The Bonaduces: The Roof is (Not) on Fire

The Bonaduces damn near set the Lo Pub on fire. The sheer humidity of over one hundred people trying to keep up with the energy on stage tripped the fire alarm. When the men with the swirling red sirens arrived in their flame-retardant suits with their axes and sledgehammers, we all evacuated. When the fire department finally let us back in, the band picked up in the exact same spot in the song they'd left off on.


As always, the band occasionally teetered on the edge of chaos (no one brought a tuner?) before suddenly pulling everything together for some ass-kickin' performances, including a raging "Really Powerful Telescope" and a full-blooded sing-along take on "Understudy to Abby Grey". Then the fire alarm went off. Again.



With another false alarm discredited, we all filed back in (trying to remember where we'd left our drinks) and the band kicked off again (quite literally in Koop's case who spent much of the show defying gravity).



It was a great triumph but as a hopeless partisan I could have written that before the show even happened. The alarm did go off again before the money got split up but all the bands, including the Cop-Out's (their set, their first ever, was strong and almost alt-country-ish) and Halifax's Dog Day (who showed an unusually tough take on indie-rock, as exemplified by their blazing cover of the Nils' "Fountains") got paid. Then we shut things down before the fire trucks were forced to return and fight another illusory blaze.

All photos by Jameel Adams



Thanks to the ever-dedicated Brody469 for the footage.

(And yes, the lighting at the show was pretty miserable.)