Pile played Great Scott – 12/3

Beloved Boston noisemakers Pile played the first of three December residency shows at Great Scott on Thursday night. 

Pile plays Great Scott…rather frequently, but they’ve sought to make this run of shows special by chronologically revisiting their own history and playing unique sets week to week, focused on different stages of their discography. For opening night, the setlist pulled largely from the band’s first two LPs, 2009’s Jerk Routine and 2010’s Magic Isn’t Real. In short, this meant a lot of rarely-performed older tunes that a room full of diehard fans was psyched on. I’ve shot Pile a few times at this point, and this was by far the wildest set. I spilled my beer, narrowly avoided losing my glasses and watch, accidentally destroyed an innocent bystander pint glass while holding onto my cameras for dear life, and came away with many, many bruises. But all’s fair in rock ‘n’ roll. Pile were in raw and raucous form, as they always are, and it was a killer set. Locals Rye Pines and Gracie, along with the emotive and hair-whipping jams of Louisville, KY’s State Champion, opened the show.

Front-row shooting was naturally a bit challenging with such an active audience during Pile’s set, but I managed to occasionally brace myself against the stage for long enough to get some clear shots, and caught some fun (/grainy) crowd moments. I also stuck to frontman Rick Maguire’s side of the stage this time, which by choice or circumstance I haven’t done before, and I like that angle more than stage left despite the occasional mic-placement roadblocks. Hopefully I succeeded in shooting something a little different from my last several Pile shows. If I can no longer be the city’s Krill archivist, I will rise to the occasion of Pile archivist as best I can.

And so ends the photography diatribe portion of tonight’s program; actual photos below.