Michael Harkin

The fundamentals of Fucked Up

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You needn’t be too wary of the dialogue surrounding Fucked Up, Toronto’s jewel of esoteric hardcore punk. The members’ beliefs and their names are hidden, but they’re not out to brainwash anybody. And they’re certainly not hiding anything in the songwriting department: the melodies are blistering and as uninhibited as the band, which has a knack for subverting punk conventions.

"For hardcore bands especially, politics are often made out to be black-and-white," rhythm guitarist 10,000 Marbles says on the phone from Toronto. Critics and listeners have puzzled aplenty over this pseudonyms-only band in their attempts to pin down Fucked Up’s political allegiances. Before releasing its debut, Hidden World, on Jade Tree last year, the band had spent the prior five years releasing 17 vinyl singles with artwork and lyrics that cited magick, anarchism, the Spanish Civil War, and André Gide. These may look to be the makings of a bizarre cult agenda, but Fucked Up’s "culture of confusion" and conflicting political ideas — the most bizarre instance coming in the form of a photo of a Hitler Youth rally on the cover of its 2004 split single with Haymaker on Deep Six Records — are more about kick-starting independent thought than advancing any specific, concrete ideas.

"We originally wore the anarchist tag pretty proudly," rhythm guitarist Gulag says, also calling from Toronto. "But now we’re more interested in leapfrogging cultures and ideas. It’s a more fulfilling way to live, if a little unprincipled." As amorphous as the members’ personal beliefs may be, Fucked Up doesn’t express any disdain for punk as a sound: Mustard Gas’s bass lines and vocalist Pink Eyes’s deep growl-howl are quite reverent toward the ghosts of hardcore past, and surprisingly enough, the band’s new 12-inch, Year of the Pig, marks its first waltz with rhetorical clarity and straight-ahead activism. The A-side title track examines the ongoing problem of violence toward women through the lens of prostitution, which is legal in Canada. It’s the culture of repression and guilt surrounding these subjects that has inspired the unusually pointed song, 10,000 Marbles says: "It’s taboo issues like sex work that people like us have a responsibility to talk about."

"Year of the Pig" is pretty daring stylistically and structurally, but to Fucked Up’s great credit, it’s also fantastic. Eighteen minutes long and starting as something of a twee shuffle before shifting into organ-backed operatic bellows from Pink Eyes, the song deftly delves into pummeling, psychedelic kraut rock riffage the likes of which might make Earthless or Major Stars jealous. Fucked Up’s sheer disregard of genre pigeonholes is especially evident in its recent doings. "We’re trying to bring in the electronic crowd now," Gulag says. "We just recorded a cover of [French dance duo] Justice’s ‘Stress.’ "

Venturing into Daft Punk–related territory: there’s a first for hardcore! It’s this staunch avoidance of cliché and political boundaries that very nearly makes Fucked Up punk for the Reading Is Fundamental set. More than anything else, the imperative is to ignore convention and get informed, which isn’t a fucked-up MO at all.

FUCKED UP

Sat/30, 8 p.m., $7

924 Gilman, Berk.

(510) 525-9926

www.924gilman.org

Also July 4, 9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

On the Download — Ridin’ the wi-fi

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ON THE DOWNLOAD Don’t doubt it: southern hospitality is real, and it’s especially so in the rap game now that Lil Wayne and Chamillionaire have released free downloadable mixtapes of their latest rhymes on their Web sites. As mixtapes so often incorporate other rappers’ beats without written permission, the circuit, despite its hype and promotional benefits, has become a sizable source of controversy in the recording industry following the Jan. 16 arrests of DJ Drama and Don Cannon in Atlanta. In a Jan. 21 Reuters-Billboard article, Young Jeezy, a rapper who’s collaborated with Drama and other mixtape DJs, is quoted as saying he was "getting booked for shows in Detroit, D.C., places [he’d] never been" because of his mixtapes, which have each sold thousands. According to the same article, the Recording Industry Association of America is behind these arrests, apparently intending to target "illegal CDs" by way of "anti-piracy activity" — problematic designations at a time when artists and major labels monetarily support their proliferation. Luckily, legalities aren’t trapping Chamillionaire’s and Wayne’s new tapes, which both showcase major steps forward in their talent.

Chamillionaire, hailing from Houston and best known for megahit "Ridin’," posted Mixtape Messiah Pt. 2 on his relaunched site for free download on Christmas Eve. It’s a bitchin’ present, to be sure. This guy’s mixes are anticipated for a reason: his flow’s got such a malleable step that even the simplest rhymes smack of brilliance, plus the man can sing his own choruses. No Akon necessary! (It is, however, a terrific bonus that he appears on "Ridin’ Overseas.") Despite the title, Chamillionaire is disarmingly charming in his sentiments throughout — he comes across as a genuinely nice guy, pledging an end to dis tracks on the skit following his take on Nas’s "Hip Hop Is Dead," a remix that’s considerably more thrilling than what Nas himself committed to record.

As if topping Nas on his own beat wasn’t enough, "Roll Call Reloaded" shows Koopa convincingly imitating several friends, including Lil’ Flip, Slim Thug, and Bun B and Pimp-C of UGK. The gee-whiz factor doesn’t stop there: "I Run It" would be single material if it weren’t all about the biz, and "Get Ya Umbrellas Out" lays down a swaggering, believable promise of continued greatness over an AZ beat: "I’m about to bring the rain so they know how the thunder sound / Get ya umbrellas out."

Umbrellas are also advised as Lil Wayne continues to "make it rain on them" with his own playfully warped flow on Lil Weezyana the Mixtape Vol. 1. Credited to Lil Wayne and Young Money, it’s mixed by Raj Smoove and features MCs from the Young Money label, Wayne’s own imprint alongside Cash Money. The other MCs — including Curren$y and a secret weapon known only as Elle — don’t quite shine like Wayne, who blazes over Jay-Z’s "Show Me What You Got" in a way that leaves one feeling pretty uneasy about Jigga’s supposedly tight rein over the scene. Wayne’s rhymes are always intriguing, including such clever quips as "In the game, I’m manning up like Eli" and "Coupe blue like the do on Marge."

Smoove’s beats constantly switch up their style, allowing Wayne to exhibit his ability to kill just about any beat: "Secretary" employs a scratch-based hip-hop track, while "Vans" is finger snaps and an 808 behind a whispering Weezy. There are more serious moments, as on "Amen" and "I Like Dat," and the sincerity on these tracks is as compelling as the surreal wordplay elsewhere. This tape, alongside last year’s Dedication 2 (Gangsta Grillz) with the aforementioned DJ Drama, shows how dramatically far Wayne’s skill has come since his days in the Hot Boyz — you may not have guessed it from "Go DJ," but this guy is now spittin’ with the best. *


www.chamillionaire.com/mixtape/

www.youngmoneyent.com/ymaudio/index.html

Of Montreal exposed

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By Michael Harkin


› a&eletters@sfbg.com

As all English majors know, beginning a sentence with a prepositional phrase can be problematic. Of Montreal — the Athens, Ga., band headed by songwriter Kevin Barnes — proves an exception to this rule, and if it’s a beginning you need, look to Barnes, because it’s starting to look like his finesse in penning clever pop records is boundless. With the new Of Montreal full-length, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (Polyvinyl), Barnes takes nary a stray step on the path to pop bliss, assembling a coherent, front-to-back compelling listen the likes of which someone like Robert Pollard rarely realizes these days.

In a recent e-mail interview, Barnes spelled out the difficult circumstances surrounding its recording: the result is a few shades darker than the ecstatic, candy-colored dance pop on Of Montreal’s last two albums, Satanic Panic in the Attic and The Sunlandic Twins (both Polyvinyl, 2004 and 2005). The emotional depth and refined craft at work render Hissing the group’s most rewarding effort yet.

The disc’s tone isn’t foreign territory for Of Montreal. Barnes points out that "I’ve made records like Hissing before," and anybody would want to dance to the greater part of it, but sitting down to listen illuminates something obvious: the dude who wrote this was unquestionably down. The recording was born of a tumultuous year for Barnes. "I was going through this heavy chemical depression, and I was desperately trying to keep my sanity," he writes. No kidding — one new track, "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal," a 12-minute swirl of anxious uncertainty, sets some serious melancholy right at the CD’s center. Elsewhere, as on the first single, "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse," cheery arrangements get paired with lyrics of the desperate sort: "Chemicals don’t flatten my mind / Chemicals don’t mess me up this time / Know you bait me way more than you should / And it’s just like you to hurt me when I’m feeling good." According to Barnes, writing this record allowed him "a way of constructively facing" his problems. It’s a good time for him to be on the upswing: riding the popularity of its last two albums, his band is the most successful it’s been since its start in 1997.

As a group once associated with the fabled Elephant 6 collective, Of Montreal dwelled for some time in a sugary subcategory of the American underground: Beach Boys– and Kinks-influenced pop that Barnes speculates may have been "a bit too anachronistic" for most attuned to indie rock. It was 2004’s Satanic Panic that changed things. As to why he thinks this happened, Barnes gives some pretty precise speculation: "I was slowly getting into more dancey and electronic stuff, like Manitoba, Four Tet, RJD2, and Prefuse 73, and I wanted to create something that combined my ’60s and ’70s influences with a slightly more progressive and modern feel." More modern indeed: songs such as "So Begins Our Alabee" and "Disconnect the Dots" have graced many a college student’s stereo. "Labyrinthian Pomp" on Hissing reveals the depth of the stylistic change — the track is informed by the Jamaican dub and ’70s soul Barnes found himself listening to while writing and recording. It seems apt that Barnes, as he mentions in a piece he wrote for Pitchfork, has been listening to departed disco progenitor Arthur Russell. In a sense, the two have similar strengths: like the late Russell, Barnes is capable of producing infectious dance-floor fillers and has shown himself brilliant at pinning down difficult, crippling emotions in a sweet, meticulously arranged pop context.

San Francisco plays host to Of Montreal for three nights this tour because, Barnes writes, when the band plays the city, it "really feels like it’s a communal experience and that we’re not just animals at the zoo." Animals they ain’t. An Of Montreal show is no joke. It’s a giddily passionate spectacle of the sort one rarely encounters — as if the book-reading, scarf-wearing kids suddenly turned into flamboyant musicians throwing a light switch–flickering disco party for the neighborhood, and it’s suddenly everyone’s birthday! Glitter, feather boas, and synchronized bustings of moves abound, and as the costumes change onstage, the band somehow continues to play. Its live brilliance will surely hit new highs this time, aided by the royalty check from last year’s Outback Steakhouse commercial that had an adaptation of the ensemble’s "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (and Other Games)."

What’s in store, exactly? "I don’t want to give anything away," Barnes writes, "but I will say it is going to be an event." If Of Montreal’s past appearances and the new, neighborhood theater–esque video for "Heimdalsgate" are any indication, it’s gonna be a goddamn show, man. *

OF MONTREAL

Thurs/1, 9:30 p.m., sold out

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

Also Fri/2–Sat/3, 9 p.m., $16

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

>

“Yah Mo B There”

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ONLINE TV Contrary to what you might mistake as your better judgment, the soft-rock world of the late 1970s and early ’80s produced some top-notch sounds. Admittedly, nary a twentysomething peer confesses to joining me in enjoying the music of Michael McDonald, but even societal relegation to guilty pleasure status can’t stop the soothe sounds — a sentiment thankfully shared by JD Ryznar and Hunter Stair, creators of the online television series Yacht Rock.
Released by Channel 101, a group based in Los Angeles, Yacht Rock presents humorous, five-minute vignettes (starring Ryznar and Stair kitted out in soft-rock drag) explaining the origins of some “remarkably smooth” hits from such champs as McDonald, Steely Dan, and Toto. “We’re not just sailing the seas of smile on a gentle bed of rock,” says “music industry mogul” character Koko Goldstein, the show’s key promoter of smooth music in the industry. “My artists fuel their vessels with their blood … and their broken dreams!”
It’s some serious business — the songs of that era are given rather dramatic, hilarious backstories that, while stretching the truth, are based in hard facts: for instance, there are indeed Toto members playing on Michael Jackson’s return to smooth production, “Human Nature.”
“Hollywood” Steve Huey, a critic from the All Music Guide, hosts the show, guiding viewers through the hits of 1976 to 1984 in the yacht rock genre, a label referring to smooth pop that would seemingly please the affluent ears of champagne-sipping, island-cruising millionaires. Aside from being completely hysterical, the series presents many facts of interest to yacht rock aficionados: did you know that Ted Templeman, producer of the McDonald-period Doobie Brothers material, also produced the first Van Halen record?
Sellouts come in the form of Hall and Oates, the ever-present bullies who took the funkier, somewhat grittier route away from the Holy Church of Smooth. Kenny Loggins, while presented in a notably heroic light throughout, also comes off as something of a jerk, betting that McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin’” would never make it past number four on the charts (and although Loggins is initially correct, the salt ’n’ pepper smooth OG comes out on top as the tune is later sampled in Warren G’s hit “Regulate,” ultimately reaching number two).
The myriad brilliant one-liners include such fortunate turns of phrase as “You guys just checked into Hotel Cali-ass-kick!” and McDonald’s ice-cold response to Toto’s threat of a musical climate change in the ’80s, “Me? An irrelevant joke? Please.”
That anybody would want to reexamine the music of this period is certainly unusual, especially considering the reverence Yacht Rock has toward the music. Never before have I seen Loggins placed in anything resembling a heroic light. Not since Footloose anyway. Sadly, Yacht Rock has now ceased production of new episodes, but it’s never too late to tune in to old installments — you’ll soon be sailing away again with Christopher Cross and company. SFBG
www.yachtrock.com

