Rock for Life

Charity can be found in many different places. This past Wednesday, if you braved the snow, you would have found it in a little rock club in Allston. That was when my good friend Jay Breitling hosted the Clicky Clicky Community Servings benefit at Great Scott, featuring Guillermo Sexo, Varsity Drag, Infinity Girl and the Boston-area debut of Johnny Foreigner.

Of course, nobody could have foreseen the crazy-ass Nor'easter that blew into town that day, bringing with it mucho snow and slippery road conditions. The drive in from the North Shore was rather hairy, but it was nothing compared to the slog JF had to take from NYC, a journey that took the band 10 hours. Meanwhile, the band Speedy Ortiz had been slated to play second on the bill, but they were stuck in Northampton because of the snow, so Varsity Drag agreed at the last minute to jump in.

It was a mini-Webnoize reunion, with me, Jay, Briggy and Doobs all in attendance, as well as other luminaries (and friends of the podcast) Nick Lorenzen (who is raising money by selling pies for Community Servings, which provides free meals to the chronically ill and their families), Mike and Cathy Piantigini and Brad Searles (who got there after I left). Infinity Girl and Varsity Drag both played excellent rocking sets, and then Johnny Foreigner (who only arrived a short while earlier) took the stage and promptly blew everyone's freaking minds.


Jay has been hyping these guys for years and is pretty much responsible for "breaking" the band in the U.S. (using the term loosely, of course) and I've been digging their albums, but JF has to be seen live to be fully experienced. They started their set with "Johnny Foreigner vs. You,"  sung by frontman Alexei Berrow and bassist Kelly Southern as they stood amongst the audience before climbing onstage to explode into "Feels Like Summer." The band thundered through a blistering set of older and newer songs before Southern led a group of folks outside to do snow angels on the sidewalk.

Guillermo Sexo came out for the headlining set at just past 12:30 a.m., but I had to head home so as to not be completely brain-dead the next day at work.

Kudos to Jay and Nick for pulling off such a great event to help out folks in need. And as was heard from the stage early and often that night, buy a pie, dammit.