My first trip to Brighton Music Hall

The Boston music scene is large and exciting. But which venues are the ones where you need to shower after? Ones where you can’t go alone? Ones where the bouncers will turn the other way?

Let’s explore a local venue: Brighton Music Hall.

On what would have been an otherwise tame Wednesday night, Taleen and I decided to attend a concert, because who needs to study for midterms?

The band in question is called In the Valley Below and the venue that we graced was Brighton Music Hall in Allston. Sounds dingy, right?

Wrong.

A mere five minute walk from the Harvard Ave stop on the Green Line, Brighton Music Hall is pretty damn nice. It displays a big, edgy sign telling you where to enter in case you are easily confused, and friendly bouncers checking IDs with only a small grimace.

How about everything else? Let’s discuss.

After the bouncer marked our hands with two big black X marks, indicating that we are the good under-21 members of the crowd, we entered the main part of the hall, which is basically a medium sized room with a bar on each side.  

Filled with less than 50 people all over 30, the room was pretty nice to stand in.

But a lack of  bodies made things a bit awkward.

We are used to concerts filled with people screaming, dancing and bonding over mutual adoration of boy bands or solo artists. The absense of action was unsettling and didn’t give the “concert” vibe, if you know what I mean.  So to stay occupied between sets, we walked around and found the merch table, the bars, a billiard room, and the bathrooms that were cleaner than Warren’s after cleaning day. 

A closer look at the bars reveal creative drinks and moderate prices, for those of you older than 21, of course.

Now for the most important part…the bathrooms. Easily the scariest part of any concert venue.

Tucked away behind the billiard tables, the two doors indicating the men’s and women’s rooms are lined up. 

Inside we found…A suspiciously clean place.

No trash (except for a lone water bottle), no stary toilet paper, no bugs, no sticky floors.

So clean.

So clean we’re putting Brighton Music Hall on the dirty scale as nicer than a Warren Towers Common room…but not quite StuVi. 

Some nice advice for friendly concert goers who might want to spice up their experience:

Other fun things about Brighton Music Hall include this sign:

Another unexpected perk of a venue so small and underfilled?

The opening act completing their set and then joining the crowd in drinking, chatting, and dancing to the headlining show. If we actually knew who they were, we would have died at this possible interaction.

When In the Valley Below came on stage, they rocked the house. The speakers and microphones provided some impressive acoustics. We stood right in front of the stage, amid speakers and cables, and had enough room to dance and capture pictures at the perfect angle.

It’s safe to say that Brighton Music Hall served us well. Overall rating? 8/10. Check it out next time you want to ignore your responsibilities.