Pop music review: FYF Festival works out the kinks

The daylong event shows a thriving punk spirit

 

This post has been updated. See below for details.

They were peppered throughout the 20,000-strong crowd at the exuberant FYF Festival in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday: first-generation punk band T-shirts worn by indie kids, twentysomethings and Gen X-ers alike. A chubby man wearing Minutemen; a pixie in a sleeveless Conflict jacket; the Big Boys on a sound guy; M.D.C/Stains shirt and knee-high black Doc Martens on a glum (and surprisingly young) skinhead. And of course many versions of the Black Flag bars. There was even a Slovenly shirt.

Most impressive were the couple who looked as if they'd just helicoptered in from Malibu: she in an elegant floor-length pattern skirt, perfect hair and nails, and a form-fitting Circle Jerks "Golden Shower of Hits" tee highlighting her Pilates physique; her man dressed casually sophisticated in a weathered Minor Threat shirt.

Punk rock long ago transcended class, age, gender and ethnicity to become a signifier not necessarily of outward rebellion but of the symbolic, crazy-on-the-inside variety. That sense of internal defiance continues to permeate the entire underground and has become a secret handshake that united not only the artists who made traditional-ish punk rock over the course of 10 hours of the FYF -- the Descendents, No Age, Off! among them -- but from a wildly divergent cast of in-yer-face artists including beat makers Nosaj Thing and Dan Deacon, the deeply sensual, self-referential house music of Portland's Chromatics and Glass Candy, and the catchy, arena-aspirant bands like Broken Social Scene.

"It's a punk rock festival. That means we're going to play ... in the wrong key," declared Guided by Voices singer Robert Pollard during his band's sturdy, hook-infused rock set featuring acrobatic kicks, monster choruses and a sexy girl delivering between-song lighted cigarettes to guitarist Mitch Mitchell.

The White Wires bring the Great White North to Southern California

 
Canada’s pop punk outfit the White Wires is no stranger to unconventional performances. “We do a lot of weird shows,” the band’s singer, Ian Manhire, said during an interview Monday, three days away from kicking off a West Coast tour that will land the trio in L.A. on Friday night and Fullerton’s Burger Records on Sunday. “We played in a U-Haul last summer. Just pulled up on [Victoria] island at 2 a.m. and told a bunch of people and they rode their bikes out to see us. We play a lot of house parties, we play in people’s kitchens.”

But the most daunting place the rough and ready act has played was a frigid Ontario beach in February, shortly after the release of its sophomore platter, "White Wires II," from Dirtnap Records.  "The beach season doesn’t last very long here,” Manhire said. “But we were always joking about doing a beach video in the winter, something totally stupid.” When the time came to shoot a video for the band’s summertime anthem, “Let’s Go to the Beach,” the group's members knew they had to put words into action. With a posse of 20 daring friends as extras, they lugged their gear to the snowy shores of a frozen lake. 

“It was like minus 20 degrees Celsius,” said Manhire. “It was a really cold Canadian night, and then it was windy on top of that. Girls were in full-on bathing suits, guys were in shorts. I was playing my guitar on the first take and my fingers actually went numb, so I played with construction gloves after that. But Allie was a total trooper. She was in a bikini playing drums and she was freezing. I was trying to sing along with the words but my face was so numb that it actually doesn’t sync up very well.”

The White Wires formed in 2007. With Manhire’s high school friend and former Million Dollar Marxists singer Luke Martin plucking bass and drummer Allie Hanlon, who has her own solo career as the divinely sweet Peach Kelli Pop, the trio quickly made its mark on the band-friendly city of Ottawa. “Ottawa’s the second biggest city [in Ontario],” said Manhire, who formed the short-lived label Going GaGa to release music by local artists, including his band’s debut. “There’s a really strong DIY music scene here. There’s a lot of bands and people help each other out.”

Big Audio Dynamite: An encore to the reunion?

