WINNER Best Boston Female Vocalist Sophia Cacciola of Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling shows off
her Golden Record.
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Around midday last Wednesday, Fourth Wall Project on Brookline Ave was clean and sparkly; strings of studio lights offered more warm brightness than the cloudy skies outside would have allowed, the tall white walls provided a crispness and contrast to the gray cement floors, and the two dozen pieces in Jurne & MWM's "Algorhythms" (on display until June 29) splashed bright colors on those six white walls.
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And then the shitshow party rolled in. By midnight, the place looked like a disaster area, though the only causalities were measured in empty beers bottles: more than 1100 containers of PBR and Schlitz had been consumed over three hours. Since the Phoenix is moving out of the Fenway neighborhood later this summer, we wanted to throw an awards bash close to home, and there's nothing closer (apologies to the Yard House below us) than the Fourth Wall Project, a space that even a few years after its opening still feels very un-Boston-like (in a very good way).
It was the perfect home for the Best Music Poll Awards 2012 — downsized and privatized after last year's successful live-music-focused event at Brighton Music Hall. Gentlemen Hall, Quilt, and Bad Rabbits won big; pRIMORDIAL sOUNDS supplied a night's worth of garage and surf-rock tunes; and in perhaps the night's highlight, Justin Lally of Earthquake Party and Birthdays' Sammy Yager teamed up for a noisy, droning experimental medley of all six Boston Accents Song of the Year nominations (who knew the lyrics to Viva Viva's "Hailing a Cab in Hell" flow perfectly into Casey Desmond's "Talking to God?").
It was a cool, loose gathering of the nominated artists, and no overblown self-righteous awards party. There was no podium — or stages or risers, for that matter — so from the floor we handed out 17 Golden Records to everyone from Yale, Massachusetts (Best New Act) to Ghost Box Orchestra (Psych/Experimental) to Acaro (Metal) to Grey Sky Appeal (Rap/Hip-hop).
Next year, though, we promise to go back to being a public event. If there was any drawback to the 2012 BMP party, it's that we didn't invite all of Boston.
