New England Music News

NEMO and the Boston Music Awards

All’s well that ends well

By MATT ASHARE | October 3, 2006

Bang Camaro (pictured here at their August video shoot) played the BMAs after only two gigs

It all started a week ago Wednesday at Avalon, where bands played, the audience mingled and schmoozed, a guy in a bear suit turned out to be Dresden Dolls drummer Brian Viglione (I think), and the NEMO music festival kicked off with the 2006 Boston Music Awards. I had the honor of presenting the first award of the night — “Best New Band,” to Humanwine. That was after a drum corps in lab coats from Berklee joined forces with a female hip-hop duo backed by a turntablist and a drummer to prove that it ain’t your parents’ Berklee School of Music anymore. As is almost always the case at this sort of event, it was impossible to pay attention to every award presentation. In fact, I’m not even sure what award the Dresden Dolls were accepting when a French-sounding dude in a white suit and slicked-back hair read in broken English from a card presumably provided to him by Amanda Palmer thanking someone or everyone for the honor of being there. That’s when the bear appeared and it seemed some kind of cool performance art might take over the stage. Instead, the stage folks mingled back into the crowd, and that gave me a chance to hunt down the guy in the white suit. He turned out to be Otto from Porsches on the Autobahn, a band based in Boston and NYC who may or may not have gotten here via anywhere in Europe — aside from pronouncing “cool” as “cooowell,” Otto didn’t give much away in terms of his heritage.

But bringing a little DIY fun to an awards show that just a decade ago was doing its best to declare its irrelevance to the local music scene by holding its annual event in huge venues like the Wang Theatre and the Orpheum and inviting celebrities (like New Kids on the Block vets) to help boost ticket sales can only be a good thing. Robby Roadsteamer’s blowhard rant about the BMA’s “sucking” or something like that aside, it was a relief not to be seated among screaming teens. And regardless of who took home an award, the live performances, especially the pop metal of Damone, the apocalyptic Americana of Frank Smith, and the harmonizing hard-rock guitars of Bang Camaro (who invited a couple dozen friends up to sing their tune while they focused on complex soloing), were all well timed to keep the momentum moving. Things stalled for a bit only when local DJ Shred read what seemed like an entire Gang Green biography before introducing the veteran Boston hardcore band for a quick run through all their hits, from “Skate to Hell” to “Alcohol.”

All dolled up
Yes, Virginia, but there’s more to the local scene than Amanda and Brian
Boston, beer, and Bobby Brown
The 20th-Anniversary BMAs
Growing pains
The Dresden Dolls try to balance life and art
More