Tag: Gonerfest

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Gonerfest 11

“It’s a little crazy this year how many are Australians,” Bruce Saltmarsh says of this year’s GOnerfest lineup. But if anyone is to blame, it’s Saltmarsh. “I’ve worked with all of them except for one.”

Saltmarsh runs Easter Bilby, a record distribution company with a niche in Australian garage rock.

The Rebel

“It’s just increased every year since Eddy Current Suppression Ring played [in 2009].” Saltmarsh says. “That year was Eddy Current and the Ooga Boogas. Since then, when I was starting Easter Bilby, there’s been an increase in Australian groups playing. There’s also been an increase in Australian tourists as fans coming to Gonerfest, which is basically as ridiculous as the number of bands coming to the festival.”

Australian music is on a roll. Seven bands are onboard for Gonerfest 11, which runs from September 25th-28th.

“The thing to me is, I’ve been following Australian music for as long as I can remember, going back to Radio Birdman and the Saints. It’s always been great music. I think that my having started this distribution company with only Australian bands, and there’s a little New Zealand mixed in — it’s just opened the doors to a lot of stuff that wouldn’t have normally been heard outside of Australia.”

But Saltmarsh never set out to be an Australian music mogul.

“I wound up starting Easter Bilby about seven or eight years ago,” he says. “I started helping out a friend from Australia. I said, why don’t you just ship however many records to me. When you get orders, I’ll send them out in the U.S. for you. So I kind of started sideways. But that was the beginning of it. It was Aarght, a record label, the first record was probably Eddy Current Supression Ring. From that, it’s just turned into this ridiculous thing. I’m sitting in my office, and I’ve got probably 150 different releases sitting here.”

Ausmuteants

Ausmuteants hail from Geelong, Australia. Their self-titled debut is on Goner in the U.S. and Aarght in Australia. Ausmuteants play Thursday night at the Hi-Tone.

“I’m meeting them in L.A. and doing the first couple of weeks of their tour with them,” Saltmarsh says. “They’re all kids. The oldest guy is 25. They’re coming over to do a month-long tour. I’ve been laughing at myself, wondering how the hell did I get roped into doing this.”

What makes Australian music so compelling?

“It seems like it’s so isolated,” Saltmarsh says. “The isolation is a big part of it. It’s a hard thing to put into words. Australians in general have a hard time believing in themselves.” He laughts and adds, “I think it’s the opposite in Memphis.”

Gonerfest has a few non-Australian tricks up the T-shirt sleeve this year.

Londoner Wreckless Eric leads the Len Bright Combo. Eric Goulden is a Class of ’77 Londoner who bore the country-punk imprint of Nick Lowe in his early years and birthed the somewhat legendary album The Len Bright Combo Present… The Len Bright Combo… By The Len Bright Combo. That title that tells you everything you need to know about an album that set standards for how shimmering guitars should work over lumbering, rudimentary sludge. Len Bright Combo plays on Friday night at the Hi-Tone.

Len Bright Combo

Hertsfordshire, UK-native Benedict Roger Wallers is a master of disguise who has released music and performed under several personas. The Rebel finds Wallers offering a mix of classic rock references and musique concrete, with noise samples and textures that recall Stockhausen and John Cale. The Rebel plays on Saturday with Indiana protopunks Gizmos.

Keep an eye on the Flyer website for more previews of Gonerfest 11 music.

Gonerfest 11, September 25th-28th. See gonerfest.com for full lineup and tickets.

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Sing All Kinds We Recommend

Lenguas Largas, White Night, TSOT at the Hi-Tone Friday

Lenguas Largas blew me away two years ago at Gonerfest 9. They played the outdoor stage at Murphy’s, and their three (or was it four?) guitar attack came off as a disjointed, jangly Skynryd that had risen up out of the Arizona desert. They’d sold out of all their vinyl, and they impressed me so much that I actually bought a CD, the most archaic and pointless of merch. They’re stopping in at the Hi-Tone on Friday as part of the Recess Records 25th Anniversary Cavalcade of Clowns. Recess put out their most recent LP, Come On In.

You could call Fullerton, California’s White Night punk, but that wouldn’t really cover all the bases. They also fall into the surfy/garage/weirdo stoner genres. Emphasis on stoner, as they include the ubiquitous 420 in their Bandcamp address. A recent Facebook post praised the citizens of Colorado for their legalization of the good stuff. The band is out in support of their album Prophets of Templum CDXX.

When TSOT announced their permanent hiatus last spring, Midtown bar owners and sound guys alike breathed a collective sigh of relief. But like a cockroach rising out of the glowing embers of Chernobyl, Richard Martin’s banjitar refuses to be extinguished or silenced. My first night in Memphis seven years ago was spent at the Hi Tone where TSOT had a regular Monday residency. I believe my reaction was, “What the shit is this?” I didn’t get it. And that’s because I wasn’t in on the joke. Once it dawns on you, a TSOT show is what all rock and roll shows should be: fun and unpredictable. And usually Sambeaux in his underwear.

Lenguas Largas, White Night, TSOT at the Hi-Tone Friday

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Gonerfest at 10

Call it the accidental music festival.

In late 2004, Goner Records co-owners Eric Friedl and Zac Ives heard that King Khan & BBQ Show were touring. Things snowballed from there.

