Practically from the opening note, I understood why there was a line out the door to this seaside shanty bar in southern Rhode Island. Freeway & the Vin Numbers kicked ass. And they didn’t need the Twister games, guns or chainsaws from the now infamous YouTube videos to do it.
The Heartbreak Lounge, as I had found out in my research, no longer wanted the band to grace its stage after the shenanigans of last Halloween. But the smaller, more rustic Sea Mist was thrilled to draw hundreds of fans — who ranged in age from 21 to a few 50 somethings — for the band’s CD release party two days before Valentine’s Day. The wind chill was 12 degrees outside where the waves crashed into the rocks beneath the beach bar’s rear outer deck. But inside, the band members were warm and toasty, thanks to a whole lot of hot bodies crowded around the stage. Other fans flocked to an outer ring of merchandise tables, buying up the debut double album and other trinkets as fast as the band’s helpers could hand them out. The band members wore colorful bathing suits, white muscle shirts and Hawaiian leis as they opened with a fitting beach-side cover of the Jimi Hendrix classic “Castles Made of Sand,” off his 1968 album “Axis: Bold As Love.”
Freeway played the beautiful guitar melody, but started out singing the second verse and familiar chorus:
“A little Indian brave who before he was ten,
Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends
And he built a dream that when he grew up
He would be a fearless warrior Indian chief
Many moons passed and more the dream grew strong, until tomorrow
He would sing his first war song,
And fight his first battle, but something went wrong
Surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night
And so castles made of sand, melts into the sea … eventually”
“Welcome to our CD release party and winter beach bash! We are Freeway & the Vin Numbers,” Vin Masoli screamed into his microphone as the crowd went wild. “Here’s a new song you won’t find on the double album because we wrote it just for tonight. Get ready to dance. Saturn, this one’s for you! Will you be my “Interplanetary Valentine?”
I recognized the name Saturn from one of the songs on the CD and observed a rather sexy young woman jump up and down near the front middle of the stage as I watched the show from the front left side. Strobe lights flickered and a disco ball started spinning above our heads as Masoli cranked out a funky bass line backed by Buck Griffin’s drum beat. Then Masoli sang: