Like “Herbie”, the automobile in the 1968 movie The Love Bug, cars were more than supporting characters tonight in the Marshalls Plaza in Newton Upper Falls!
Couch The Band produced joy and happiness before an assemblage of nearly 100 cars filled with avid horn-honking coronavirus-avoiding fans. With only half of the eight member two-year old band, four talented and stage savvy twenty-somethings played keyboard, bass, sax and percussion along with the most pleasant vocalizations of one of their “usually” two vocalists, Tema Siegal, whose lovely voice was clearly admirable, even as she occasionally conjured the dulcet breathiness of Astrud Gilberto strolling along the sands of Ipanema in the 60’s.
The event, the brain-child of Jerry Reilly (who else?) with the sound system aid (and guest saxophone solo) of Chris Pitts, the food boxes from Better Life Food, the traffic control of the Newton Nomadic Players, the four mobile stages – Youngbood Builder”s matching white pickup trucks , the venue made available by the Northland Corporation, was held this evening in a surprise location told only at noon today to those first 100 car owners who RSVP’d to the Newton Nomadic Theater website that they wished to attend.
Cars were parked in every other space and led there safely by the usual Nomadic Theater performers. It was literally a BLAST. Cars honked at every pause and also requested and got an encore! Newton Community Pride underwrote the event so it was FREE for all. Nonetheless, VENMO donations (@ Couchtheband) will be happily accepted and 1/3 of the proceeds will go to an organization (TBD) that works for racial justice for our black community.
As I said above, it was AMAZEBALLS!!!!!
Couch, off the back of four pickup trucks was an amazing thing to see tonight. I”m not sure when I last had as good time as this.
One of the most fun details of the night was Nomad Radio 91.3. The whole show was broadcast via FM radio to everyone’s car radios. Last week, Newton Nomadic Theater actor Noni Lewis said ” why don’t we produce a taped pre-show. We’ll call it Nomad Radio and make it sound like a real radio station.”
Noni and her friend Jeff Berlin who both work in radio production put together a 45 minute pre-show. We had the band send us a playlist of some of their favorite songs. Noni and Jeff produced station jingles, retro-sounding ads for local businesses, and wrapped it all with a very realistic sounding DJ. Take a listen to this sample.
This was one of the craziest concerts I’ve ever gone to. So much fun.