In the midst of setting up the merch table, preparing for his own set, and making sure opener Cecil Otter was ready to take the stage, Sage was in somewhat of a frenzy when I first arrived at Harpers Ferry. But even in the whirlwind of preparations, his excitement for the night’s upcoming performances – both his and those of his friends who’d take the stage before him – was apparent. Not until he was seated on a couch for our interview did he seemed to calm, thoughtfully reflecting on his past work and talking, albeit guardedly, about his upcoming project. Even then, several times he stopped mid-sentence to check in on the other artists, only to resume a minute later without missing a beat. All in a day’s work for an indie rap legend/record label president.

With dual frontmen trading lines at top volume and a dueling pair of DJs, there is no danger of boredom at a Big Digits show. The recent addition of a projected video backdrop now lends a level of full-on audiovisual confusion to their live set. My fascination with each of the elements of their show made it a bit difficult to keep track of everything the members of Big Digits were doing on stage, but the potentially dangerous levels of sensory overload didn’t prevent the crowd from dancing along frantically–although no one was a match for the energetic moves of TD.

The title pretty much says it all.   This weekend is long for a reason and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Columbus totally screwed up trying to find India and wound up with us instead.  With Boston bands headlining shows in Cambridge, Allston and Somerville on Friday, Saturday and Sunday night, [...]

The leaves are changing, the kids are back in town, and everyone’s trading in their iced coffee for the real thing as fall has hit full force in Boston.  For the last month of this short-lived summer, Gab, Jessie and I spent at least a night a week at the Lizard Lounge and it’s smaller, [...]

If you follow fashion at all you’ve probably heard about the NYC Fashion Week kick-off turned GLOBAL EVENT that is Fashion’s Night Out. Vogue has joined forces with the City of New York and the CFDA to, essentially, get people to go out and spend some money.

We first heard of Annie and the Beekeepers from the list of local favorites given to us by Rhode Island-based experimental folk upstarts The Low Anthem during an interview and, after their subsequent, awe-inspiring Brattle Theater performance, we absolutely trusted their opinion when it came to quality musicianship. So, when Annie Lynch, Ken Woodward and Alexandra Spalding came through Boston in support of their latest EP, The Squid Hell Sessions, recorded locally in Jamaica Plain, we we jumped at the chance to check them out.

For the record, Gab and I are not softees. Commercials featuring cute, three-legged puppies that need homes? Gut-wrenching human interest stories with tragic endings? The season finale of “Grey’s Anatomy”? Yeah, we’re human, but I think I speak for the both of us when I say that we’re pretty tough cookies and that we aren’t prone to overtly emotional reactions when we’re really, really moved by something… that is, until we both welled up when Christopher Pappas of The Everyday Visuals sang his heart out during the finale of the band’s intimate acoustic set at TT the Bear’s Place a couple of weeks ago.

When the staff ofTea Party Boston met to determine which subject to cover for our first Tea Party Tastes column, the Channel Café was a natural choice. At TBP, we strive to show you a side of Boston that is hidden in plain sight: a band you’ve been missing, say, or a designer who deserves your support. And the Channel Café is both literally and figuratively underground. Located in a sunny basement-level space at 300 Summer Street in Fort Point, it’s almost invisible, and retains a counter-culture aesthetic that feels more Berkeley, CA than Boston, MA. Here, WERS plays daily on the radio; the café’s tattooed staff are quick to recommend a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie or to mix up a Vietnamese iced latte; and the café’s customers, who have all found their way to this place via word of mouth, include artists, architects, entrepreneurs and other wearers of the Diesel-jeans-and-graphic-tee uniform that has come to characterize the postmillennial office culture of the Fort Point

There is something so infectious about the music of White Rabbits. Their songs seem to creep into the crevices of the brain and fester. Ever since the their 2007 release, Fort Nightly, I have been waiting with bated breath for their next album. 2009’s, It’s Frightening, delivers an evolved White Rabbits. The album provides a complex simplicity with a dark sophistication that makes any indie rock lover’s heart thump with pure bliss, and hey, it’s hard to have a bad album when Spoon’s Britt Daniel is producing it.

Sitting powwow style on the deck at Great Scott (frontman Joe D’Agostino and I sat on the floor because the chairs were all chained together. Ah, Allston.), Gab and I joked around with Staten Island-based up-and-comers Cymbals Eat Guitars.