A
night filled with booze, broken glass
and the Bronx
By
Brigid McGuire
Summer Forty-Niner
Diversions Editor
In a dirty, makeshift patio, the lead singer Matt Caughthran for the Los Angeles
group the Bronx, sat in an old lawn chair and used an egg crate for a footstool.
He looked calm as his tattooed arms rested across his chest and his drummer
Jorma Vik sat to his left.
The night was June 17 at the Long Beach local watering hole Alex’s Bar
on Anaheim Street and the first night of the band’s national tour.
“This is a place that we hang out at a lot and every time we play here
it just keeps getting better and better,” Caughthran said. “I like
smaller places like this (compared to larger venues).”
The band is out promoting the upcoming sophomore album, self-titled the Bronx,
coming out July 18.
The Bronx’s last album was recorded live, with only one or two takes,
giving it a ruff, intense feel to it.
However, with the new album the band decided to not go in that direction again.
“ The tracks were recorded live but it was a very detailed [album],” Caughthran
said. “We played it over and over again until everyone in the band was
happy and we all knew it was an awesome take. We even got into 60 or 70 takes
for just one song.”
“It was about capturing the right take,” Vik said. “And if
you’re not having a good day, you may have 30 takes [and] that’s
what was hard about this record. We all had to be on.”
With such a precise recording, the album takes on a cleaner sound, then a tough
as nails sound as before.
“I think it sounds cleaner,” Vik said.
“Just because we’re playing cleaner as a band, like when we recorded
the first record, we weren’t really a band at all. So we definitely grew
as musicians.”
After touring for nearly two years straight, the band wanted to create a new
sound.
“We wanted to push ourselves creatively and I think we did that,” Caughthran
said.
Alex’s Bar is a small, dimly lit bar with a soft red glow, located in
the working class section of Long Beach.
With a strict 21 and over only policy, the vast majority of concert-goers look
like they are in their late 20. Most are moderately to heavily tattooed.
With broken bottles on the ground and a lack of security, feels as if they
have traveled back in time to an era of tuff as nails punk show.
It was a little past midnight when the Bronx finely took the same stage and
the crowd erupted with drunken shouts and pushes. Caughthran broke into song
and the small bar erupted into a mass of sweat, broken glass and alcohol.
Most of the people massed at the front of the tiny stage were men and they
were soon soaked with beer that Caughthran threw on them.
Caughthran looked tired but continued to pound out song after song and eventually
no one could tell which song was which.
The showed ended without any major incident and the Bronx members filled off
the stage, looking like they had just fought the battle of their lives.
|