Smart and dangerous

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The Fucking Ocean are seriously fucking refreshing: they’ve taken cues from Mark E. Smith and Ian MacKaye alike to produce biting, sincere post-punk that’s nigh anomalous in American music. In band member John Nguyen’s San Francisco home, the current three-piece talked about their politics, new record, playing under the stairs at the Edinburgh Castle, and a shared affinity for Mexican food and DC punk.
It was collegiate rock enthusiasm that initially helped bring about this ensemble. Nguyen went to Brown with fellow band member Matt Swagler, where they played together in what Swagler said was a “pretty embarrassing ’90s power pop band.” When Nguyen subsequently moved west to enter med school at Stanford, he randomly tuned in to Fucking Ocean cofounder Elias Spiliotis on KZSU, the campus radio station.
“I had a show called Lethal Injection on Saturday evenings where I was playing Greek punk and bands like the Fall, Fugazi, and Blonde Redhead,” Spiliotis said. “Before I ever met him, John called in one night, said he liked the show, and asked me, ‘Where are the cool people at Stanford?’”
They inevitably found each other at a station staff meeting a few months later, and Nguyen started his own finely titled show, Sad and Dangerous. Later, after Swagler moved to San Francisco, a 2003 show from defunct DC no-wave ragers Black Eyes blew the friends’ collective mind. Starting a band was the noble, noisy result.
As cryptic as the Fucking Ocean’s name is, it has rather silly origins: “I was dropping off Matt after band practice when ‘Foggy Notion’ by the Velvet Underground came on the radio,” Spiliotis said. The band had been tossing around possible names, and when he suggested “the Foggy Notion,” his Greek accent unwittingly locked in a different phrase, one that they’ve used to this day.
SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION
Luckily, Swagler explained, the Foggy Notion serves as a name for playing kids’ birthday parties — when his grandmother recently asked his band’s name, that’s the one he gave her. Spiliotis, while no longer in the band (he left in order to continue his research in cell biology at Stanford), appears on the record with Nguyen, Swagler, and Marcella Gries, who joined the group after former bass player Megumi Aihara moved to Boston for graduate school.
For more than a year their rehearsals were tape-recorded on Gries’s clock radio. The band eventually had a friend help them record a five-song EP that, while never released, primed them for their studio time at John Vanderslice’s Tiny Telephone studio.
“We were playing a lot of shows, and our friends in the Mall suggested going to Ian and Jay Pellicci to record an album,” said Gries of the Pelliccis, who have recorded some of their favorite bands, Deerhoof and Erase Errata. They brought the Fucking Ocean newfound on-tape clarity and a pointed drum sound care of Jay Pellicci, as well as some nifty frills — a vintage Gibson amplifier and, appropriately, a telephone, which Nguyen said was “rewired and disordered in a way that makes it sound vaguely like a bullhorn.”
“MUSICAL VOLLEYBALL”
The Fucking Ocean’s affable attitude contrasts with their music’s tension and focus. Drum, bass, and guitar duties aren’t singularly assigned — the band writes collectively and swaps instruments. The approach makes their live show as varied and blindingly fun as their record. On the road they have been carting around new songs and video accompaniment courtesy of local artist Tony Benna. Shawn Reynaldo, who signed the Fucking Ocean to his Oakland label, Double Negative Records, calls them a “musical volleyball team” with a deliberately Minutemen-like songwriting economy. The prevailing maxim among the Fucking Ocean is that if an idea is presented to the listener, it needn’t stick around that long: no use in letting John Q. Listener get too comfortable, right?
Recording the album, all done on analog tape, took six days in June. While a lot of Indian pizza, Gatorade, and various caffeinated drinks fueled their long nights behind the boards, the result, Le Main Rouge, is damn lean. At 11 songs in a little under 27 minutes, it’s an urgent delight of terse angularity from a band bursting with novel ideas, both politically and riffwise.
Addressing abortion rights in the fuzzed, pissed strut of “Adam,” the Fucking Ocean close with the lines “Do you remember when, do you remember when?/ Women had to risk their lives just to live again!” “Bombs in the Underground,” a response to last year’s London Underground bombings, opens with a memorable guitar-bass groove reminiscent of midperiod Sleater-Kinney before bursting into a shouted refrain, then traversing odd tempo shifts and a drum fill — it’s thoughtfully fragmented and endlessly listenable. Le Main Rouge shows a band whose enthusiasm hopefully bodes a good run ahead. You’re advised to polish up that kayak and tune in. SFBG
FUCKING OCEAN
With Kid 606 and Friends and Warbler
Thurs/16, 9 p.m.
Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th St., SF
$8
(415) 621-4455

