The Mammals

The Mammals played Club Passim last week. They play traditional music, though they jazz in up a lot. Or as The Boston Globe put it:

"The Mammals play old-time string band music the way Jack Kerouac wrote novels - with an abandon born of a deep understanding of structure and form. Their sound is wild, mirthful, and masterful."

Why are music reporters so much better at describing musical acts?

I've seen them before and enjoyed their show a lot. They do a version of Richard Thompson's 1952 Black Vincent that, even though not as good as the original, is pretty damn good.

At one point they mentioned how they had become the center of a small storm over censorship after singing a song about George Bush and people complained and the organization asked them not to do the song again.

There's a description of what happened in an article at The Independent Weekly Don’t Play it Again, Sam

...Ungar’s band, The Mammals, played a set at the Community Coffee Scène Lafayette stage at Festival International on Saturday, April 23. For its encore, the band performed its song “The Bush Boys,” which contains lines such as:

Listen up folks the votes are in
It was anyone’s guess who’d win
Democrats had the higher amount
But they lost ’cause Florida could not count …
You won’t believe what the Bush boys bought.

Ungar was milling about the hospitality tent the following day preparing for The Mammals’ next performance when Festival International VP of Programming Jimmie Duhon approached her and asked her not to play “The Bush Boys” again...

I see on their website that they'll be playing some shows with Arlo Guthrie on his "Alice's Restaurant 40th Anniversary Massacree Tour."