“We were just trying to do a show,” Ives says. “We did not know it would appeal to anyone outside of Memphis to the degree it did. King Khan & BBQ Show were doing a tour. We had a record from them and a record from King Louie. So we put them on Friday night and King Louie on Saturday night. The Black Lips were touring with King Khan & BBQ Show, so we put them on. Then we added local bands, and people started calling and wanting to come from all over the country and from Italy and England. They wanted to come to Memphis.”

Friedl recalls, “As a joke, somebody said, ‘You should call it Gonerfest!’ and we were like, ‘Sure! Great!'”

So in January 2005, Gonerfest 1 invaded the Buccaneer, a favorite hole-in-the-wall in Midtown. “Having a show at the Buccaneer is like having a party at grandma’s house,” Ives says. “It was so crowded, you couldn’t get to the bar. You had to go outside and walk around to the back door to get to the bathroom. It was nuts.”

After the initial, unexpected success, the pair held a second Gonerfest in late 2005, headlined by Memphis surf legends Impala and including many of the acts that would become festival staples over the ensuing years, such as Human Eye, the Limes, and Leather Uppers. In the age of the mega-fest, when Lollapallooza, Coachella, and Bonnaroo attract hundreds of thousands with mixed bills of indie rock, hip-hop, electronica, and revered classic acts, Gonerfest has quietly become a kind of gathering of the garage rock tribes; a showcase for the best of a certain strain of rowdy, primitive, punk-tinged rock-and-roll from all over the world.

“It’s grown every year,” Ives says. “Memphis has a mystique. I think we realized that, after the first show, it was an excuse [for people] to come to Memphis.”

Unlike Bonnaroo’s massive stages and vast field of tents, Gonerfest takes place in Midtown clubs like the Hi-Tone, Murphy’s, and the Buccaneer. “When you do a show at a space that is this small, where sometimes there isn’t even a stage, you take away some of the barriers between the people who are playing and the people who are watching,” Friedl says. “You’re going to be standing right next to the guy who is going to be onstage next.”

Ives says that, even as the festival expands, the intimate vibe is something they don’t want to lose.”We’ve filled up the Hi-Tone, but we’ve never felt a need to get into a larger venue.”

Gonerfest has become an international phenomenon, with acts from Puerto Rico, Denmark, France, Serbia, Austria, and even as far away as Tasmania braving long flights to play. “Eddy Current Suppression Ring came right when they were getting really popular in Australia,” Friedl says. “They knew a lot of people from Melbourne, and they brought a big crew that year. And then those people went back to Melbourne and told their friends.”

Japanese bands, such as the legendary Guitar Wolf, which will open the festival this year, have always been popular. And then there was Red Sneakers from Osaka.

“We just drove up to the store the week of Gonerfest, and there were a couple of Japanese dudes with their bags and equipment sitting out front of the shop. They were ready to play Gonerfest,” Ives says. But the Sneakers hadn’t actually been invited to play, and hadn’t contacted Goner, so Ives had to tell them there was no room for them on the bill. “But they were there when Jay Reatard decided he was too sick to play at Murphy’s on Saturday afternoon, and so they got to play, and they were amazing. That’s just sheer willpower.”

For both Friedl and Ives, the best part of the festival is the temporary community that springs up every fall in Midtown. Photographer Don Perry has organized an exhibit of the best images from the past festivals, which is on display at Crosstown Arts. The collection of images, capturing the drama of live performance and the fans’ sweaty ecstasy, acts as a sort of yearbook for a decade of rock-and-roll. “We bring all of these great people together for three days — bands, fans, the fans who are in bands,” Friedl says. “It’s really cool. Everybody is here, because they want to be here.”

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Goner Guide

Thursday, Sept. 26

Gonerfest traditionally opens with a low-key, outdoor show at the gazebo at the corner of Cooper and Young. This year, however, the opening promises to be a lot less low key, with Japanese legends Guitar Wolf bringing their brand of acrobatic, primal, ultra-high-energy garage primitivism to the neighborhood that is not aware of what is about to hit it.

The first night of Gonerfest 10 opens at the Hi-Tone with the Blind Shake, a Minneapolis three-piece in the noisy Hüsker Dü tradition, whose fantastic second full-length album Key To A False Door just dropped. Next up is the confusingly named Octa#Grape, a sort-of San Diego supergroup led by former Trumans Water noisemeister Glen Galloway, and then the reverb-drenched Frenchmen Catholic Spray. Detroit’s Tyvek plays straight-ahead, pogo-worthy punk appropriate to their hometown’s reputation. Their previous Gonerfest sets have been pits of riotous energy. The first Memphis band on the bill is Ex-Cult, who played one of their earliest shows at last year’s Gonerfest and have since gathered a following by barnstorming the nation supporting Ty Segall. Closing the first night is New Orleans’ organ wizard Quintron, whose headlining set at Gonerfest 6, which wound up a tired bunch of punks into a giant, all-night dance party ­— as Eric Friedl says, “It was a big, sweaty mess” — and is on the shortlist for best Gonerfest performance ever.

Friday, Sept. 27

Friday kicks off with an afternoon show at the Buccaneer featuring the ramshackle Florida rock of Gino and the Goons and poppy Swedes The Martin Savage Gang.

