Friday, May 20, 2022

DesertFest NYC 2022

 


Yet another substantial interval between my last blog entry and the current one.   Time and time again I determine that my expected topic has been covered already and I had nothing new to offer.  In 2022 I’ve had to realize that the blog will be haphazard and irregular, as I no longer have the luxury of being able to drone on about something new and original every Friday.   I still have NO idea how many people actually read the blog, as I understand many read it and give no feedback at all.  For all I know former Romanian friend Julia is reading them, though I doubt it. 

But here I undeniably have something to say, a remarkable (if not unique) experience to share.  So here goes.

While I’ll discuss “stoner rock” again in more detail later herein, for now it suffices to simply describe it as a form which melts dark and heavy music (like Black Sabbath), with something else, usually something psychedelic.  Although I’ve yet to hear Hawkwind described as stoner rock, I would say they certainly qualify as such.  So then the question becomes:  are there stoner rock festivals?   And by festival I mean a concert with more than 3 bands and possibly stretching over several days.

Oh, and this business of associating “desert” with stoner rock.  This comes from Kyuss holding concerts out in the desert in California in the early 1990s, bringing portable generators with them so they could play somewhere far from any actual electrical outlets.  As my own venture to L.A. lasted a few days in summer 2010, I wasn’t in a position to sample that scene when it occurred.  I saw Kyuss open for White Zombie in 1995 but wasn’t paying attention to them because at the time I had no idea who they were.  Summon the Delorean to bring me back so I can actually enjoy it.  Anyhow.

Yes, there are DesertFest festivals in London and Berlin, a Freak Valley Festival in rural Germany (somewhere between Cologne and Frankfurt), a HellFest in northwest France (near Nantes and nowhere near Paris), and a Psycho Las Vegas festival.  But the closest to where I live, the DC/Baltimore area, was this DesertFest thing, first in 2019 and more recently in 2022.  Fortunately on both occasions a friend of mine in Fort Lee, allowed me to crash at her place for the duration of the show.  I attended the 2019 version of this, at the Saint Vitus Bar in Brooklyn, three years before.  Now the 2022 version came by, and I decided to see it. Here’s the Report.

Friday, May 13, 2022

The show was at the Knockdown Center in Queens, although the nearest MTA stop was in Brooklyn, about 12 blocks northeast.  My friend lives in Fort Lee, New Jersey, on the NJ side of the George Washington Bridge.  There’s a New Jersey Transit bus, #158, which goes from three blocks away from her house to Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street and 8th Ave.   As a matter of fact, it’s the bus she uses to get to work in Manhattan.  It takes an hour to get from one to the other, and runs until about 1 a.m. 

I took a Chinatown bus from Rosslyn, Virginia (across Key Bridge from Georgetown, Washington, DC), to Penn Station, NYC, which is itself about 8 blocks south of Port Authority on 8th Avenue.  Given the timing, I did not have enough time to go to Fort Lee, drop off my stuff, and then come all the way back to NYC, so I simply held on to my backpack, hoodie, and hat, and eventually “coat checked” them at the club itself; on Saturday I could simply leave them at Fort Lee.  Friday attire was a Green Lung t-shirt (they were originally scheduled but had to bail out due to visa issues); Saturday was a green Brant Bjork t-shirt. 

From the Jefferson St. (L Line) subway stop, I walked over to the club on Flushing Blvd.  There was NO sign of any shuttle bus.  The bus seems to be fiction.  No one at the venue had any information about it and no other patrons expressed knowledge about it.  That meant a 12 block walk, something like 30 minutes – unpleasant in the rain. 

This place had two stages.  BIG “MAIN” STAGE and LITTLE “TEXAS” STAGE.   LS is like a small room.  BS is a stage at one end of a huge, empty ballroom.  This is one of these nineteenth century structures with a raised roof in the middle column.  The place was mostly empty except for the stages, a few bars, the food trucks, and the merch tables.  The neighborhood was body shops.  Definitely NOT upscale or trendy, south Queens on the border with Brooklyn.  Nominally you would think two stages would mean you could see both tiers of bands, one band setting up on one stage while the other was playing on the other, but there was about 15 minutes of overlap between sets.  Well, too bad. 

