GARY C.W. CHUN / GCHUN@STARBULLETIN.COM
Nic Offer of !!! gets down during last weekend's All Tomorrow's Parties festival.
‘Simpsons’ creator
Groening helms
music festival
LONG BEACH, Calif. >> "So you wanna be a rock superstar?"
That trenchant and slightly ironic bit of verse was on the back of a well-worn, white Cypress Hill T-shirt worn by a female member of the band Jackie-O Motherf ...
We can't go on to complete that inflammatory moniker in this newspaper, so we'll just call them JOMF. The avant-garde collective was just one of 28 acts at last weekend's All Tomorrow's Parties (ATP) Pacific 2003 music fest held at the Queen Mary, curated this year by "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening, who was a rock critic for the now-defunct L.A. Reader in the early 1980s.
ATP started in London in 1999 as an alternative to mainstream festivals. Promoters Barry Hogan and Helen Cottage, in coordinating the annual international festival (staged over the year in the U.K., New York City and Los Angeles) has invited bands to act as curator for the fests, handpicking acts that reflect or influence their own tastes.
This year's twice-postponed Los Angeles ATP marked the first time a "non-musician" curated the festival. But considering the number of musical guest stars Groening has invited to appear on "The Simpsons" over the years, as well as his experience as a rock critic, it seemed natural to have the cartoonist put together two days of eclectic -- but very guitar-oriented -- music.
"There's such a huge array of amazing things going on in all different genres, but nobody's listening to all of it," Groening told the L.A. Weekly. "I feel sorry for music critics because of the dismal state of the current pop scene in general. I mean, this stuff (the ATP lineup) is great, but it's not being played on the radio. We're inundated with pseudo-hipness, and if I had to write about the big bands, I'd quit. But there's still great music out there, if you search for it."
And for this critic, jetting off to ATP proved to be a search rich in rewards.
BOTH WEEKEND DATES brought in people throughout SoCal. Patrons strolled back-and-forth a quarter mile throughout the afternoons and evenings between the Queen Mary's two stages. The outdoor stage in the events park boasted the best quality sound I've ever heard, while a smaller stage inside the floating hotel's hold offered a more intimate environment.
It was impossible to see all of the acts' sets on both stages. I had to pick and choose carefully, with both days offering equally strong lineups.
But here are highlights from the two days; some of these names you'll know, others you won't, but all were ATP-worthy:
>> On the small stage, New Jersey's Danielson Familie was a hoot to see and hear. If there's such a thing as "Christian outside music," this is it. Decked in white hospital scrubs and nurses' uniforms, group members had their names printed in red like a loopy variant of the Mickey Mouse Club. The group's presentation of "New Jerusalem Music" was made complete with two drummers, a violinist, a glockenspiel player, a flutist, choreographed hand movements and lead brother/guitarist Daniel Smith yelping out his love of the Lord. There's not a bit of irony and cynicism in their presentation, and the crowd loved them. A documentary on the group should be out next year.
Satomi Matsuzaki of San Francisco's veteran noise-pop Deerhoof played a Hohner bass and sang mainly in Japanese. The quartet veered between quiet and beguiling, and loud angular songs, that were at times childlike in their abandon, yet disciplined. Matsuzaki, in black blouse and pants, stood tough and proud through it all. Deerhoof was one of the pleasant revelations of ATP Pacific. (The group's latest album, "Apple O'," is on the Kill Rock Stars label.)
But the hands-down highlight was finally seeing the aforementioned JOMF. Even though the ragtag, nine-person group (drawn from about 20 musicians from New York, Portland and Baltimore) started late due to its elaborate setup, JOMF took the audience through 45 minutes of layered and looped sound that grew and ebbed with psychedelic intensity.
Guitars were played with portable electric hand fans and steel wool pads rubbed against the strings. Other instruments included a violin and a saw. The floor was cluttered with effects pedals and boxes, portable keyboards and other percussive ephemera. The fluid combination of improv, noise, folk, rock and agitprop primitivism made for a fascinating, nearly spiritual experience.
