First Night is an annual all-day event held in Greater Boston on New Years Eve that celebrates the generosity and vibrance of the Boston arts community. It's a day that begins with art, movies, free tours, dance, and puppet shows and ends with music and fireworks. It's also a great opportunity to stalk me if you want to follow me around all day. It's New Year's Eve--put a cheese ball and some crackers in your purse and meet me at the MFA at 10AM. You can check out the full First Night schedule here, but here's my agenda.

Tonight in Harvard Square's Oberon Theater, Jaggery will perform as one of the acts in a performance called Org: Last Day on Earth which has a theme somewhat related to the Mayan version of the Y2K bug.

As tongue-in-cheek concepts like joking about the end-of-days have become as ironic as an ingrown toenail, it's important to remember that music, if not the medium, can always be worth venturing the unknown for.

If a volcano the size of Rhode Island started to erupt, I wouldn't go and see Jaggery tonight, but under any other circumstances, seeing them is a delight. At the center is the mercurial magesty of Singer Mail (piano/vocals), who is not so much mercurial for her moods as in the conventional sense of the expression, but more for the molten metallic drip that her vocal phrasings weave around the rhythms of the music.

Admit it, we all looked in admiration and horror at fingernails man in the old Guinness Book of World Records. Today is a new era, where everyday people just like you too can try and break a world record too! Today, Boston electro-smash duo Bang! Bros are actually trying to break the Flaming Lips record by attempting to play 12 shows in 12 different cities within a 24 hour period (get it? 12/12? Oh, and the Flaming Lips record was 8). Meanwhile, Cotton Candy have released their newest LP, Off-the-Hook and Out-of-Control, with 33 tracks clocking in at just shy of 17 minutes. That's got to be a world record, or something?

Just in time for a break in the run of the Slutcracker across the street at the Somerville Theatre comes a two-night run of Jo Carol Pierce's Bad Girls Upset By The Truth. The humorous production splices country-tinged ballads with dramatic monologues that explore one woman's realization of the "truth" about love.

Unlike Slutcracker (which I love too), Bad Girls reminds us that not all bad girls are created equal. Not all of them are raging extroverts, or conventionally sex-positive, or are particularly socially well-adjusted for that matter. Sometimes that geek girl with the ugly sweater is just that, a geek girl with a sweater--and that thing ain't getting whipped off to a disco soundtrack.

In that tiny splinter of time that existed between the great first wave of American rock & roll and the British Invasion, there was a place and time for the brief rise of the instrumental group. Outfits like the Ventures and Shadows helped paved the way for the unit-mentality and melodicism of the Beatles, and surf-guitarists like Dick Dale were of course hugely influential on left-coasters from the Beach Boys to Jimi Hendrix. Two of Boston's best instrumental groups have events this week, and despite all the differences in their sound and philosophy, they have more in common than I first would have guessed.

It turns out that both the Weisstronauts' Pete Weiss and the Invisble Rays' Rafi Sofer are both recording engineers/producers in the New England area. A pretty significant point to have in common other than the way they look in reddish lighting based on the pictures included here! Sofer works in Cambridge at Q Division, while Weiss runs Verdant up in Vermont. Could it be that each formed his instrumental band a decade or so ago (the Weisstronauts in '99 and the Invisble Rays in '01) to escape the musical ego machine that is best embodied by the persona of the lead singer? There might be a bit of truth to that.

I might not have a 740AM tattoo, but I l do love lounge music. In fact, it's one of those things like being a Yankees fan or a vegetarian that I imagine would be sometimes hard to explain. Things that I like about being a fan of lounge music though are easy to list. For one, I have my pick of the litter at the Goodwill. Also, at record fairs, I can make a b-line for the Bacharach, Chris Montez, Doris Day and Anita Kerr records without having to bump elbows with other grubby collectors. The fact is, nobody wants this stuff. Lounge music is the punchline of every musical joke, the easiest genre to parody, even perhaps when you think about, the last line of parodying that anyone can cross. After all, what lends itself to that dreaded apparition of a 'medley' better than a baby grand and a shimmery dress?

