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N.E.S.T. eggs
The Northeast stuck together. Here’s a wrap-up.
BY CAMILLE DODERO

The organizers of the N.E.S.T. showcase were insistent that the 30-shows-in-seven-days marathon wasn’t a "festival," yet where else but at a festival does a week of music in Boston include: a nine-year-old six-string shredder sitting in with his guitar teacher’s art-rock trio (Devil Music at Great Scott last Tuesday); a shirtless Maine native with a cheese-wedge head who clears the room with noise (Crank Sturgeon later that night); a Providence foursome, anchored by Lydia Lunch–like frontwoman, costumed in trash bags (Made in Mexico at MassArt last Friday)?

Down the block from the cheese head last Tuesday, Ramona Córdova (formerly Ramón Acarcón) serenaded a small O’Brien’s crowd so quietly that a bartender noted it was the first time she’d heard dollar bills crinkle during a show. Dressed in shorts and a painter’s cap, the Philly boy trilled such freak-folktale treats as "One Day, Someday," an acoustic, castrato-style tune from his little-boy-lost concept album, The Boy Who Floated Freely (ECA Records). When Córdova settled behind the merch table, Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky — who’d already performed that night as Octave Museum — got all fanboyish on him, saying he "really loved" the new record. Córdova seemed pleasantly nonplussed.

On Thursday, fanboys who’d gotten sold out of German techno hotshot Isolee’s set sulked on the sidewalk outside Middlesex Lounge. After midnight, the packed house included über-DFA DJ Juan Maclean (known in a previous life as Six Finger Satellite guitarist John Maclean), who showed up for the last 30 minutes of Isolee’s set. Outfitted in Kangaroo sneakers and his red traveling shirt (he wore the same one at CMJ), Maclean had just spent the evening spinning Carl Craig and Ovum imprints on dusty turntables between N.E.S.T. bands at Great Scott — it was his first Boston gig, DJ or otherwise, in a decade. (He had come, he wrote later on his Web log, "with the intention of seeing if there was a scene there I could kinda infiltrate, or something, and to maybe run into some old friends. It seems like I did both.") The end-of-the-night clapping from the audience was on some lifesaving-gratitude shit, like passengers applauding after a flight landing in a Third World country. Later, Isolee was spotted sacked out, glassy-eyed grin still intact, on a couch at the Cambridge apartment of N.E.S.T. co-organizer Ben Sisto. Two nights later, Great Scott was packed to the gills for the N.E.S.T. finale. After Tunnel of Love frontman Andy McBain crawled around on the dirty ground like he wanted to be yer dog, three of the four N.E.S.T. organizers (Sisto, Dan Shea, and T.D. Sidell) got on stage to introduce headliners Night Rally and to thank everyone for the "week’s worth of events." They stuck together and didn’t say "festival," but it sure looked like one to me.

Camille Dodero can be reached at cdodero[a]phx.com


Issue Date: September 30 - October 6, 2005
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