Bone Zone and adorable pajamas at Mass Market
By MATT PARISH | December 16, 2008
"I'm starting to have misgivings about playing this show," says Bone Zone bassist Matt Zaccarino, as he leans against the stage at the far end of MassArt's Pozen Center Sunday and looks out over tables and tables of hand-to-hand commerce taking place in the big, echoey, gymnasium-sized room. Shopping music has thus far been pumped out of two turntables at food-court levels while eager customers have haggled with vendors over piles of homemade wallets and crates of vinyl records. The band still have a while before they play, but the members are all nervously fiddling with tuning pedals and eying the crowd suspiciously.
A steady stream of customers plows through the door all day — a hair shy of 1000 all told — plunking down the $1 cover and diving into the sea of homy art pieces, fashion, trinkets, and a baked-goods contingent that grows with every biannual Mass Market event (this being the third). Electrical outlets decorated with cutouts from vintage girlie mags, baby pajamas with fuzzy duck patches, copper jewelry, epileptically colored prints on giant posterboard — it's all here. Liz Coffey pushes a candle on me that says, "Go Away Writer's Block!" (She's sold out of the mixtapes she made: "One about drinking, one about driving, one about drinking and driving.") The customers filter in through a kind of roller-coaster queue — once you're done chatting with someone, it's tough to avoid awkwardly trailing him or her for another five minutes unless you have an exit strategy.
After flicking on their amps, Bone Zone start at full volume. It's loud, punchy, and shrill, but the feared "Head for the Exits" effect doesn't kick in, and the antsy social situation actually seems to work to their advantage. Bone Zone music is a schizo deconstruction of hundreds of half-thought-out songs — an ADD MO that's well-suited to browsing. Dan O'Neil sings, "Everything I do is illegal!", and the scene, newly chaotic, starts to feel like it. Misgivings aside, the band fit right into this mish-mash of the unexpected — even if they make it a little harder to barter.
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Topics:
Live Reviews
, Pozen Center, Bone Zone, Liz Coffey
