The Justice

The concert at Cholmondeley's last Friday night went exactly how you would expect a five-hour, low-budget college concert event to turn out: four difficult-to-listen-to bands set the mood for a semi-good headliner that didn't take the stage until around midnight. It was strange that the number of people who came for the Boston-area headlining band, Westbound Train, was drastically less than the number of people who arrived during the first three opening acts. Maybe this was because the first acts were simply more popular. I mean, who hasn't heard of In the Face or Eroica, or that good old-fashioned folk trio The Northwoods that everyone loves to listen to when they're in a dentist chair or in an elevator or in a car listening to a low-frequency country station in the backwoods of Beaver City, Nebraska? C'mon, these bands are old favorites, which must have been why there was a higher volume of concert goers during their sets than during the headliner's set.

Or the reason could have been that Westbound Train played so late-absurdly late, I daresay, so late that I left at 12:30, which was in the middle of their set and right around the time when the guitarist's new, straight-out-of-the-packaging Fender amplifier stopped working, forcing the band to stop playing for God knows how long; could have been five minutes, could have been an hour. At that point, the hours were as useless as peanut shells, shucked off two at a time until you realized that you'd been standing in the same spot next to the monitor for nearly four hours. Whoops! Time to move before your ears start to bleed…

If you were one of the few die-hard Westbound Train fans who did decide to brave the opening acts and stay until the end then you were duly rewarded. Westbound Train was a reprieve, a professional ska act with well-spun song structures and an authentic, feel-good vibe. Singer, trombonist and chief songwriter Obi Fernandez demonstrated some remarkable vocal chops, which, to his adoring fans, are only a vehicle for delivering his lyrics. His songs, as he informed the crowd multiple times during the night, sprang from his restless, starry-eyed college musician days when living in his old Boston apartment at 1111 Boylston St. Watching the audience members mouth and sing along to Fernandez's every syllable made it very clear that his lyrics are the focal point of the band's appeal. After all, what college kid doesn't want to ditch rigid familial expectations and follow some righteous pipe dream?

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools