PRIMAVERA: Friday

Friday’s music begins for me creeping into the darkened indoor auditorium to catch the last half of the set by Holly Golightly & The Broke Offs. Holly seems a little distant and uncomfortable in such a huge space, but, her music being what it is - namely all that feels right and rocks solid and is undeniably GOOD, naturally she brings it home nicely. Of course I miss the swing of her full band, but the rough Sun Records style honkytonkin’ blues she bashes out with the Broke Offs man are dead good too. I mean, how could they not be, right? One day I’ll find the time to write some appropriately real good stuff about Holly Golightly, but it shall not be today, as I am tired this evening and I’ve still got a ton of other festival reviewing to get through.

Back out in the sunshine, I’ve agreed to meet up with Pete to go and see a band called It’s Not Not. The reasons for this are unclear in my memory, but I think we wanted to make an effort to catch some genuine Spanish punk rock in amongst all the laurel-resting old American geezers who comprise the bulk of this festival’s lineup, and I took it as a good omen that some of this lot apparently used to be in a group called ‘Tokyo Sex Destruction’, and that they decided to call their first album ‘NO TIME FOR JOKES’. That title alone, along with the accompanying photo presenting them sitting outside some woodland cabin absent-mindedly poking gas canisters with sticks and generally skulking around in some gap-toothed hardcore kid/hillbilly fashion, led me to suspect we may have been in the presence of some odd kind of genius. Sadly though, It’s Not Not are, well… not. Not dreadful by any means, but not all that great either. They’re a pretty serviceable unit – one of those bands that I guess marks the exact point at which what were once daring post-punk moves become expected, default rock moves. Heavily in thrall to Liars, their most exciting song is even one where they all go “Run! Run! Run for your life!” over tom-toms and doom-funk bass in precisely the way you’d expect. I think a band like this one might be just the ticket if you were, I dunno, 17, and saw them in some sweaty, scary club having previously had no experience of Birthday Party / Jesus Lizard type performance punk, and the singer accidentally hit you in the back of the head of something. But playing to the jaded likes of us in a three quarters empty concrete coliseum on a sunny afternoon, their antics are just not happening.

After that, there’s a big gap in my schedule where it seems I didn’t see any music… I think we went and had some dinner, and stuff. So, you rejoin our correspondent a few hours later, charging alone across the big, open square and taking a flying leap (ok, not quite, but you get the idea) into the centre of the crowd to watch The Sonics.

Andy Parypa of The Sonics

Yes, I know, the actual Sonics! It seems completely ridiculous. In my mind at least, those timeless, frenzied, holy sides of unparalleled maximum rock n’ roll that busted out of Northwest nowhere back in 1964 with ‘The Sonics’ stamped on them might as well have been made by cartoon characters rather than real, flesh & blood people, such is the disconnection between their larger than life, brain-bypassing lunatic appeal and anything extant in what is commonly held to be ‘the real world’. But, as the mania for lucrative and unlikely band reformations gains increasingly silly momentum, here we all are in Spain, and the sun is shining, and the bloody Sonics are playing. Well, some of them are anyway. Sax man Rob Lind would seem to be the driving force behind this new get together, dominating most of the between song chat as if he were taking a run for the senate, along with original guitarist Andy Parya and legendary organist/frontman Gerry Roslie (who’s looking a bit shaky these days, but still keeping it together and looking/playing like a cool cat), ably assisted by a bassist/vocalist who I thiiiink (correct me if I’m wrong) is Wally Kemp of the New Colony Six, and a new drummer.

Now, a number of people I spoke to later in the weekend said they found The Sonics set to be disappointing. The phrase “pub-rock” was bandied about. Well let it be said that if this is pub-rock, maybe I should be spend more time hanging out in pubs, because dancing with a load of random Spanish guys to some of the most joyous, good-times rock n’ roll ever laid down, yelling along to every word of “Boss Hoss” and “Walkin’ The Dog” and “Have Love Will Travel” and “Dirty Robber”, was undoubtedly the most FUN thing I’ve done in months.

I don’t know what the show’s detractors might have been expecting – some terrifying explosion of proto-punk violence perhaps? Well certainly, The Sonics lack the energy and attack they brought forth on their original recordings, but I mean, of course they do – sixty year old guys with careers, families and Eagles tapes in the car are just NOT going to swing out like sexually frustrated seventeen year olds trying to be Little Richard, playing three sets a night for gas money, and it would be churlish to expect them to. It must be said that the manic fills and killer timing of original drummer Bob Bennett are notably absent – quite possibly the new guy is still playing them, but one of the secrets of The Sonics impact on record was the way in which the drums sprung so unnaturally loudly into the foreground of the mix, and a modern outdoor festival set-up can’t/won’t allow for that sort of unusual tweaking. And Roslie and the other guys’ trademark “AAAAaaaaaRRRggGGhHH!!!!”s are perfunctory rather than spine-chilling, but hey, they make the effort bless ‘em, and the audience are more than ready to compensate if they can’t hit the high note anymore.

