Hooligans In The Vestibule. MATWEEDS

Rum Bar Records is churning out more good records than for the life of me I can keep up with and every once in a while I like to give some attention to others. This one was released in March and remained on my potentially to do list. Here it is anyway.

Hooligans In The Vestibule is not even a new record. When the Dogmatics, check this blog for that band, and Stranglehold folded, Jerry Lehane and Jim Keogh came together and started to make music with some Boston musician friends  ...  never to be released until Rum Bar decided to do so in 2023. (There are too many friends to mention here, so check out the Bandcamp page for details.) And what a glorious record it is. In a mix of U.S. (60s garage)rock and U.K. Madness and Stones MATWEEDS rocks out and doesn't stop doing so, with the exception of one ballad.

What defines this album perhaps more than anything else, is, besides the fun in playing these songs, the saxophone being the lead solo instrument. Not unique for a (garage)rock band but certainly different. It is where the Madness likeness comes in most together with that obvious fun element, call it a 'One Step Beyond' without the ska but the same sort of energy.

Keogh's rough sounding voice takes the most lead in the songs making the songs very much rock and roll. With 'Fear and Whiskey' the hardest rocking song, bringing The Rolling Stones of circa 1970 to mind. The ballad 'Your Love Is Worn', sung by Lehane, does the same. It brings the country back to the U.S. via the 'Sweet Virginia' link. (I could have sworn I heard 'your love is warm' being sung, but what's in a word? A lot in this case by the way.) There is another Stones link, Ron Wood's 'I Can Feel The Fire' is covered here.

What caught my ear immediately is the tremendously poppy opening song 'Stay' with dual lead voices. It rocks alright but listen to that organ, the saxophone, the pub like singing. Stay is the kind of song that will make a pub brawl "you ought to stay, stay, stay", as loud as the fans can. I have a hard time believing this song was recorded in 1987 or so. That is 36 years ago and it all sounds so fresh. Where does time go? 'Stay' would have fitted immediately after Diplomatics' opening song 'Jungle' on the recent album 'Is It Time To Fly?'.

Would I have liked the song at the time as much as I do today? Impossible to answer of course but that said, the answer may be no. My ears are screwed on very differently. Around 1987 there was not a lot of new music I liked. On reflection perhaps that could have been the reason why the answer would have been yes. There are enough links to what I really liked from the 1970s to enjoy on Hooligans In The Vestibule.

It's all academic. This album was only released this year. For whatever the reason was, it was never released and perhaps these are the only MATWEEDS songs in existence, is inconsequential: the album finally is here for all to hear. Rum Bar has uncovered one of the best kept secrets from the Boston underground. One everyone with a love for good old fashioned rock and roll should listen to and fast. In the 1980s, in hindsight, it didn't come much better than this and today the answer may simply be the same.

Wout de Natris

You can listen to and order Hooligans In The Vestibule here:

https://rumbarrecords.bandcamp.com/album/hooligans-in-the-vestibule