arthur magazine festival

Highlights for me today were Comets on Fire, Jack Rose (nice Fahey-esque solo guitar), and Growing. Dead Meadow were good and they looked like Spacemen 3 with Ginger Baker on drums. I caught a bit of Vetiver who looked and sounded like they stepped right out of the Royal Tennenbaums. I also watched special guest Devendra from the theater line but I couldn't hear much.

Circle was still the most exciting thing I saw by far.

I saw Yoko and ended up liking it. She kind of has a slick stage show (I heard someone say she's 72, so more power to her) and I didn't like the first thing I heard because of the sappy sentiment, but by the time they got to "Thin Ice" and "Don't Worry Kyoko" I was won over. Also came home with a couple Onochord flashlights, sure to be collector's items! She ended her set saying "See you next year."

I also saw Ned before Brad Laner's show (also front row) but he seemed too involved in the people he was with so I didn't go over. That was a great show, Brad, did you do the visuals too? I took a lot of pictures that looked good on the camera's LCD.

Anyway, so the second day -- got to meet and chat with Mr. Jay Babcock himself, a fine feller; we chatted about the Theatre crunch problems from the first day a bit (as he sagely noted, since it was the only place with a/c, the temptation to stay there was rather strong...). Got up there, poked around a bit and figured that the best thing to do was, indeed, settle into the Theater early. Ended up getting the last open seat in the center front row, which was cool -- some Southern Lord/Sunn O))) fanatics were already there!

So working through the Theater bill:

The Time Flys -- Ramones meets Hellacopters meets opening band for Kiss 1976 (the first, sound; the second, tude; the third, look)

Fatso Jetson -- surprisingly 'normal,' I guess; for the ur-band of stoner/desert rock etc. it was more like heavily amped-up bar-band blooze with off-kilter moments. Did like the sax and harmonica though.

Modey Lemon -- pretty good, got better as it went as they changed from aggro three-piece 1971-noise into Moog-overload on top of same

Brad L. -- like Nick said, really enjoyable, great photos to be taken. Brad said to me afterward, tongue piercing cheek, "Sorry about the Medicine song, maybe you liked it better without the chick singer." ;-) Touche!

Earth -- admittedly I really haven't kept track of them (or Dylan Carlson in particular) over the moons so the transformation into a very meditative/doomy three piece that played like Codeine on even stronger downers and no vocals and distortion (much) was a bit of a surprise to me. Very good but almost overwhelming

Growing -- only half an hour and marred at one point by a technical glitch but damn they were great; reminded me of a more violent sounding Windy and Carl (and this was before I realized they had albums on Kranky!)

Then I had to face my moment of truth -- stick around to at least see the start of Sunn 0)))) or try to catch bits of the other stages, especially since Jay had mentioned needing to see Yoko if at all possible. Since Sunn 0)))) are playing near the end of October I figured 'to heck with it' and went for the other spots. Alas, I think I made the wrong choice in the end -- Spoon, who I never heard before, came across as terribly generic and obvious; crowdpleasers yes but I wasn't pleased. Cat Power I only vaguely noticed and while I was primed to see at least some of Yoko's set, the fact that (as I could notice from my vantage point) it took the roadies 15 minutes to do apparently absolutely nothing with a keyboard proved rather frustrating since by the time everything was about ready to go I had to leave to catch the last train back to OC. Ah well.

Great time overall though! Good to meet Walter and Jay, chatting with Brad briefly was fun, and much thanks to Rogermexico for the crash space, he's a fine feller! More thoughts later, have to go to a co-worker's farewell party...

No, I didn't mean any criticism. I just thought the drummer looked an awful lot like Richie Tenenbaum and the couple of songs I heard sounded like nice Nico-esque chamber pop that wouldn't be out of place on a Wes Anderson soundtrack.

And my on-site purchases were:

An Arthur (as opposed to Arthurfest) T-shirt
The Golden Apples of the Sun comp
Sonic Youth, Hold That Tiger
Circle, Forest
Sunn O)))), The GrimmBold Demos

I am glad to see all this love for Circle. I have wanted to see them for years and they delivered. Dude from Aquarius who was their tour guy said they had sold out of their new album already on the tour and there was a rush to get CDs and shirts after the show -- good signs, I would say! Would love to see them back and doing an even longer set.

other highlights for me were dos, circle, merzbow, earth, and brad laner.

A pisser -- sounds like Growing's problems affected them too. Or maybe both bands were just too loud!

'twas nice to see ya ned, nice savage republic tee : )

And also would have been nice to have a piano there for Steve.

I feel awkward speaking for Jay but I hope he doesn't mind my saying this for now (and please correct me if I'm wrong when you see this!) -- in talking with him about things briefly yesterday, he noted that one reason why the bands in the gallery theatre were there was becase so many were going to be using heavy constant bass tones and drones and etc., which would have caused some problems about noise complaints or worse had they been in the Pine stage location instead. I had overheard someone wondering on the first day why the Pine stage folks weren't in the theatre -- controlled environment and better for the 'quieter' bands -- but perhaps this was the best that could be managed, per Jay's description.

Perhaps that slightly lower location near where the staircases for general entry ended would be better for Pine-stage style bands, being further away and more isolated for sound? Monday morning quarterbacking, I realize, but the Park's such a nice location that if it happens again I'd love to see a repeat of the setting. The flipside is that makes the fest more spread out from the central booth/food zone. Just thinking out loud!

Some of the bands playing in the theater could have and should have been playing for much bigger audiences and at first it seemed strange to me to have a lot of the loud bands in there. On the other hand I thought the theater had the best sound of all three stages and most of the acts in there benefitted from the darkened environment, stage lighting and intimate atmosphere. If the room didn't have seats and more people could have packed in it would have been ideal.