The Hi-Tone show begins with a trio of Tennessee’s finest. Fronted by Memphis noise rock legend Richard Martin and including Friedl, the indescribable True Sons of Thunder must be seen to be believed. (“We don’t know what we’re doing, but we’ve been doing it for 8 years, so we must be doing something right,” Martin says.) Viva L’American Death Ray Music marks a rare appearance from a pair of Memphis’ favorite sons, Nick Diablo and Harlan T. Bobo, who have decamped to Brooklyn and France, respectively. Nashville’s Cheap Time are Gonerfest veterans with deep Memphis roots and solid, assured songwriting by leader Jeffery Novak.

The first of two Seattle bands at the fest is Head, a favorite of Goner’s Zac Ives. Detroit’s Human Eye, led by Detroit’s Timmy Vulgar, brings their psychedelic blacklight stage show and sci-fi weirdness back to the Gonerfest stage, where they dominated two years ago.

The big story of the tenth Gonerfest is Friday night’s headliner. “Mudhoney is by far the biggest band we’ve ever had play,” Ives says. The Seattle band was there at the conception of the ’80s “Seattle sound,” and their first single, “Touch Me I’m Sick” marked, if not the beginning of the grunge era, then at least the first time most people outside the Pacific Northwest heard the sound that turned rock-and-roll inside out and made the former underground the mainstream. They were labelmates on Sub Pop with Nirvana, and Mudhoney just released their tenth album, Vanishing Point, on the venerable label. In 1998, they recorded the album Tomorrow Hit Today under the tutelage of the late, legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson. Where others from that era either flamed out like Nirvana or went arena rock like Pearl Jam, Mudhoney has stuck to its guns, keeping the tempos up and the lyrics snotty. Many, if not most, of the bands playing at Gonerfest owe a stylistic debt to Mudhoney, whether they know it or not.

Saturday, Sept. 28

Gonerfest Saturday afternoons are in many ways the heart and soul of the festival. The festival invades Murphy’s in Midtown with 10 bands alternating on two stages, one inside and the other in the parking lot.

“That’s one of the shows that people from Memphis usually come to,” Ives says.

“It’s a good way to check out Gonerfest without the whole ‘subway ride to hell’ thing,” Friedl adds.

This year’s Saturday includes sets from Memphis punk provacateurs Manatees and Harlan T. Bobo’s newest project, the hard-rocking Fuzz. Other highlights include Gonerfest stalwarts Digital Leather, a synth-punk project by former Jay Reatard collaborator Shawn Foree; Oxford’s Talbot Adams; and Austin art-punks Spray Paint. Closing the afternoon show is Wreckless Eric, a British punk rocker who was there at the creation of the sound in 1977, and whose long and varied career has seen at least 17 albums under many different names and has taken him all over the world.

For those who have survived the preceeding two days, Saturday night at the Hi-Tone is stacked with talent. The night kicks off with the spacey, soulful sounds of Iowa’s Autodramatics and ’90s Australian punkers Onyas, featuring guitar strangler John “Mad” Macka, will throw down before Memphis’ own Msr. Jeffrey Evans leads his CC Riders out of retirement. Next up are Alabama synth weirdos Wizzard Sleeve, who are Gonerfest vets and perennial Memphis favorites. The penultimate band is Destruction Unit, led by former Memphian Ryan Russo. “They are one of the best bands on the planet,” Friedl says. “They’ve got this kind of Hawkwind thing going on, with everyone flying around the stage for 45 minutes.”

Saturday night’s headliners are the Australian gut bucket rock legends the Cosmic Psychos. The highly influential band’s first three records, Down on the Farm (1985), Cosmic Psychos (1987), and Go the Hack (1989), have been rereleased on Goner Records, and the band is currently touring America. The documentary film Blokes You Can Trust, about the band’s origins as Australian farmers and the startling contrast between life on the farm and life on the road.

“It’s not just about the music. If you like good documentaries, you’ll love this movie,” says Friedl.

The film is screening five times during Gonerfest, and is a must-see, not only as an introduction to the bands long legacy but also because it’s a great, funny, and endearing film where you’ll find out that when, on the song “Down On The Farm,” Ross Knight sings “I love my tractor!” he really means it. The Psychos fun, down-to-earth, no nonsense rock-and-roll will be the perfect capper to a stacked Gonerfest lineup.

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Music Music Features

GonerFest: Take 5

Garage rock, power pop, punk rock, and a few other visceral permutations of rock ruled the game at last year’s GonerFest, a now semi-legendary rock festival curated by local record store and label Goner. This year, the evolving festival — which begins with, of all things, a Ping-Pong tournament Wednesday, September 24th, before the musical assault launches the next day — expands beyond its garage/punk base, roping in a diverse landscape of independent rock bands over four days and nights at five locations.

GonerFest stalwart King Louie One Man Band kicks things off with a 5 p.m. performance Thursday at the Goner Records store in Cooper-Young, which also will be hosting a photo exhibit by the San Francisco-based Geoff Ellis, the man behind Sad Kids, the wonderful photography zine that focused its last issue on GonerFest 4.

