Quick Hit Band Interviews: Burger-A-Go-Go Tour bands

Summer Twins

Interview with Summer Twins (via Chelsea):

How would you describe your sound? '50s/'60s inspired rock 'n roll.

What’s your favorite gig/set/tour story or memory? We played a house show in Fullerton once and it was insane! People were moshing in the living room while we played and someone jumped off the roof into the pool. It was like a classic party scene out of a movie.

Patsy's Rats

Interview with Patsy's Rats (via Christian):

How would you describe your sound? I’d describe our sound as scruffy power pop. We love pop hooks and big guitar leads, but we’re not trained musicians so everything is coming from a punk / DIY perspective. And that’s how we like it.

I believe it was mentioned that the band has moved from Portland to Los Angeles. What drove the decision to move to Los Angeles? We started the band in Portland, where Patsy and I met. We still have love for the city and return often, but have relocated to LA as of the end of 2017. We were both due for a change personally, and the musical landscape in LA right now feels like a good fit for us to keep working on the band without playing the same clubs to death in a small city like Portland. Also, sunshine.

Dengue Fever

Interview with Dengue Fever (from Music Tastes Good via Zac Holtzman):

How would you describe your sound? I usually leave it to others to describe our music. We have a Cambodian singer and we play and pull from all the sounds that have ever been made and are yet to be made. We appreciate vintage gear but by no means limit ourselves by not using toys we find at the thrift store.

What are some of your favorite spots, locations, areas in your adopted hometown of Long Beach? What make them your favorites? I've got some good memories of eating, dancing, and playing music at Sophie's. Also bringing in the New Year at Alex's Bar was a lot of fun.

Burger-A-Go-Go Tour at 1720 Warehouse

It was off to a new venue called 1720 to catch the Burger-A-Go-Go tour. This was a double first. First, I've never attended one of Burger-A-Go-Go's tours. Second, this was my first time at the new 1720 venue. Getting to the venue was interesting. I knew it was on 16th St off Alameda. As I was driving down Alameda, it suddenly dawned on me that 1720 was reasonably close to The Blue Star. The Blue Star used to have punk shows at night. I used to hang out there once every 3 months or so. With that realization, I ended up driving right past 16th St. Ha ha.

Reflections. There is a tangential connection between my random thoughts as I drove to 1720 and the music night. 

The crowd was an interesting mix of youth and age. What drove the diverse crowd? Dengue Fever. Dengue Fever is closing in on two decades as a band. As the crowd anticipated their arrival on stage at around 10:30 p.m., a chant rose from the audience, cheering for their Fever. The band responded with their genre mixing music. Their music takes a little from Cambodia. It takes some world music inspiration. And then you could even add in college basketball prep rally band. As their one hour set came to a close, they called members from the other bands onto the stage and we got a joyous dance party that even included a Conga line.

Dengue Fever

Opening up was Patsy's Rats, Summer Twins and Winter.

Patsy's Rats opened with, "I'm Patsy, these are the Rats." They're a lo-fi band that is shifting their home base from Portland to Los Angeles. Hearing their sound had me missing Portland. First, I've come to learn that I love Portland bands. Second, I spent a few days in Portland a couple years back and checked out their music scene. Fun fun fun.

Patsy's Rats

Summer Twins was up next. Talk about reflections. This was my second time seeing Summer Twins. The first time was way back in 2012. Six years between catching this band. The band has this calm, soothing sound though I will say the drum beat seemed stronger than when I last saw them. So maybe they're a touch less soothing.

Summer Twins had a fun story from their Burger tour. When they were in Portland, they were able to find lodging at a house. A friend of one of the Patsy's Rats band members lived in the house. They were told that the door would remain unlocked for them. So at 2 a.m. they drove to the house. When they got there, all the lights were out, which they thought was strange. They went to the front door and it was locked. They thought maybe they were supposed to enter through the back door. So they went to the front gate and tried to figure how to open the gate. They were having issues with that. Then they got a text message stating that they'd been sent to the wrong address. Oops.

Summer Twins

The final opening band was Winter. This was my first time seeing Samira Winter, but I had heard of her before. In a random conversation with an individual, I was told that Winter was one of his bands to keep an eye on. So I've been wanting to catch Winter. Her backup band included three of the Summer Twins band members. They switched up positions; however. The drummer switched over to the bass. The keyboardist went to drums. The vocalist moved over to guitar. One of Winter's song was dedicated to her cat Zoey.     

Over-heard. There was a guy near the stage who kept on saying: glitter glitter glitter. Was he fascinated by all the glitter the musicians of Winter were using?

