In the wake of scandals revolving around shoddy workmanship, Toyota are desperately trying to present themselves as the cool guys to the next generation of young adults who will grow up and buy their cars. (Apparently, they didn't get the memo that the kids digging on the garage rock revolution mostly work minimum wage jobs and will be driving used cars for the rest of their lives.)
Still, it was an uncharacteristically cool move on Scion's part to give the good people of Lawrence an honest-to-god micro-festival that was, admittedly, pretty fucking awesome and 100% free to the public. I went downtown into Scion Garage Fest a skeptic expecting the worst, and left drunk with my ears ringing high on tasty jams, and desperately wanting a denim jacket.
The evening started off early at Liberty Hall with ramshackle local darlings Rooftop Vigilantes. As the band is accustomed to playing the smaller, more dive bar-esque venues about town, the first half of their set was spent wrestling with the venue's epic soundsystem which threatened to turn their brilliant hooks and raw energy into a mass of distorted mush. A handful of songs in, they conquered the beast and as usual, verified that they're the great white hope of the Lawrence music scene and that their potentially doomed, J Mascis-recorded sophomore LP Real Pony Glue needs to see the light of day as soon as humanly possible.
The Columbus, Ohio trio have never failed to bring positive vibes in the handful of times I've seen them, and of all the new bands at the moment they seem to have the most potential of doing something totally amazing sometime in the future. It could be that they've been courted by such legendary groups as Yo La Tengo, the Breeders, and Guided by Voices, or it could just be that a song like "No Time, No Hope" has enough energy to power a small village.
Then there was the three block trek to the Granada to watch Cleveland's Cloud Nothings play to nobody, which was really sad because they're one of those fresh young bands that are writing the kind of hooks better known bands still dream about writing. The catchiness was even more profound upon realizing that the guys in the band all looked like they were all under the age of 20. Bedroom-punk might not be a genre that will ever be conventionally popular, but a song like "Can't Stay Awake" is destined to be one of those timeless underground rock and roll tunes that people will still be stumbling upon ten years from now.
Next up was girlfriend's choice: indie band du jour Best Coast. I hadn't planned on attending after finding Bethany Cosentino's debut full-length, Crazy For You, to be a colossal bore in comparison to the fantastic singles that preceded it, but the point was made that it would be good to take a breather from the testosterone fest of the...fest. Though I approached Best Coast's live show with an open mind, it was the same old boring California faux-nostalgic pop that was on the record. Even the terrific early singles ("Sun Was High (So Was I)," "So Gone," "When I'm With You") were seemingly reworked to sound as anonymous as the rest of the tracks from Crazy For You. I know, I know. All the songs are supposed to sound lazy but the band lacked the necessary spark to make a bunch of songs about unrequited love, smoking weed and Cosentino's cat sound remotely compelling. Though slightly more interesting than watching paint dry, they did contribute the most endearing moment of the fest by inviting a 9 year-old girl up front on stage to play tambourine on "When I'm With You." The girl was terrified and so nervous, but you could see her mouthing along the words to the song and well, it was just sweetness personified.
For the remainder of the evening I hunkered down at the Granada. First up, Hunx and His Punx, the probably self-proclaimed gayest punk rock band of all time. (Yes, gayer than Pansy Division.) Frontman Hunx is was a brilliantly realized walking, strutting stereotype. Decked out in nothing but a thong, see through black nylons and a leather daddy hat and backed by three overweight and glammed out chicks dressed as drag queens, Hunx basically proved that Generation Whatever think gay people are totally great. Watching a scrawny dude sexing up the stage with dirty, hooky garage pop jams while a bunch of straight dudes rocked out on the floor was like some big, beautiful revelation: yes, once the stubborn old homophobes kick the bucket, we'll sit back and wonder why people ever thought being gay was being a problem. (If anything, Hunx proved that being gay was fucking awesome. He was having so much fun!)
Next up, the Clean. Yes, that the Clean. Did you know they were playing shows, because I certainly didn't know they were playing shows -- much less a show in the middle of Kansas. The legendary New Zealand band noted that they'd never played in a garage, and while their addition to the bill was a bit perplexing, no one really cared. No one cared that they were rusty and that their set was top heavy with songs from last year's Mister Pop, because it was the motherfucking Clean! Every respectable music nerd of the fest was in attendance, including members of Times New Viking, Nodzzz, Rooftop Vigilantes and certainly more rocking out on the side of the stage. Sure, songs abruptly fizzled out, but they played "Anything Can Happen," "Getting Older," and "Everything I Do Its Right" amongst other classics that turned Lawrence into a bright burning ball of jangle-pop bliss.
And that was it. I feel guilty for skipping out on the Oblivians, but there was nothing that could have followed the Clean. (Which is a poor cover up for "I had a headache and any more skuzzed out distortion surely would have made my head explode.") But alas, Garage Fest was a great, beautiful thing. It provided some exposure to the only cool town in Kansas, and hopefully, the bands playing will keep Lawrence in mind next time they go to plot a tour and we can all stop groaning whenever whenever INSERT BAND HERE goes the Denver-Omaha-St. Louis and avoids the KC area completely. Who knows -- maybe something like this can happen every year. Nothing is as invigorating as a choose-your-own-adventure style mini-festival. No one has time to be ambivalent when there's six straight hours of nothing but cool shit to do.
Critic's Bias: Chords + distortion + catchy hooks = a hard thing to fuck up.
Random Notebook Dump: "Other shit who cares your weed habit gurl 4 lyfe. No charisma. Nothing to write home about." Presumably, a drunken rant about Best Coast while thinking about the Get Up Kids, in reverse.
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