Straight outta Mill Valley

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Some time has passed since people routinely looked in 924 Gilman Street’s direction to familiarize themselves with what’s new and interesting in Bay Area rock. However, this doesn’t mean that nothing worthwhile passes through its doors. Topping the bill of the annual Punk Prom earlier this year were the Abi Yoyos, whose cavalier, recklessly hooky normal-dude brand of punk is totally outlook brightening.
Over beer and burritos at a San Francisco taquería, guitarist-vocalist-songwriter Matt Bleyle and lead vocalist Shawn Mehrens, both 21, recently strolled down a nearly five-year-long footpath of memories, including problematic tour vans and onstage pleas for Albuterol inhalers. Unlike a lot of local groups, the Abi Yoyos openly rep the North Bay: namely, Mill Valley. Its members’ paths crossed when Bleyle, Mehrens, and bassist Jeff Mitchell attended Tamalpais High.
“The band was sort of an offshoot of the conversations that Matt and I would have while taking all-night walks in Mill Valley,” Mehrens said. “Nothing is open past 10 p.m., and nobody really presents any options as to how to change things aside from maybe starting a band.” Originally, they played straight hardcore; since then, they’ve adopted a more complex, melodic approach. They cite Charles Darwin — or as Mehrens calls him, “Chuck D” — and Phil Ochs as inspiration for their evolution, along with bands like los Rabbis and the Fleshies.
“Originally we were called Gutter Snatch, as we tried to just come up with the most offensive name possible,” Bleyle said. The moniker Abi Yoyos came to pass courtesy of a Pete Seeger song and an African tale that prophesied “if we turn our back on music and religion, Abi Yoyo [a bogeyman who symbolizes Western civilization] will come and get us.”
The musicianship of the band — which includes drummer Blaine Patrick and saxophonist Kyle Chu — is remarkably solid. “Blaine has won ‘Outstanding Soloist’ awards at Stanford Jazz Camp,” Bleyle explained. “Jeff was in a band called Turbulence that sounded like a cross between Weezer and Hendrix.” Chu joined the band after the Abi Yoyos’ first 7-inch, “The World Is Not My Home” (Riisk), and the lineup solidified to what it appears as on their new debut, Mill Valley (Big Raccoon).
To put out that record, Mehrens worked 80-hour weeks between three jobs, including one at ellusionist.com, a magicians’ supply Web site. “We’re really hard to pigeonhole,” said Mehrens, who now runs Big Raccoon. His friend Corbett Redford, who ran S.P.A.M. Records, along with other industry-seasoned pals, gave the Abi Yoyos the guidance needed to release Mill Valley, an altogether inspired, infectious set of songs.
“I think we can all agree on our hometown heroes,” Bleyle said with a smirk. Sammy Hagar was one of the first names to be mentioned, along with “the guy who invented the toilet-seat guitar,” Huey Lewis, Clover, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. “Cruisin’ and boozin’, my ass!” exclaimed Mehrens to much laughter. “I hate Sammy Hagar.”
Instead the band takes after punkier forefathers. John from the Fleshies introduced the Abi Yoyos to the Punk Prom audience as what Flipper would sound like “if Flipper were good.” After a few minutes of searching for the drummer, that description gained credibility as the band, donning dresses and sparkly makeup, ripped into their cover of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter.”
They routinely jam “Helter Skelter” in their practice space — a large metal storage box with electrical outlets by San Quentin State Prison — skirting lunacy in their proximity to inmates and in their unusual reverence for both the sticky melodies of ’60s pop and the fast, snotty punk that emerged from LA in the ’80s. In a scene where, in Mehrens’s words, “image means a lot,” the Abi Yoyos tend to defy punker conventions, adopting an unusually eclectic aesthetic. “Quagmire” moves from medium-paced hardcore to a full-blown anthem about halfway through — a nod to Bleyle’s recent “openness to prog” and odd song structures — and they pop hooks in a forcefully shameless manner; Mehrens was, after all, “raised on R&B and Motown.”
“We have friends in a lot of different scenes,” Mehrens said. “Bands that play hardcore, dancy punk, crusty punk, and some that don’t do anything at all. At every show, there are different types of kids rockin’ out.”
Their first nationwide tour began in late July and has included such transcendent experiences as Dumpster diving, playing a farm in Las Cruces, and shooting Roman candles out the passenger-side window of their van on the Williamsburg Bridge. “We’re a little too weird for the South,” said Mehrens by phone from Ohio. “And one show flyer described us as ‘strange punk,’ which we all think is pretty awesome.”
With any luck, their sharp wit and taut songwriting will take them much further than would the gas tank of Sammy Hagar’s convertible. SFBG
ABI YOYOS
With This Is My Fist, Onion Flavored Rings, Giant Haystacks, and Robocop 3
Sat/21, 7 p.m.
Balazo 18 Art Gallery
2183 Mission, SF
$5
(415) 255-7227

