Tag: Gonerfest 13

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Gonerfest Weekend: May The Circle Be Unbroken

Gonerfest Saturday is The Longest Day.

A pair of Goners feeling the love at Murphy’s outdoor stage.

OK, it’s not like D-Day or anything. It’s just 12 hours of rock, with a short break for Pho Binh in the middle. 

Archie and the Bunkers

The Saturday day show at Murphy’s split 10 acts between two stages, one indoors and one outdoors. With low humidity and the temperature peaking out at 85 F, the weather could not have been more perfect in the venerable Midtown venue’s shaded back parking lot where the outside stage offered bands from as far afield as Ireland. Oh Boland made the trek across the Atlantic to play some no-nonsense punk that, in the idyllic conditions, sounded more uplifting than angry. King Louie’s contribution to this year’s festival, Iron Head, on the other hand, was full of nonsense—and I mean that in the best way. Louie and his New Orleans cohort plowed through a sloppy, fun set punctuated by arguments over where the guitar solo was supposed to go.
Saturday’s afternoon show is not only the most communal phase of the festival, but it’s also prime time for unexpected discoveries. This year’s big reveal was Archie and the Bunkers, a pair of brothers from Ohio who channeled Quintron and The Damned in a frenzied half-hour set. These younguns were clearly the band most excited to be playing Gonerfest, and, despite the hours upon hours of garage punk variants I was exposed to over the long weekend, it was their cover of “Neat Neat Neat” that played in a loop in my head.

The World

The World, a postpunk band from Oakland brought a welcome change of pace outside some sax-driven tunes reminiscent of James Chance and The Contortions’ No Wave dance party. Then the soundtrack to the sunset on the crowd at Murphy’s grove was provided by Spray Paint, the beloved, Goner vet noise rockers from Austin.

Sick Thoughts

Weary Goners trickling into the Hi Tone that night were greeted with the anomalously chill sound of Couteau Latex from Geneva, Switzerland. But any peaceful vibes were quickly dispelled by Sick Thoughts, a Trampoline Team side project from New Orleans whose singer DD Owen bashed around the stage like a cocaine fueled bull in a nunnery. After repeated leaps into the crowd, he finished the set off by basing headfirst into the drum set, where he and the drummer lay for a long moment in a tangle of equipment. I was about to yell for a medic when they finally stirred to leave the stage. I guess they were just resting.

Control Freaks

One man band don’t get much weirder than Bloodshot Bill, the Canadian psychobilly rambler who had to take the stage as the sound guys cleaned up the destruction left behind by Sick Thoughts. You have to be brave to pull off a full solo routine like that, and Bloodshot Bill bantered fearlessly with the audience between strange songs where his voice veered between singing, screeching, yodeling, and a vocal fry that approached tibetan throat singing territory. Then the Control Freaks from San Francisco alternated between sounding like a Mack truck barreling down the 101 and a barrage of insulting anti-humor from Friday night’s MC Greg Lowery.

Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds

The California trend continued with fellow San Franciscans Midnite Snaxx, and the Saturday night headliner, Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds. Headlining Saturday night is a double-edged sword, because the crowd is going to be thoroughly worn out by 1 AM, but the best acts manage to overcome the audience’s rubbery legs. Kid Congo was one of those acts. I didn’t think I was going to make it more than one or two songs, but I ended up staying until the bitter end, and dancing harder than I had all fest. Big kudos to Kid Congo!

Rev. John Wilkins

I was going to write this blog post on Sunday, but I found my brains turned to mush, so my wife and I wandered over to watch Gonerfest end where it began, in the Cooper-Young gazebo. A few years ago, the Mid South’s own Rev. John Wilkins was introduced to the Goner crowd with a deep set of soul-tinged gospel delivered at the Murphy’s sunset slot. I wrote at the time that we here in Memphis are jaded by all the amazing soul and blues that permeates the air like the perfume of blossoms in the springtime, but the out-of-towners from Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Japan, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the UK werre slack-jawed in amazement when presented with The Real Thing. This happened again on Sunday at the Gazebo, when the Rev led his impromptu congregation through soul claps and call-and-response celebrations of life, brother- and-sisterhood. By the end, he and his crack band had us all beseeching the heavans with a Stax-y rendition of “May The Circle Be Unbroken”. It was the perfect illustration of the Saturday night/Sunday morning dichotomy that defines Memphis music’s unique appeal, and the perfect capper for one of the best Gonerfests ever.

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Gonerfest Friday: Woozy, Brutal, Beautiful

Gonerfesters got a running start on Friday with an afternoon superkegger at Memphis Made’s taproom on Cooper. Memphis Made created a pair of custom beers for this year’s festival: A tart saison IPA and Gonerbraü, a smooth creme ale. Both proved popular with the rockers assembled in the sun to watch a four-band bill. New Orlean’s Trampoline Team turned in the most turnt tunes of the afternoon.

Yes, I just wrote that sentence. I probably should have just deleted it, but I’ll leave it to show the effects 48 hours of pounding beats are having on my synapses.

Trampoline Team riles up the crowd at Memphis Made.

The eventful Hi Tone Friday night got rolling with Opposite Sex from Deundin, New Zealand. They led with an impressive one-two punch in bassist/screamer Lucy Hunter and guitar squealer Reg Norris, who is able to get an huge range of sounds from just a wah pedal and a souped up stomp box. (TurboRat represent!)

Opposite Sex

The Hi Tone was filling up quickly as Memphis family affair Aquarian Blood howled to life. The husband and wife duo of Memphis hardcore OG JB Horrell and Laurel Fernden, supported by drummer Bill Curry and Coletrane Duckworth (son of Memphis guitar legend Jim Duckworth), gets better every time I see them. Between Horrell trying his best to strangle his ax into submission and Fernden switching between a clean microphone and one with rubbery echo effects—sometimes within a single lyrical line—they sound like no one else.

