B.F. Raid (Boston's Final Raid) | Matt Connarton Unleashed

Setting the Stage for Bf Raid's Return

0:00 Speaker 1: W m n H rip the novels.

0:06 Speaker 2: If you're listening to macconnorton Unleashed on w m n H ninety five point.

0:12 Speaker 1: Three, we're back from the brand.

0:23 Speaker 3: Macconson whiskey on the new Bread.

1:05 Speaker 4: One night, I want to op it.

1:08 Speaker 5: I cashed in my silver tongue before the night's done.

1:14 Speaker 6: In an alley or a condo.

1:19 Speaker 5: Leave me somewhere I don't know. I mean my way back home by the first night. Son, you're trying to leave my past.

1:32 Speaker 6: All love your reference. I wait your path.

1:35 Speaker 5: I death my math on the thirty streets and every day of grasp being in door.

1:48 Speaker 7: In the bowl yard we drink.

1:53 Speaker 6: I'll see alone to think.

1:56 Speaker 5: About how far the death blood help for stads.

2:02 Speaker 7: Read all the way to home on this.

2:04 Speaker 5: Fun punch struck off wisdom, punching up my weight, and I was punching back.

2:17 Speaker 7: You're trying to leave my mask.

2:19 Speaker 4: All of your repents are way too fast.

2:23 Speaker 6: I left my mouth on.

2:24 Speaker 5: The thirty streets and every plate of braspban in joke.

3:34 Speaker 8: Let's talk about all the renovation lost in my disorientation.

3:39 Speaker 9: Stepping back in time, I'm thinking about everything.

3:42 Speaker 1: Go offication.

3:44 Speaker 4: I take a trink with offer and set the great side off my inn sas could you, which you call insul. It's tirected out there the Bible have fillow.

3:53 Speaker 6: With STI still.

4:01 Speaker 7: Kaptized in the mystic river.

4:05 Speaker 6: I emerge, but mora.

4:07 Speaker 5: Siner eight sanday ss onst and I with delt.

4:14 Speaker 7: There was no way of blop.

4:18 Speaker 5: You had to stand up, ignoring Mordy himself.

4:24 Speaker 6: Stay with help.

4:28 Speaker 3: You're trying to to leave my past and.

4:31 Speaker 5: All of your abits await your past. I've left my mouth on the dirty streets, and every made of brass bed in your breed, another coat of pain of a white bosh breaking my bread for the bast to field up. All of this work is done in brain. You'll never find every Stay. He'll tell you what trying to do. Itsane you.

5:07 Speaker 10: Oh yeah. If that doesn't get you, move and check your pulse, you might be dead. I love it. That is punch drunk.

The Generous Guests Arrive

5:12 Speaker 10: The band is bf Raid, Boston's Final Raid. And we got a couple of the guys from the band here with us. We're gonna talk to them in just a moment, but welcome everybody. We have entered our number two newmarrow dose of Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are live from the studios of w m NH ninety five point three FM Inglorious, Manchester, New Hampshire. And of course you can stream the show from anywhere. Go to Matt condorton dot com slash live for all your live streaming options, social media links, contact info, show archives, et cetera, et cetera.

5:41 Speaker 10: Today is Saturday, August twenty two, two thousand twenty six. Let's get these mics on. So we've got Bruce Owens returning to the show and Jamie Forbes with us as well from the band bf Raid, Boston's Final Raid. How you doing, guys doing? Welcome, Welcome, Welcome and combat Zone. So this is very new. This just came out end of July. Correct. Yep, the album combat Zone fantastic. Yeah. I listened to the whole thing really good. I love it. Oh and I got, of course the package you sent with the flash drive and everything.

6:13 Speaker 10: Oh. Speaking of which, yeah, you did walk in with a bag of stuff, didn't you. Oh my god, you guys, You guys takes such good care of us. Here, I'm gonna for those of you watching the video, I'm gonna put the uh put this back on myself for a minute. So we got a bag here with the band's logo on one side. Oh, and of course combat Zone, the album on the other. And this is a This feels like there's a lot of stuff in here. Oh my god. So the vinyl a vinyl copy. There's the front, there's the back of combat Zone.

6:48 Speaker 2: Oh that's the first album.

6:49 Speaker 10: Oh, the first album. I'm sorry, I rate it again, which goes with the T shirt that I'm wearing because you're you were generous last time too and brought brought goodies. So I'm wearing the T shirt that's the first album. Yep.

7:01 Speaker 10: Oh this is Yeah. These have the stick some these have more. Oh Jenny loves stickers, by the way, I don't know if you remember that. You remember that from last time? Yeah, thank you. So these these are full of full of stickers. And let's see what else. Oh got a shirt a shirt for new album. Oh yeah, for the new album combat Zone. Wow. Look at that. I'm trying to describe describe this all the best I can for our audio listeners. But very nice, very nice.

7:32 Speaker 11: Matt Bruce's Santa Claus.

7:35 Speaker 10: He really is. This is incredible. No listen sometimes guests bring us goodies, but this is way above and beyond. Yeah, and he did that last time too.

7:45 Speaker 2: I remember too.

7:46 Speaker 10: He brought us more stuff than any other guest ever has.

7:49 Speaker 11: He's second, he's second to Gene Simmons. But he doesn't shod you for it.