If you want to hear the bands' recordings, its "Wow" and "The Magick Fire Music" albums, previously available only on vinyl, is now available on CD on the ATP/Recordings label. "fig. 5" and "Liberation" are on Roadcone and JOMF's latest disc, "Change," is on the Paris-based Textile. This is a group that has to be experienced live!
THE OUTDOOR stage featured the festival's main acts and, overall, they were doozies:
Day one led off with NYC-via-Sacramento's !!! (usually pronounced chik-chik-chik, but any three repetitive sounds'll do). If such early 1980s punk-funk bands Gang of Four, Liquid Liquid and Pigbag mean anything to you, you know that these "great white hopes," led by vocalist Nic Offer, can get chunky-funk with the best of them. They have an acid-tinged hit indie single in "Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard" on the Touch & Go label. Needless to say, we got down with our bad selves!
The Shins were, next to Modest Mouse (a hit with the younger crowd), treated nearly as rock royalty during their sets. The band's self-effacing on stage demeanor and near-power indie pop numbers were well-received. The band has already received some mainstream exposure -- if you consider a McDonald's commercial and musical background for "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Newlyweds" such. (Check out its two Sub Pop albums, "Oh, Inverted World" and the recently released "Chutes Too Narrow" -- each a compact half-hour long.)
The Mars Volta also got a rousing reception, although their riotous set sounded like one prolonged climax with no release, throwing out verse-chorus-verse tunes in favor of long and exhausting improv-rock stretches. But there's no questioning the wildman charisma of the two former At the Drive-In frontmen, guitarist Omar Rodriguez and warbler Cedric Bixler.
"Hypnogogic" is a word that's been used to describe the narcotic sound of "Psychedelphia's" Bardo Pond -- though the intensity of its music on stage was far from sleep-inducing. The band never met a sustain pedal it didn't like, as vocalist Isobel Sollenberger and company explored dream states with a riveting, trance-y set. ("On the Eclipse" was released this year on ATP/Recordings.)
Sonic Youth was absolutely fearless and masterful, with the bulk of its evening-ending set devoted to new material. While unorthodox-tuned guitars and crisp rhythmic attack are key to the band's sound, avant-garde leanings keep its sound fresh. With the addition of Jim O'Rourke, the core quartet of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Renaldo and Steve Shelley made a beautiful noise. Former ATP curators themselves, it's no wonder Matt Groening has been quoted as saying that Sonic Youth did the best rendition of "The Simpsons" theme when the band appeared on the memorable "Homerpalooza" episode.
GROENING also took it upon himself to introduce the act that inspired him to curate ATP. The reformed Magic Band is basically an all-star cast of musicians who played with the indomitable Don Van Vliet, a k a Captain Beefheart, now retired as a fine art painter. Once again, Mississippi Delta blues was gleefully mixed with knotty, free jazz and bizarre lyric imagery, thanks to John French (who sang Beefheart's lyrics in almost the same Howlin' Wolf-like growl as the Captain), Gary Lucas, Mark Boston and Denny Walley. It was a rare and happy opportunity to see these elder men tear into music with disciplined glee.
But leave it to Iggy Pop and the Stooges to leave the festival crowd slack-jawed. You haven't lived until you've seen Iggy perform -- he is truly a man possessed! The bare-chested 56-year-old moved with abandon as he led his former Detroit bandmates (with an energized Mike Watt ripping into his bass in place of the late Dave Alexander) through such proto-punk classics from the 1970 epic "Funhouse" as "I Wanna Be Your Dog" (twice! -- once with guest saxophonist Steve Mackay), "No Fun," "TV Eye" and "Dirt" (a song that Iggy dedicated to suicide victim Elliott Smith). The one new song they did was their collaboration on Iggy's newest album "Skull Ring."
You could tell that Iggy was jazzed that he could share this great music with an audience both old and new. At one point, he extended his arm to point to each section of the audience, proudly proclaiming, "I am you ... I am you ... I am you." And we was.
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