By Alee Hoffman

While Speare Cafeteria may be best known as the place to go to set up cable for dorm rooms or pick out housing for the upcoming year, it served a rather different purpose Saturday afternoon when the Council for University Programs (CUP) held its “Rocking Back To School” concert featuring local bands.

CUP Concert Chair Joshua Pratt said the rather interesting location was chosen when the original location for the show, Krentzman Quadrangle, had to be scrapped due to university restrictions. After a place was finally settled on, Pratt went to work choosing Boston bands that he heard good things about, or was a fan of himself.

“I knew I wanted to make it a rock show,” said Pratt.

The bands were from all spectrums of the genre. The lineup included soloist Chris Amoral, The Glow, Slater and Northeastern bands, The Greenline and First Aid Kit. One band that stood out was, The Glow, who started things off with its high-energy brand of kitschy indie rock that brought to mind bands such as current big guns Hot Hot Heat, The Shins and Elvis Costello. The group boasts great bass lines, an organ played old-school funk style, and two-part harmonies. Their front man’s raspy vocals had the feel of Rancid’s Tim Armstrong and provided a nice contrast with the smile-inducing style of the music.

Next came Northeastern’s own, The Greenline, who had their posse in effect with the largest crowd of the day. Pulling a 180 from the bands before and after them. It appears the guys are well-known regulars on campus, letting the fans decide on many of the songs they played.

“I think they are awesome, and they play everywhere,” said Zack Hastings, a middler engineer major.

The music was very reminiscent of O.A.R, Guster and other jam-band college kid-favorites.

The Greenline finished their set with a rather stale cover of Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” but redeemed themselves with an excellent version of “Badfish” by Sublime. The group’s Web site is greenlineband.com

Also playing at the show was First Aid Kit, another NU band. Although the band said before the show that they don’t quite understand the comparisons to the late At The Drive In, Cursive or Karate that are often made when others describe their music, it started to make sense by the time First Aid Kit pounded into their first song. First Aid Kit’s lead singer possesses a vocal style that is sturdier and more stable-sounding than Cedric’s (of ATDI) squealing yelps. First Aid Kit shines with their thick, frantic guitar parts that come in fits and starts, reminiscent to some other thrashing style indie rock bands such as ATDI and Pretty Girls Make Graves. They had excellent stage presence, and gained some new fans after their set, such as senior music industry major Ryan Shanahan, who ended up purchasing First-Aid Kit’s full-length CD titled “Frights and Shivers.”

“I was really impressed by First-Aid Kit,” said Shanahan.

The band’s guitarist James Dennis, a senior computer science major, said the guys got onto the bill rather last minute, so there wasn’t much time to spread the word to friends the afternoon show.

“My friends could still be sleeping,” said Dennis, who also noted that he enjoyed the great variety of bands that were there.

Diversity in sound was what CUP had in mind when putting on this rock show, and they plan to do the same with an upcoming hip-hop show. Pratt said he was pleased with the 200 or so kids that filtered in and out by the concert’s end and said there were concert-goers obviously there for certain bands that ended up staying to see others on the bill.

“I hope this will get people into different kinds of bands,” Pratt said.