[ATTENDED: March 1, 2022] Dazey and the Scouts
I had never heard of Dazey and the Scouts when my son said he wanted to go to their only show.
I did some research, found out that they’d been a band about five years ago. They were from Boston. They put out a short record called Maggot and then broke up.
Sometime about two years ago, their songs were discovered by the TikTok users and Dazey had a huge (in terms of their band) resurgence of popularity–presumably more than they had initially.
My understanding is that the song “Sweet Cis Teen” was what really went big online. Dazey and the Scouts are a queer band, and they sing about sex. “Wet” is pretty funny and explicit. And “James Deen” was a porn star who was later accused of rape and sexual assault.
The band came out on stage. Guitarist Brennan Wedl in a hot pink bustierre. Since the band broke up, Brennan has moved to Nashville and is making alt-country albums (!). On the far side from me was bassist Otto Klammer. They were quiet for most of the set until they introduced “Sweet Cis Teen” which they wrote and sang.
There was a drummer whose name a I never got. They were great–loud and gangly with a wonderfully loose style that fit the band perfectly. They said that they’ve been friends with the band forever. But I don’t know if it’s the drummer that played on Maggot.
Finally in the center was lead singer and lead guitarist Lea Jaffe. Jaffe was a fantastic front person–engaging, funny and incredibly emotional.
They opened with the ripping “Groan” and the crowd was there for every word. When the song ended Jaffe, who was absolutely intense on stage, stomped on and broke her power supply–“on the most important show of my life!” That was quickly remedied, but in “James Deen” her guitar strap broke on her brand new guitar that he was really excited to play. So she had to go back to her other guitar.
It was a shame that the beginning was so beset by technical difficulties since the whole show was being filmed.
But even technical difficulties couldn’t dampen the energy of the crowd and the band. The whole room screamed along to “Wet” and a pogoing pit was in full swing.
I wondered how they would headline a show with only one record and less than a half hour of released music.
Well, Brennan Wedl sang one of he solo songs “I Wanna Be Your TV” which sounded very different from the rest of the set.
After playing “Sad Boys” (they played Maggot in order, with some extras mixed in), Lea introduced a previously unreleased song. Apparently they had recorded a couple more songs but never put them out. This one was just as good as the rest.
The band left the stage and Lea prepared for a solo song. She introduced it by saying she wrote it the night that Dazey broke up. Lea was going abroad and her significant other broke up with her that night as well. It was rough and she wrote this song (I didn’t get the name). She was an emotional wreck while telling the story–amazed at the love and caring in the room and the fact that so many people still wanted to hear them. It was nice to be in the room when this happened.
The solo song was mellow and melancholy. But the rest of the band came back out and interrupted the mellow moment by playing a fantastic version of the snotty “Maggot.”
When the song was over, Otto said that they were always supposed to segue from “Maggot” into “Sweet Cis Teen,” but that they never could because they wanted to talk about the song. It was even more true tonight when they had to thank everyone for everything. It was even more emotional than Lea’s moment. And when they told us what it was like to write “Sweet Cis Teen,” it made the song even more powerful. It’s a slow, poignant song, but the ending was a wild, chaotic frenzy of slam dancing and feedback. It was amazing.
The band left and then came back out for the encore, which everyone knew would be “Nice Nice.” They intro’d the song by doing a “fuck, marry, kill” like the start of the song. The crowd had a lot of fun with that and then the band launched into the song with a lot of energy and power. Once again, the crowd was a writhing mass of bodies. It was a perfect ending. The set was barely 45 minutes but it was a few years of catharsis for most everybody there.
SETLIST
- Groan
- Wet
- James Deen You Let Us Down
- I Wanna Be Your TV (Brennan Wedl song)
- Sad Boys
- unreleased song
- solo song from Lea
- Maggot
- Sweet Cis Teen
- Nice Nice
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