“I wasn’t getting the attention I wanted through gallery openings, and doing a zine in 2008 actually puts me in a unique area,” says Ellis, a onetime Memphian who recently shot the cover for comedian Brett Wienbach’s next album. “People pay attention to it, because the web is saturated with photography blogs.”

Thursday night’s set at the Hi-Tone Café starts with San Francisco’s Sic Alps, one of the more talked-about bands of the festival. Sic Alps’ sound is informed by the lo-fi indie rock of the ’90s, along with the primal stomp of early garage-rock bands such as the Troggs or Pretty Things, unifying these influences via an inspired melodic sense and with the guts to blanket choice moments in layers of noise.

The more-pop-than-garage Crusaders of Love will represent France on their first U.S. visit. A totally different but no less interesting mindset will follow when Dan Melchior takes the stage. Melchior, a Brit who has been based in New York and, more recently, North Carolina, has appeared on more than 30 releases during the past 11 years, collaborating with Billy Childish and Holly Golightly, recording solo, or fronting Dan Melchior’s Broke Revue. The latter released three great, full-length albums from 1999 to 2002 on the labels Sympathy for the Record Industry and In the Red.

Continuing Thursday night’s overload of goodness and hailing from the same San Francisco scene that spawned Sic Alps, Oh Sees are the current brainchild of John Dwyer, veteran of, in his estimate, “20 to 30 bands and creative monikers.” The long list includes the sadly defunct Coachwhips (which also featured Sic Alps’ Matt Hartman), a stripped-down garage-rock band that recalled the glory days of John Spencer’s legendary Pussy Galore. Before that, Dwyer led the unclassifiable Pink and Brown. “After being in so many bands over the years, Oh Sees are seven or eight of my creative outlets crashing into one band, so to speak,” Dwyer says.

Among the lineup at this year’s Gonerfest: Vivian Girls

For those who are not too hungover or still asleep or both, the first of the official GonerFest satellite shows will take place Friday afternoon in the backyard of Light Years Vintage at 885 S. Cooper. The Touch-Me-Nots, a Bay Area couple who play country-tinged pop, will kick things off around 2 p.m. More pop will come by way of Indiana’s Eric & the Happy Thoughts before the set concludes with the promising punk-rock assault of locals Dead Trends.

Friday night’s show at the Hi-Tone commences with Jeff Evans & His Southern Aces, a new project that the Goner site refers to as “Evans backed by a new crop of Alabama studs.” Should be interesting.

Evidenced by the strength and increasing popularity of their eponymous debut on In the Red, Cheap Time have made serious strides since longtime Goner regular Jeffrey Novak (late of his one-man band the Rat Traps) formed the band in 2006. The cover design of Cheap Time’s album screams “power-pop throwback,” but the sounds within benefit from a revamped lineup and an appreciation of early-’70s glam.

“The Ooga Boogas were my favorite act of last year, and that was only their first performance in the States,” says Goner co-owner Zac Ives. “I’m really looking forward to seeing how they are a year later, after releasing an album.”

The place that the Ooga Boogas are coming back from, to be precise, is Australia, where they are sort of a sister band to soon-to-be-omnipresent (just wait) Eddie Current Suppression Ring, the most recent addition to the Goner Records stable (with the release of this month’s Primary Colours full-length).

Among the lineup at this year’s Gonerfest: Oh Sees

The “B” side of the Vivian Girls‘ seven-inch debut (“I Believe in Nothing”/”Damaged”) is one of my most frequently played pieces of new music in 2008. The band’s full-length debut will be released in a matter of days on In the Red. The album and the band are tough to pin down sonically — perhaps a low-budget My Bloody Valentine with gorgeous vocals, big hooks, and everything pushed through the speakers with drumming that evokes the Velvet Underground’s Mo Tucker.

They have two out of three predictions correct when it comes to GonerFest 5: “My vision of coming to Memphis is buying records at Goner, eating a lot of pizza, and partying a lot. People have warned us that there will be a lot of partying,” bassist Kickball Katy says.

Clocking in dangerously close to when some revelers will be rising after a round of early-morning after-parties, double-stage Murphy’s lineup for Saturday afternoon is alone worth the price of a three-day golden pass.

Blasting off at 1 p.m. with Chicago’s AV Murder, the lineup also includes the spazzy, fidelity-challenged pop of Eat Skull. Featuring former members of the Hospitals, Eat Skull are active participants in the rebirth of the Siltbreeze label, once a ’90s safe house for noisy, no-fidelity bands droning and screeching from the margins of underground rock (Dead C, Bardo Pond, Strapping Fieldhands).

To music fans who consider Arcade Fire or the Decemberists challenging fare, the Columbus, Ohio, trio known as Psychedelic Horseshit may sound like exactly that.

Among the lineup at this year’s Gonerfest: Intelligence

But ears trained in the above-mentioned noise-pop movements will hear mind-blowing hooks and inspired lyrics underneath the prickly blanket of noise and loose rhythm. They are highly recommended.

No strangers to a local stage, house party, or in-store performance, The Barbaras return to this year’s GonerFest with a Goner-released single (“Summertime Road”) under their belts and a Jay Reatard-produced full-length debut on In the Red scheduled for the near future. They command a whimsical pop sensibility somewhere between skiffle, the Beach Boys, and the forgotten glam of Roy Wood’s Wizzard.

