Basement venues in Boston

An article by someone who hosts shows in his basement.

My house the music venue - The Phoenix: "Within weeks in either direction of me moving into my house, nearly every small, independent-minded concert venue in the city of Boston was shut down. Art spaces, a record store, other houses, and even a small bar ceased hosting bands. Allston’s Reel Bar, Re: Generation Records, the Lilypad in Cambridge, and a house known as the Cuntree Club were all casualties of the same period of under three months. Necessity, as it turned out, was the mother of five Finnish men as old as my parents playing Discharge-inspired hardcore at my house.

When the dust settled and the information about my basement started to reveal itself, the various operators of some of the venues began to come to us with show proposals. A friend who booked shows at the now-showless record store knew a band called Diswar, who were on tour with Kohu-63. It evokes the sequences in old sitcoms where split-screen telephone conversations would go on and on, with each new person hanging up and calling someone else.

Even when the venue climate is relatively barren, bands from Boston can always get local shows — it’s not so easy for bands from a few states away to keep their finger close enough to the city’s pulse to know who to ask and, for the time being, my roommates and I have no problem hosting them.

The long and the short of it: I like basement shows and I like music — that’s why I’m willing to enter this situation and go to bat for all these people. I think a lot of my friends and a lot of their friends are doing interesting and fun things musically. I’m more than willing to break the law so my friend Brian, his high-pitched voice, and his acoustic guitar can sit on a PA speaker and cover 'I Wanna Be A Homosexual” by Screeching Weasel.'"

He makes reference to an early article that discusses the concept in length.

It came from the basement: "Bloodstains Across Somerville is one of a handful of rental-house basements in the area that moonlight as live-music venues. Some of the rawest rock shows in town are performed in DIY places like this, beside dusty furnaces, cylindrical water heaters, and laundry hampers. They’re accessible only through crawlspaces and creaky back doors, down peeling-paint bulkheads and wobbly wooden staircases. The best, most frenetic, in-your-face shows in town sometimes happen quite literally underground, sometimes only for an audience of 30 — in craggy-walled, cramped, dingy cellars situated in cheap-rent districts like Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, Brighton, Allston, and Somerville."

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Boston