GREAT SCOTT! IT’S BACK! Great Scott, a venue whose decades-long career as Allstonite’s favorite community-gatheringsee-your-friends-band-grab-abeer locale ended during the pandemic, is coming back just up the street from its original location. The venue will share space with its sister venue, O’Brien’s Pub, on the corner of Harvard Ave and Cambridge Street. Great Scott was originally opened in 1976 and steadily became a hallmark of the Boston music scene. With a capacity around 240
people, patrons could expect to get up close and personal with their fellow audience members for shows from folks on national tours to your neighbor’s friend’s old coworker’s really sick band. Henry Beguiristain, whose band Aloud played the release show for their 2004 record The Sooner It Comes, remembers his days of living down the street from Great Scott well. And while there was a time when Great Scott was known as just a local bar for Boston College students, there was a serious shift somewhere along the way.
“It was this magical thing where little by little it became a place you wanted to be,” he said. “It’s hard to describe…realizing what a magical confluence and combination of factors that is.”
previous iteration being intimate and passionate about music—as well as PBR. Now, she’s looking forward to what the venue’s return means for the local music scene in Boston.
Beguiristain said the spearhead of this change was Carl Lavin. Lavin was the booking manager for Great Scott for 20 years and is now partnering with Jordan Warshaw, a real estate developer, and Paul Armstrong, the CEO of media company Redefined, to get the venue back on its feet.
“I’m hoping with Great Scott’s reopening they begin to fill the hole that they and other shuttered venues left behind, Solomon said. “The newer, larger venues that have opened—Roadrunner and MGM Fenway come to mind—are wonderful, but they could have opened anywhere in the country. Great Scott belongs in Allston.”
“After a number of swings and misses it looks like we’ve found the target here,” Lavin said in an interview with WBUR. The return of Great Scott also marks the return of New England talent who gained their footing in the Boston music scene. Almost 20 years after their original debut at the venue, Rhode Island punk band Gymshorts, fronted by Sarah Greenwell, is playing a show for Great Scott’s inaugural performance series at the end of September. “Great Scott has been one of the staples we’ve been playing in Boston for a long time,” said Greenwell. “I’m looking forward to it being back.” Erin Solomon, a Jamaica Plain resident, said she remembers the community at Great Scott’s
According to a media release, Great Scott will strive to keep the vibes of the past with punk shows and dance parties while innovating its show technology. Here’s to hoping the blurry memories of walking home from gigs in the 2000s through the loveable-yetrat-and-turkey-invested-streets of Allston will be revived with a new generation of Boston local-musiclovers and the friends they bring to have a beer during their set.
GWEN EGAN
DESIGNERS:
Phoebe Delmonte: p.1,4,5 Hannah Blauner: p.2,3,7 Adrian Alvarez: p.6,8