Mick Ronson is better than your favorite guitar player, and there’s a decent documentary coming out about him called Beside Bowie. Maybe it coulda been called Burned by Bowie. The doc makes it seem like Ronno, who wrote and arranged quite a few of Bowie’s biggest songs during the Spiders From Mars days, was never paid what he was worth. There’s not a whole lot of footage that big Ronson fans haven’t already found on the web (and nothing as great as this), but it’s worth a watch if only to see how stoked Lou Reed looks when he’s discussing Ronson’s arrangement on “Perfect Day.” We honestly didn’t know that Lou Reed could smile. You’ll also learn the sci-fi inspiration for Ronno’s boots, as well as how the kidnapping of Stevie Wonder’s mom may have affected his post-Bowie fame. Plenty to learn or just marvel at.
Good Fest, Sad fest:
The Music Tastes Good festival wrapped up its second year at a new location near the water in Long Beach. It’s weird writing about a music festival that occurred the same night a broken human exercised his second amendment rights all over another festival crowd. When is America going to be great again?
Anyway, the warm feelings of wow from Music Tastes Good were still in our heart when we heard the news of what happened in Vegas, and it makes it hard to care about Kool Keith’s silver suit, or the fact that he actually put on a rollicking, complete show along with the rest of his Dr. Octagon crew. But this page is dedicated to the frivolity that distracts us from all the crap that broken humans do to each other. Music festivals can be such joyful escapism that we want to report on a special fest in hopes that everyone still goes out and relaxes and enjoys life and maybe feels good enough to not break and shoot a bunch of people, or any people, really. So, here goes.
Moved from the streets of Long Beach to the shore and pared down to two stages, MTG crammed over thirty eclectic artists into the weekend. We only attended Sunday because we had tickets to see Television in LA on Saturday, and choosing between the meandering guitar solos of Tom Verlaine and at least one of the other guys who built the stage at CBGB or Ween–a band who always seemed to be on a diferent brand of acid than us–seemed a no-brainer. So we missed Slaves, whose London rap-punk we discovered via the MTG Spotify playlist. The guitar-and-drums duo has been scratching our itch for heavy Crass-like Rage-lite music against some kind of machine.
Sunday was beautiful. Blue skies by the ocean with a crowd that would’ve made Goldilocks happy. We never waited more than a minute for food or drink. Large, interactive, and clever art dotted the field, from the multicolored hands greeting you at the entrance, to the massive mix tape (with deceased MTG founder Josh Fischel’s name on the label), to glowing, touchable, walk-through sound rooms. There was always something to admire with just about every sense, which is appropriate for a festival with synesthesia in its name.
Speaking of senses, it’s time to talk about booty shaking! The lead singer of !!! ran in four hundred circles around the stage, propelled by heavy disco breaks so powerful they cut the bottom of his slacks off, making him look like a hyperactive, guitarless Angus Young in shorts and a sportcoat. Big Freedia had a twerking fest on stage with beats so slamming they probably (hopefully) pissed someone off in Orange County. Then, never to be outdone, Peaches came out in a pink monster suit which was discarded as she shook every body part. On the other side of the fest, Digable Planets were smooth-grooving the crowd with a full live band. So whether you liked it rough or mellow, you were getting it good. And it wasn’t too far to go between stages if you wanted it both ways.
Los Lobos rotated in like a cigarette after all that funking. (Really, the main stage rotated, so that there was no time between bands, which is a nice idea unless you want to get a beer or release a beer between bands) The East LA vets played their 1992 Americana masterpiece Kiko, compete with a harp.
All weekend long, the great dilemma was whether to watch Dr. Octagon or Sleater-Kinney to close the show? We’ve been burned by Kool Keith a few times, including a show at Long Beach’s short-lived downtown venue, The Vault, where he only came out to tell us he wasn’t performing and that he owed Long Beach a free show–which we’ve never gotten. So we were leaning toward just watching Sleater-Kinney, but peer pressure and some texts telling us that Keith and the rest of Dr. Octagon were sounding great led us across the park to hear the madness. And it was heavy and funky and good.
We didn’t pay extra to go into the taste tent, where chefs from New Orleans and Long Beach served up signature bites, so we’ve got nothing to say about that part of MTG. This isn’t one of those flavor-of-the-month food blogs, after all. But we did pay extra because of a not-so-customer-friendly cashless policy that MTG has adopted. Cash was useless at the fest as customers were forced to connect their bank accounts (what could go wrong?) to some company that loaded money onto a bracelet you had to use to buy beer, food, merch, or anything else on site. I’m sure they do it because it makes the bean counting on the back end easier, but it’s an annoying and pointless step for customers, and if you had five dollars or less on your wristband at the end of the fest, you were out that money because those are the rules and fuck you. There were some announcements about donating whatever was left on your wristband to Oxfam charities, which is all well and good, but damn. Just straight up taking money from your customers is some Ticketmaster-level grift, and not something we expected from such an otherwise extremely comfortable and enjoyable–in every other sense–festival.
And now for the heavier stuff…
Quicksand have returned and are promising their first album in 22 years. Interiors will be released by Epitaph records on November 10. The first couple of tracks have a bit more of an introspective vibe than you might expect, but still have the bursts that remind you this band is made up of hardcore music legends.
Speaking of (local) legends, Long Beach drummer and pugilism purveyor, Doug MacKinnon (of The Vandals and Love Canal, among others), shared some new songs from his new band Shiners Club with us. Great energy, classic bite. It’s the kind of music that makes you wish you had a muscle car to play it over the roar of the engine.
Brown Town Sound is a good place to get some great heavy tunes and sonic scares during October. Rock on, Señor Garcia! Hope to see you at the Hot Snakes show.
LA’s finest rock-n-roll/punk band, X, is getting an exhibit at the Grammy Museum. Head out to the museum and get some culture.
No one will really believe this is true, but we swear on our stack of Steve Albini-produced albums that the first draft of this here column openly pined for a reunion from dense and creepy rockers The Jesus Lizard, because we’ve never seen them and this kind of thing looks good to us. Before we could edit out all the bugs and get this chicanery approved by the legal department, lo and fucking behold, The Jesus Lizard announce their first tour since the aughts. Now, we had specifically asked for a show in the greater LA area, ON A WEEKEND, but everyone really should take a Friday off every now and then. Check your local listings.
We’re going to think long and hard about which reunion we’re going to wish for before writing another one of these. Actually, we’ll just save time and hope that someone from Operation Ivy reads our hope now.
The lineup for the Growlers Six festival is simply overwhelming. Last we’d heard, HR from Bad Brains had a literal bad brain and was undergoing surgery. Apparently he’s well enough that they booked this gig, and that’s great news. And when was the last time the Butthole Surfers played? And where’s the phone number to our old acid dealer? Anyway, it’s the weekend before Halloween, so maybe move your costume party to San Pedro.
The always deep San Pedro resident Mike Watt will be playing the Growlers Six fest, naturally. We leave this inaugural installation of musical what-have-you with a random Facebook post from The Man in the Van With a Bass in His Hand:
“know who’s a son of a bitch? this fuckin’ soft toy pansy trying to come on butch cuz his shit is pathetic + jive + only tools get fooled” – watt 9.23, 4:37PM
Loving it like a cheeseburger and fries.