Mean Creek

Sweet Talk

From the brain flow of Paste's Editor At Large:

Some nefarious music hounds from Decatur twisted my outsized ego into creating a dialogue littered with opinionated recommendations and myopic rants. Therefore, to put a smidgen of decency back into nepotism, I have stolen the title "Sweet Talk" in homage of my father who had a weekly sports and leisure column of the same in the early 70's that was syndicated in several small town newspapers in the land the gods made great, New England (sans Connecticut of course). Luckily this space will focus more on sporting leisure, my favorite kind.

Browse Sweet Talk

I know I'm regionally biased, but Mean Creek is not merely a great Boston Band; they're a really great band period. The J. Geils Band at the Worcester Centrum was the first concert I ever experienced. This was a few years before "Cenetrfold"/ "Freeze Frame" J. Geils . It was more the Full House LIVE J. Geils era, with "First I Look at The Purse", "(Ain't Nothin' but a)House Party", "Whammer Jammer" ie the down and dirty street shuffle, combat zone, jungle boogie shit that makes you proud of your dirty water heritage. I was twelve years old wandering around backstage when I ran into lead singer Peter Wolf, my first brush with rock stardom. I told him I was a big fan. Being a mere shrimpy pre-teen he held his hand a foot or so above my bowl cut and said, 'Hell man, you ain't that big!' and walked away laughing his ass off.

Lesson learned.

When writing about rock and roll never let the band know you're a fan before meeting them. Well, I'm breaking the rules with mean Creek. I'm taller now so I screw it. I'm a huge fan and everyone outside the 617 should be warned Boston has birthed it's next prodigious band. Be prepared.