Big Audio Dynamite was in the midst of completing a brief U.S. tour in celebration of its recent reunion, yet it was Mick Jones' pre-Big Audio Dynamite band, British punk forebears the Clash, that was referenced in a current events joke on "The Daily Show." In an effort to make sense of this month's riots in England, comedian Jon Stewart superimposed an image of the chaos over an imagined Clash album cover and joked, "Please tell me the Clash reunited and they're shooting a new album cover."

Jones didn't see the clip, but he's well- ware that the music he wrote with the late Joe Strummer has a tendency to be tied to civil unrest in Britain. Early Clash staples in the late '70s included the two minutes of bravado that is "White Riot," as well as the snarling stomp of "London's Burning." Though often lighter in tone, Big Audio Dynamite wasn't immune to violent imagery itself. Check, for instance, the band's mid-'80s, synth-pop crawl "Sightsee M.C.," in which London is taken from the aristocrats by the rioting youth. 

Jones performed the song in Los Angeles last week, and acknowledged its sudden topicality. The singer, however, let the song, which was also written with his former Clash co-hort Strummer, stand on its own. "I ain't going to say anything about it because I don't know anything about it," Jones said from the stage of the chaos that was sweeping London. 

The topic at hand is the still-new reunion of Big Audio Dynamite, whose original lineup split around 1990. Well-received festival dates at Coachella, Lollapalooza and Outside Lands have left the door open for more Big Audio Dynamite collaborations. Dates are scheduled through the fall, and then there's talk, perhaps, of a new album and reissues.

Pre-concert, however, Jones is on the prowl backstage for the BBC, as he noted he's been trying to watch as much of the network as possible in order to get a handle on what's going on back home. It also inspired a line of questioning that Jones knows he can't avoid.

Of course, it's unfair to expect Jones to answer to every bottle thrown through a window in London, yet Jones still knows he'll be asked how today's violence makes the older Jones reflect on songs such as "London's Burning" or "Sightsee M.C.," if at all. 

"People just seem really fed up, but I won’t have a better idea until I’m at home," Jones said. "The [budget] cuts have been very bad. They’re closing down libraries. That’s crazy. The way people are reading now is changing, true, but if you can’t afford a computer, where are you? So they’re almost destroying the community, but I am not going to go too far commenting on this."

Yet he's said enough to indicate that he's at least willing to revisit the concept of rock 'n' roll as social commentary. A new song from Big Audio Dynamite, the swift rocker "Rob Peter, Pay Paul," fits comfortably with the traditions of both of Jones'  best known bands. 

"We tried to simplify the economic meltdown," Jones said. "That song is the meltdown explained."

Le Butcherettes let it all out in Chicago

L.A.-based trio Le Butcherettes has had something of a coming out party in Chicago. Though Pop & Hiss was forced to piece together the act's Lollapalooza set via YouTube clips, the excitement and ferocity of the hard rock trio could still be felt through these trusty-ol' tinny desktop speakers at our downtown HQ. 

Teri "Gender Bender" Suaréz was in fine form, and even in the two-and-a-half-minute clip below, she's a force that demands attention. Her voice is a dexterous thing, as she knows how to shade a yell with hints of scorn, sarcasm, slyness or whatever the moment calls for. Her rhythm section does plenty of heavy lifting as well, opening up the floor to let Suaréz bounce, run and level all sorts of abuse on her guitar. Before all is said and done, she punctuates the set to a close with a monstrous howl and topples onto a photographer.

At the start of the below video, you'll notice Suaréz has a little fun with drummer Gabe Serbian. "Puke all the time," she sings as she looks his way. Serbian had reportedly vomited off the stage more than once during the set, and though this clip appears to be vomit-free, Serbian clearly didn't let an upset stomach slow him down.

Perhaps he was suffering exhaustion from the Chicago heat, or maybe he just had marriage jitters? After the Lollapalooza set, Serbian flew back to L.A. to celebrate his union with Dum Dum Girl bassist Bambi Davies. 