7:53 Speaker 10: So we got yeah, two shirts, one for me, one for Jenny. Thank you so much. And what is in this? Oh? This is interesting? Okay, So here's a box. It's got the a variation of your logo from the Bruins, the Boston Bruins. I'm not a sports ball fan, so I'm slow on that. But uh my god. Oh, by the way, we still use the last time you brought us a mug. We still we still use that mug afraid? Oh is it?

8:18 Speaker 11: Yeah?

8:20 Speaker 10: So this is oh my goodness. We open this up here. Very nice. Another thermos if you will. Would thermists be the right term or travel travel mug? Yeah? Yeah, very cool. And it's got the graphics for the boy. This is this is the real deal too, Like this is not a cheap thing, No, this is this is really.

8:44 Speaker 2: I use mine every day.

8:45 Speaker 10: Oh my god, yeah, very cool. It looks like this two of them here, so wonderful. Thank you so much. Whoops, put that down for a second because I see yet something else in here? Uh bfraid? Uh would you call that a bottle opener?

8:59 Speaker 1: Yeah?

9:00 Speaker 10: I don't drink, so I don't know rarely opened bottles. But these are very cool. Thank you got two of those too, Thank you guys so much. Bus you really are Santa, it's amazing, amazing.

9:13 Speaker 11: Next time you see, like, if you happen to watch Coach and bro like Coach, make sure he has the mug visible on his desk.

9:19 Speaker 10: Yeah, oh absolutely, absolutely, Well, geez, you know what you gave me an idea. If I put this right here, there you go, there we go. Excellent. That's a very good I get that. That's right exactly exactly. Wow, thank you guys.

9:36 Speaker 2: Well, it's funny because since the new album came out and I didn't tell you Jamie yet, I was checking out on merch logs. Now merch is blowing up good, excellent, big time. I mean numbers that are really impressive.

9:52 Speaker 11: So I think I think with the shirt, whether you like the band or not, it's a cool shirt.

9:57 Speaker 10: It is a cool shirt. Yeah, yeah, absolute.

10:00 Speaker 11: And what we had to do to what Bruce had to do to get the image. Yes, but you were involved in a lot of that too. Well no, I mean you had to deal with that.

10:09 Speaker 10: You know, what did you have to do to get

The Making of Combat Zone

10:11 Speaker 10: the image?

10:11 Speaker 2: Well, when we first started looking for the album art, Matt is big against Ai. Okay, so we were like, okay, we're going to use a photograph. And we found a photograph of the Grain Street in like the nineteen seventies with a seventies car on one side. It was daybreak, so there was a prostitute walking down the street ending her shift and a blue collar guy walking in the other direction starting his ok we thought it was perfect. It took me a month to hunt down the guy that owned the rights to the picture, and he wanted us to pay pretty much our recording budget licensed professional?

10:56 Speaker 11: Was this the professor or.

10:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't even want to say, what's schoolies from? But he wanted a lot of money. Yeah, So we kept hunting. We found a picture we liked in the City of Boston archives of a theater in nineteen sixty three.

11:13 Speaker 10: Yeah.

11:14 Speaker 2: City of Boston said, go ahead, use it free album for free?

11:17 Speaker 10: Oh no kidding, excellent.

11:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, We're like great. We put it on some of the march and it started getting rejected because there was a woman on one of the posters in the theater that was scantily dressed, and AI kept saying, oh, that's a naked woman. Oh okay, and they kept bouncing it. So we were like, we don't want to upload the album cover to platforms and have the same problem because it isn't a human looking at it and the album's getting rejected. So we finally found the cover ut we're using from this guy, robit Post. He was awesome, he worked with us, he gave us a great price.

12:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, the post artworks on the front City Boss not work is in the back. And another guy gave us outwork for the inside of the CD.

12:13 Speaker 10: Okay, okay, No, it came out great.

12:15 Speaker 2: Yeah.

12:16 Speaker 11: Wasn't there any problems? Wasn't there some problems with this platform wise in the beginning?

12:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, well not make up bound because of the City of Boston picture.

12:25 Speaker 11: No, this one that we have now, no, No.

12:27 Speaker 2: It's been smooth.

12:28 Speaker 10: Yeah, oh good good.

12:30 Speaker 11: So it was a process just to have the art. Yeah, but we would dead set on combat Zone.

12:36 Speaker 10: Yeah. While worth it where.

12:38 Speaker 11: Everybody says, oh that the naked eye.

12:40 Speaker 2: Yeah, and even if you don't know the band, I don't think there's any T shirts out there with the Naked Eye in the Pilgrim Theater on it. So, right, anyone who's like a Bostonian just like seize the shirt and they love it.

12:53 Speaker 10: Oh yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. Awesome.

12:55 Speaker 11: I've had several people like again, like you know, friends of ours that are not into the band, but I want that shirt. Yeah that's great, you know, like an NWA shirt, you know that's the Yeah. I almost wore one because I heard you were into it.

13:09 Speaker 10: Yeah it was I was like, well, anything Kiss related is a good choice too. My favorite band.

13:14 Speaker 2: So and the cool thing about having that Naked Eye on the cover is Naked Eye was on Washington Street in Boston, Okay. Its address was six six six Washington Street.

13:29 Speaker 10: Kid.

13:29 Speaker 2: Yeah, the most club in Boston.

13:34 Speaker 10: Yeah six oh wow, Oh that's cool.

13:38 Speaker 11: I work in the Seaport, so, like I took a stroll over there a couple of weeks ago just to yeah, try to feel it. Yeah, I mean there's still some structure there, but it's like the seaport alone was packing lots thirteen years ago and now it's a whole city. Oh yeah, but the ghosts are there in the farm bet zone.

