of ones about how to just run a better business, how to kind of lead from your heart, how to build a good culture, how to build a training program.”

The Northeast Coffee Festival
When: Friday, May 15, and Saturday, May 16
Where: Main Street in Concord
More: Many of the event’s activities are free and open to the public. Tickets to attend sessions and workshops are $99 each, through the Festival’s website. Visit northeastcoffeefestival.com/passes.

Featured photo: Coffee Festival. Courtesy photo.

Set your PoutineFest alarm

Tickets sell out fast for this big food event

“I call it the Poutine Super Bowl,” Tim Beaulieu said, “especially in New Hampshire. This is where it all started.” Beaulieu is the founder and organizer of New Hampshire’s PoutineFest, an annual celebration of everything poutine. Poutine, a French Canadian dish made from french fries, gravy and cheese curds, is a staple of New Hampshire’s Franco-American community. “It was my grandfather who inspired me to get involved in [Franco-American] culture, and after seeing what they did with poutine in Montreal I realized, ‘Oh, my god, we have to do that here.”

“So we took some of those pieces from Montreal up in Quebec,” Beaulieu said, “and made them a little bit more New England-y. Essentially, [PoutineFest] is a big poutine sampling event that is family-friendly. We have entertainment. But mostly we have local restaurants, pretty much all from New Hampshire, to see how their poutine compares to each other. We have a couple that come up from Mass and a couple that come over from Maine, but the New Hampshire event is primarily New Hampshire-based. We do have sister events in other states now … in Vermont, Maine, and this year for the first time the city of Boston. So we’re calling this event the Granite State PoutineFest now, and it’s kind of the flagship of all of them.”

For many years, Beaulieu said, PoutineFest was held at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Merrimack, but since the brewery’s closing last year the festival has changed its location and its schedule.

“So Aug. 29 is when it’s going to be this year,” he said. “We used to do it in October for probably four or five years after Covid, but when Anheuser-Busch closed we did a bit of a scramble to find a good, suitable location. And most of them had late summer offerings, so we moved it to August. We’re going to be at 603 Brewery. The thing I like about them is that they’re so close to the town of Londonderry and they have experience doing events and they’ve kind of seen what we’ve done in the past. There will be slightly different beer offerings, which is great, because that works for me. But it will still be family-friendly, which I like. And it’s something that we both share as values.”

Beaulieu sees PoutineFest as an opportunity for independent restaurants to showcase their interpretations of poutine as they compete, whether they present traditional takes on it or more interpretive ones.

“We have a people’s choice award,” he said, “and we also have an overall champion from our chef judges. So we get a little bit of both. We create custom kitchens for all the restaurants outside. The hardest part [of coming here] is most of these poutine vendors are small businesses that don’t have the infrastructure to leave their restaurants. We give them as much product and infrastructure as we possibly can, so they can’t say no, unless they have a scheduling conflict. We also pay them to come; they’re getting paid to do this. It’s not a ton of money, but we’re making sure we cover as many of their expenses as possible.”

The tricky part of attending PoutineFest is getting tickets.

“They are gone in hours,” Beaulieu said. “Everyone remembers our first year back from Covid when we sold out in one hour. It was nuts. But since that time it’s usually a few hours. Our poutiniacs, they set their alarm for 10 o ‘clock on the day of ticket sales. If you’re there at 10, you’ll get tickets. If you wait till the afternoon, there’s no guarantee.”

Granite State PoutineFest
When: Saturday, Aug. 29
Where: 603 Brewery, 42 Main St., Londonderry, 404-6123, 603brewery.com
Tickets: Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. Saturday, May 16, at poutinefest.com/newhampshire and will sell out quickly. General admission tickets are $54.99.

Featured photo: PoutineFest. Courtesy photo.

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