Winter

Quick Hit Band Interview: Dengue Fever

Dengue Fever at Music Tastes Good

Q&A time with the band (via Zac Hotlzman). Hope you enjoy:

How would you describe your sound? I usually leave it to others to describe our music. We have a Cambodian singer and we play and pull from all the sounds that have ever been made and are yet to be made. We appreciate vintage gear but by no means limit ourselves by not using toys we find at the thrift store.

What are some of your favorite spots, locations, areas in your adopted hometown of Long Beach? What make them your favorites? I've got some good memories of eating, dancing, and playing music at Sophie's. Also bringing in the New Year at Alex's Bar was a lot of fun.

Music Tastes Good: Day 2

Music Tastes Good Day 2.

Brainstory opened up the festival on Day 2. Their jazz improve had me thinking about one of the opening bands last year, Bootleg Orchestra. It was a chill way to start off the festival.

Brainstory

The Bearcoon duo put on an energetic mid-day set. I couldn't help but think about travelling nomads who make money here and there by putting on sidewalk music sets.

What I noticed: the guitarist knows how to kick. The percussionist knows how to wear a black hat.

Bearcoon

Tied for best set of Day 2: Y La Bamba sound at times reminded me of an old Mickey Hart (Grateful Dead drummer) album, Planet Drum. Sure, Y La Bamba didn't have a line-up of drums, but just how they used their vocals seemed to carry similarities. And then, of course, this band is from Portland and I have a love affair with Portland based bands.

Y La Bamba

Side topic: The Long Beach Stage had a rotating stage. When I first looked at the schedule, I couldn't help but think, "Wait, how's that schedule going to work?" On Saturday, when I first noticed the rotating stage, I was like, "Of course. Duh" There were some amusing moments due to the rotating stage. For Y La Bamba the stage started to rotate a few minutes too early. The lead singer pleaded, "We still have one more song." The stage rotated back in place to let them finish up their set. Jay Som who came on stage after Y La Bamba said, "I'm a little dizzy from the rotating." And as the stage rotated Los Lobos off, they kept on playing in a style that just had me thinking of Disneyland's old Country Bear Jamboree show.

Comment of the day came from Guadalajara's Los Master Plus, "It's about to get a little hotter today, because we're playing some cumbia today!"

Los Master Plus

Dengue Fever lead singer gave us some Asian infused music theory scale vocals. And backing up those vocals were some jazz style sounds. So interesting, so intriguing.

Side topic: as the shade extended across the Long Beach Stage, the crowd grew.

Dengue Fever

!!! put on one great show. The lead singer throughout the set blew kisses into the audience, jumped into the crowd, and put on some John Travolta moves. I'm pretty sure this drove the crowd to dance like no other crowd of the festival.

!!!

Tied for best set of day 2: Peaches put on a theatrical influenced set. Initially, Peaches and her two dancers came out dressed in full body bird-like costumes. As mentioned, in my Day 1 review, the weather was perfect, but how close were they to fainting in those costumes? Well, it didn't take long for Peaches to strip down to her underwear and make a costume change.

Comment of the set: Jesus walked on the water. I'm going to walk across the crowd. (And she did, as fans helped her walk a good 20 meters or so from the stage.)

Lyric of the set: Dick in The Air.

Moment of the set (well, other than walking on the outreached hands): during Dick in The Air, a massive condom floated across the audience. Like massive, like 20 meters across the audience. She walked through the condom and then "came" into the audience.

Peaches

For me, an amusing moment happened during the Los Lobos set. I caught the first part of their set and then took off to catch a few songs of Rhye. Then I rushed back to catch the last part of Los Lobos. I stood towards the back of the crowd. A woman looked at me and I had this feeling she was thinking, "Hey photographer, you're probably not getting the most exciting photos of Los Lobos." I say this, because she said to me as she looked at my camera, "They're so laid back. I love it." Then not a second later, Los Lobos said, "You're definitely the most laid back audience we've had."

Los Lobos

When I was in the photo pit for TUNE-YARDS, a photographer next to me started screaming. We locked eyes and she said, "I'm such a big fan of hers." I say there's some blues-synth fusion genre going on there. Those rapid fire vocals, I'm sure, reverberating across the ocean.

TUNE-YARDS

Sleater-Kenney ended the night with some country/punk fusion sounds. There were some staccato rapid beats coming from that band. It was a great way to end the night. I know this is awful to say, but I took off a little bit before their set ended. As I walked down the road that was parallel to the festival, a skater was sitting on the grass with his camera phone filming the set via the large video monitors that could be seen above the fence that separated the festival from the street. As I walked pass him, I thought, "Now there's a true fan of Sleater-Kenney."

Sleater-Kinney