Joey Reyes, age 5, reads the Gonerfest 19 program. (Photo by Sarah Fleming)
“It’s rock and roll Christmas!” cried Gally as she greeted friends in line at Railgarten for the 19th edition of Gonerfest.
She’s worked at every Gonerfest since number 4, but for opening night, she’s just here as a fan. “That’s why I’m wearing a dress tonight,” she says.
This is the second year the underground rock festival has been held at Railgarten, a COVID safety precaution that has also allowed the festival to expand ticket sales. This year, fans of the classic late-night sweat fests have plenty of options with afterparties at DKDC, the Hi-Tone, and B Side. And since noise ordinances mean the main shows have to wrap up by 11 p.m., those afterparties are getting started earlier — I heard a fellow Goner reminisce about the time she booked an afterparty that started at 3 a.m.
The hours may be slightly more civilized, but the music remains untamed. I arrived just in time to see the much-anticipated comeback set from Bennett Foster. As one of the Barbaras (and later the Magic Kids), Foster was the catalyst for some of the most gloriously chaotic sets in Gonerfest history. His new music, which he recorded under his first name after almost ten years of “retirement” when he devoted his time to political organizing, has the pop sensibilities and decadent atmosphere of early Roxy Music. Tall and lanky, with a keen sense of stage presence, Foster cut an imposing figure on the Railgarten stage.
Bennett stages a comeback at Gonerfest 19. (photo by Chris McCoy)
Philadelphia-based Rosali, who just returned from a European tour, brought out the big guns for her first Gonerfest set. Her roaring guitar sound echoed off the metal walls of the stage, which is built from shipping containers.
Next up was another highly anticipated set, the return of The King Khan & BBQ Show. The duo of Mark Sultan and King Khan (aka Arish Amad Khan) were the core of the very first Gonerfest, which took place at the now-disappeared Buccaneer, and now have a huge Tik Tok hit with “Love You So.” Things didn’t exactly go as planned, though, when Sultan tested positive for COVID earlier in the day. But King Khan couldn’t have asked for a better backup plan, when two-thirds of the Oblivians joined him for a one-time-only performance as King Khan and the Bolivians.
King Khan and the Bolivians asking the musical question “Which song is this?” (photo by Chris McCoy)
Resplendent in gold sequined hot pants, raccoon cap, leather mask, and what appeared to this reporter to be a fox head covering his crotch, Khan received a hero’s welcome of hurled beer cans from the rowdy crowd. Out-of-towners from as far away as Seattle and Melbourne got a lesson in Memphis musical superiority, as Greg Cartwright and Jack O, never ones to stoop to such gauche measures as “learning songs” or “rehearsing,” picked up the tunes on the fly, and led the crowd in a stomping version of Rufus Thomas’ “Walking The Dog.”
This was the third Gonerfest appearance by Shannon and the Clams, and the first as a headliner. “I always think it’s a prank,” said bassist and vocalist Shannon Shaw. “I’m not cool enough to play Gonerfest!”
Shannon and the Clams’ Cody Blanchard and Shannon Shaw at Gonerfest 19. (Photo by Chris McCoy)
Yes, you are Shannon. After tackling some early sound issues, the band delivered the evening’s tightest and best-received set. Shaw’s voice, a mixture of sweet alto and gravel which brings to mind Memphis legend Wanda Jackson, was in top form. Many of the women in the crowd appeared to be there just to hear her, and the crowd surfers who appeared during the band’s encore were all female. Between harmonized lines with co-founder Cody Blanchard, Shaw admonished the frenzied crowd, “Don’t you drop her!”
A crowd surfer during Shannon and the Clams set at Gonerfest 19. (photo by Chris McCoy
Perhaps nothing has been more indicative of how Gonerfest has grown than the moment last year during Gonerfest 18 when Abe White jumped onstage with Jack Oblivian and the Sheiks to sing Alice Cooper’s ode to adolescent confusion, “I’m Eighteen.” It was the perfect moment to celebrate Gonerfest’s coming of age, bigger than ever and still kicking.