13:57 Speaker 10: Right right, yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So is that kind of the theme of the album, I mean, tell us about the album.

14:03 Speaker 11: So.

14:05 Speaker 2: Not really by design, but it evolved to be what I call an auto audio documentary about Boston because a lot of the songs are really autobiographical, with the exception of Bullets from the Board, but even the songs that Billy wrote are really about his past experiences growing up in Boston, first meeting his wife on Causeway Street, things of that nature. So there's a lot of songs. Punch Drunk is about our hometown.

14:38 Speaker 11: Ultimately, it starts in our hometown, on our block that Bruce and I grew up on and Billy on the other side.

14:45 Speaker 2: We grew up in the same neighborhood, but Jamie's younger than me, so you know, we didn't really meet each other until a little bit later, you know, when I was in my early twenties, Jamie was in his late teen But yeah, so we grew up with the same kind of experience and people. So Punch Trunk is about I was driving through Malden and and it's core. It's a very crude song, but I've hidden the crudeness of what it's about. But I was driving through Malden and I was remembering an encounter with a young lady as I was driving by our house.

15:28 Speaker 2: Then I get a couple of blocks away and I can remember an encounter, another one a few blocks down, and then I drove by our own rehearsal studio and I'm looking around and I could still see that the city has totally changed. But there were like little places where I can remember maybe a fight here or a kissed there, or and still kind of left my mark in the city. So our hometown has totally changed.

15:59 Speaker 11: Just three day years ago, I was. I was on the phone with them and I had to because my family house is still in that town. Yeah, And I was like, Bruce, would you I went to all the areas that are mentioned in the song, that are all but I was just sending them video footage, just like clips, right, because he was trying to put the put together a video, and he did end up using some okay, But like the boneyard is mentioned in the song, Bruce, was the boneyard the graveyard or was it in the back of the graveyard.

16:32 Speaker 2: There was a graveyard if you left our high school. There were train tracks right there, which had a live train back in the day. Okay, so you come out of the high school, go by the tracks, and there was a hole that probably the generation before me had ripped in the chain link fence. She could go into the graveyard and you were hidden away and people could smoke various things or fronk beers back there. Yeah, and it's so funny that, like we would it was called the boneyard because a free roll was called a bone back then, okay, and people will go to the boneyard.

17:10 Speaker 2: And like Jamie was like younger than me, and by the time I had moved on and I was hanging out in clubs, him and his teenage fronts were drinking in the boneyard. It was like a past on kind of thing from And I'm sure there's kids that are drinking in the boneyard right now. So it's kind of a cool little area. But it's right in the middle of downtown and the cops can definitely see what's going on, but you just kind of leave people alone.

17:38 Speaker 10: Oh really, we know where you.

17:39 Speaker 11: Are, right right, yeah, thing, Yeah, yeah, I'll turn into a condo haven, you know what I mean, because it's right next to the Orange line. So it's just like the workforce that makes sense, and there was generations of families that have been there for fifty sixty years. Yeah, it's no more.

17:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, our dad's and Billie went to Malden to high before we did.

18:01 Speaker 10: Oh really yeah, oh wow, yeah, no kidding, no kidding. So where did you record this? Because this album took a long time, right, like it seems like like almost two years and you got yeah, and you guys really and part of why I know that is because you guys were really documenting it on on social media as you were recording.

18:18 Speaker 11: Well, as soon as we finished Rated Again, we went right to work. It was almost like having a second child before thinking about it. It's just like we don't do this now, we might not do it, so like we were just committed to it. You know, we're not Spring Chicken. So we just we went right to work on the second one. Yeah, right after Rated Again was released.

18:38 Speaker 2: Wow, So we used the same studio the record go okay, and we like the place. It feels like home to us. And we used to say engineer who is a genius.

18:52 Speaker 11: Yeah. If it wasn't for the engineer, you know what I mean, it wouldn't have been an automatic. We would have went back there. But yeah, since he you know, he was like the fifth member, okay. Yeah, and it was just like knows our nuances, knows.

19:05 Speaker 10: Our moods, yep, yep.

19:09 Speaker 11: But most important, he's knows my drums, Like he mixed my drums better than any project I've ever been in. Yeah, because he's a drummer, so he was, oh perfect, I had that advantage perfect.

19:20 Speaker 10: Yeah.

19:20 Speaker 2: Yeah, he really knows us well and what we want and how to communicate with us. And I'll give him a shout out. He actually just opened up his own recording studio okay and Waltham called One Horse Recording. It's the old Wellly Mammoth studio set was owned by David Minihan from the neighborhoods.

19:40 Speaker 10: Oh no kidding.

19:41 Speaker 2: So he bought that and it was one last track I had to do, and I went over to the new studio to do that track. Yeah, and it's beautiful, it's really nice and it was easy to work in.

19:55 Speaker 11: So yeah, well you can't leave out where the record Cole was.

19:59 Speaker 2: Oh yea yeah. So that was the inspiration for a lot of the album too.

20:03 Speaker 11: Yeah, right in the heart of methadone mile. Oh really, you're in the middle of it. It was like this look, you know, gem in this you know, dark place, and it did inspire you know a lot, you know, a lot of the attitude, the nastiness, you know, the ugliness of the world too. But it's really in the middle of the method.

20:28 Speaker 2: The Greatest Show really was kind of born during the Raided Against sessions because there's these giant windows in the recording studio that look out right at the middle of mass and casts and we could watch drug deals every day.