Lounge is easy to bully because it's just like that geeky guy with the glasses at the piano-- clear, nuanced, vulnerable, fun, sexy...well, all these things. But, it's also one of the all-time great musical genres for lovers of pure music.

Tonight, Rock 'n' Roll Rumble maven and WZLX DJ Anngelle Wood will be fulfilling a long-held dream by launching Lounge Act, a series of lounge inspired music from local Boston bands, at Somerville's Radio. Tonight's show will feature Ruby Rose Fox, SPF 5000 and Goddamn Glenn and the Parlour Bells Players. I asked each of these parties what THEY think of when they think of lounge music. Here is what they had to say.

I'm not sure which of these statements is true. 1. These days musicians have to be everything to get noticed. 2. These days musicians are everything. 3.These days musicians have to get noticed. Sometimes being involved in the press link makes me a little confused on this point. In the end it doesn't matter who you are. You're all going into the great cosmic shuffle of my jukebox where there you will stay.

Two bands that will be pushing a new hook when they drop their new records this year are Parks and Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys. Parks is the new band from Oranjuly's Brian King, who aside from adopting a new sound (less retro, more 'now') has retired Oranjuly and has a new band with former members of the Motion Sick (Matt Girard), Stu Dietz (This Blue Heaven) and Brian Fitch (Spirit Kid). For the Army of Broken Toys, it's a grand new concept album titled Soft Time Traveler (love that title) which they plan to turn into a multi-media affair and hopefully a fabulous tour (investigate their Kickstarter here).

For anyone looking to get themselves inebriated and/or acquainted with the Boston Music scene on short notice, now is your big chance.

Tonight, Red Star Union in Cambridge’s Kendall Square will present a preview to the 25th annual Boston Music Awards (to be held December 2nd at the Liberty Hotel) featuring performances from New Artist of the Year nominee Fat Creeps, Metal/Hardcore Artist of the Year nominee Mellow Bravo, and Electronic Artist of the Year nominee Bearstronaut.

Tonight, two Boston Bands share a dual record release bill at the Middle East Upstairs. And while two will enter, only one will leave. While Mean Gene Okerlund couldn't be reached for his ring-side commentary for what will surely be a steel cage match of rock and wits, Inbound Sounds is doing our best here to interview the contestants and see what kind of smack they have to talk.

In the red corner, you've got gentle indie country kids Muy Cansado who are releasing their latest full-length, Let It Go. In the blue corner, you've got fist-pumpers Naked On Roller Skates with their new Songs from a Wooden Box EP. I asked Muy Cansado's Chris Mulvey and Naked On Roller Skates' Travis Richter to face off and talk a little smack before tonight's show.

The Boston Police Department may be cracking down on local house show hosts like Whitehaus and Gay Gardens (chronicled nicely here by Perry Eaton in Allston Pudding) but have no fear denizens of funky music--the festival that represents all the best that the underground has to offer is happening in full effect this weekend.

We are speaking here of course about Homegrown 4--the celebrity baby of Boston's Dan Shea (Boston Hassle/B.O.W. shows) and Sam Potrykus (Boston Compass). Shea and Potrykus aren't just members of Needy Visions, but are also two of the hardest working promoters I've come across in my 20 years as a music nerd.

What do you get when two people who really love music, like, insanely a lot, pool together all of their connections and resources to put on the best music festival of their dream bands? You get Homegrown.

Of all of the bands that will be dressing up and performing the music of other bands tonight in the Boston Halloween tradition, there are no choices more obscure than Ruby Ridge performing as the Knife at tonight's The Pill 10th Annual Halloween Party at Great Scott. Comprised of married couple John and Callan Von Bittrich, Ruby Ridge have both the acumen and set-up to take on the arch-electronica of Swedish brother/sister duo, the Knife, best known for chipping away at rockist barriers with the breakthrough 2006 release Silent Shout.

Lots of good shows have been dive bombing Somerville's Radio lately, and tonight's show will be one of the best. San Francisco's Sic Alps harken back to a time when skinny boys with bad teeth made records and people went to the store and bought them and took them home and played them (wait they still do that?). Their new album Sic Alps (Drag City) is full of the sights and sounds of a warm, cramped dive bar, c.1968. Check it out and notice how "Glyphs" has the sludgey symphonics and lava lamp vocals of Syd's Floyd, minus the gnomes. Then "God Bless Her, I Miss Her" grooves along mid-sweat, like CCR to the Blues Explosion's Mitch Ryder.