“We’ve issued a challenge to certain audience members, and that challenge is to surprise us with something while we’re playing, just so long as it doesn’t interrupt the music,” says band member Bennett Foster. “If no one ends up doing a good prank or stunt, we have something that we’re going to unleash. Well, we’ll probably unleash it regardless.”

There’s no need to panic if attendance swiftly rises during the fourth hour. It just means that Jay Reatard and his band (Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes of the Barbaras) are about to take one of the stages. Moments later, Sector Zero will take an opposite stage. A vehicle for Goner co-owners Ives and Eric “Oblivian” Friedl, the band also includes Reatard on drums.

Also working to make this a very special afternoon are local hardcore hopefuls No Comply, The Oscars, with their first show in who knows how long, Alabama’s Wizzard Sleeve, Earthmen & Strangers, and Turpentine Brothers.

By this point, after processing the band schedule already covered, some readers probably are feeling phantom hangovers or hallucinating that their ears are ringing. Toughen up. It’s time for Saturday night back at the Hi-Tone.

Charging out of the gate will be Pierced Arrows, or Fred and Toody Cole of Dead Moon reborn with a different drummer. Lifers? The word doesn’t even begin to explain this couple. From his brushes with garage and bubblegum stardom in the ’60s (with the Weeds and the Lollipop Shoppe) on through countless bands until settling on the incredibly consistent Dead Moon in the mid-’80s, the Coles always have possessed more energy and passion than the vast majority of bands in their early 20s and will continue to do so two or three decades from now.

Regardless of this year’s impressive variety, there is no band playing GonerFest 5 that sounds quite like Intelligence. The baby of Lars Finberg, this Seattle band was long affiliated with A Frames due to Finberg’s membership in both. The (now-defunct) A Frames’ sound was an industrial post-punk wasteland with very rough edges, but Intelligence is less apocalyptic and more open to pop.

“When I saw this year’s GonerFest lineup, I thought, wow, it’d be great to play one of these things. [It includes] so many of my favorite bands right now,” Finberg says. “And then we were actually asked to play. I was really excited.”

The proverbial 25th hour of GonerFest 5 will be colored with the punk-rock slap of Static Static (John Henry, formerly of Detonations) and the decidedly different Box Elders, an up-and-coming Ohio trio. “Box Elders will be a dark horse coming out of nowhere this year and blowing people’s minds,” Ives says.

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Shaky Ground

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

In May 2002, the Flyer published a story about a fledgling local arts organization, Live From Memphis, that had recently emerged with a website (LiveFromMemphis.com) and a plan to help promote and unify the city’s diverse “creative” scene through a series of projects. While the organization has had many successes in the six years since that article was written, Live From Memphis has lately fallen on hard times.

Founded by film director and graphic designer Christopher Reyes, 38, Live From Memphis is well-known and respected in the Memphis music and arts community not only for the valuable networking and promotional resource that the website provides but for its involvement in countless other ventures, including Lil’ Film Fest, the Music Video Showcase at the IndieMemphis Film Festival, Gonerfest, and the My Memphis DVD project.

Reyes told the Flyer back in ’02 about his plans to expand Live From Memphis, which would eventually include working with Memphis’ industry establishment to organize festivals, record-label showcases, a recording studio for artists on a budget, and further developing the website as a promotional tool. However, building cooperative relationships with groups such as the Memphis Music Commission, Memphis Music Foundation, Memphis Tomorrow, and Arts Memphis proved to be harder than Reyes expected.

“I have no idea why it never worked out,” Reyes says. “I’ve tried and tried, and I’ve talked to everyone I could ever talk to about forming partnerships. We didn’t want to just go out there and do things by ourselves. That’s the whole idea of community — working together. But people don’t want to work together; they want their own little corner, their own piece of the pie. All these groups like Arts Memphis and the Memphis Music Foundation are working toward building sites that are practically identical to LiveFromMemphis.com. At some point it’s like, why are we doing this?”

Reyes pauses for a few seconds and then adds, “I think somewhere along the line I might have been blackballed.”

Reyes doesn’t deny having a contentious relationship with certain, notable members of the Memphis music industry, which has no doubt had an effect on his ability to realize his dreams of integrating Live From Memphis into other industry groups.

“People don’t like to hear that what they are doing is wrong,” Reyes says. “And people like me who are outspoken tend to become outcasts.”

Support for Reyes and Live From Memphis from within Memphis’ more grassroots community, however, is fairly unanimous.

“Every good idea that the Music [Commission or Foundation has had] they stole from Christopher. Nothing they’ve tried to do has ever had an effect on me as a musician,” says Mark Akin, of the local band the Subteens and a close friend of Reyes.

“With a minimal staff and totally self-funded, Live From Memphis is an exhaustive central location to listen to bands, find out about bands, buy music, and find out about events around town,” says Goner Records’ Eric Friedl. “That Chris can do this by himself is mind-blowing. It’s no wonder he looks exhausted all the time.”

“Organizations like Live From Memphis are the key to a cohesive and productive music scene and thus to putting Memphis back on the map for good current music,” says Brad Postlethwaite, of Makeshift Music and the local band Snowglobe. “For years, Christopher has been going out in the community and recording show after show, night after night, all for the simple goal of promoting the music and helping the artists. It is a thankless task, unfortunately, as is evidenced by the lack of funding for projects like Live From Memphis.”

Despite an inability to form relationships with the local industry or find any substantial outside funding, Live From Memphis has remained a fixture on the local music and film scene and continues to grow. Reyes recently moved Live From Memphis from its offices in Reyes’ downtown loft to a more publicly accessible space at the MeDiA Co-op in Midtown, launched a social networking component (called “Community”) at the website, and is developing a print publication due out later this year called Art Rag. This comes in spite of the fact that Reyes has been dealing with significant health problems since August that have seen him bedridden, in and out of hospitals, and severely in debt.

These days, Reyes is getting around better and continues to work on Live From Memphis projects around his graphic design and film work. However, personal and organizational financial concerns have left him wondering how long he can keep it going.

“I think we get taken for granted, absolutely,” Reyes says. “We have only a handful of supporters. We are the same creatives who we’re trying to support. I’ve definitely thought, at times, about shutting it down.”

For now, though, Reyes is content to push forward with minimal assistance and the hope that someone will see the value of Live From Memphis and offer some substantial support. Until then, he continues to promote the music scene that he loves by whatever means available.

“As soon as Christopher was well enough to get out of bed, he was recording shows for free,” Akin says. “He has a genuine passion for Memphis music and puts his money where his mouth is. That’s something we need to save and support.”

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Visitation

Gonerfest,” says Memphis transplant John Hoppe, “is like [New Orleans roots-music festival] Ponderosa Stomp in reverse: Instead of waiting 25 years for someone to tell you this band is great, you can actually see ’em while they’re good.”

Hoppe knows of what he speaks: He traveled here to attend the three previous Gonerfest garage-rock extravaganzas and had such a good time last year that he moved from Michigan, permanently, and got a job at Goner Records, the Cooper-Young label/storefront behind the event.

Hoppe, Goner founder Eric Friedl, and co-owner Zac Ives have spent the last nine months preparing for Gonerfest 4, a five-day affair that kicked off with a five-act label showcase on September 26th and — spanning seven venues and including an art show, record-spinning DJs, and a special screening of the movie The Man Who Loved Couch Dancing — continues until the wee hours of Monday morning.

“A lot of it books itself,” says Friedl, who describes the festival as an “organic” event that, this year, draws more than 100 musicians from three continents.

“We’re getting better at planning ahead,” he says. “It kind of extends from one year to the next. Who couldn’t come, who did we forget to ask, and what were we missing from the last one?”

This year, the Goner crew has pulled out some big guns, including 1990s garage-rock legends Donny Denim, Tina Lucchesi, and Head; Australian rockers the Ooga Boogas and Eddy Current Suppression Ring; the return of U.K. garage group the Hipshakes; and regional favorites Lover!, Evil Army, Mr. Quintron & Miss Pussycat, and the Perfect Fits.

“The fact that it’s in Memphis is something else we’ve got going for us,” says Ives, who points out that performers and audience members alike are flocking to the Bluff City to eat, shop, and party all week long.

It helps, of course, that past Gonerfests have been immortalized on both the Goner Records message board and via the Electric Goneroo: Gonerfest 2 DVD/CD, which was co-produced by Live From Memphis and Rocket Science Audio and is currently out-of-print.

For out-of-towners, the ancillary draws are many: the wealth of music history found here; the only-in-Memphis high jinks that range from Young Avenue hot dog cookouts (Gonerfest 1) to an outdoor kiddie pool filled with live eels (Gonerfest 3); the stamina of local scenesters, who already have planned three nights of after-party shows that kick off at 2 a.m.; the lure of five new Goner releases, including a Ross Johnson retrospective CD, stellar new albums from Chicago rockers Cococoma and Atlanta group the Carbonas; and a book by Milwaukee artist/Tuff Bananas bassist Mark Ertmer. All of this, in addition to the regular daily and nightly shows, make the marathon event a must, despite the popularity of other garage-rock festivals such as Chicago’s Blackout, Oakland’s Budget Rock Showcase, and the Las Vegas Grind.

As Alex Cuervo, frontman for the Austin-based group the Hex Dispensers, insists, “My wife and I were talking about coming, no matter what. It’s even more fun to play it, but I’m glad we’re performing on Thursday night, so we can relax. We want to eat at Gus’s Fried Chicken and the Cozy Corner as often as we can. The Memphis scene seems like it’s thriving. There’s a lot of really exciting stuff happening there.”

Here’s a critical guide to some of Gonerfest 4’s potential highlights:

Thursday Picks:

Greg Cartwright — Goner Records, 5:30 p.m.

Why you should care: In between playing on the Detroit Cobras’ latest album and producing Mary Weiss’ much-heralded comeback and appearing, with Weiss, on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, the former Memphian hasn’t returned home for a gig since his band the Reigning Sound’s triumphant show last New Year’s Eve. Sans his backing band, Cartwright headlines the official opening ceremonies for Gonerfest 4. And if the live album he and the Reigning Sound cut at Goner in June 2005 is any indication, he’ll be performing at full-throttle — in pure Cartwright style, with his neck tucked in and his strumming arm flailing — for the hometown crowd.