20:46 Speaker 11: Some day I had some recorded. Bruce was like, no, no, no, no, really like stuff that would go good with a video, but it would have been yeah.

20:54 Speaker 2: And one of the things was we would see, you know, these young crosstitutes like twenty feet away from us on the other side of the glass, and at first you have this voyeuristic kind of thing, and then after a while you kind of get sick to your stomach because these girls are whacked out on drugs. They can barely stand up. There's strangers picking them up. And that's what really got me to write the greatest show in town, because you know, these girls to treated as adult entertainment. And I know some people have the libertarian idea about prostitution and people can do with their body what they want to do, but most of these girls that are out there aren't doing it because they want to do it a lot of times to being forced to be out there traf And what really hits me the hardest, and I kind of make a point of the song, is probably like ninety percent of these girls have been are victims of sexual abuse, and it hits me hard that when they're young girls and their abuse, all of us want to get the pitchforks, grub the abuser, and drag them out and to whatever to them.

22:10 Speaker 2: Right, they hit eighteen, they kicked out the system, and they end up on the streets and now they're a cautionary teal while people drive by in point and laugh and it's like, well, why did you care so much about that girl two years ago when she was seventeen sixteen, But now that she's eighteen nineteen, Now it's a joke and it's not.

22:32 Speaker 10: I mean, that's a really good insight.

22:34 Speaker 2: You know, they're in rough shape and hiety.

22:38 Speaker 11: All of them looked like junkies either, like somewhere in the early stages that.

22:41 Speaker 10: You would you wow, you you know what I mean, right right.

22:46 Speaker 11: I think the thing that disturbed me the most about those visuals was, you know, those addicts having no control of their body, you know, and having you know, they were just yeah.

22:58 Speaker 10: I know what you mean. Yeah.

23:00 Speaker 2: And the freaky thing was there was a four one fifty at Boston Police if you're listening, that will pull up in the alley across from the studio every day at ten, I mean eleven am on the dot really and it will pull in in a line with form and they would just start selling fentanyl. Really, And it was every day at and I'm like, if I can see this and the police stations down the street, why don't you see this?

23:30 Speaker 10: Right?

23:31 Speaker 2: And every day at eleven, the guy would pull into the same alley, everyone would line up. Noontime, he'd do another lot, loop around the block and boom, And he was also coming back and checking on.

23:43 Speaker 10: The girls, okay, whether.

23:45 Speaker 2: He was supplying them with fetanyl or he's trafficking them. But it was like this one truck and then we go back to the studio months later, same truck, eleven o'clock on the dot.

23:57 Speaker 11: Wow, So remind you this is this is the invitement. We recorded both these records.

24:02 Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, in the inside of the studios gorgeous. Yeah, but you're looking through that glass and it's like, wow.

24:09 Speaker 10: Wow, that's that's incredible. I think we should play another

The Greatest Show in Town

24:15 Speaker 10: What do you guys want to play? You can pick that on.

24:16 Speaker 11: The subject and greatest show from what we were just talking about.

24:20 Speaker 2: You might still play the greatest show since we were just talking about it and what it's about. And it was also inspired loosely on the Robin Benedict murders. Okay, so Robin Bennict got murdered in the combat Zone. Okay by a tough professor. It was a huge case in Boston in the eighties.

24:39 Speaker 10: Okay.

24:40 Speaker 2: So part of the song is about the last first it's about how these girls are kind of nameless and throwaway and they just disappear.

24:49 Speaker 10: Okay, So all right, let's give this a spin. This is the opening track on the album. By the way, the album is Combat Zone and by bf Raid Boston's Final Raid, and this is the greatest show in town.

25:17 Speaker 5: I'm trying to fos and fished your ride on a fixing.

25:20 Speaker 6: Co lamp, but.

25:25 Speaker 1: No one knows this is your.

25:27 Speaker 4: Fucks and a night time chat's traveling itself.

25:40 Speaker 7: Then you drag your whistrom town to town.

25:47 Speaker 6: I'm not gonna buff on.

25:48 Speaker 7: The back of the bus, just.

25:49 Speaker 9: Waiting to touchdown.

25:54 Speaker 6: You don't let him know you're to fine.

26:02 Speaker 1: Notice.

26:03 Speaker 7: Then you dripped away with a bottle of John's dog whine,

26:09 Speaker 7: screaming like a connimal buck up working off your latest moncker.

26:17 Speaker 5: Shotleman who gather around to see the Brady show in town puffies off remembrance, but they can't also help you, folks.

26:32 Speaker 6: I could even have the shaming herd.

26:35 Speaker 7: But what good happened?

26:36 Speaker 1: Yet?

26:40 Speaker 6: Your eyes trying to bulls a tear once.

26:42 Speaker 5: You cry yourself a here ago, so you climb a coat another, don't.

26:50 Speaker 7: Move another tail away from home on.

26:53 Speaker 1: A no no, screaming like a conimal bucker.

26:59 Speaker 7: Working your native looker. You're the festial to me, bounds.

27:06 Speaker 6: The greatest show with time, step right up.

27:40 Speaker 7: Screaming like a cockle bucker working off your native looker.

27:48 Speaker 5: You're the pestil to me bounds for I'm the crazy show went.

27:56 Speaker 6: Ok.

27:57 Speaker 11: Let me put some fun tonight.

28:01 Speaker 5: Are you looking at Patty?

28:04 Speaker 7: Let me put out a little.

28:05 Speaker 1: Show part that's so telling.

28:11 Speaker 7: Are confide.

28:14 Speaker 1: The chattery? The names?

28:18 Speaker 3: Would grandmothers did that?

28:21 Speaker 1: They were?

28:22 Speaker 6: They said, then you don't know she suffered supper chat to are you go in tush?

28:36 Speaker 5: Who were they?

28:36 Speaker 1: Or you remember.

28:44 Speaker 7: Super name?

28:44 Speaker 1: Movie else? Your name?

28:45 Speaker 9: Somewhere on Long Dollar Road would to no one's there a shadow to? They would have they already known?

28:58 Speaker 1: Did everyone that you you want.

29:03 Speaker 6: A soul?

29:06 Speaker 9: But not you.

29:07 Speaker 6: You'll stay in because you have nowhere to go.

29:11 Speaker 7: No, no, no, no scream just like a cannibal bucker and your binger has your final bucker. You were the best in town.

29:24 Speaker 4: That's the great show in town.

29:38 Speaker 10: That is the greatest show in town. That is the opening track of the new album combat Zone from b f Raid Boston's Final Raid. And we've got Bruce and Jamie from the band here with us in studio and uh no, we were kind of talking off air. That's a that's a very strong, strong opening track. And uh, Bruce, you were just telling me too that you know, uh listeners might uh fans might recognize that voice from the first album, the voice of the female in that song.

30:05 Speaker 2: Yes, So on the opener for Rated Again Hollywoodwood Snakes, we used a front of ours gen cous Growth shutout to Jen and she's an actress. She's been in I don't know if you've seem Blown Away with Mark Wahlberg. Oh yeah, yeah, she's in that. She plays the nurse. Oh no, she's been in a bunch of stuff. But she does voice over work and she DJs, so she has that group voice. So yeah, we brought Gen back to do. I didn't know that.

30:31 Speaker 11: Now I have to watch the movie. Yeah.

30:33 Speaker 2: Yeah, she's the nurse that gives Mark Wahlberg the asprom with a thick Boston accent.

30:38 Speaker 10: Okay, yeah, yeah, Jamie, we were talking off air too well. Actually, Bruce was telling me about this before you got here, because you got here a little bit before you about you've been getting some the band has been getting some exposure on the Coach and Bro Show.

30:53 Speaker 11: Yes, yes, Vince Russo and Jonathan Coachman. I mean I've I've been friends with Vince for probably about a decade. And it all because you know the heat he gets Judy Bagwell on a poll match, right, he gets blamed for the death of WCW So like, he gets attacked a lot on social media, so I used to go in there and defend him because I thought his creative and his writing was great. And after due time, he started taking notice and he was like, hey, hey, thank you, I appreciate that. Next thing, you know, he's following me.

31:27 Speaker 11: Next thing, you know, I'm in his fantasy baseball league or whatever, and like, you know, so we we've corresponded over the years. He collects album he collects albums, he likes music, he likes Kiss.

31:37 Speaker 10: He's a big Kiss fan.

31:38 Speaker 11: Yes, so we you know, we just I would talk to him about non wrestling things. So he started this show with Coach about a year year and a half ago, and they're the they're the ones who don't glaze like they they're constructive criticism where they wweaw they want people to just put them over. Yeah, so they have an objective show. So Coach got fired from Serious from Busted Open, and now they're in the process of, you know, trying to do their own radio show. But through the connection, you know, I sent them some merchants, some the albums and the music, and they says, we're going to use this.

32:25 Speaker 11: So before the show starts, they run it through and then they mentioned us all the time.

32:31 Speaker 10: Oh fantastic.

32:32 Speaker 11: So with the new album they've been waiting for, so as they as they keep growing, you know, we're going to be their music people because it's not going to cost them anything for one. But they're also helping. Vince is helping me out. He was here, He was here in May, did some convention and I went out and met him. Yeah, and he's working with ICP with j c W right now, and they're trying to get that So if they come to Boston, we could end up being on a show with ICP. Oh that's cool, be it with those jugglos, they're crazy right right, But they there and they got quite a following, so I'm trying to keep that content.

33:07 Speaker 11: Bruce does all the promotions, so I try to do it from a different angle so that way we can complement each other and just work different avenues. So Vincent Coaches have been really big supporters of us.

33:19 Speaker 10: Oh that's excellent.

33:20 Speaker 11: Yeah, if you watch the show, they'll be mentioned.

33:23 Speaker 10: Yeah, I'll have to check it out.

33:24 Speaker 11: Because I go by an alias. I work at a love firm, so they don't want me to using my real name.

33:30 Speaker 10: Oh, no kidding.

33:31 Speaker 11: So I'm Jimmy Fingers nineteen. Okay, that's my alias.

33:35 Speaker 10: No kidding. Oh wow, that's cool. That's cool, very good, very good. Yeah, I'll have to check that out. That's awesome.

33:43 Speaker 10: Any any other unusual sort of avenues for a promotion that you guys have done or.

33:49 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you know my background is pretty much marketing. Yeah, and that's been since like high school. I worked in a print shop in high school, so Fraid always had the best flyers and stickers and things of that nature. So we've been blessed, you know. As far as radio promotion, a lot of the local shows like New England Rock and Metal Radio and the w NES just picked us up good, and then a lot of the international stations and not picking us up. And we got picked up by another station in Mexico this week, Oh excellent contacted us out of the blue and it's a pretty big show that's been around for forty years.

