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Weird show. I'm on the patio of the Cottonwood Cafe, so we're rocking out outside, in an echoing canyon of Back Bay concrete. And I'm here to see this band mostly because a dear friend of mine plays in it, and not so much because I like their music, which tends toward school of Aerosmith hard-rock-with-power-ballads and is not really my thing. That said, they're very good. My friend Pete plays bass, funky and melodic and rock solid. The drummer gets a bit lost in the most complicated fills, but is otherwise very steady. The singer is kind of a hard rock howler; he had a cold the other time I saw them, so I'm pleasantly surprised at how fierce his voice gets. And the star of the show is Tony Russo (a.k.a. Stony Curtis, a.k.a. Dr. Bong), a guitar shredder of mystifying awesomeness. I have yet to see the project where he devotes his powers to music that I would otherwise want to hear, but every time I see him play I am blown away by his abilities. After a rock set, they take a break and play a short acoustic set. Pete breaks out the sax for these, and it can't be a coincidence that the words "sax" and "sex" are so similar. Then a big rock finish, with an audience sing-along that doesn't quite gel. On a sidewalk in the Back Bay. Weird.