Greg Cartwright

Hex Dispensers — Hi-Tone Café,

10:30 p.m.

What to expect: Horror-themed Ramones-meets-Misfits pop punk. “As basic and as good a description as that is, it’s pretty flattering. It sounds kind of generic, because they’re both such obvious and prominent punk-rock bands — but at the same time, that’s what we’ve tried to do,” says vocalist/guitarist Alex Cuervo, veteran of classic garage-rock groups Blacktop and the Now Time Delegation, who formed the Hex Dispensers with guitarist Tom Kodiak, drummer Alyse Mervosh, and bassist Dave Bessenhoffer last year.

Top Ten — Hi-Tone Café, 11:15 p.m.

What to expect: “We’re action-packed comedy and good times — a drunken extravaganza,” says Top Ten frontwoman Tina Lucchesi, who has planned a six-city tour around the group’s Gonerfest 4 appearance. A veteran of iconic Bay Area garage-rock group the Trashwomen, the raven-haired Lucchesi sings gritty covers of classics such as Teenage Head’s “Got No Sense” alongside helter-skelter, Runaways-minded originals such as “Easily Unkind” with the assistance of hard-rocking guitarist Erin McDermott, bassist Richie Butler, and new drummer Lumpy McGumps.

Jay Reatard — Hi-Tone Café, 1 a.m.

Why you should care: For the majority of Memphis’ million-plus population, Jay Reatard’s as anonymous as you or me. On the indie-rock circuit, however, his rock-and-roll antics and oft-disputed musical brilliance are making him a household name. At last year’s SXSW Music Festival, Reatard (real name: Jay Lindsey) dazzled the honchos at Vice Records; now, fresh off a European tour with the Boston Chinks, he’s being hounded by über-producer Rick Rubin and A&R men from media conglomerate Universal and alternative stalwart Matador Records. “It’s all weird ’til I get paid,” Reatard says with a shrug, declining to name which label’s the lucky bidder. Catch him while you can: Post-Gonerfest, Reatard and the Boston Chinks embark on a two-month coast-to-coast U.S. tour, which includes a high-profile stop at the CMJ Festival in New York City.

Friday Picks:

Hex Dispensers

Head — Hi-Tone Café, 10:30 p.m.

Why you should care: Since forming in 1990, Seattle punk trio Head has languished in garage-rock obscurity. When Eric Friedl requested a dream reunion for Goner Records’ 2006 SXSW showcase, band members Ree Ree, Touch, and Tulu insisted, “We never broke up.” Indeed, Head has plugged along for nearly two decades, independently releasing albums on the band’s own imprint, Evil Clown Records, including Heil Head, a 31-track discography, and a new album called No Hugging No Learning, which includes the hook-laden, pop-punk pedophilic anthem “I’m 35 Years Older Than You.”

Eddy Current Suppression Ring —

Hi-Tone Café, 11:15 p.m.

What to expect: With the Ooga Boogas (which features members from the Onyas and the Sailors) and Digger & the Pussycats, the land down under is well-represented at Gonerfest 4, but word on the street is that Eddy Current Suppression Ring is the band to watch. Named for the electromagnetic ripples on a conductive metal plate, the group takes on the deconstructionist roots-rock style popularized by fringe groups such as the Country Teasers, then channels it through a hurricane-force, four-to-the-floor technique that’s equal parts ’60s Yardbirds punk and ’70s New York minimalism.

Head

Mr. Airplane Man — Hi-Tone Café, midnight

Why you should care: “It’s been awhile, and I think it’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal to see ’em again,” says Greg Cartwright, who helped this Boston-based blues-rock duo cut two albums, 2002’s Moanin’ and its ’04 follow-up, C’mon DJ. He has a point: Despite rising success in the middle of the decade, the band went on hiatus after guitarist Margaret Garrett’s temporary exodus to Memphis (and subsequent return to New England) and drummer Tara McManus focused her energies on the Turpentine Brothers. A rumored reunion gig in Los Angeles this fall never happened, but Garrett and McManus performed live in Somerville, Massachusetts, last week and are finally slated to bring their unadorned, North Mississippi hill-country-blues meets Morphine rock sounds back down South.

Saturday Picks:

Mr. Airplane Man

Goodnight Loving — Murphy’s, 5 p.m.

What to expect: While this Milwaukee group has already rolled through Memphis once this year, their appearance at Gonerfest 4 should still be a highlight: The band’s new album, Crooked Lake, which was recorded in a fishing cabin and released just days ago, sounds like a well-mixed combination of Muswell Hillbillies-era Kinks and Irish roustabouts the Pogues, with catchy lyrics and driving rhythms galore. Don’t miss the live rendition of their song “Land of 1,000 Bars,” a folksy ode to binge drinking that’s guaranteed to stick in your head long after the buzz wears off.

