Dan Shea

By JOE BERNARDI

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I recently asked a bunch of people I knew what they thought of Dan Shea, and he apparently looks great in gym shorts, makes great chili and has declared a war against boredom. For the better part of the last five years, Shea has been booking weird, cross-genre shows, setting up other artistic events and generally being a cool man-about-town. "I'm trying to create an environment where people of every age can come and hear some interesting music," says Shea, "and be inspired by it, and hopefully eventually becoming engaged in it themselves in some way."

Shea's events have always been underpinned by a desire to move away from the typical if-you-are-a-certain-age-you're-allowed-to-pay-a-bunch-of-money-and-then-pay-a-bunch-more-money-for-beer live music business model. "It seems hard to get a place that's not running off of making money from the bar and having big names come through," he says. "I don't know of anything that has emerged or is emerging, really."

In spite of the seeming lack of venues for Shea's events (these days his events operate almost entirely out of Tufts' Oxfam Café), he's more or less relentlessly positive about the state of Boston music. "I'm not really even sweating it as far as thinking about the whole overall Boston music scene," he says. "It seems like there's more DIY bands doing weird stuff like starting from nowhere and not even worrying about being a so-called 'real band.' There seems to be more of that than almost any other time than I can even remember."

Such bands, Shea says, include Red Horse, General Interest and MMOSS. Considering the fact that those bands play noise, punk and psychedelic rock respectively, it's no small wonder that Shea specializes in putting together shows with ridiculous, disparate lineups. "I'm very encouraged," he says. "More younger people are saying 'Fuck it' and throwing care into the wind and just being like 'We're gonna make it happen here,' instead of moving to Portland or New York.'"

Dan Shea also knows a lot about soda, is great at building a fire and can draw a crowd of people all the way beyond Powderhouse to see a show. Admirable, indeed.

[Sightings, Bezoar, Life Partners and Baixa. Fri. 4.11. Oxfam Café, 210 Packard Ave., Medford. 617.628.5000. 8pm/all ages/$7. bowaac.com]