Part of what deterred me from seeing the festival this time around was that the bands I liked most I had already seen, unlike 2019 when Elder was the headliner.  Of course this meant I could forgo those bands if I wasn’t that interested.  The 2022 stoner rock ME is considerably more jaded and less tolerant of the wide net cast defining “stoner rock”.  To me, bands like Slayer and Motorhead are too standard rock/metal, offering no “special ingredients”, to differentiate themselves from their peers.  Ironically I’d be happy to classify Trouble and Hawkwind as stoner rock.  Some bands seem epicly suited to the soundtrack of an angry mob of orcs – “meat’s back on the menu, boys!” – and if total aggression is your scene, well, we had multiple Angry Noise Bands to satisfy that niche.  For me, something trippier and weirder, with intelligible vocals from a competent singer, was the ideal mix for any band calling itself “stoner rock”. 

So who showed up, and did I zone out on?  Actually I took it upon myself to prep by listening to many of these newer bands’ latest releases on Spotify before coming up.  However, with about 24 bands total – not counting the Sunday lineup which I would be missing (see below) – inevitably even this pre-festival prep would go in one ear out the other.  Here goes:

Leather Lung.  (LS) [Boston, Massaschusetts].  I had listened to their album, Lonesome, On’ry and Evil, and it was modestly OK, with a very nice album cover.  Livewise, they simply projected generic stoner rock angry noise.  Mostly ignored.

Black Tusk.  (BS). [Savannah, Georgia.] Angry noise.  I was not impressed by the most recent album on Spotify, TCBT, nor was I in real life.  Basically a ripoff of Orange Goblin and Motorhead.  Not sure why this type of music gets a free pass at qualifying as “stoner rock”, but I’m probably in the minority in feeling this way.

Howling Giant (LS). [Nashville, TN – like All Them Witches].  Actually better live than they were on the studio album.  A three piece.  Tom Polzine is the guitarist/singer, with short hair and a mustache, he looks like he’s “the manager” at a store or company.  Sebastian Baltes (son of Accept bassist Peter Baltes) looks like a male version of Gilly (Hannah Murray), Craster’s daughter who hooks up with Samwell Tarly.  I didn’t see much of the drummer.  I saw Tom & Sebastian walking around the crowd fairly often.  I already had their most recent CD, The Space Between Worlds, but wasn’t impressed by the two t-shirts they had for sale.  This was by far my favorite of Friday’s bands and a pleasant surprise.

Mothership (BS). [Dallas, TX].  I’d seen them at the Ottobar in Baltimore.  More high octane rock but I actually found them fairly boring – both then and now.  ZZZ.  If anything, they remind me of Pantera; a surplus of attitude, aggression and enthusiasm which doesn’t quite crutch an absence of truly original material. 

Geezer.  (LS).  [Kingston, NY]. No, not the bassist for Black Sabbath.  Actually, I found them pretty good.  They have several albums, of which I listened to the most recent, Groovy, on Spotify.  I planned on getting it at the show, but they only had it on vinyl. I did buy a t-shirt.  They’re a three piece band led by an Angry Santa guy (chubby, long white beard).  He’s left handed and often plays a Mosrite, though distorted through a full stack.  No sites actually list the band members’ names, so far as I can tell the main guy is Pat Harrington.  Maybe not. 

Orange Goblin (BS). [London, UK.]  Angry noise, but for me at its most tolerable thanks to Ben Ward and Joe Hoare.  I watched most of it.  I’d seen them a few times, have all their albums, and can generally enjoy them enough. 

Holy Death Trio (LS) [“Central” TX, USA].   Quickly degenerated into more angry noise.  I paid scant attention and left the room. 

John Garcia & Band of Gold (BS). [California, USA].   JG was the singer for Kyuss and Kyuss Lives, plus Unida.  On that alone he has substantial stoner star power, but I’m not finding he has a Midas touch such that every band he’s in winds up being just as good as Kyuss.  Having heard both albums by his Band of Gold – Coyote seemed to be acoustic covers, including some well known Kyuss songs - I wasn’t impressed by either.  This went in one ear, out the other.

Sasquatch (LS) [Los Angeles, CA].  I bought their newest album, but live they were just more angry noise.  I left during the middle of their set as I wasn’t impressed.  Overall I found this band was 70% angry noise and 30% weird stuff, but that puts them in with early Opeth.  Why listen to early Opeth when you can listen to late model Opeth?  Well, aside from being nostalgic for the blue monster who loves cookies, but Sesame Street characters shouldn’t be your model for band vocals.  I left at this point.

The final headliner was Corrosion of Conformity (BS).[North Carolina, USA].  This time around I did not stick around for their set, partly because I’ve already seen them a few times before, partly to void courting disaster at getting back to Fort Lee while public transportation was still working, and partly simply to enjoy quality time with my friend before she entered hibernation mode for the evening.

