Saturday night and the Great Scott is cluttered with band equipment, more than I’ve seen at past shows in Boston. It stands piled high in the dark corners and litters the front of the stage. The polite crowd, meanwhile squeezed between, enjoys a surprising amount of personal space. Except, that is, for my poor, assaulted left arm…but wait, I’m jumping the gun!
Half past midnight. The white bed sheet “projection screen”, sagging and sad, is pulled down. Images of pumping human hearts, skyscraper-high waves, and hungry, snapping shark jaws dripping blood reel through my head, disturbing echoes of opener No. 3: A Storm of Light. Harvey Milk takes the stage, smiling and waving, and my shoulders begin to relax.
Harvey Bernard Milk was, according to Time Magazine, “the first openly gay man elected to any substantial political office.” Public in his campaign for gay rights, Milk served as city supervisor of San Francisco from 1976 until his assassination in 1978. The sounds of Harvey Milk (the band) encapsulate the sweetness of choice and the anger and confusion with victimization born out of ignorance. The band, which first broke onto the music scene in the early 90s, now rides a wave of popularity following the re-release of previous singles and full length albums, and the release of their fifth album, Life…The Best Game In Town, with a tour down the East Coast followed by a stroll through Europe. Day 5 finds them in Boston where, on a humid night, they conduct a heavily tattooed crowd in synchronized head-banging.
Oh, what to say of Harvey Milk? Not my usual cup of earl grey, but beside that, amazing! This band has been kicking and screaming since the early 90s, changed folks around a bit, and now, back with the original crew – Creston Spiers, Steven Tanner, Paul Trudeau, and Kyle Spence, and tour addition Joe Preston – this rock metal group out of Athens, Georgia is ready to take on the world. Granted, there are pauses in the rocking on Saturday to tend parched throats with cold bottled water, and Spiers seems to really enjoy the blowing box fan hanging overhead. But there is no doubt that Harvey Milk has its teeth sunk deep into the flesh of the night. Lyrically intelligent and musically versatile, this group is playful and patient on stage, splicing shredding sound with unnerving silence, leaving the unfamiliar awkwardly moving where old-hats fall still and wait. Songs of the night include "Decades" (Life...The Best Game In Town), "The Anvil Will Fall" (My Love is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be), "Brown Water" (The Kelly Sessions) and a handful of other tracks from the newly released Life...The Best Game In Town. Amidst playful stage banter, slow intros and violent endings, I stand smiling through the pain scratching through my heals and up my legs. What a deliciously dark sound. The only brightness in the room: the beautiful blond hair of the fellow to my left rhythmically swatting my left arm with his quaffed locks.
