On March 14, I broke the story of the sudden closing of the Boston Phoenix, and with it the unfortunate demise of the new WFNX.com stream, which launched just five months prior. The news sent shockwaves throughout the Boston community as there was now no station from which to have a local beacon to inform the public about shows, events, and the latest music from area bands. WFNX will still live on though in the hearts and minds of every music fan currently living in the city, and I myself owe an enormous deal of gratitude to them for influencing my music tastes over the years, and I probably would not be writing this article if it wasn't for them.
On April 15, 2013 the entire landscape of the City of Boston was shattered at 2:50PM when explosions rocked the finish line at the Boston Marathon, killing 3 people and injuring over 200. The events of that day and what was about to transpire over the course of the entire week forced me to do something I had never done in the 4 year history of the site: suspend all posts until further notice. In my first post about 2 days after the bombing happened, I said that music was the only thing helping me get through the entire ordeal and allowed me to look at things from a different perspective. After the perpetrator was apprehended, life slowly started to return to normal and we all carried on with our lives and the site returned to its duty of covering music from Boston, the city of champions.
Over the summer, fans of the Beverly, MA based group Caspian were shocked and saddened to hear that their beloved bassist, Chris Friedrich died unexpectedly. The band has just played a street festival in their hometown in the time leading up to his death, and this was a major blow to the core foundation of the group whom I had the pleasure of interviewing here on the site earlier this year. The band soldiered on after taking the intervening time off to aid in the grieving process, and the band will continue on but Chris's memory lives on in the hearts and minds of all of his bandmates, but most notably his fans.
The much anticipated Boston Calling Music Festival made its debut over Memorial Day weekend this past year with fun., The National, Of Monsters and Men, and Silversun Pickups anchoring the inaugural edition of the festival that was a rain soaked event at Boston's City Hall Plaza, but a number of people braved the elements to watch their favorite indie acts take their talents on a mass stage gathered right in the heart of the city. The festival returned just 4 months later on Labor Day weekend with Vampire Weekend, Passion Pit, and Local Natives among the plethora of acts gathered on a idyllic summer day where yours truly was able to deliver the goods and report on all the happenings at the festival, which went way beyond my expectations and only made my heart grow fonder for this city and all of the people that live in it.
My sophomore Bandcamp compilation, Towering Over London was released in November and immediately became a smash hit here and across the pond where all of these bands were bred and raised. I had high hopes going into the making of this compilation as I was convinced that this disc would be something special and one that would be well received by the general public. In the end, all the hard work paid off from contacting all of the bands to gathering all of the recorded material, everybody came through in the clutch and what results is one of the most cohesive and eclectic compilations I've had the great pleasure of handling. Acts such as Alexander, Lower Lands, and Maycomb are among some of the most gifted and talented acts I've ever come across, and I'm blown away at the reception of this disc from the general public.
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