Aquarian Blood

When I walked into the Hi Tone Big Room to see Power killing it, I briefly wondered if I had stepped back in time to 1974. Like their countrymen Wolfmother, the Melbourne, Australia trio have embraced butt rock, mullets and all. And the Gonerfest audience went right there with them.

Power and the crowd.

I have to admit I totally missed Buck Biloxi and the Fucks. I was visiting the food truck out front for a much needed gutbomb burger when the party (it may have been a hip hop show, I wasn’t clear on the details) across the street at the erupted into a shirt-ripping brawl. There was at least one shot fired, but no one was hurt, and cop cars quickly swarmed the area. It was a strange, tense scene: on one side of the street, an African American crowd rapidly dispersing as police arrived; on the other side of the street, sweaty, mostly white punks from all over the world watching with a combination of horror and fascination, wondering if we were going to be witnesses to some kind of racially charged incident that has dominated the news in 2016. Fortunately, the first wave of cops to arrive seemed focused on de-escalating the fighting, and the situation cleared up without further violence or—judging by the lack of ambulance—injury.

The Blind Shake demonstrates unorthodox guitar technique.

Flashing blue lights provided the background as The Blind Shake took the stage. The Minnesota brothers Jim and Mike Blaha, who describes themselves as an “extraterrestrial backyard surf party”, are Gonerfest regulars. This year, they topped themselves with the tightest, snarlingest set I’ve seen from them. “Shots fired next door,” Jim said from the stage. “It’s an old marketing ploy.”

Black Lips

When 1 AM rolled around, the wrung out crowd milled around, trying to catch our breath as Black Lips meandered onto stage. The original Gonerfest grew out of a Black Lips show, and the band represents something of a garage rock ideal. The sound they have been chasing for the last decade and a half is something like a drunken 60s girl group backup band practicing in the stairwell where John Bonham recorded “When The Levee Breaks”. This is the strain of punk rock that originated in Memphis with the immoral Panther Burns. With the addition of a new saxophonist, the Black Lips pushed ever closer to the Panther Burns party vibe, gathering steam with each woozy rocker until “Katrina”, their 2007 underground lament of New Orleans devastation sent the crowd into a frenzy from which we didn’t emerge until the lights came up.

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Reigning Sound Rule Gonerfest Thursday Night

If you want to get cheered up quick, try Gonerfest. 

Memphis punks Nots open Gonerfest 13 in the Cooper Young Gazebo

I had had a pretty crappy Thursday, and was in a pretty foul mood as I headed to the corner of Cooper and Young for the kickoff of Gonerfest 13. The fresh air, idyllic weather, and flurry of faces, both familiar and unfamiliar, loosened me up a bit, and then Nots rocked away the remnants of my darkness. As Goner co-owner Zac Ives said in his brief introduction to the band, it’s been a real privelage watching this band of Memphis women grow and evolve from raw, explosive talent into the finely honed outfit that confidently kicked off the world’s greatest garage punk festival. Even more heartening was the gaggle of little girls who gathered transfixed before Nots frontwoman Natalie Hoffman. The rest of Gonerfest may not be kid-friendly, but for a few minutes yesterday afternoon some Midtown kids got a glimpse of what a powerful, talented, and determined bunch of women can do. 

The show moved to the considerably less kid-friendly environs of the Hi-Tone for the evening’s festivities, led off by Memphis newcomers Hash Redactors. Half the fun of Gonerfest (well, maybe not literally half) is discovering new acts, and between the psychedelic Redactors and Chook Race from Melbourne Australia, I had joined two new fandoms before 10 PM. As the night’s MC, the legendary Black Oak Arkansas frontman Jim Dandy, explained “Chook Race” is Aussie slang for chicken racing, which is apparently a thing in the Outback. But aside from their accents, the three piece didn’t sound like they were from down under. I got a distinct vibe of Athens, Georgia circa 1981 from the jangly sound and twisty songwriting. Some songs sounded like Pylon, while others could have been outtakes from REM’s first EP “Chronic Town”. 

Chook Race from Melbourne, Australia

The crowd shoehorned into the Hi Tone mingled all kinds of accents and looks. I noticed as I entered the show that passports were being offered as IDs as often as American driver’s licenses. Yes, people really come from outside the states to Gonerfest. Lots of them. 

Reigning Sound

The rest of the evening offered various shades of garage rock, from Ohioans Counter Intuits to the Gonerfest veterans now based in San Francisco Useless Eaters. Guitar heroes Fred and Toody—Oregonian legends who fronted Dead Moon and Pierced Arrows—played a noisy set to a reverent room. Then it was time for a return of some Memphis favorite sons, Reigning Sound. Greg Oblivian Cartwright formed the band in the early 2000s with Alex Greene on keys, Greg Roberson on drums, and Memphis import Jeremy Scott on bass and backup vocals. The original lineup stayed stable for two of the best records created in Memphis since the heyday of Stax, and their live shows are legendary. When the original lineup reunited, with the occasional addition of John Whittemore on pedal steel and guitar, they proved the legends true for those who didn’t get the opportunity to see it go down the first time. There wasn’t a bad band on the first night of Gonerfest 13, but the Reigning Sound were head and shoulders above the rest. No one else had the width and depth of Cartwright’s songwriting, or the telepathic group cohesion that can sound both haphazard and incredibly tight at the same time. These guys are, and have alway been, the real deal. 

Now to get rehydrated for today’s shows.