Punk Fest Celebrates 10th Anniversary In Oakland's Mosswood Park
By Dave Pehling
OAKLAND (CBS SF) -- Celebrating it's tenth year, the annual Burger Boogaloo festival brings a host of great bands to Oakland's Mosswood Park on the first weekend of July for two full days of unhinged punk mayhem once again hosted by iconic film director John Waters. Co-produced by SoCal imprint Burger Records and Bay Area rock promoters Total Trash Productions, Burger Boogaloo presents another whopper of a line-up with two nights of headlining performances by pioneering Scottish act Jesus and Mary Chain and an international cast of new and vintage punk bands.
Spearheaded by main organizer and Total Trash honcho Marcos Ribak, the Boogaloo has established itself as one of the premiere underground rock festivals in the country on par with Goner Records' yearly Gonerfest and the Boogaloo's Southern California counterpart, Burgerama. While the tenth edition features a couple of major chances including a headliner playing two different sets and the return to a single main stage -- the smaller Mosswood Amphitheater stage will now be the backstage area -- the Burger Boogaloo will still feature vendors selling records, clothes and guitar gear in addition to an array of food options. The festival has actually shrunk its footprint in Mosswood Park this year, in part to accommodate a homeless encampment at the edge of the site. Organizers also hosted an outreach event for the people living in the camp a week ahead of the Boogaloo.
This year, the festival expands on its usual pre-parties with two days of unhinged celebrations at Oakland clubs. A couple of Ty Segall's regular collaborators play a sold-out show at the New Parish Thursday night when Mikal Cronan and powerhouse guitarist/drummer Charlie Moothart (who plays in Segall's main band as well as the side projects Fuzz and GØGGS) brings his band CFM to share the stage with Burger Records artist Sarah Bethe Nelson. On Friday, the festival offers up Tokyo Nite at the Classic Cars West Garage with ferocious Japanese garage punks Thunderroads (who played the fest two years ago) topping a five band bill for an early 6 p.m. show before additional shows at Eli's with Flytraps and Apache and the Octopus Lounge where celebrated Northwestern garage-surf combo Satan's Pilgrims headline a rare Bay Area show. Eli's and the Starline Social Club will both host after parties during the weekend presenting such acts as legendary British garage rocker Billy Childish, the Sneaky Pinks, Audacity, Tommie & the Commies and more.
For the fifth year running, Burger Boogaloo is bringing its marque host with pencil-mustached director and revered trash-culture expert John Waters serving as MC. Expelled from NYU where he was studying film in the 1960s, Waters rose to notoriety thanks to his string of '70s campy midnight movies including Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living. Making up what the director termed his "Trash Trilogy," the films shredded the boundaries of conventional propriety and movie censorship with outrageous dialog and action as well as establishing drag queen Divine (Waters' friend from his Baltimore, Maryland childhood and muse, Harris Glenn Milstead) as an actor and cult figure.
Waters would eventually go on to more mainstream success with his later films like Hairspray (which inspired the Broadway musical and movie adaptation), the Johnny Depp film Cry-Baby and the scathing satire Serial Mom, but he has remained an icon of trash culture between his b-movie appearances, books and This Filthy World is a one-man stage show exploring his artistic origins. More recently, Waters has explored visual arts with mixed media and manipulated photo exhibits that by his own admission aim to inspire disgust with the viewer. Waters never fails to deliver off-color commentary during hilarious band introductions from the stage. His return as host should be no less entertaining.
The line-up for both days of this year's explosion of garage rock and punk is topped by one of the most influential bands to emerge from the U.K. during the post-punk '80s, Scottish noise-pop veterans Jesus and Mary Chain. Founded by brothers Jim and William Reid in the city of East Kilbride in 1983 (though the pair had been writing songs and recording demos for a number of years already), the band initially drew inspiration from British punk and the Ramones before adding elements of proto-punk influences the Velvet Underground -- specifically their minimalist snare-and-tom drum sound -- and the Stooges as well as the melodic sounds of girl groups like the Shangri-Las.
The band moved to London in the hopes of getting signed and soon scored a deal with Creation Records, who released their first single "Upside Down." The feedback-drenched song would become a huge hit, leading to a deal with Warner Bros. subsidiary Blanco y Negro and the release the band's debut album Psychocandy in 1985. An uncanny mix of blown-out guitar distortion and infectious pop melodies, the album established Jesus and Mary Chain as a major force on the U.K. scene and would exert a massive influence on the shoegaze movement and alternative rock sound that followed.
Jesus and Mary Chain would scale even greater heights with their follow-up album Darklands two years later, an effort that remains their highest charting recording yet. Replacing their live drummer with a drum machine (Primal Scream leader Bobby Gillespie had played on the first album before leaving to focus on his group), the Reid brothers further refined their hooky songwriting and melodic guitar squall. The band continued as a duo in the studio for the more electronic, dance-oriented Automatic in 1989, eventually returning to guitar-focused rock for Honey's Dead in 1992, the same year they would join the second Lollapalooza tour across the U.S.
The band would only record one more album of new material between then and their eventual split in 1999 after growing tensions between the Reid brothers led an ugly onstage meltdown in Los Angeles. The Jesus and Mary Chain eventually reunited in 2007 to play the main stage at Coachella and have toured regularly since. The band issued its first new collection of songs in nearly two decades with the well-received Damage and Joy in 2017.
The balance of the weekend's line-ups feature a wide cross-section of classic punk groups and rising acts. On Saturday, things get started with Detroit bubblegum-punk pioneer Nikki Corvette before sets from Terry and Louie (formerly of Portland, OR-based power-pop punk group Exploding Hearts), Australian glam-punks Amyl & the Sniffers, Thin Lizzy-inspired power poppers Sheer Mag, local budget-rock favorites Nobunny and the Phantom Surfers and San Francisco punk rock legends in the place to be the Dwarves before founding guitarist Cleveland punk pioneers the Dead Boys Cheetah Chrome leads the current line-up of the band through a performance of classic songs.
Sunday's action kicks with another Detroit figurehead as psychedelic punk freak Timmy's Organism takes the stage at noon, followed by Aussie dirtbags the Chats and Derv Gordon, the legendary lead singer to influential British soul-rock band the Equals. The balance of the line-up includes more international sounds (Puerto Rican punks Davila 666 and Australian post-punk greats the Scientists) and malevolent local noise-punk outfit Musk prior to acclaimed garage-rocker King Tuff playing his popular album Was Dead in it's entirety. Bay Area garage-rock scene institution Shannon and the Clams bring their mix of trashy punk with doo-wop, surf and vintage '60s girl-group sounds back to Burger Boogaloo (host Waters has called them his favorite band) before the Jesus and Mary Chain close the festival with their second performance. For tickets and information go to burgerboogaloo.com.