Restoration Hardcore

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Davis might not have those frog signs along the westbound side of Highway 80 anymore — “Live in Davis because it’s green, safe, and nuclear free…. It’s academic!” — but there’s certainly no shortage of wondrous music happening there.
Exhibit A: KDVS — the UC Davis radio station, a longtime champion of alternative music and the only entirely student-run station in the UC system — is about to put on the fourth edition of “Operation: Restore Maximum Freedom,” a twice-a-year one-day music festival, the likes of which have seldom been undertaken by Northern California college radio stations.
Unlike other music festivals hawking themselves as “alternative,” O:RMF is the real thing, presenting strictly music of the compellingly weird variety without sponsored stages and pricey merch tables — by sheer dint of student-volunteer willpower. “It’s a good time out in the sunshine,” said Erik Magnuson, who DJs at KDVS in addition to holding down the station’s assistant programming directorship. “We’re able to get great acts without having to worry about advertising to offset costs.”
The festival isn’t a station fundraiser — all profits go toward future incarnations of the event — but is instead an earnest offering of experimental sounds chosen democratically in committee by station volunteers. Those volunteers run O:RMF at Woodland watering hole Plainfield Station, which KDVS events coordinator and O:RMF organizer Brendan Boyle described as a “biker bar with a quasi-Libertarian vibe.” O:RMF itself fully “represents the radio station,” Boyle continued. “We’re free-form, which is a real anomaly, and it’s a reaction to our current political climate.” Hence the military-operation-inspired name.
The first, all-ages O:RMF in May 2005 was headlined by elastic noise psychos Sightings and Elephant 6 pop oddities a Hawk and a Hacksaw, and the subsequent fests have featured bands like the increasingly relevant, drift-ambience peddlers Growing and the splendidly hard-angled post-punkers Erase Errata. In each case, KDVS has looped in some of the most keenly unconventional artists around, and the upcoming festival looks the best yet.
This time it’s drawn 17 artists of various marginal modes, all of great repute in their respective scenes: longtime glitch-head Kid606 started the Tigerbeat6 label, and quirk-folk guitarist Michael Hurley was a luminary in Greenwich Village’s 1960s folk scene. Hop around to the dance punk of Numbers and the disorienting, psychedelic hip-hop of Third Sight. The garage-punk component is damned impressive by itself: the Lamps, one of Los Angeles’s finest and an In the Red mainstay, will crack their bass-heavy fuzz whip along with Th’ Losin Streaks, whose famously fun live show begets a cleaner, more Nuggets-like, ’60s garage vibe.
Suffice to say that few stations have the guts and the cavalier student base to put on an event like this, especially one that’s plainly not out to make money. As Boyle puts it, “it’s a very real event with no bullshit attached,” and with any luck, attendees will get as stoked on smashing music industry conventions as KDVS is. (Michael Harkin)
OPERATION: RESTORE MAXIMUM FREEDOM IV
Sat/7, noon–midnight
Plainfield Station
23944 County Road 98, Woodland
$15, $10 advance; all ages
For tickets and the complete lineup, go to www.myspace.com/maximumfreedom

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