Live Reviews

Hometown throw up

Darkbuster, Abbey Lounge, February 21, 2007

By JEFF BREEZE | February 27, 2007

DARKBUSTER: The line between band and fan blurred.

For years, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones celebrated the holiday season and their Boston roots with a week of club gigs they dubbed the “Hometown Throwdown.” Leave it to Darkbuster, the beer-swilling, hard-rocking band who are Boston to the core, to pick up where the Bosstones left off with something a little more their style: a week of gigs at the Abbey christened last year as the “Hometown Throw Up.”

The taps at the Abbey Lounge were flowing and the cans of PBR were plentiful as the crowd gathered fairly early for a Wednesday night midway through this year’s “Throw Up.” The pompadoured Trash Boys set the tone with their piss-and-vinegar punk. The tempo slowed a bit as scene legends the Real Kids took over for a set that peaked with a blistering “My Baby’s Book.” Unfortunately, things fell apart during an encore of their best-known tune, “All Kindsa Girls,” thanks to some sort of in-joke that left most of the crowd in the dark.

As soon as Darkbuster stepped on stage, Lenny “CaCa” Lashley seemed to start directing the momentum of the crowd, a circular swirl of bodies that stopped and went vertical in a rage of fist pumping as the choruses hit. The line between band and fan was quickly blurred as audience members jumped on stage to shout along to the choruses. Bassist Mike “Sweet Pea” Gurley and drummer Danny “Deer in the Headlights” O'Halloran kept it all together, from driving anthemic punk backbeats to the occasional dubbed-out refrain. And aside from her nimble fretwork, the biggest difference that Darkbuster’s newest addition, guitarist Amy “Grif” Griffin, has brought is that the audience seems less inclined to spit beer back up toward the stage when she’s in the frame. No, the crowd saved most of that for Lashley, who seemed unfazed even as a few beer cans whizzed by, precariously close to his head.

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