34:38 Speaker 2: So it's funny. Two years ago when we sat here, a friend of ours was in paper Jam and said to Sheila and Tony, hey you should check out this band bf Raid, And they did the write up on us and they said, oh you should check out Matt Show. And your Show was the first show we did, so it was just like a project from us for us. And then after we did paper Jam and You, people started contacting us and we're like, wow, what is this And it just started to take off. And now with the second album, the momentum is kind of crazy because our streaming stats beyond what we expected.

35:22 Speaker 2: Like I was telling Jamie earlier, our merch sales after the roof and it's good and it's sad because we put merch out there for pretty much at cost. We make nothing on merch, so we want to just make it available and I'm like, wow, you know if I mark that up a little bit, you know, but it's just good that people are buying shirts and mugs and listening to the music and stuff. So yeah, we use every avenue you can think of.

35:48 Speaker 11: So speaking of the merch, like now my jeep is filled with shirts and I'll pop them out, you know, and other wherever I'm at, people say, hey, you got that shirt, because because what we do on our site is we take pictures of people holding up our shirt. And now that library is getting big so that people want the shirt. But back to this you know, talking about the promotion pot like that. He's got all of the music thing going, so outside of the wrestling thing going. I a big fantasy football player, so like I have friends over at Sirius on the football shows.

36:26 Speaker 11: They got the stuff, and every now and then they'll play a cut and transition and that's outside the music run, but it's still promotion because someone's going to say who was that and they're going to be able to tell it. So like we're complimenting each other by doing different things once again, you know what I mean. He does way more than I do, but I try to help him by doing something different the same thing.

36:49 Speaker 10: It's excellent, Jammie.

36:50 Speaker 2: It's to one guy in the band that will like jump in and give me a hand with the marketing and the promotion. And I can bounce stuff off of him and he'll say, yeah, I like that, or can you change the can you change that? So it does help having so in to work off of.

37:05 Speaker 10: Absolutely.

37:06 Speaker 11: I think I think ultimately Matt would be what would would be on my dream is that, you know, again where we're not under pressure by a record company or management. We you know, we're we're a little a little bit older, So we're doing this for the love of it. Yeah, and then if we have a professional product, which we do, maybe maybe it shows up in a movie, right, you know what I mean, or maybe sets a scene, you know, like.

37:33 Speaker 2: Well, we don't have labor pressure, but we put the pressure on ourselves.

37:36 Speaker 10: Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, no doubt, no doubt.

37:39 Speaker 11: It's not always fun, but we but but horns. But I think it's so far more important because we are The shows we've done is non existent, but we have a catalog now. Yeah, So I think the next phase for us would be to now play that catalog and within the time, people are getting to know the material. So if someone shows up to a show, they're gonna know what opposed to like, oh, here's our new song that we've you've never heard exactly, but they hearing it and it's in its full form now.

38:12 Speaker 10: Right right exactly.

38:13 Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the most interesting thing about Combat Zone is how naive we were heading into the studio to do ten songs. Yeah, and it was like we actually

38:29 Speaker 2: mapped out ten songs in the first day, yeah, which was insane, and we didn't even think, you know, we said, okay, let's do this, and it was kind of funny because we didn't think about our physical limitations. We're still thinking like we're twenty sure sure and driving home from the first day of twelve hours of playing guitar, I could barely hold my drive my steering wheel.

38:53 Speaker 10: Wow.

38:53 Speaker 2: From Boston to New Hampshire, my hands were like robbing. I had to get some sleep and being a studio the next day.

39:01 Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, we did two.

39:03 Speaker 11: We scheduled two back to back twelve hour block good lord and during a snowstorm. Well, the first day wasn't the snowstorm, but like you know, I I had the first days of the drums, right, yeah, so I had to pound them for twelve hours because it was like you know, test you know, sound levels for the first three hours.

39:26 Speaker 10: That's the most physical instrument you're using, all four limbs.

39:29 Speaker 11: Well, I wasn't thinking about that. But then we had some friction, right, and we didn't start our first track or complete our first track to like four thirty in the afternoon and we were there.

39:39 Speaker 10: At ten yeah oh wow.

39:41 Speaker 11: And then once we hit our stride, we just kept going, kept going. So after the twelve hours, I'm like, what is this.

39:50 Speaker 2: Well, it's funny because I know you're not a sports guy, but I know you know the analogy of when the coach comes out to the mound and asks the picture for the ball.

39:59 Speaker 10: Yeah.

40:00 Speaker 2: So, after Billy had been singing for what about eight hours, I could hear it in his voice, and I walked into the little booth.

40:09 Speaker 10: Bill's in give me.

40:11 Speaker 2: And I'm like, Bill, give me the ball. You're done and he's like really, and I'm like really, and he's like okay. So he was done for the day. And then I started to work on guitar parts and Billy and Matt had left and it's just me and Jamie And like ten thirty, Jamie comes into the booth I'm working and he's like, Bruce, give me the ball.

40:35 Speaker 10: Really, And I'm like and he knows me.

40:39 Speaker 2: We've known each other forty years. Yes, my playing, So I didn't even argue with him. And he's like, you know, you're off, And then my adrenaline was going. I didn't notice, And like I said, it wasn't until I got in the car and I couldn't grab the scaring wheel. I'm like, yeah, my hands are shot.

40:56 Speaker 11: Do mind you this is January, right, Yeah, And more pressure came on us because now the forecasts were in. Now we booked the double twelves, and now we know that like the blizzards come, but we still drove in the next day.

41:12 Speaker 10: I remember seeing this on social media.