I had fries, a beer, and a Coke at the show.  The food trucks – “both” of them – had a very limited range of food.  It was diet time at the show.  Fortunately I had scored pizza & a Coke at the hole in the wall pizza place near PABT.  Those wide, thin slices of NY style pizza are among my favorites, and you can’t screw up a name brand soda.

I found my way back to the subway, no thanks to that nonexistent shuttle bus.  L train to 14th Street, A train north to PABT.  Snagged the 158 bus, and was back in Fort Lee while my friend was still awake. 

Saturday, May 14, 2022

Murphy, absent yesterday, showed up.  First, the first 158 bus to come by the stop completely ignored me, passing on down the road.   I had to get the next bus down on North Street.  Then the ACE lines were deactivated southbound from Port Authority.  I had to go north on ACE to Columbus Circle, then south past 14th street, then back up on the F line to the 14th street station, before I could finally get an L line train to Jefferson St.  Then it was raining.  D’oh.  Fortunately I had no trouble finding the club the second time or getting in, except that I arrived after some shows were over.

Green Druid. (LS) [Denver, Colorado].  MISSED.

Warhorse (BS). [Worcester, MA.] More angry noise.  ZZZ.

Somnuri (LS).  [Brooklyn, NY.] Angry noise.  ZZZ.  The sad thing is that they mixed it up a bit, but no sooner than they drift off into “weird & fun” – and I came back to watch them – they veered back into Cookie Monster aggression.  See, that’s early Opeth for you. 

Cloakroom (BS).  [Northwest Indiana]. WHOA.  Some killer psychedelic stuff from a three piece, led by guitarist/vocalist Doyle Martin on a Telecaster.  I had listened to their new album online, and fortunately managed to buy the CD and an ugly tie-dye t-shirt.  A very pleasant surprise.

Brume (LS) [San Francisco, CA].  Mostly ignored, especially since their set conflicted with Cloakroom’s.  They seem to have a female singer, Susie McMullen who wears a full white dress.   The problem is that they enter the “very serious, pretentious” zone of goth/art kind of music. 

Inter Arma (BS).  [Richmond, VA]. Multiple musicians with a theremin player.  Most of what I heard was noise so I ignored most of their set.

Yatra (LS) [Ocean City, MD].  I had seen them before.  They’re a three piece with a big hairy guy on guitar singing (Dana Helmuth), a drummer (Sean Lafferty) and an attractive, dark woman on bass (Maria Geisbert).  Helmuth is apparently Maria’s husband or boyfriend.  I saw them hanging around during Cloakroom’s set.  But although I have their newest album, which came in the mail several months after I ordered it, this was another casualty of “excess angry noise”, which sadly Yatra are another band of this nature; I kind of have to be in the mood for this type of music to really enjoy it.

King Buffalo (BS) [Rochester, NY].  Up with Cloakroom as my favorites.  I’ve seen them twice as headliners in small clubs, recently opening for Uncle Acid, and now this time.  These guys are always fantastic, and this was no exception.  I spent most of their set up close to Sean McVey’s side of the stage.  At one point I looked back and saw Sebastian Baltes five feet away – he appeared to be knocked out by King Buffalo.  A very enthusiastic audience, rightly so.

Silvertomb (LS) [Brooklyn, N] [includes the guitarist for Type O Negative], Torche (BS) [Miami, FL], and Baroness (BS) [Savannah, GA] I did not see.  By this point I wanted to get out of there.  Of these, I had seen Baroness I had seen several years before in DC.  Their distinction is color-themed albums with impressive artwork, even if the music itself isn’t as original or impressive.  I have Torche’s newest album, which I liked, but their set was a casualty of my inclination to vacate the premises.

Note that except for Orange Goblin, these are all American bands.  OG is doing a four date tour of the US.  Not sure how that makes $$$ sense, but that’s not my problem.

The SNAFU with the ACE/L line at Fourteenth Street and Eighth Ave was still there, so I detoured up to Times Square and over to Port Authority, managing to get another 158 bus to Fort Lee.

Sunday, May 15, 2022

Woke up.  I made sure I had everything, and walked over to Med West.  The 158 bus came in about 5 minutes.  No issues.  A nice goodbye from my friend, on slightly better terms than in the past.

Arrival at Port Authority. 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.  NO REST STOPS, I was starving.  Chipotle in Rosslyn. Uber picked me up 5 minutes later.  Home at 4 p.m.  TUB & Beer.

SUNDAY NIGHT:  ALL THEM WITCHES.  BLACK CAT, DC.

