Yesterday the Boston punk scene, Bowery Boston, and Boston’s Ladder 14 and Engine 41 announced a benefit at Great Scott for the two firefighters who died in a nine-alarm blaze last week on Beacon Street. The show sold out in two hours, and at the VIP pre-sale price of $75. General on-sale (at $30) was supposed to happen tomorrow, but there are already no tickets left over.
So the organizers are throwing a second show — April 23 at the Sinclair in Harvard Square, Cambridge. Tickets are $35 and will go on sale Thursday, April 3 at noon via Ticketmaster.
On the bill are Street Dogs, Ducky Boys, a reunited Avoid One Thing playing their second show in 10 years (after the Great Scott gig the night before), the Old Edison, and what we’re told are “special guests to be announced soon.”
Josh Smith of Bowery Boston knew a second show was inevitable once VIP tickets to the first gig started selling fast yesterday at noon.
“Response has been unreal [yesterday] and the event sold out completely in about two hours, so we all got together and decided we need to add a second show, this time in a bigger room,” Smith says. “We have a few of the same bands involved and are working on adding a few more as we speak.”
Like the Great Scott show, money from the Sinclair gig will be donated to the Lieutenant Walsh – Firefighter Kennedy Memorial Fund, established by the Boston Firefighters Credit Union.
Yesterday, Lind explained the motivation behind the original show.
“You’d be hard pressed to find someone in the Boston area that doesn’t have a friend or a relative on the fire department,” Lind said. “People want to help and they don’t know how; we’re just gently steering people toward the official fundraising efforts and throwing a punk rock show their way in exchange for their donation. It’s the right thing to do. It could have been any one of our friends or relatives on the fire department that didn’t come home that day.”