Boston Band Crush Archived Article: Show Crush: Logan 5 and the Runners CD Release (Preview 3 free MP3s) – 1/17 @ Great Scott

First, the details:
Logan 5 and the Runners Debut CD Release
(the album is called Featurette).

Saturday 1/17/09
Great Scott
1222 Comm. Ave. in Allston
with:
The Daily Pravda (9:30)
The Luxury (10:30)
Logan 5 and the Runners (11:30)

then hot jamz by skilled turntable disc jockey Mr. NI$E. There are rumors of cake as well. Not the band, but the consumable.

Anyone that knows me personally will gladly volunteer to say that I am a little too into some questionable stuff, notably: B-grade Barbarian movies filmed in Argentina (which are unrelated to the present post) and heavy-handed ’70s Sci-Fi with political overtones. Knowing the latter category, it is not terribly surprising that Logan’s Run is one of my absolute favorite movies of all time.

It’s a classic tale of a post-apocalyptic utopia…with one tiny flaw, of course. In this case, when you turn 30, you get “judged” in an awesome floating laser pit (with rad sound effects) called Carousel. If you fail to check in at judgment time, you are classified as a special class of outlaw: a runner.

Logan 5 is a Sandman, a member of the police force that hunts down and executes runners. He, along with young runner-sympathist Jessica 6 (the very-delightful-to-look-at Jenny Agutter, who I continue to have a lingering non-band crush on), must infiltrate the runners to see what they’re up to. If you’ve not seen Logan’s Run, but the plot sounds sort of familiar, you might recognize many, many elements from the very poorly written rip-off film The Island.

While Logan 5 and the Runners don’t quite play songs about sci-fi schlock, you can clearly pick out the interwoven elements of post-hippie-era, entertainment-industry trashiness in their loungy glam sound. I could even imagine them floating in Carousel with lasers blasting all around them, though I would hope they would not be judged too harshly, as their music is quite intriguing.

Back to the trashiness, they even have a song, “Neely O’Hara,” paying tribute to a character from Valley of the Dolls. The vocals have a sort of relaxed, but emotional delivery reminiscent of slower Bowie and Bryan Ferry (of Roxy Music), as well as much of the bombastic modern britpop movement spawned, perhaps, by Jarvis Cocker (of Pulp). Go see them on Saturday!

Download “Girls of the Internet”
Download “TV”
Download “Subtitles”

Some local reviews of Featurette:
Boston Phoenix
Weekly Dig