Amazing Factoid.  I was on the fence about Desert Fest because unlike the 2019 version which had Elder, which I had never seen, most of the bands I could identify, I had actually seen before.  Monster Magnet bailed out, as did Green Lung (who I’d never seen in person, though I’ve seen them do a live stream show); and King Buffalo were added.  Moreover, I had no guarantee that my friend would allow me to stay with her, and there are no cheap hotels in the NYC area.  In any case I rolled the dice and bought the tickets before she agreed.  But that still left Sunday; although DesertFest had a Sunday lineup, I had already bought a ticket for All Them Witches for that Sunday at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. 

[Nevertheless, here was the Sunday DesertFest NYC 2022 lineup:  High On Fire: Matt Pike’s more brutal band than Sleep; Red Fang;  Dead Meadow (good, but I’ve seen them already); Big Business; Left Lane Cruiser; Telekenetic Yeti; High Reeper; Stinking Lizaveta; Mother Iron Horse; and Greenbeard.]

After unwinding at home with tub and beer, I prepped up for ATW.  Uber up to 14th Street.  No trouble getting in.  I scored an impressive tie-dye version of the yellow shirt I was wearing (itself purchased at the Baltimore Soundstage show a few months ago).  I was up against the stage for the first 75 % of the show, dropping back out of sheer restlessness for the last few songs.  I noticed the setlist showed “Blood & Sand” as the last song, but had “?” after that on the list, which told me the actual encore would be a wildcard – and turned out to be “Alabaster”. 

Finally it occurred to me the distinction between King Buffalo and All Them Witches.   KB take more inspiration from Pink Floyd, whereas ATW draw their “oddball influence” of Doors, Allman Brothers, and Grateful Dead, even down to guitarist Ben McLeod mostly playing clean through Fender amps.   Bassist/vocalist Charles Michael Parks remains as charismatic as ever – in fact, ATW shows seem to attract more women than most bands of their nature, and were the band members inclined, it looked like several female audience members were very much eager and enthusiastic for post-show festivities – which remain pure speculation on my part. 

As a matter of fact, it appeared that, on both stages of the DesertFest, the bands’ guitarists were using a full stack of Orange 4x12” cabinets, but were switching out the head itself for the individual bands.  And of course they were using their own guitars. 

Stoner Rock Again.  By now many of you may be noticing that I was fairly unimpressed with most of these bands.  I suppose as I get older my tastes slide down to be more tolerant of mellower bands like the Grateful Dead and less tolerant of heavier bands like Slayer and Motorhead.  As noted, I have zero tolerance for “Cookie Monster” vocals, which cover many thrash bands and early Opeth. 

To me the essence of stoner rock is blending Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd (or some other band) into something heavy enough to keep me awake but varied enough to avoid being oppressive and boring; in fact, Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath is my favorite Black Sabbath album.  At this point my favorite such bands are Elder, REZN, and Weedpecker.   Elder were at the 2019 DesertFest NYC, and are FINALLY playing a show down here this summer.  REZN I’ve seen twice – though they owe DC a replay after their last set was abruptly cut short by technical issues.  Sadly, though, I’m not holding my breath for a band from Poland (Weedpecker), as good as they are, navigating the COVID/INS minefield to get to the US, although they seem to be expanding their audience and tour schedule across Europe, outside of Poland. 

Clutch.  Here’s a weird thing.  By now I know if I see a show in DC or Baltimore I can count on several people wearing Clutch shirts (yes, that includes Clutch concerts).  A rough guess is that Sleep and Black Sabbath were the two bands’ whose shirts were most common at this DesertFest, but oddly Clutch were also well represented, even if NYC is 4+ hours northeast of Germantown, Maryland.   Some bands develop a secondary “home market”, like KISS and Detroit, Grateful Dead and NYC, but if Clutch have conquered NYC, it’s news to me.  And as for being stoner rock?  Well, there’s a slight funk offstep to their songs and some offbeat lyrics from Neil Fallon, so I’d say Clutch meet a very generous and vague standard to qualify as stoner rock.  And I suppose “Willie Nelson” certainly reveals the band’s appreciation for Nelson’s herbal preferences. 

When you think about it, though, defining “stoner rock” this way is a bit odd.  Rappers are notorious stoners and not shy about blowing their smoke in our faces.  Snoop’s 420 cred is unimpeachable.  And jam bands are also well associated with weed; the distinctive aroma is ubiquitous at a GD/Dead & Co, Phish, Widespread Panic, etc. show.  Even more, jazz is "highly" associated with cannabis, in fact from earlier than 1937, when the national ban went into effect.  But these bands sound nothing like Black Sabbath.  That being the case, if rappers and Deadheads aren’t going to call us on applying the label to variants of Black Sabbath, I suppose we’re getting away with it.   Knowing smile…(cue “Sweet Leaf”)

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