Brian Slattery Photo
Magaña and Martinez from Fea.
Connecticut’s own Damn Broads — Michelle Threat on bass, Crazines on guitar, and Taytoxic on drums, all of them on vocals — had already finished its short, punchy set by 9 Tuesday night when Fea, from San Antonio, took Cafe Nine‘s stage.
By storm, as it turned out.
With Phanie Diaz driving the drums, the four-piece — Letty Martinez on vocals, Aaron Magaña on guitar, and Jenn Alva on bass — tore through an airtight set of punk that also drew a bit from surf and rockabilly, never letting more than five seconds go by between song after blistering song.
Martinez’s rat-a-tat voice cut through the mix in English and Spanish, seemingly locking eyes with the entire audience. Magaña proved himself both a ferocious rhythm player and a economical soloist full of surprises. Alva, her eyes on her strings, kept the gas pedal to the floor for the entire set. At the end of a month-long tour that had taken the group from Texas to Arizona to the southeast U.S. and up the east coast, Fea played with that paradoxical loose tightness that musicians have when they’re playing at the top of their game, as players and as a band. (“We like the road,” Martinez explained after their set; the band already has an upcoming West Coast tour in the works.)
Fea’s members also played like they were having the time of their lives. Martinez kept flashing smiles at Alva. They and Magaña pogoed in unison. They got into a musical dogpile in the middle of the stage, Magaña and Alva nearly on the floor and Martinez on top of them. The audience followed them down, rose back when they did, and howled for more at the end of every song. Near the end of the set, Diaz laid into her drums with a fervor that suggested it might be Fea’s last number, only to throw out two more. They played like they were giving everything, though as Martinez said, “that’s how we always play.”
Veteran rockers Agent Orange — Mike Palm on guitar and vocals, Perry Giordano on bass and vocals, and Dave Klein on drums — then unleashed the brand of surf-laced punk that they lay claim to originating in 1979. Two generations of fans swarmed the stage to get close to them. The moshing started with the first number. A pint glass flew from someone’s hand and shattered on the floor.
“Tell more people to dance!” a voice from the crowd shouted.
Palm shook his head. “Nah, there are no rules,” he said. “They can do what they want. As long as people are having fun.”
And they were, whether they were colliding with each other on the dance floor, or hanging close to the stage, swaying and bobbing their heads, or standing near the back of the club, eyes glued to the band. Or even sitting outside at the door, talking with friends in the warm air while the music from inside flowed onto Crown Street.
At the beginning of his set, Palm declared with great pride that this show was the ninth time Agent Orange had played the Elm City, and exclaimed that touring with Fea had been a blast. He was sorry they were parting ways there, at the end of Fea’s tour. But not sad.
“Our paths will cross again,” he said. “Don’t worry.”