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”)
