Review: Beatfest, with Dave Alvin, Ray Manzarek, others, at the Knitting Factory, Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES--The Knitting Factory has been holding Beatfest, featuring on various nights Steve Earle, Love and X, among others.
LOS ANGELES--The Knitting Factory has been holding Beatfest, featuring on various nights Steve Earle, Love and X, among others.
It’s supposed to be a celebration of the influence of Beat writers and musicians. Jack Kerouac was being celebrated, sort of, on Thursday (5/2). The evening ultimately sucked, and the suck was apparently rooted in the fact that we, the crowd, were too small to warrant any sort of respect from the performers or the venue.
The first act was Ray Manzarek and another guy that I’ll pay the respect of not naming, since I walked out on him. I’d assumed that it would be Ray Manzarek reading something and the other guy backing him musically--I’m fascinated by Manzarek’s eternal obsession with Jim Morrison--but it was Manzarek pleasantly backing this guy on keyboard, while the guy recited some Beat-y poetry. I’m sorry, but Beat’s forefathers inspired more half-assed crap than Sonic Youth has.
The two performers took the stage 30 minutes late, evidently waiting for a crowd that never materialized. I always forget that the Los Angeles gestalt long ago decided, “We are Los Angeles. We will get there when we get there and you will wait.”
When I returned, Virgil Shaw, of Dieselhed, came on stage. Before he began, he pointed out somewhat hostiley that Beatfest was sponsored by Pontiac--presumably, he was unaware of that when he booked the gig. His rock-pop trio won me over.
(From the liner notes of Beatfest’s sampler CD: “Pontiac Vibe is the presenting sponsor of Beatfest 2002. … ‘Self-expression and individuality are consistent themes in our conversations with young buyers,’ said Linda Pesonen, Pontiac Vibe brand manager. ‘Since Vibe was specifically designed for the youth market, Beatfest is a great venue to reach our target.’")
Closing the evening was Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men. I’d thought they were local favorites, but maybe not, since the crowd was quite sparse. And don’t think Alvin didn’t notice that, though he attributed it to it being Los Angeles on a weeknight, which probably had a lot to do with it--people do go to bed quite early out here (I think it’s because of their horribly long commutes and their not wanting to get back in the car at night).
They started their set, it wasn’t very tight, and Alvin waved them to stop, then petulantly explained to us that they were supposed to go up an hour and a half ago, and that during that hour and a half, they were continually drinking, and they hadn’t seen each other for awhile anyway, and they’d done professional sets before, so this would be their sloppy set. Sloppy sets can be fun, or they can be icky, especially if the frontman is visibly cranky.
And poor Christy McWilson, whose http://www.soundspike.com/story/53>latest album Alvin produced and whom he had invited to L.A. to sing a few songs from the album, she had to come out in the middle of all this shit. And while the songs were good--really good--after she was done, she wasn’t sure whether to leave or stay, so Alvin told her to stick around and sing harmony, so she moved to guitarist Chris Gaffney’s mic, but Gaffney didn’t seem to want to share, or even look at her, and he either would take the whole mic, or give her the whole mic, as though saying, “Fine! You sing, I’ll just go eat worms.” Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it was just a mic-related problem, but eventually McWilson eased over to the keyboardist’s mic, and finally just left the stage. (She did return for the encore, though.) Whatever was going on, it was just plain uncomfortable.
A large part of the problem was that the sound truly sucked ass, and I figured out the Knitting Factory’s policy re: sound: the quality must exist in direct proportion to the size of the crowd. When I saw http://www.soundspike.com/story/57>Lambchop, the place was packed and the sound was stellar. But when I saw Robbie Fulks last year (a show which, incidentally, featured an appearance by Alvin), the small crowd brought out the worst in the sound guy. In fact, toward the end of Thursday’s show, Alvin, having given up any pretense of professionalism, said something like, “I’d just like to say that there has been a hum up here on stage all night, just for future reference.” Well, the sound guy apparently didn’t like that, assuming he was paying attention, and the show ended with a firm bedrock of feedback.
Alvin’s tribute to Kerouac, by the way, consisted of reading California-related passages from “On the Road,” and playing Alvin’s song “From a Kitchen Table,” a bleakly touching song about a guy who never moved out of his parents’ house; Alvin chose that song, he explained, because Kerouac ended up a right-wing alcoholic who lived with his mother.
Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men are very skilled—-if you haven’t heard them, they are the Metallica of roots rock, they are the OutKast, the Tool of roots rock--and even without passion, enough skill can get the job done, and most bands who are sober and glad to be on stage still can’t match Alvin and his band when they’re drunk and would rather be somewhere else.
They closed their main set with “American Music"--oh, and they had planned to close with “Marie Marie,” but Gaffney’s accordion wasn’t working, so as Alvin pointed out, it really wasn’t his night--which ended with one of the most balls-out sweet-tight Fuck You guitar solos you’ve ever heard. I think he was doing battle with the feedback. And won.
He told us he’d make it up to us somehow before he died, “which will probably be about an hour from now.”
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