For, as long as they keep busting out the hits (and ALL Sonics songs are hits), one can’t help but think, FINALLY, somebody at this damn picnic’s had the good sense to bring The Proper Music to the people amid all the marathon doses of arty, noisy shit, and as a result the positive energy in the crowd is immense when they close, as they must, with ‘Louie Louie’, and their unbeatable triumvirate of original punk rock classics… I won’t patronise you by reminding you what they are. But remember: she’s got long black hair / and a big black car / I know what you’re thinking / but you won’t get far / she’s gonna make you itch…. (ready?)…. COS SHE’S THE WITCH! AAAAAAaaaaaaaRrrrgghh!!!

They don’t write ‘em like that anymore. And for good reason! But the bare bones of the Sonics material is eternal: these songs can be played anywhere, by anyone, and two minutes and ten seconds of knuckleheaded, feral abandon is guaranteed, so being able to get down for a while with the creators of such integral pieces of rock n’ roll culture is a rare privilege.

The development of punk rock of course took a pretty strange and circuitous route after it was pounded into shape by The Sonics, and little do I suspect that I’m immediately going to get hit over the head with an even more primal experience by a guy who embodied it twenty years after them, as I look at my watch as the last note of ‘The Witch’ dies away and think, hey, I’m still in time to catch some of Bob Mould’s set…

Now a quick survey: who here remembers ever reading/hearing anything good about Bob Mould’s solo albums of the past decade or so? I don’t own any of them, and that’s probably because all the critical/public feedback that seems to surround them tends to boil down to “oh, he’s such a hopeless middleaged windbag, his songs get so generic and awful, he tries to do all this pop stuff with vocoders and dance beats and it’s just embarrassing, oh why can’t he just rock out like he used to” etc. And I could never really get into Sugar either to be honest, so, y’know, shrug, fair enough, fickle, hype-led swine that I apparently am, I haven’t exactly made catching Bob’s latest endeavours a top priority. Instead, I’ve been satisfied to just wait for one of those grim mornings when it’s a struggle to put one foot in front of the other, and drag myself into some sort of forward motion by cranking up the volume to lose myself for the millionth time in the sanctuary of the tinny, poorly mastered hurricane of the seven or so years Bob Mould spent co-fronting one of the truest, most inspiring, cathartic and NECESSARY rock bands of all time.

Bob Mould

But, as soon as I get close enough to the stage he’s playing to see/hear what’s going on, I instantly want to stick it to all the haters who’ve led me to believe that Mould is washed up, because clearly he’s in GREAT shape, and he and his backing band are on fire. I don’t know whether Bob’s been putting in time down the gym, hiking through the wilderness or has just been toughened up by a few decades of additional life experience, but frankly he looks like he could beat the shit out of the sadsack who turned up in those grim Candy Apple Grey promotional appearances back in ’87. He’s lunging around the stage in full-scale punk rock fashion, hands a blur, guitar ringing out sheets of purest, shrieking treble.

The couple of solo Bob tunes I catch are sounding pretty damn fine to me, and I’m about to turn to some friends I’ve noticed I’m standing next to in order to express this thought when suddenly……. the opening riff to “I Apologise”. Whoa. Battle stations! The next twenty minutes or so are something of a blur of white light, sweat and myself quite possibly freaking out like some sort of spastic, but at least some part of my brain was still on-point enough to recall that he went on to play “Chartered Trips” and “Celebrated Summer” and “These Important Years” and “Makes No Sense At All” and finished with – holy jesus – “New Day Rising”.

As with most of the important / overwhelming events in life, I wasn’t expecting this one at all. It came out of nowhere, left me utterly wrecked, and went back into nowhere. I know I’ve invested a lot in Bob Mould’s songs over the years (although at a push I’ve always been more of a Grant Hart man), but I never realised it was QUITE this much until now.

And there’s not much more to say on the matter. I may often be apt to bitch about aging indie-rock stars, cynical band reformations, lacklustre performances, poor sound, corporate festivals and the like, but feel free to kick me or ignore me the next time I get started on that line, because as both Bob Mould and The Sonics prove beyond a doubt, sometimes it’s only the songs that matter. And no matter how lame the nostalgia-fest might get, there’ll always be people in the audience for whom they matter a HELL of a lot, and, whether or not the musicians are still feelin’ their work of x decades ago or just putting their kids through college, it can be their duty to acknowledge and respond to that ‘hell of a lot’, even if it’s just by being there, and remembering how to put their fingers in the right place for a few minutes.

What happened after that? Man, who cares. Oh yeah, I bought a bootleg Husker Du t-shirt off some genuinely nice folks who’d printed up some shirts in order to cover their expenses in coming to the festival. Then I went and watched Sebadoh. They were alright.

Then there was, like, a 45 minute break or something before we were allowed the opportunity to become yet more disillusioned in the face of Cat Power’s new brand of soulless soul, so I declare I’ve had enough for one night and go home instead.

Hopefully it won't be another whole week before I finish writing up Saturday!

Mp3s>

Holly Golightly & The Brokeoffs - You Can't Buy A Gun When You're Crying
The Sonics – Keep A Knocking
The Sonics – The Witch (live)
Husker Du – I Apologise
Husker Du – New Day Rising

Labels: Bob Mould, festivals, Holly Golightly, Husker Du, It's Not Not, live reviews, Primavera, The Sonics