STRICTLY LOCAL: LIVVER

Anyone who’s ever been in a band or promoted a show in Boston can sympathize with Livver guitarist Robin Goodhue.

He’s spent years toiling as an underground show promoter—a thankless gig that frequently leads to bitter disputes, occasional fisticuffs, and shattered friendships. So when it came time to name the new album from his hardcore/punk band Livver, he turned to the gangster classic, Goodfellas, for inspiration. The result: Fuck You Pay Me.

Wiseguy Henry Hill used the line to explain how his mobster bosses blatantly shook down club owners. For Goodhue, it’s a plea of sorts to all those who’ve screwed him over.

“I came up with that because no one ever pays me,” Goodhue told the Dig. “I’m always paying everyone else out.”

After booking for Radio and Church, among other venues, Goodhue grew frustrated with the promoting scene. He’s severed ties with most venues, choosing now to work mostly with the Elks Lodge in Cambridge, where he brings in a wide array of heavy acts. He’s booked a slew of local and regional bands, like thrashers Ramming Speed, as well as classic Boston bands like DYS.

“There are definitely a lot of people who will go to shows,” he says.

“And there are still clubs that will have shows, but the Boston scene is turning very corporate. And that’s not good for the scene.”

His focus these days is on Livver, the band he formed with his longtime musical compatriot, drummer Morgan Berns. The two met in their hometown of Portland, Maine, and played in a female-fronted grindcore band for years before moving to Boston together.

They worked at the late, lamented Tower Records together on Newbury Street before Goodhue moved to Austin and joined Kill Ratio. He returned to Boston and played in Defcon 4, a punk/hardcore band that was on Today Is the Day mastermind Steve Austin’s label, Supernova.

“We were all fighting,” Robin recalls of the demise of Defcon 4. “I was just like, ‘I need to be in a band with a friend again.”

So in 2010, he and Berns got back together and recruited Whitey/A Terrible Beauty drummer, now bassist Aarne Victorine. They found vocalist Bruce Bettis from a demo tape of his band. “We were like, ‘Let’s find a singer who sounds like a man,’” Goodhue said. “We were going for that insane, dead guy. I heard his demo and I was like, ‘Holy shit. He sounds like a man.’”

Fuck You Pay Me—a blaring, hardcore blitz of 10 songs, all but one of which clocks in at under two minutes—is available on the band’s Bandcamp site. You can download a couple tracks free on the Bandcamp site, but the rest, well, you know: