All Asia no more?

Yet another endangered species for your list
By BARRY THOMPSON  |  January 24, 2011

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After the bartender poured me a mug of PBR the size of my head, he assured me they’re hashing out a plan to dodge the MIT-funded demolition crew coming for 334 Mass Ave in Cambridge. Let’s hope the All Asia can relocate to a new building. I used to shit-talk the place . . . until I heard it might close. Now, I mostly think about the awesome shows I’ve seen there, and those times poor dead Josh Skunk hooked me up with drinks at those raver parties he seemed to enjoy. I should start appreciating cool shit, since cool shit seems to keep succumbing to the vacuum of merciless fate.

VIDEO: Dead Cats Dead Rats, Dead Beats, and Liberation Day.

Sunday afternoon, 2010 BMA Best Punk winners Dead Cats Dead Rats played second, following workmanlike truck-stop punk from Lowell’s Dead Beats. Monsters, DCDR’s latest, confirms the North Shore power trio as a potential second coming of one of those late-’80s/early-’90s Seattle bands we’ve read so much about. During their appropriately thunderous performance, guitarist/singer dude Matt Reppucci commanded onlookers to yoink a CD out of a nearby suitcase. Music wants to be free, and offering downloads for suggested donations doesn’t cost anything, but, cripes! Paying to get a physical CD manufactured only to hand it out willy-nilly like that is a horrible business model.

The Fifth Minute, endearingly dorky pop punks out of Weston, segued into the too-cool-for-school post-punk of New Hampshire’s Liberation Day. Any journalistic observations I might’ve made about them were pre-empted by the pair of their groupies who kept stealing my notebook. Also, I got distracted when someone texted me, “YOU UNGRATEFUL TRAMPY SLUT! DON’T COME BEGGING TO ME FOR MONEY AGAIN WHEN YOU NEED ANOTHER ABORTION!”

Most of the crowd bounced after their friends’ band played. Undaunted by their unfortunate distinction as the headliners, Kermit’s Finger played very loud and fast, because they are bad-asses.

  Topics: Live Reviews , Cambridge, New Hampshire, MIT,  More more >
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