For explorers of sound, Boston's Bent Shapes is one of the other mountain-esque bands on tonight's bill. Formerly known as Girlfriends, the newly re-christened Bent Shapes feature a tighter cleaner sound on their new flexidisc "Boys to Men"/"Brat Poison."

(photo Alex Bloemendal)

Welcome to installment #3 of Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man-where unrelated Boston musicians are made to review each other's records. I am your friendly moderator, which I guess would make me more of a Lou Costello than a Bud Abbot. If you catch my drift. In this installment we have Rick Berlin, who is like, Willy Wonka-talented and has been around forever...and then over here very impressive newcomers Hey Ice Machine, who up until recently were known as Shelterbelt (but how new can you be though when your band features members of Fuzzy(!), Frank Smith, Muy Cansado and Mittens?) Both Mr. Berlin and Hey Ice Machine have new records out, discussed below in an exchange between the two parties and in fact, Rick Berlin's CD release party for Rick Berlin and the Nickle & Dime Band's Always On Insane is TONIGHT at the Magic Room in Allston (see details below). As always, my take on the two albums very much informs the questions. But see for yourself just how unexpectedly things play out between Hey Ice Machine's Jonathan Ulman and Rick Berlin. Mwa-ha-ha.

[Photo: Jay Elliot]

Right down in Davis Square, some of the best rock & roll bands in Boston will be battling Multiple Sclerosis tonight (Sat 9/29) in the second night of Crash Safely--an annual Boston music scene fundraiser held this year at the Davis Square Theater (formerly Jimmy Tingle's theater) in Somerville. Organizers Amanda Nichols (who rocks triumphantly with MS) and Nick Blakey have upped the ante this year by bringing in court jesters Cotton Candy and none other than the most royalest Upper Crust who promise once and for all to vanquish this sulking beast of a disease even if they have to stay together for another 300 years. Sidewalk Driver, TRiPLE THiCK and Thick Shakes will be rocking with prominence as well.

I stepped into the court of the Upper Crust's Lord Bendover (2nd left) and this is what he had to say.

Running a record label in 2012 is tough business. Especially when you are a two-man operation doing it on a shoe-string. More especially when you are focused on putting out music by bands and artists that you love. Most especially when no one is buying music anymore, and the value on 'talent' is perceived by some to be at an all-time low behind the ability to put pants in seats (look at the listings at some of Boston's bigger clubs. Not a perfect record).

This brings us to Midriff records, who also might not have a perfect record in the double-A league of noisy indie-rock that they trade in. But try telling that to label-head Cameron Keiber. All year long, Keiber has been running a 10-year anniversary celebration of the label in the form of a monthly residency at Union Square's Radio--highlighting many of the bands that have graced Midriff's roster, including his own band, the Beatings, who released Midriff's first album Italiano in February 2002.

Previous installments in this residency have featured Midriff stalwarts Age Rings (R.I.P.), Greg Lyon and Louder My Dear. Tomorrow, Keiber has invited Boston Band Crush to help put together a special bill for the September installment of the Midriff residency, as the local unicorn lovers bring the Daily Pravda and Eski Esko to join Midriff's Eldridge Rodriguez (Keiber's post-Beatings project) and Midriff NYC friends, Relations.

I talked to Keiber about what the future holds for Midriff Records and what does it even mean to run a label in 2102 anyway.

While some pairings might seem less savory than others, it's a red sky at night for the pairing of Audrey Ryan and Will Dailey, who will play two shows at Club Passim tomorrow night (9/22). Ryan and Dailey share a hard drive to find a niche for themselves in the ever-expanding and complex singer-songwriter market. Dailey's last album, Will Dailey and the Rivals, was released in 2011, while Ryan's last album, Siren's, was released just this past June. In addition, Ryan published a book this last April, The Need to Be Heard, which features several interviews with notable music industry artists and figures about the struggle for a place in the world of music.