This year, the alternative music festival celebrates its last year as a teen, though few expect it to ever outgrow its adolescent angst and experimental bent. And though milestone years are generally reckoned in even numbers, this year’s iteration feels like a true turning point, coming full circle to its earliest touchstones. The King Khan & BBQ Show, who played the first Gonerfest in January 2005, is back for its first Gonerfest since then. The Compulsive Gamblers, who set the tone for a new gonzo rock-and-roll culture in this city back in 1990, are back again as well. And ticket sales indicate that this will be the most popular Gonerfest ever.
Aquarian Blood (Photo: Courtesy Goner)
Fans and Bands
When Eric Friedl started the Goner label back in 1993, it was an act of fandom. He saw the Japanese turbo-charged punks Guitar Wolf and knew he had to get their demos out to a wider audience by any means necessary. And it shaded into his work in a band as well. The Oblivians, where Compulsive Gamblers front men Greg Cartwright and Jack Yarber joined forces with Friedl as a trio, were just taking off, and their recordings were also among Goner’s earliest releases.
That unique mix of fandom and band-dom has colored Goner’s aesthetic ever since, especially when Friedl teamed up with Zac Ives, front man for the Final Solutions, to make Goner Records a brick-and-mortar store in 2004. Gonerfest was conceived that same year, exuding the same blurred line between players and their audience. As Friedl says today, “There’s not a whole lot of separation between fans and bands and everything else in Gonerfest. It gives it a different feel, rather than seeing someone up on stage that isn’t interacting with the people at all.”
Bennett (Photo: Tommy Kha)
Friedl recalls the small scale of the festival when it began. “It was amazing that people wanted to come to Memphis to see this music. The first time I realized we were doing something more than just putting on a show at the Buccaneer was when we saw this guy with a label in Italy, walking down Cleveland in the middle of the day. I was like, ‘Okay, if people are willing to come from Italy to watch these bands over a weekend in Memphis, we might be doing something interesting here.’ That was at Gonerfest 1. We had The King Khan & BBQ Show, and they may have been the only band from out of the country for that one. And then it kind of exploded from there. People wanted to come to the festival, and they had bands as well, so it was like, ‘I’ve got a band, why not just try to play?’”
Since then, the festival’s international reach has only grown, with the notable exception of last year, when Covid-related travel complications kept the band roster all-American. Now, the entire world is returning to Memphis once more. “This year,” says Friedl, “we’ve got the Australians, a band from Switzerland, and The King Khan & BBQ Show from Berlin and Canada. We’ve got people coming from all over the place.”
Snooper (Photo: Courtesy Goner)
The Great Outdoors: Not Going Viral
In other words, back to normal for Gonerfest. Of course, last year also marked the advent of a more cautious approach. Proof of vaccination was required of all attendees. This year, Friedl says, “I’m sure it’ll be a lot looser than last year, when people really didn’t know how things would go. But obviously, if you get a bunch of people together, there’s a chance for spreading Covid. We are strongly encouraging people to be vaccinated, and we’re keeping everything outside. And Railgarten gives everyone enough space that you aren’t forced to cram into any kind of small, restricted area. So we’re hoping that is sufficient and people can stay safe on their own.”
Last year’s move to Railgarten as the sole venue, as opposed to spreading the festival across several stages in the past, was indeed a game-changer, both in terms of Covid safety and in the camaraderie of the festival-goers. For the first time, everyone was in one place. “Railgarten has worked out great,” says Friedl. “It’s a big enough stage for everybody, and there are enough sight-lines that you can be in different places and still see everything and get away from it a little bit without feeling you’re not at the festival anymore.”
Michael Beach (Photo: Courtesy Goner)
And, he adds, the venue change has dramatically increased the capacity of Gonerfest. “We had our biggest attendance ever last year,” reflects Friedl. “We just had more space to put everybody, and everybody wanted to come. So we’re right on the same pace as last year now, and we’re not close to maxing out Railgarten. Last year, we limited it a bit more than we had to, probably; this year we’ve increased the capacity a little bit, but not enough that anybody would notice. It’s going to feel the same as last year, which I thought was pretty comfortable.”