San Diego’s Johnny Rad Fest returns for its fourth year

 
In the last decade, garage rock festivals have blossomed across the U.S. like unruly weeds from a cracked sidewalk. Dedicated to spreading the gospel of the raw and hedonistic rock 'n’ roll exemplified by acts such as Nobunny, the Black Lips and the late Jay Reatard, Portland, Ore.’s Slabtown Bender, San Francisco’s Total Trash Fest, Memphis, Tenn.'s Gonerfest and Atlanta’s Mess-Around staked claims for their respective regions. That may be well and good, but what’s a Southern Californian to do when seeking out a beer-soaked, blown-out weekend of rock 'n’ roll?

The brightest hope is San Diego’s three-night Johnny Rad Fest, which returns for its fourth year this weekend. The diverse, all-star lineup includes costumed keyboard punks the Spits, Indiana’s garage pop Half Rats, the vocal-driven Shannon and the Clams, psych-leaning hard rock from one-time Reatard Ryan Wong’s Tokyo Electron, and legendary garage rock icon and founding member of the Oblivians Greg Cartwright with his soulful Reigning Sound.

Indiana transplant and Lurkville skateboard entrepreneur Tyrone Taylor started the festival in 2008, when he realized he wasn’t going to be able to make it to that year’s Gonerfest. “It was kind of far away,” he said in an interview Monday. “There were a lot of bands playing I wanted to see that weren’t really local California bands.” Rad Fest, as it is affectionately known to regulars, was intended to correct that omission –- and hopefully enrich San Diego’s anemic garage music scene.

Network Awesome's Women of Punk week: Trashing of the Troubadour

You can lose a lot of time on YouTube, its more intellectual, surrealist-loving cousin UbuWeb, or the tube substitute Hulu, but for a repository of hungry, feisty, stylish, smart punk women, sometimes trashing the venues we know and love best, Network Awesome cannot be beat.

This week, the video channel that refers to itself in part as "TV about TV," started by music producer and all-around ideas man Jason Forrest, is devoted to the women of punk rock. If you tool around, you can stumble on many beautiful curios rescued from the vaults of time, including Wendy O and the Plasmatics performing on “Solid Gold” in 1981, with Lady O donning a scandalous leather-kini that’s probably illegal in most states south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Mo-Dettes, the short-lived ‘80s punk act, has a lo-fi video for “White Mice,” a tight number with a staggered strut of a bass line. Other favorites: Feministic political collective Delta 5’s “Anticipation,” something like a more calm and collected Gang of Four song, and a video of the recently departed Poly Styrene, dressed in pastels and with bows in her hair like some crazed incarnation of a '50s diner waitress.

Friday marks the return of King Khan's fiery melding of punk and soul at the Echo

 
“I’m touring my favorite murder capitols of America,” garage soul icon King Khan jokes about his current U.S. tour, which thus far has encompassed a week in New Orleans, two shows in Chicago and upcoming gigs in Oakland and Los Angeles, where he’ll land Friday night at the Echo.

He recently garnered copious attention for displaying his unclothed posterior to Lindsay Lohan at Cannes, but his punk rock pedigree stretches back more than a decade to scrappy garage acts inhabiting scabies-infested crash pads in in his native Canada. His recent rise as the crazed frontman for garage-soul dance sensation King Khan and the Shrines has proved that he can transcend fire and fury to reach a broader audience.

After suffering a nervous breakdown last year (fueled by the sudden demise of his longtime musical partnership with Mark Sultan and a one-two punch of the fabled rock 'n’ roll lifestyle plus years of heavy touring), he took a year off to collect himself. “It’s like a fireball,” he said of the crisis. “You keep going and it gets bigger and bigger and suddenly I realized it was killing me, and I also realized I missed my family.”

The father of two, who has called Germany home since 1999, slowed down and smelled the roses. “I got to finally be with my kids and not be a stress machine,” he said of the break. He produced a couple of albums at his Berlin-based recording studio (including a forthcoming collaboration with operatic Russian folk singer Mary Ocher, whom he describes as “a mix of Kate Bush, Kim Fowley and Buffy Sainte-Marie”), hosted rooftop barbecues with friends and neighbors, and emerged feeling as if he had a new lease on life.

