Brian Tivol
tivol@mit.edu
Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, where the Toasters were playing on Friday, is surprisingly easy to find. It has amazing artwork; around the side of the building are murals depicting late musicians floating in their own stone archways, against a background of their own heaven. The line-up includes a varied set of artists including Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Miles Davis. Inside, murals just as tall as those outside depict living stars performing in front of a brick wall, with all the panels tiled together to look like one big concert with equally spaced singers. Off to the side of the chest-high stage is a large collection of couches and a pool table. A fun place for a concert, but the plain concrete floor is not only painful to stomp around on for hours, but it becomes slippery and grimy after only a few beers have been spilled on it.

On the other side of the same building is the Met Cafe, where Moxy Früvous was playing on Saturday. It's a much tamer place, more like a bar with a stage in the back than the club that Lupo's is. Along one wall, however, are posters from many of the bands who have played at the Met Cafe, with a neat artists like Junior Brown standing out among the plainer posters. The bathrooms are also covered in amazing graffiti, evidently where bands without posters leave their mark. The bar was clearly designed for an older clientele than Lupo's; while Lupo's had two Street-Fighter-esque fighting games in the back of the room, the Met Cafe had Centipede.