Donny Denim & The Meatballs —

Hi-Tone Café, midnight

What to expect: “I’m coming to Gonerfest because I said no the first three years Eric asked me.” So says South City, California, homeboy Darin Raffaelli, whose first band, Supercharger, inspired Friedl’s iconic Memphis group the Oblivians. “The switchboard is lighting up,” Raffaelli adds, when queried about his backing band, the Meatballs. “Russell [Quan, drummer for another early Oblivians influence, the Mummies] is coming, and Brian Hermosillo and Kathy Walker from the Retardos, along with Chris Santamaria from Loli and the Chones.” For their sojourn to Memphis, the Meatballs — a party band that initially cut just two songs, “Hey You” and “Necro Sue” — have been working on a set of inspired covers that are sure to pack the dance floor, although Raffaelli, aka Denim, claims, “I’m actually intimidated by this Hi-Tone place. I think we’d be much more comfortable in a record store or someone’s living room.”

Why you should care: Ask Raffaelli about his musical background, and he’ll solemnly declare, “I’m a hobbyist.” But as his friend Tina Lucchesi correctly insists, “Darin’s important for late-’80s to early-’90s garage rock. His band Supercharger came around at a time when there was a musical lull, and, along with the Mummies, they started an explosive run of punk rock and simple rock-and-roll. Because of those two bands, all these other bands started.” Other notches on Raffaelli’s belt: He was the Kim Fowley-like Svengali behind the Donnas’ formation and wrote all the material for their first album, he’s the mogul behind West Coast indie label Super*teem Records, and he’s the voice behind “Boy Like You,” which was featured in a popular 2002 Target TV spot. Ever modest, Raffaelli counters, “I’m out of touch. I never felt in touch, to be honest. I wasn’t and have never felt part of any scene.”

Categories
Music Record Reviews

A great Memphis music festival captured in sight and sound on two impressive discs.

A collaboration between Goner Records and Live From Memphis — two do-it-yourself organizations that have done as much for Memphis music as anyone over the past few years — Gonerfest 2: Electric Goneroo DVD/CD is a really impressive two-disc, two-hour collection that captures the garage-rock and punk chaos that ensued when like-minded bands (and like-minded fans) from all over descended on Memphis last September for the multi-day, multi-venue music festival organized by the Cooper-Young record store.

The DVD contains 26 performances from 18 bands while the CD contains 27 performances from 27 bands — captured at the Hi-Tone Café, the Buccaneer, and the Goner store — with very little performance overlap between the two discs.

I’ve always been leery of live albums since, as pure aural art, they’re rarely as interesting or sound as good as the studio recordings of the same bands. They’re snapshots of an immediate experience with the immediacy removed. So, as good as the audio disc is, I’m more impressed by the DVD, which inherently brings you a step closer to the actual experience. And it helps that this concert film is so well put together.

The Gonerfest 2 DVD was directed, produced, and shot by Sarah Fleming and Christopher Reyes of Live From Memphis and edited by Reyes and Claudia Salzig. And it isn’t rooted in the stale, dim stationary camera visuals you might expect. The crew uses multiple hand-held cameras to capture different angles and perspectives on the same performances and bring you so close to the action you sometimes feel yourself heaving along with the crowds.

The editing is sharp and witty and frequently as dynamic as the music without ever being incoherently overactive. And, in a very smart move, the Live From Memphis crew veers into the crowd and outside the clubs (or the Goner store’s hot-dog cookout) between performances for a sort of Gonerfest version of Heavy Metal Parking Lot. The disc could have even used more of this material.

Musically, there are no outright weak links on either disc, but I’m pretty confident it’s not just a local bias that makes the Memphis (or Memphis-connected) bands stand out. The local bands are the ones most likely to push through the bare basics of noise and energy and attitude into something more substantial. (Biggest non-Memphis exception: Probably Killer’s Kiss, whose “Shine It” brings a Byrds-y vibe to the garage-rock template.)

Playing songs on both the DVD and CD with his band Knaughty Knights, former Oblivian Jack Yarber conveys a wisdom, sardonic sense of humor, and emotional depth few performers here can touch. And if it wasn’t already clear, Yarber’s old bandmate Greg Cartwright is some kind of rock-and-roll savant. Opening and closing the DVD with performances of “We Repel Each Other” and “Bad Man,” Cartwright’s the Reigning Sound is fierce and soulful, but they may the one band that’s even better on the audio disc: It’s almost unfair to the 24 bands who come before that they have to share disc space with the Reigning Sound blasting through the whiplash rock-and-roll of Too Much Guitar‘s “I’ll Cry.” On a collection that pays loving testament to a musical genre and cultural scene, this band transcends both.

Other Memphis-connected highlights abound: The Persuaders, with Memphian Scott Rogers on guitar, boast a seductive, menacing, bluesy low-end guitar roar, especially on “Hot Stix.” And though an onlooker raves about Jay Lindsey’s Reatards at the Hi-Tone (“the only real punk show I’ve seen in 10 years,” he proclaims, marveling that he got hit in the head with a full bottle of beer), his poppier band the Angry Angles are more impressive with an electric set at the Buccaneer. The Memphis band that relies the most on noise, energy, and attitude, the Final Solutions, also make the most of those qualities, barely holding together the anthemic “This Is Memphis Underground” and “I’m a Punk” before a surging, joyous crowd at the club.

Other Memphis acts here push the boundaries of the Goner musical continuum: Harlan T. Bobo’s more reserved songcraft and Impala’s instrumental, atmospheric movie music. (Both, sadly, are missing from the DVD.)

— Chris Herrington

Grade: A-