Boston bands hold benefit show for marathon attack victims

Following the explosions near the finish line of the Boston Marathon Monday afternoon, local musicians rallied together to organize a benefit concert at TT the Bear’s, featuring music from local acts such as Mean Creek, The Field Effect, Endation, Earthquake Party, Dan Nicklin of Oldjack, Cameron Keiber of the Beatings/Eldridge Rodriguez, Ruby Rose Fox and more. The concert was ‘pay what you can’ for enterance and all proceeds went to the Massachussetts General Hospital to aid those affected by the explosions. MUSE staffers Sydney Moyer and Megan Riesz recount their experiences of the local scene working together for Boston.

For Boston: The music and why it matters

By Sydney Moyer

When I describe this city to people who don’t live here, I tend to say something like, “It’s like New York, but like, a town, you know? A town that cares.”

As aimless as my vague statements sound, my town proved this statement time and time again over the past 72 hours.

Most notably for me, last night local music staple TT the Bear’s hosted a benefit show featuring more than seven Boston bands. The venue donated the proceeds to Massachusetts General Hospital to aid the victims of Monday’s bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in Copley Square.

I’m graduating in May, and I’ve spent three years here covering music for The Daily Free Press. I go to shows every week all over Boston and Cambridge, I read Boston music blogs such as Allston Pudding and Sleepover Shows, I’ve been to basement shows and seen artists whose name I couldn’t even successfully Google but who have a devoted following in this city.

I owe what I am today to this city and its many concert halls and jazz bars and basements and holes in the wall, the best classrooms I ever could have asked for.

Last night, many venues canceled their shows in light of the tragedy. TT’s itself announced it would be closed via Twitter earlier in the day, but bands and bookers came together to put on this show for my beloved city — for our beloved city.

As performer Ruby Rose Fox put it, “The only thing that makes sense to me right now is to sing.”

I watched astounded yet still unsurprised as TT the Bear’s slowly filled with devoted Bostonians, decked out in Celtics jerseys and wholeheartedly supporting their town. The music seemed to bestow a palpable calm upon the room, casting an ineffably comforting bubble, each riff and wail echoing resilience, echoing community.

“Some of us are doctors and counselors. Some of us aren’t. I’m in the music community and we all gravitate towards community,” said show organizer and former Boston Phoenix Music Editor Michael Marotta.

It’s that community that I’ve found so welcoming, so incredible over the past few years, and I count myself lucky to have been a part of it. And after all this tragedy, what better antidote than that very music, that very community coming together to support one another?

Growing up in the post-9/11 generation has made me overly cautious, expectant of disaster around every corner and somewhat desensitized to it as it happens. Tonight helped me let go of that, as all gestures of goodwill should in these next few days. Whether someone plays a song for a crowd, or holds the treacherous swinging doors of Boston University’s College of Communication, or gives up a seat to a friend in need on the T, every act matters, and those events, innocuous as they may seem on paper, those events are the ones that matter.

Local music speaks to the unspeakable

by Megan Riesz

I am the first to say that I am no connoisseur of the Boston music scene.

As a former Allston resident of two years, I rarely frequented local bars such as Great Scott, preferring the overplayed 90s tunes of Common Ground on Friday nights. My taste for local music is and was undeveloped, despite having a plethora of high school friends in the DIY punk scene. I am out of the loop when it comes to discussions of bands spanning Boston or even New England, although I can air-guitar the hell out of “Dream On.”

Despite my obvious lack of knowledge in this area, however, I’ve come to appreciate the intangible communal feeling that derives from a single 15 or 30 minutes at a local show. On Tuesday night, as an ever-growing list of bands appeared onstage at TT the Bear’s, I was flooded with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and pride for Boston’s talent — so much of which is underappreciated. Case in point: Ruby Rose Fox.

The second artist to perform, Ruby Rose Fox came off the stage to talk to me after I gushed over her performance. Playing solo to a riveted audience, her stripped, visceral performance was the most haunting and appropriate set of the night, having made many lyrical references to Boston.

“Thanks to Facebook, the word got out really quickly that there was going to be a show,” she said. “I’ve been feeling so anxious the past 24 hours. Like a mild anxiety attack. I don’t know how to calm myself down unless I sing.”

The year-and-a-half Boston performer, and graduate of Emerson College and Brookline High School, was visibly shaken as she tried to describe how the events of the Boston Marathon have affected her and the local music community. She took a half-day off from work and heard about the bombings via a friend from Minneapolis.

“This is a new community to me, but it’s really special,” Fox said. “Music can say the unspeakable. The unsayable. The unknown.”

It was in the moment when I realized that my lack of integration into this city’s music scene meant nothing. Whether for 15 minutes or 4 hours, every attendee at TT the Bear’s benefit show felt a sense of solidarity and relief, whether minute or outstanding.