One consequence of the outdoor venue is an earlier noise curfew, but the festival carries on informally after the outdoor stage goes dark, with after-parties featuring bands at the Hi Tone Cafe, the Lamplighter Lounge, and Bar DKDC, with DJ sets at the Eight & Sand bar in Downtown’s Central Station Hotel.
Another Covid-induced innovation that will remain in place this year is the live streaming of every performance. “We constantly question the sanity of trying to live stream every performance, but it’s fun,” says Friedl. “I hope people take advantage of it. It’s a full-on video shoot over four days of long hours, with more than just one static camera. Technically, it’s challenging, but we do it in our DIY style. I really like how it turned out last year. We learned a lot. It’s its own kind of animal. And we do have a big community of people that want to be here and participate that way.”
The King Khan & BBQ Show (Photo: Courtesy Goner)
The King Khan & BBQ Show
As it turns out, the idea of community is at the heart of both Gonerfest and the many bands it brings to Memphis. This is especially true of one of the opening night’s headliners, The King Khan & BBQ Show, but the theme runs through all the performers we spoke with: Music, be it punk or simply innovative, is a kind of haven for those who can’t quite find a niche elsewhere, and Gonerfest is just such a haven, writ large.
That’s how King Khan sees it, going back to his earliest days in Montreal. “I joined the Spaceshits when I was 17, and it changed my life,” he says. “Me being Brown, with Indian parents, I always felt like an outsider in Canada. Just being someone with Indian genetics, growing up in the ice and snow was a shock. And I think I took that sense of shock to the Spaceshits. Now shock rock is such a ridiculous thing, but I think we were trying to shock the audience. I used to love getting naked and stuff. We loved to incite chaos. And having Mark Sultan and the rest of the Spaceshits, we were just a disaster!”
But that shock just built stronger bonds with the audiences, all seeking some meaning through music. “Music was my secret world,” Khan says. “But I also found my greatest friends, who were like my chosen family. And that led me also to the Spaceshits. We had this common love of being freaks and accepting freakdom. And worshipping it. We literally worshipped it.”
That was a time, in the early-mid ’90s, when Khan and Sultan first met the Oblivians, even coming to Memphis for a memorable show at Barristers. “People were throwing snowballs at each other on stage,” recalls Friedl. It was a fortuitous encounter, for when Khan and Sultan formed their duo, The King Khan & BBQ Show, featuring Khan on guitar and vocals and Sultan (BBQ) playing drums and guitar simultaneously, they had a receptive fanbase in Memphis, open to their unhinged hybrid of punk and doo-wop sensibilities. Indeed, two of those fans ran Goner Records, leading to the duo’s first commercial release on the label, and ultimately their appearance at Gonerfest 1.
And while the duo is decidedly unconcerned with traditional commercial potential, apropos of most Gonerfest bands, a funny thing happened during the social media revolution. “The elephant in the room,” says Khan, “is obviously what happened with TikTok, with me and Mark. We had no idea what TikTok even was. We just got weird messages from people, saying, ‘Hey look, this Italian astronaut posted about making a taco in space and used your song!’ I was like, ‘What?’ And it was our song ‘Love You So,’ from our Goner debut! With this taco floating in space! And other weird stuff. You know when Drew Barrymore posts it, there’s something fucked up going on. But a lot times, these posts wouldn’t say the name of the song, so a lot of people don’t even know what song it is. They just grab it because it’s popular.
“It’s funny because we released that song almost 20 years ago, we never even made a video for it. And now it’s up to almost 20 million streams. But because of the pandemic, we haven’t toured since that happened. So I’m curious to see what the effect will be in America.”
The duo will find out Thursday, when they and garage-pop masters Shannon and the Clams will headline the festival’s opening night. And while the latter band has been put through the ringer, with front person Shannon Shaw still grieving the loss of her fiancé, Joe Haener, in a car crash, they too will soldier on for the community, closing Gonerfest’s first night.
The Rev. Fred Lane
If, as King Khan quips, “the quality I love most about rock-and-roll is when it’s a secret,” then Fred Lane and his band are the perfect expression of that, for they have purposefully aimed for obscurity since their first recordings. But they aren’t really rock-and-roll.
