Word: gittleman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Boston, with its huge population of willing college and adolescent devotees and its history of producing great ska bands, served as a perfect city to nurture the band from the outset. Growing up in Boston exposed Gittleman and other members to old school Boston punk and ska bands such as Bim Skala Bim, DYS, Stranglehold and the Dogmatics. The stage was set and with the only changes being a new drummer and added horns in 1990, the band has been consistently blasting out their defining ska-core sounds for over ten years with a constant line...
From immediate gratification of the live show to the compassion of transforming their music and motivation into addressing a local issue, the Bosstones have readily contributed to Safe and Sound, an organized response by Boston musicians to the Brookline Clinic murders a few years back. Although Gittleman feels releasing the Safe and Sound benefit album last year was "a selfish thing to do, at the time, the shootings rocked the city and [the record] was a way to feel better about the situation." It raised money and awareness and represented the intimacy of the Boston music community. The first performance...
...these appearances are on the heel of Let's Face It, the Bosstones most enjoyable, commercially successful and varied effort to date. Some fans may have been disappointed by the toned-down gruffness of Barrett's vocals or the album's refined pop-readiness, but, as Gittleman notes, "[the Bosstones] go a different direction on every record." This year's approach brought the band straight to the pop music airwaves, but Gittleman explains radio popularity as a result of the "new temperature of mainstream music [which is] different than when previous albums were released...
...Devil's Night Out would have done great this year," says Gittleman, a little too unconvincingly. The comment is certainly an exaggeration, seeing that the release was too rough around the edges for any commercial radio station to gladly welcome. The atmosphere of rock music, especially the "ska craze," described by Gittleman as being generated by "radio and MTV getting too excited," was more likely the boost for the popularity of Let's Face It. Devil's Night Out never would have made the newly defined...
Hesitatingly, Gittleman initially balks at the suggestion of playing a college such as Harvard. But in order to avoid falling off the fine line between sincere opinion and publicity personality, he replies, "We've played places stranger than Harvard...