{"id":46255,"date":"2025-02-10T17:02:52","date_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/?p=46255"},"modified":"2025-02-10T17:02:52","modified_gmt":"2025-02-10T22:02:52","slug":"geordie-greep-paradise-rock-club-2-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/2025\/02\/10\/geordie-greep-paradise-rock-club-2-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Geordie Greep @ Paradise Rock Club 2\/7"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review by Miguel Gonzales<\/p>\n

Photography by Jack O’Sullivan<\/p>\n

Friday night was shaping up to be a special occasion. A line curved around the Raising Cane\u2019s on Commonwealth Avenue, managing to block both entrances. It was a holiday for some, especially with the eager folk who went the extra mile to look fashionable. An ensemble of tall, long-haired guys dressed in navy suits and red ties walk with pseudo-shrewd confidence, joining the back of the line. It was extremely chilly too, and those guys in suits were undoubtedly freezing their asses off. The puffed-up worker jackets and wool scarves didn\u2019t help, others couldn’t help but gripe to the universe about how windy it was. Once security permitted the line to enter, the audience was greeted with smooth jazz, dark blue lighting, and bumbling chatter about the \u201cmystical ethos\u201d of Geordie Greep, as one person called it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Geordie Greep lives an adventurous, almost theatrical musical life: he\u2019s an exciting performer, a talented guitarist who can play technical or unabashedly fierce, and someone who is publicly open as a genuine lover of music. Once the ex-frontman and lead guitarist of English experimental rock trio black midi now pursuing a solo career, it isn\u2019t a shock Greep would plunge into more musical endeavors. Under his own terms was what had people in awe, in shock, or with skepticism. However you may feel about Greep\u2019s solo move, you\u2019re still getting new music after all.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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His debut solo album “<\/span>The New Sound”<\/span>\u00a0released last year via Rough Trade Records, displays Greep\u2019s musical influences splurging out, playing the journey of a pathetic man while melodic musical chops are packed tightly in an exhilarating hour-long album.How would Greep and his backing band capture these songs live on the second-to-last show of their North America tour, especially for a sold-out show in Boston?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Opening for Geordie Greep at 7:30 p.m. was Chicago native, multi-instrumentalist, and singer-songwriter Nnamdi Ogbonnaya who goes under NNAMD\u00cf. NNAMD\u00cf\u2019s set clocked under 30 minutes, but he was fun to see. Playing on top of backing tracks and occasionally wielding his guitar, while pampered up in a beautiful tuxedo and a baseball cap, NNAMD\u00cf\u2019s bubbly personality and melodic pop-rap was a good appetizer for the evening. His vocals were caked with autotune for some of the songs he played (and on occasion would peak), the guitar tones were nice, and had some fun instrumentals he performed on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople still say \u2018play Free Bird\u2019?\u201d NNAMD\u00cf responded to someone who asked him to play Free Bird.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The lights shuttered to near-darkness, and the theme song of The Long Good Friday began to play. Greep and the band walk out to a roaring applause filled with ear-piercing whistling, elongated clapping, and some shouting \u201cMr. Greep,\u201d trying to get his attention. The audience started to clap to the rhythm of the song, and Greep and a few of the band members maneuvered around, pretending they were an orchestra conductor waving their arms and hands. Greep occasionally waves his pointer finger around, smirking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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After the theme song fades away, the band jumps into \u201cWalk Up,\u201d an absurdly arranged, explosive song filled with sadistic and ironic themes of prostitution, toxic masculinity in the corporate workspace, and humiliation. Greep stares into the crowd and is dialed into the theatrics \u201cWalk Up\u201d demands, throwing in a variety of low snarls and flashing vocal melodies. Behind Greep is the just as locked-in backing band, all of them playing tight and effortlessly building off each other. With live renditions of \u201cTerra,\u201d \u201cThe New Sound,\u201d and \u201cThrough a War\u201d that came after, it\u2019s clear Greep has crafted his own musically eclectic universe filled with melodrama, wringing in many musical genres similar to Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart.<\/span><\/p>\n

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You can call it experimental, but there\u2019s so much to account for. The nods to Latin music (particularly salsa), jazz-rock legends such as Steely Dan, the infused elements of jazz fusion and progressive rock, the improvisational nature and unpredictable variations of jam band performances \u2014 all of it was contained within the entire set. The non-chalanting of \u201cBongo Season\u201d and the whacked-out, pathetic anthem of \u201cHoly, Holy\u201d are great examples of the band\u2019s musicality, sprawling many pushpits and calamative reactions from the audience. Songs during the set were intentionally elongated, the backing band attentively playing off one another and progressing to either loud or silent sections, separate solos, and grand finishes.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The one solo that had me impressed was pianist Cameron Campbell, tastefully playing off-the-cuff and rapidly plunging down multiple chords. The same goes for the rest: drummer Charlie Schefft keeps the frenetic tempo with his shirt off, bassist Dave Strawn freely sweeps up and down rapidly thrumming his bass strings, guitarist Ethan Marsh shreds and twangs (even when he breaks a string), and Greep occasionally pulls out his guitar and plays some devilish licks on top of it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Though most of the set consisted of Greep\u2019s original material, Greep and the band threw in a few covers as well. They touched on Chick Corea\u2019s \u201cSpain,\u201d an instrumental version of Bruce Springsteen\u2019s \u201cBorn to Run\u201d and Frankie Valli\u2019s \u201cCan\u2019t Take My Eyes Off You,\u201d but the cover that caught my attention was their fantastic rendition of Willie Col\u00f3n\u2019s \u201cCua Cua Ra, Cua Cua.\u201d On bongos and vocals for the Willie Col\u00f3n cover was Santiago Moyano. Greep and the band stepped aside, giving Moyano his time to shine while they groove along.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate drama!\u201d Moyano exclaims, going on a long tangent in Spanish about the complications of romance and love. He was too real for that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Greep and the band end their set with the 12-minute goliath, \u201cThe Magician,\u201d which is extended to around 20 minutes. Even after two whole hours of elongated variations of songs, a lot of improv, and sprinkled-in covers, Greep and the band never lose steam. The pushpit turned into a dancefloor, grown men fluttering and prancing around when Greep silently murmurs hiding from reality, explanations, life, and the people who love him most. The crowd ruptures into applause when the band reaches an agreed-upon conclusion, an ending so fiery and blistering with passion that the ceiling drips from the amount of bodies cluttered inside Paradise. They all bow down, Moyano yells an astounding \u201cGeordie Greep,\u201d and Greep gives his thanks to the backing band and opener.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThank you, woah, woah!\u201d Greep says, while his voice is cloaked underneath heavy echo and reverb. \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review by Miguel Gonzales Photography by Jack O’Sullivan Friday night was shaping up to be a special occasion. A line curved around the Raising Cane\u2019s on Commonwealth Avenue, managing to block both entrances. It was a holiday for some, especially with the eager folk who went the extra mile to look fashionable. An ensemble of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21925,"featured_media":46268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1895,1525,1523,15],"tags":[2273,2274,117],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46271,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46255\/revisions\/46271"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/wtbu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}