“Since the ’80s, when Shimmy Disc put out the Fred Lane records,” says Friedl, “I’ve been fascinated with the idea of this group of people in Alabama, putting out this crazy, twisted big band lounge jazz. And learning more about the people in Tuscaloosa in the ’70s that did this, and all the wild music and art that came out of there at the time.” Yet even learning that much was not easy. “Before the internet, especially, nobody knew anything about who Fred Lane really was.”
Indeed, the group’s two releases from the ’80s seemed to come out of nowhere. The covers sported disturbing images of the Reverend himself, looking greasy with a waxed goatee and a demonic grin, his face covered in band-aids, and a list of many imaginary albums on the back cover that created an entire universe.
Lane and his cohort turn out to have been the product of yet another community, this one centered around the University of Alabama, which eerily echoed other alternative communities springing up across the U.S. (Gonerfest has brought in other bands with roots in this era, such as Akron’s X__X.) Even Memphis had a similar avant-garde, giving rise to Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and others.
One of the musicians in Tuscaloosa was the visual artist and flautist Tim Reed, who describes how the scene expressed an impatience with consumer-oriented music. “By the mid ’70s, I was getting sick of rock and counterculture music. It sounded manufactured. There was no heart in it. So I just said, ‘I’m gonna go out there and pretend I’m a really bad Frank Sinatra, and just insult people in the audience. If Don Rickles can do it, I can do it.’”
He was already helping to mount art exhibits mixed with vaudeville-like revues, and ended up writing a whole show built around his persona, the Rev. Fred Lane. “In 1976, I wrote a show called From the One Who Cut You,” he recalls. “There were different band names, but they were basically different versions of a group of us musicians who had been calling ourselves Raudelunas. We were influenced by Dada, Alfred Jarry, and the Ubu plays.” With an aesthetic somewhere between Andy Kaufman, Bill Murray’s early lounge act skits, and the Joker, he recruited musicians well-versed in free improvisation and got them to learn tunes, over which he recited and sang his surreal lyrics, often in a blazer and boxer shorts.
“I always tried to make it hard to know when everything was recorded,” Reed says today. “I’m a contrarian. If people thought the tracks were from the ’50s or ’60s, we agreed with them. That was back when nobody knew who we were. We were kind of a secret society.”
But lately, with the documentary Icepick to the Moon, and an album by the same name, the Rev. Fred Lane has resurfaced. Superfan Friedl is pinching himself about it. “I never thought I’d have the chance to see them live, much less reissue the records. And I never thought they’d have a chance to play Gonerfest. And it’s definitely in the Gonerfest spirit of things, and at the same time diametrically opposed to it. Just in terms of music. So I think it’s going to be really fun. The first jazz group at Gonerfest! With a great feeling of anarchy at all times.”
Freezing Hands (Photo: Courtesy Goner)
The Compulsive Gamblers
If Fred Lane is an outlier in the usual Gonerfest musical milieu, the Compulsive Gamblers practically defined it. For many Memphians, the band needs no introduction. Though their heyday was nearly 30 years ago, co-founders Greg Cartwright and Jack Yarber (aka Jack Oblivian) have maintained a strong presence here. When they play their 2000 album, Crystal Gazing Luck Amazing, front to back on Saturday night (full disclosure, with myself on keyboards), they’ll be evoking the kind of quality songwriting that both singers have exemplified ever since.
“The Gamblers were my favorite band in Memphis. Everything was an event. They had the horn section that was never in tune, and a violin player, and nobody was really doing that. Even in the garage kind of scene, it was too weird. A lot of those bands, once they’re in a genre, they use those genres to define who they are. But Greg and Jack had this big, expansive idea of all the music they wanted to make, ranging from Tom Waits kind of stuff to punkier stuff to more R&B stuff. It was fantastic, and the shows were just a mess. But at the same time, the songs they were writing were so good.”
Indeed, the songs hold up impressively. Garage rock aficionados can hear the nascent echoes of Reigning Sound and Jack Oblivian and the Sheiks in nearly every riff and chorus. And it will be all the more powerful in combination with Gonerfest coming full circle, back to its roots, and back to the future.
Gonerfest takes place at Railgarten, Thursday-Sunday, September 22nd-September 25th, and at various venues for after-hours shows.