I think all three stages could have been bigger for the crowds that were there, but quite an accomplishment anyway, Jay. How is the video shot during it going to be used?

Cat Power freak out on stage? Why that's as likely as Thurston Moore playing a guitar with a baseball cap!

No, he just took one from a photographer instead. ;-)

The way I see it, ArthurFest took on a general model from get-togethers like Terrastock and ended up making it broader than its various sources of inspiration -- much as I love the Terrastocks, for instance, there's no way the Juan Maclean would have ever been on one of the bills for them. That deserves much credit, and frankly I'd love to see what could happen in going even broader still -- but I am not one of the organizers. ;-)

I was told the next day that I had a VIP pass and could come and go as I pleased... d'oh!!

Easily the best festival I've ever been to, and would probably be the best american rock festival of the last five years if they would just get some hip-hop. (Seriously, Subtitle was probably just working at Amoeba all day)

Kudos to Jay and the Arthur gang. Seeing Sunn0))) and Yoko in an hour was totally life-affirming.

-Earth ruled since they sound like Neurosis Dude Ranch now.
-Nora Keyes spooked everyone out like Cruella DeVille.
-Young Jazz Giants were all three.
-Merzbow was hella loud and i got to imagine I was riding a train.
-My girlfriend won't talk to me anymore after making her sit through Sunn0)))

*cries with envy*

Earth ruled since they sound like Neurosis Dude Ranch now.

Hahahah, how perfectly accurate!

oh yes: i saw a couple of these bands in Austin at that excellent Arthur mag party and they blew me away. No chance to have the next Arthurfest here in Italy, eh? :(

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ArthurFest yields an eclectic and bountiful crop, with Yoko Ono particularly vibrant.

By Steve Hochman, Special to The Los Angeles Times

There are a lot of awkward names being tossed around for the various intersecting spheres of the music underground these days: post-rock, weird folk, wyrd folk, weird Americana. Well, the beautiful Barnsdall Art Park on an East Hollywood hilltop was Weird World Headquarters over the weekend.

That was the site of the inaugural ArthurFest, a two-day event featuring some of the artists most prized by fans of these evolving sub-genres, as championed by the Los Angeles-based monthly Arthur magazine.

How weird? Some people waited in line Sunday for as long as a couple of hours to watch Japanese sound manipulator Merzbow sit stone-faced at a table creating sheets of tonality-free white noise from two laptop computers.

How wyrd? Quaint singer-songwriter Josephine Foster's set took on a Renaissance Faire quality when several fans were invited on stage to dance à la a May Day fete.

How post? Sonic Youth, once the poster figures of rock's most avant-garde edges, sounded positively conservative in the context of its Sunday headlining appearance on the largest of the event's three stages.

But the ultimate validation of ArthurFest's assemblage of such contrasting and distinctively non-mainstream scenes came with the very last piece of the very last performance, when Monday's headliner, Yoko Ono, chose her encore slot to be the first time she has performed her quintessential "Don't Worry, Kyoko" since 1972.

The song, written in 1969 as a raw, anguished cry from the soul to Ono's young daughter, who had been taken into hiding by Ono's ex-husband, was Monday turned into a guttural ode to survival. The bleats and squalls for which Ono became famous/infamous were now expressions of a wide range of emotions as her band, led by her son Sean Lennon, pounded out primal art-blues.

The pure, unfiltered quality was even more profound coming just minutes after her performance of "Walking on Thin Ice," the song she and John Lennon had been recording the night he was murdered. During the song, Ono suddenly screamed, "You killed my man, you bastard!" Appearing shaken, she turned first away from the audience and then back to face it, as fans started blinking small flashlights that had been handed out, in a code that had been explained in a film before the set: one blink for "I," two for "love" and three for "you" … i-ii-iii … i-ii-iii … i-ii-iii ….

"Thank you, I feel much better," said Ono, 72, who has given music performances only rarely in recent years.

It was a perfect demonstration of the underlying nature of Ono's public persona, one that can be summed up as "Be your art." That could well serve as the motto for ArthurFest itself, one lived out thoroughly by the most striking of the 42 musical acts spread out over Sunday and Monday. It was a roster encompassing rousing blues (Mississippi octogenarian T-Model Ford), neo-hippie folk-pop (a joyous performance by Devandra Banhart), buoyantly melodic rock (Spoon), fragile confessions (Cat Power) and various approaches to noise assaults (the psychedelic freakouts of Comets on Fire, the glacial chording of Earth).

Barefoot hippies, arty bohemians and grizzled post-punkers alike (with capacity attendance of 2,000 each day) moved from the genteel folkiness of Foster of Marissa Nadler to the stun-level garage blues of Modey Lemon without blinking an eye.

Arthur founder and editor Jay Babcock sported a look of equal parts delight, disbelieving wonder and utter exhaustion as he moved from stage to stage on the grounds of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed center. There were a few glitches (perpetually long lines to get into the small theater and at the food concessions), but nothing that spoiled the overall experience.

Among the Sunday highlights: On the indoor Gallery Theatre stage, Six Organs of Admittance (a.k.a. guitarist Ben Chasny) showed that delicate folk-blues beauty can share space with harrowing dissonance. On the outdoor Lawn Stage, the Black Keys crafted earthy garage blues, followed by the trio Sleater-Kinney, whose mix of stinging guitars and humanist declamations has toughened into one of the most bracing sounds in rock today.

Monday's most notable sets included Jack Rose's John Fahey-inspired folk-blues guitar work on the outdoor Pine Stage, Modey Lemon's Hendrix-and-beyond blast in the Gallery Theatre and Comets on Fire's Fillmore-meets-free-jazz explosions on the Lawn Stage.

And one more highlight: Before walking off stage, Ono cheerily said, "So, I'll see you next year."