Welcome to the latest in a series of posts previewing the 2016 Rock And Roll Rumble, our city’s annual throw down that doubles as a monthlong local music festival unlike any other. This year’s Rumble goes down April 3 to April 22 at ONCE Ballroom and Lounge in Somerville, is organized and presented by Boston Emissions with Anngelle Wood, with the Verb Hotel and Vanyaland on board as official sponsors. For our full Rumble coverage, click here; for tickets and venue information, click here.
What You Need To Know:
Rock And Roll Rumble Preliminary Night 2
Monday, April 4 at ONCE Ballroom, 156 Highland Ave. in Somerville MA
With Jack Romanov, The Black Cheers, Analog Heart, Eric Salt & the Electric City
Doors at 8 p.m., 21 to drink, $10 in advance and $15 at the door
Advance tickets, Facebook event page
How The Night Stacks Up:
We’ve written this here in the past (or maybe it was during our ghost life as an ink-stained alt-weekly), but one of the best parts of the Rumble every year is the discovery aspect. With four bands randomly drawn together, people from different scenes and cliques and circles all come together under one roof, there to root on and support their friends or lovers but also exposed to experience as many as three bands they’ve yet to hear. On first glance, that could be the underlying theme of the preliminaries’ Night #2 — four very distinct bands that will likely play for a room comprised mainly of people who are hearing them for the first time, whether it’s the theatrical pop of Jack Romanov, the blue collar punk of the Black Cheers, Analog Heart’s galaxy rock, or the we’ve-listened-to-everything-and-still-don’t-know-how-to-peg-them rock and roll of Eric Salt and The Electric City. But don’t go in totally cold — check out their songs and backgrounds below. But be warned — one of these bands features a dude from Darkbuster, but we won’t tell you which. You’ll just have to guess.
Get To Know The Bands:
9:00 p.m.: Jack Romanov
HOMETOWN: Boston, Massachusetts
SONG YOU NEED TO HEAR: “Words”, off September 2014 LP Sincerely
BIO: We can’t find a bio for Jack Romanov. We don’t think one exists. Maybe that’s by design.
VIDEO YOU NEED TO WATCH: Their cover of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” from Boston Pride 2014
WHY THEY CAN WIN: No drawn-out bio, one awesome Taylor Swift cover, and a weird-as-fuck sound that pulls from various traces, like the cabaret of the Dresden Dolls, the pop polish of the Luxury, and the outsider rock of Reverend Glasseye and the Campaign For Real Time. All of those bands won the Rumble, so why not a group young enough to not care if they do and smart enough to reflect the modern schizophrenia of pop.
TWITTER: Follow Jack Romanov @_JackRomanov