41:14 Speaker 11: Yeah, it was like, okay, guys, curfew, you guys gotta leave at one. So that kind of slowed up the process because even if Bill couldn't sing, Bruce and I could have did all off fixes, you know, chrackened up all on blue scents. There were points in time where I got the yips where I was trying to play you know, a double bass segment that was just pretty basic and I couldn't do it. But it wasn't just that, it was like I couldn't complete a role like my sternam was just on fire. And after that first night on twelve hours, I remember talking to the road, Jamie Road, the engineer, and he was like, dude, you just played for twelve hours.

41:59 Speaker 11: Uh, because I'm thinking it's like, oh, my heart's gonna stop, like you know, my hypochondriac so back pain. I'm like, am I going to die out? And he's like, dude, just go home and take a rest. And then but I mean, but the drums have to be done first because there's a lot of get to move, so there was just extra pressure. And the next day I was refreshed. I fixed everything that I had to fix, and then we were kicked out. But then again that set us back, what Bruce a month and a half two months because we had the book again and we couldn't go back till March.

42:35 Speaker 2: Which there was another snowstorm.

42:37 Speaker 10: Oh figures that figures we should Oh yeah, the time, the time is uh slipping away from us. Let's but

Down But Not Out

42:48 Speaker 10: let's play another I do want to play another studio track, but uh, you guys can pick whatever.

42:53 Speaker 2: Down but not out do it.

42:56 Speaker 11: Yeah, because that's a quickie.

42:57 Speaker 10: Okay, Yeah, let's give this a spend down but not out. And this is from the brand new album from bf raid Boston's Final Raid Combat Zone out now, but let's give this a spend down but not out.

43:17 Speaker 6: Got you, John Indu Shun.

43:18 Speaker 12: My mind is in days ru way from too well things to make grade.

43:24 Speaker 6: I don't know what it is that you want from my life.

43:28 Speaker 7: All I can say is that I'm time to keep you satisfied.

43:31 Speaker 12: It's the of the things that I've gone the way we fan. I wish you weren't sort of this second in all.

43:38 Speaker 7: Chance without you, it's some brand new tape without you. I love Charles five by way.

43:45 Speaker 6: But just in case, oh there's any town, I might be down.

43:51 Speaker 8: Oh but I have treasures cleansers. Well I can go to some count sure, laugh from you. All we had fun, This constant back and forth.

44:02 Speaker 7: It's finally taking his toll, like living with a never friend in case of burning God.

44:08 Speaker 12: The dreams we walk said, Oh my god, I truly thought that what we had would be like all fun.

44:15 Speaker 5: Hour No l that's a time.

44:17 Speaker 12: To reflect in your homestone and on your reason neglect.

44:22 Speaker 5: But just in case, ah, you have any town, I'm mighty down.

44:27 Speaker 6: Oh my, now there govering next morning, Well what is this boy to do? Screaming while dreaming? I'm sharing my life with you.

45:33 Speaker 7: Preflection, condemn shun.

45:35 Speaker 12: It's now ceased to be my dad's wish relief.

45:38 Speaker 7: Wish me to a crass me worry and bufering and.

45:43 Speaker 4: Los finely this night screaming thing.

45:45 Speaker 6: You don't get to access to much stress. You could get less freak, go see it go. It's got to go so many im at all We're to go by manager May not come bad.

45:57 Speaker 10: No no no, no, no, no, down but not out. And that is from the new album combat Zone from bf Raid Boston's Final Raid. And of course we've got Bruce and Jamie here in studio with us. Guys. This has been wonderful.

Wrapping Up and Looking Ahead

46:27 Speaker 10: The time does go quickly. We will we will get in another track at the end of the segment. But what do you guys have coming up? Are you playing some shows to promote the album or have you? Have you been busy?

46:36 Speaker 2: Everything's like really focused on promoting the album right now, because you know, it's been two years of writing, recording, oh yeah, and just scheduling this.

46:49 Speaker 11: So we're in a little burnout right now.

46:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, we're fried.

46:52 Speaker 10: We're really understandable, understandable.

46:55 Speaker 2: Jamie and I work together a lot. Me and Jamie worked together more than anyone else in the band. Yeah, And it's always been like that in our relationships going back forty years. Like Jamie will just call me and say, let's work And even when he was like, you know, seventeen eighteen year old kid, he would call me up and say let's put some work in. It would just be me and Jamie and we haven't even played together, which is really rare because we're just like really cooked. But I'm writing, I bought a violin.

47:21 Speaker 2: Oh okaydding so I'm trying to teach myself violin.

47:24 Speaker 10: Oh wow.

47:25 Speaker 2: And I picked up an eight string guitar.

47:27 Speaker 10: So cool. There's that.

47:29 Speaker 2: So there's always the creative thing going on, but we really haven't gotten together, so right now the focus is

47:37 Speaker 2: really focusing on promoting the album. I have some ideas if we decided to do something live, and I have a couple of promoter friends that have reached out to me, But right now the focus is just like getting this music out.

47:51 Speaker 10: There, outstanding, outstanding. Where should people go on line to

Bf Raid's Music Promotion

47:55 Speaker 10: keep up with everything that you guys are doing.

47:57 Speaker 2: Befree dot com. Okay, so we were lucky enough to get that url early. Yeah yeah, yeah, so we have bfraid dot com. Go to the Facebook page, but be afraid dot com. You can stream the music right on our website for free. This pictures the latest news is there. There's us on your show. You Instagram too, right, we have Instagram, we have x we have linked free band camp, so almost every marketing media outlet you can think of you can find us. But like I had a friend sign up for Amazon just to listen to the album this month.

