Rocknroll show

I am old and creaky and have jobs and responsibilities and need naps and don't get out to the rocknroll shows as much as I did in my younger days. But that doesn't mean I don't get out at all.

Last week I took the trip into Allston Rock City to see the Biters, seven bucks, free parking, and all the sweat and leather and hooks and ringing guitars and ringing ears and denim and good times to make me once again believe that, yes, rock and roll is a living breathing thing that needs to be experienced on occasion up close and without earplugs and with amplifiers less than five feet from your ears.

If it had been a lesser band, it might have been a pleasant enough night that faded from memory after a day or two. But it was the Biters, most likely my favorite new band since the Exploding Hearts tragically met their end about five years ago (and major thanks to Greg Munroe for pointing  me in the direction of both the Hearts and the Biters).

In short, the Biters are everything that is eternal and good and loud and now about rocknroll. They are the '76 Ramones, the early Mats, Thin Lizzy, T. Rex, Cheap Trick at Budokan. And if you want to take off points for a lack of originality, then go home and listen to your radiohead bootleg demos on your headphones alone in your bedroom. Because real rocknroll is playing your ass off in front of 50 people in a corner bar on a Tuesday night, and knowing that at least 30 of those people have no fucking clue who you are. Real rocknroll is knowing that it doesn't matter if it is a basement or headlining Madison Square Garden. And the Biters were real rocknroll, god friggin' bless them.