According to Ryan, the two independent songwriters met a couple of years ago after being asked to do an East Coast tour with the Brew, themselves big fans of both Ryan and Dailey. "Will and I really enjoyed playing/singing on each others songs and have done so ever since when we can," says Ryan. She and Dailey took to doing the odd cover here and there, before eventually sitting in on one another's tunes. It is an affinity echoed by Dailey, who remarks that working with Ryan has helped him open up to a new audience and vice versa. "In this town you can end up playing in the circle too often," says Dailey, who has not only encountered a new audience through this collision, but more importantly, new songs to love. "I'll definitely be doing (Ryan's) 'No Difference,' I can't see myself not doing that one."

Looking for something fun to do this Sunday, like, I dunno, dressing up like Gene Simmons and running 5 kilometers through the streets of East Boston? You can do that in life! This Sunday (9/16), ZUMIX will present its 3rd annual Run To The Beat 5K in East Boston (which travels Piers Park-Marginal Street).

The charity run (where runners buy tickets to run) supports ZUMIX, an organization that provides free or affordable music and technology outlets for low-income Boston youth. Runners are encouraged to run in costume, or even as a group or supergroup. And while I think we can all agree that this is a good cause, let's not forget about the hilarity that would ensue seeing the Oak Ridge Boys running through the streets of East Boston in full on hillbilly gear. I'd pay to see you do that.

Inspiration is a funny thing in that it's entirely subjective. Surely classical cathedrals inspired the Sagrada Familia. That much we know.

However, what if chocolate ice cream inspired the atomic bomb?

Maybe Oppenheimer was eating a cone on his way to the office and the tasty scoop inspired him to change the course of history.

This brings us to the case of the famous Michael J. Epstein, who must have done something really great in order to have a memorial library named after him (ok, it's a band, and Epstein is in it). Epstein and company have undertaken a curiously cool project whereby they have worked with five local artists to create new illustrations and songs based on one another's work. The final results of these complex collaborations (read on for details) will be unveiled at an EP/art release show tomorrow (Friday) at Cambridge's Out of the Blue Gallery.

Some of you might remember Slowpoke Rodriguez, slowest mouse in all of Mexico. Either way, it's not important considering other priorities in life. A simple picture should suffice. However, many of you might not know Boston's Speedy Ortiz--a rising indie rock group featuring former-New Yorker, Sarah (Sadie) Dupuis. In the great tradition of brainy rockers, Dupuis doubles as a student/faculty member in the English department at UMass Amherst. That said, I couldn't quite make out if she said that she wanted to be a Pynchon scholar or a Simpsons scholar. Yes, to be actually accurate, Speedy Ortiz are products of the Western Mass scene, but they've been playing in Boston so much since coming into being this past year that they deserve to be called honorary Allstonians. Tonight they'll be at TT's, followed by a Middle East show in October (10/12) and a Great Scott show in November (11/7). For sure, they will be a band to watch in 2013. Inbound Sounds had a chance to catch up with Dupuis on a break somewhere between updating her syllabus and breaking a guitar string.
[photo: Steven Stover]

Pretty much any reaction that you might have had to the Woodstock 4 event which took place on the Boston Common on the weekend of 8/18 and 8/19 is understandable. When I arrived, a woman dressed as Mr. Peanut asked me for a cigarette and I gave her one. "Smoked peanuts," I joked. I knew it was going to be a good weekend.

Maybe you didn't hear about it, which I can see happening since it was a free grass-roots event that wasn't hugely publicized. This wasn't intentional. The 'stage managers' of this event (who included Jamaica Plain's Whitehaus-affiliates Arkm Foam, Kate Lee, Con Tex and Frank Hurricane) worked hard to spread the word wide and far (check out this great Matt Parish piece from the Boston Globe). The Woodstock 4 crew sought to encourange the gamut of anything that could be considered contemporary folk music and performance art at this first-come-first-serve event, ranging from traditional folk elements (Chris North's Tom Paxton-sing-a-long was about as stridently folk as you are gonna get) as well as the numerous fringe elements (including lots of portable homemade sound collage work) that dotted the festival's landscape.

[photo: Greg Besun]

[cont. from Part 1]

What I'm NOT trying to say for a second is that the performers at Woodstock 4 weren't amazing, because they were--from more traditional stuff like Hurricanes of Love (so intense and pure) and the sister-love harmonies of Gracious Calamity, Dawn Fauna and Rayvon Browne, to less traditional stuff like hiphop from Sweatshop, portable sound collage from Dinnersss or insanely impassioned mixtape performance art from Shea Mowat . What I AM saying is that many different shades of human talents were acknowledged here--not just the narrow mainstream that typically gets acknowledged as being 'good music' or even 'good performance art.' And also what I am saying is that the performers stuck around and not only supported each other, but also genuinely learned from one another.

[Photo: Kate Lee

One of the biggest music fêtes of the year is coming up, namely the 4th annual installment of One Night Band. For those who are unfamiliar with this event, it's coordinated by Boston Band Crush founder Ashley Willard as somewhat of a key party for Boston musicians. Read my review of last year's event here. This year's event contains forty or so musicians from many of Boston's varied scenes. These musicians will find out the day of the event (Saturday, Sept. 8 at the Middle East Downstairs) who their bandmates are and will have only the rest of the day to come up with a few songs for the show. I put my own virtual one night band together of four of the participants: Aaron Perrino (Dear Leader), Candace Clement (Bunny's A Swine), Mariam Saleh (Fat Creeps) and Reuben Bettsak (Guillermo Sexo). Let's hear how they fared against some fierce questions!

Disclaimer 1: Inbound Sounds is obviously a Boston.com blog, and the new RadioBDC online radio station is a part of Boston.com as well. But I've been following the story of what happened to WFNX long before anyone knew that many of that stations best known personalities would end up over here.

Disclaimer 2: I'm listening on RadioBDC right now to the first track off the new XX album right now ("Angels") and before that it was the Hold Steady. I admit, I had heard neither. There. I let myself look a little uncool for the benefit of RadioBDC.

While this isn't totally unheard of in this town (remember RadioBoston that shut it's doors in 2002?), RadioBDC online radio will be the main station of its kind in the local market--that is to say, the classic-rock version of the college rock format (Mumford, Janes, etc) and a break-through point for new(er) alternative artists like those mentioned above.

What are the details? It's a stream-format, so you can get to it online from www.boston.com, or if you prefer, download it to your mobile device. How it's going to be compared to WFNX? "It's going to be better," says Music Director Julie Kramer. The reasons why have to do with the fact that this is not commercial terrestrial (land/air) radio as we know it.

When WFNX announced their sale a couple months back, a lot of dialogue was kicked up regarding the state of the Boston scene (see my article from the Boston Metro) The verdict seems to be that the scene is pretty damn healthy--healthier than ever maybe--and that while it stinks to lose a local radio station to Clearchannel, there is plenty to celebrate in the dedicated organizers, producers, DJs, writers, musicians, venues, etc, that will continue to use their creativity and will to make it all happen.

So when WFNX Boston Accents' DJ Michael Marotta (also my writing colleague when I contribute at the Boston Phoenix) found out about the loss of the station, he put together three massive bills at Great Scott to celebrate everything that he worked for on the air--namely bringing together many of the great Boston scenes--roots, punk, electronic, indie, psych, etc, into one forum where everyone is judged according to their individual merits. Last night saw Viva Viva, RIBS, Earthquake Party and Fat Creeps making varied musical chalk drawings all over the Great Scott stage. Tonight will feature a rocking bill with Mean Creek, Mellow Bravo, Soccer Mom, and Dirty Virgins. Tomorrow is more of a synth-pop theme with Gentleman Hall, Black Light Dinner Party, Bearstronaut, and Stereo Telescope holding down the fort. Each of these bills is like a Rumble final in and of itself, and if it they aren't sold out already, get thee in!

For a little bit of magic tonight I am going to head down to The Aviary in Jamaica Plain for an all-ages show featuring Chris North, a New England songwriter celebrating the release of his new EP, Near Far All We Are. North mixes in gentle, dignified ballads with a couple of cool remixes--including a nifty kaleidoscopic trancy collage by Many Mansions ("I Gave Life To Love").