48:35 Speaker 2: Oh cool, But I told him you don't have to. You can actually stream it for free on

48:42 Speaker 2: be afraid dot com or band camp and then every once in a while. Right now, it's like five bucks on band camp. Yeah, just because a promotional company told us, don't give it away. Yeah, charge the five bucks, and then when you do give it, give it away, it has a little bit more value, right right, So agreed, there's some band camp Fridays where we'll take that five bucks off of there, okay, and people can just download it, download it for free. But even when it's there for free, I'll see French stowars like ten bucks here and there, which is nice because that's cool.

49:16 Speaker 2: It covers PR a little bit.

49:17 Speaker 11: So the Facebook page has like most of the current pictures and the the video documentation and the videos Bruce have been creating for it. So like, definitely there's a lot of traffic there okay that you can see more visually.

49:34 Speaker 10: Yeah.

49:35 Speaker 2: Absolutely, there's a lot of dumb stuff on there too, which is great.

49:39 Speaker 10: Yeah, you know, that's fun, that's fun.

49:41 Speaker 11: I should have recorded the fights because I could have just set up the phone and not recording. Yeah, there was some good ones really yeah.

49:53 Speaker 10: Well, guys, congratulations on the album really really good. Yeah.

49:57 Speaker 2: Yeah, appreciate everything you and gend of for our sand yes, oh glad to do it. Yeah, the great of music community in New Hampshire.

50:05 Speaker 11: You make us feel famous.

50:06 Speaker 1: Man.

50:07 Speaker 10: Oh try for you. Thank you very much and thank you for all the goodies too. Yeah. You guys are by far the most generous guests I've ever on the show by far. My God, you think of bullets, you think, yeah, let's go with bullets.

50:22 Speaker 11: Bullets is a composition, dude, And there's songs within the song and you can try to figure out the lyrical content what's it about? But it's deep.

50:33 Speaker 2: This is the only song on Combat Zone that really isn't about Boston, growing up in Boston. It's about the shootout at the Okay Corral.

50:42 Speaker 10: Oh really okay.

50:43 Speaker 2: And if you get into the history of it, and it's too long to get into, but it was actually funded by JP Morgan and Wells Fargo and they were paying White europe to go around and shoot all these people really because they were robbing the stage coaches that Wells Fogo owned. Oh wow. And it went all the way up to President Chester author he was involved. He gave the Pardons White Up and the Rothschilds and the Royal family were involved too in Europe because he wanted to invest in America, but they wanted it cleaned out right.

51:21 Speaker 2: So yeah, Wells Fago, which was two men, Wells and Fogoye who owned American Express. We're paying White Up to kill these people.

51:32 Speaker 11: Oh wow, that's all behind the scenes, how the countries.

51:38 Speaker 2: The board is solved, Like the board of directors of these companies were paying for the bullets for Wide Up to just go out and kill people with no judge or jury. Yeah, just to go out and blow people away.

51:51 Speaker 11: All that actual, all factual stuff that is wild.

51:54 Speaker 10: That is wild.

51:55 Speaker 2: We thought so too, so we had to made it, make it a song.

51:58 Speaker 10: Yeah yeah, well great, great to end the segment, and guys, thank you again so much.

52:02 Speaker 2: Of course.

52:03 Speaker 10: Bruss Owens and Jamie Forbes from the band bf Raid Boston's Final Raid. We're gonna spin that in a second. If you are listening live on Saturday, stick around. We have Elder p Sloan coming up in the third hour, but right now we're gonna close out our number two with bullets from the board from the new album combat Zone Brand New from bf Raid Boston's Final Raid and again, guys, thank you so much.

52:28 Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you Britty.

52:54 Speaker 5: Not to change in a moment, flash there trying to bunch your futube.

53:06 Speaker 3: It's distorted by your past.

53:10 Speaker 9: King.

53:11 Speaker 6: The morals.

53:14 Speaker 3: Lay slip from your.

53:15 Speaker 5: Grasp, prevenge, your anger, dragon Lageraticlabe. There's dusting your face.

53:36 Speaker 3: And a flashing your eyes.

53:41 Speaker 7: Do you stand a little disgrace?

53:45 Speaker 1: Last?

53:46 Speaker 6: They all fall and down?

53:57 Speaker 7: Hey we cover covers your bonus from the board.

54:04 Speaker 3: I'm dropping everybody, Will stoll go can of board?

54:12 Speaker 5: Tant amount of murder. The process was ignored, but as the body's drumps, the monk quickly the d there's dust in your face, Lando, flashing yarries.

54:42 Speaker 7: Oh are you standing on Miss grays.

54:47 Speaker 6: Bless thee all bound and died. A friend on the

56:06 Speaker 6: am standing on the grass.

56:11 Speaker 5: B We're only Jakie Morgan because stop all his pain. The slammers chipped on the table.

56:33 Speaker 6: And of the YETI on the.

56:37 Speaker 5: But when the dust is settled, oh, not to stay unchanged.

56:45 Speaker 6: A lot of Bollman days. The comment from the game.

57:25 Speaker 9: A Deed Arizona. Never remain in your corporate donors.

57:36 Speaker 1: They can wrench up, but they can on you until a day die.

57:43 Speaker 6: In California, only from the board strikes an evil Cord Caldron die. They don't go.

57:57 Speaker 1: They're going for the board.