“I feel better than I ever have,” he said, although he is quick to point out that although he may have tamed his personal demons, his live act is still as wild as ever. “I still like to dance and have fun. I just know when to stop now.”

Big Audio Dynamite books Nokia and Grove gigs, but nothing at Crossroads of the World

Big Audio Dynamite, the post-Clash band led by Mick Jones, has had its way with Los Angeles architectural icons in the past. But when the band returns to the Southland this August, the concerts will be tucked safely indoors, with an Aug. 10 date set for downtown's Club Nokia and an Aug. 11 gig pegged for the Grove of Anaheim.

The recently reunited group and its myriad of lineup changes never achieved the worldwide acclaim of the Clash, but the band did manage to take its merging of rock 'n' roll with dance and rave culture straight to the Hollywood landmark Crossroads of the World. The cruise-line-shaped mall-turned-offices was the site for 1991 single "The Globe" off the album of the same name. Along with the album's "Rush," "The Globe" would become one of the band's (then called B.A.D. II) better-known songs. 

Careful listeners of "The Globe," however, will hear a nod to Jones' past, as the song is little more than a composition of samples from the Clash hit "Should I Stay or Should I Go," although "The Globe" featured awkward rapping whereas "Should I Stay" showcased Spanish backing vocals. 

"Yeah, there is that on there," Jones said of the "Should I Stay" sample. "There’s some other stuff, but there is a sample of that quite obviously."

In an interview before the band's Coachella performance, Jones addressed his past, present and future with a youthful enthusiasm. He didn't deflect any questions about the Clash or the various B.A.D. periods. Yet he did pause when the subject of "The Globe" was brought up.  

Bad Religion's Greg Graffin to teach evolution at Cornell in the fall

 
Contrary to the adage, punk rocker Greg Graffin is demonstrating anew that those who can, not only do, but sometimes teach too.

The founding member of Bad Religion will begin teaching evolution in the fall at his alma mater, Cornell University in New York, which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Graffin's other life as an esteemed author and academic.

Graffin got his Ph.D. in zoology from Cornell and, when he’s not touring with his Bad Religion band mates of three decades, he’s often been center stage at UCLA as a lecturer in paleontology and life sciences.

Last year he published his book that covered his thoughts on punk and atheism, “Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science and Bad Religion in a World Without God,” which drew critical praise in various quarters.

Andrew W.K. parties with bloody-nose birthday cake at the Echoplex

How appropriate that a night of violent headbanging would culminate with Andrew W.K. clutching an edible version of his bloody-nosed noggin above the crowd at the Echoplex. Staring up at the stage from the heated mass of bodies and spilled booze, fans howled as the lord of piano-rock party anthems hoisted up a freakishly detailed birthday cake shaped like his face as if it were a ritual sacrifice. Clawing photographers and rocketing stage divers swamped him on all sides like a Greek chorus.

In the closing moments of the monthly Check Yo Ponytail 2, hosted by L.A.label I Heart Comix, the 32-year-old (born Andrew Wilkes-Krier) proudly took the role of Bacchus in a dirty white T-shirt and jeans. Plans to perform a solo show with only a keyboard and backing tracks were dashed by revelers who ran up on stage to hug, tackle and fondle the one-man band. You might just say they were genuinely glad to see him on his special day.

Most fans had spent the entire night priming themselves for ear-splitting ecstasy, withstanding sets by Sacramento hardcore outfit Trash Talk and the emphatic noise pop of Wavves. Starting around 10:30 p.m., the first wail of chaotic chords indicated that fist-pumping or even leaping from the top of the stage scaffolding were encouraged.

It was a sentiment that W.K. was happy to cultivate further as the crowd swelled for his midnight performance. As the stage darkened and ominous organ music signaled the headliner's entrance, leather-clad show goers doused their cigarettes on the front patio and put down their smartphones to join the sweaty legion of W.K. disciples. One group of enthusiastic female fans even showed up to the gig with fake blood streaming down their noses in an homage to the cover of W.K.'s 2001 debut album, "I Get Wet."