Real Allston Christmas: The Scrooges Are Back, and They’re Playing Great Scott’s Holiday Party

The Santa-themed Stooges cover band and Boston holiday institution announces two Allston shows. —Michael Marotta

This post originally appeared on Vanyaland.


The Scrooges

The Scrooges / Still from YouTube

Everyone has a different starting point for the annual holiday season. For some, it’s those irresistible Black Friday sales the day after Thanksgiving. For others, it’s the Faneuil Hall tree-lighting ceremony, or maybe when they finally string up some of those way-festive lights along Harvard Avenue in Allston.

For the Boston rock scene, however, it’s just not the holidays until word of the first Scrooges show starts circulating. And now Boston’s most cherished Santa-themed Stooges cover band is back in action with a pair of Allston shitshows, playing both the Great Scott Holiday party and toy drive this Sunday night and a rare New Year’s Eve party at O’Brien’s Pub that marks the band’s 15 years delivering drunken holiday cheer to grown-up boys and girls across the city.

Joining the Scrooges at Great Scott will be country-fried Boston rock dudes Slim Jim & the Mad Cows, and Quiggs and Gaskco will get the ball-dropping ready at O’Brien’s to close out 2015.

This will be the third straight year the Scrooges have played the Great Scott holiday party, and before that brought a nice bit of punk rock grit to the Lansdowne Pub for the Boston Phoenix and WFNX.com holiday shindig back in 2012. The Scrooges are led by frontman David Unger and comprised of current and former members of several Boston rock bands, including White Dynomite, Hey Zeus, Cortez, Black Thai, Lamont, Fast Actin’ Fuses, Random Road Mother, the Blood Vessels, Rock City Crimewave, Antler, Motherboar, Mess With the Bull and Cropduster, and others.

Get a taste of the seasonally appropriate madness below, and don’t sleep on this—the Scrooges only play around the Christmas holiday, and we think every year around this time they say that this will be their final year of performances.

Scrooges 2015