Finally made it to Desert Daze last weekend and these are some thoughts as I try to coax myself back into writing regularly about livemusic again. Your encouragement is encouraged.
So, I’ve ended up seeing a few more music festivals this year than I have in past years and have done some thinking about how they fit into my livemusic worldview. The thoughts center around the question: why do we go see concerts? And I think there are many many reasons why we go see music played live. It fills our soul, it’s fun to dance to, it challenges our brains, it’s a fucking party, etc. etc. These thoughts center around the festivals I’ve seen this year and how each of them highlights one of these reasons. Newport Folk Festival has long been my go-to summer festival and I think, if I had to sum up the feeling around NFF, the modus operandi of the festival, it’s to highlight how live music enriches our soul. Big Ears, on the other hand, centers on the idea of the limitless possibilities of livemusic, and, thus, of the human endeavor itself. A broad statement, but damn, it’s true. I weep that I did not write 10,000 words after Big Ears, but it pushed me to think about music in ways I had not ever thought about it before, deep profound thoughts. That’s sometimes what music does and that is what Big Ears does. Another personal favorite, Woodsist, is the festival that’s just about how livemusic can be for just chilling. Or maybe just chillin’. Music can be for laid back relaxin’ and Woodsist captures that vibe perfectly. Sometimes we go see music just to see how freakin’ talented musicians can be, to revel in their abilities and, for me, this is on display at Newport Jazz Festival. Those are kind of my big 4 festivals right now and after this weekend, I’ve added a fifth one.
Where does Desert Daze fit in? What is it about seeing concerts that is personified by this festival? It’s quite simple: music can be about expanding your brain, psychedelic expansion, often induced by drugs. Plenty of livemusic is out there for you to go do drugs and have your mind “blown,” put you in a proverbial daze, and that ethos is perfectly encapsulated by Desert Daze. As someone who does not do drugs, I somehow find myself enjoying quite a bit of music built for people who do and so I found myself sober, but right at home, in the desert last weekend. Some thoughts:
The festival was actually kind of like 2, or maybe 3 festivals in one, and the desert setting was ideal for appreciating this little yin-and-yang. When you’re out in the desert at the end of the summer, the days are hot as fuck, there is a struggle to modulate your body, adapting to the conditions. It’s just not that comfortable. At night, the temperature drops dramatically, the big empty sky, devoid of the relief of clouds becomes this wide open starscape and the energy has done a complete 180. The festival matched this phenomenon perfectly. During the day, it was hot and there’s this reservoir/lake there that you can swim in while listening to music. (the dichotomy of swimming in the desert is just the kind of symbolic whoa man! weirdness well suited to the festival). There are these art installations everywhere and they’re cool and noteworthy. You might choose to see music based solely on the availability of shade or bounce back to your RV for a respite. There’s something (to me) delicious about seeing music in these conditions, a sort of delirious hallucinogenic effect of the heat while taking in this mindblowing music (I’ll get to the music!). It’s exhausting, but it’s a good exhausting. The best kind there is, frankly. At night, the festival flips over. The same artwork scattered around the festival grounds that was merely “cool,” or potentially “neat” takes on new psychedelic forms, with lights revealing new shapes and insides and poking your brain in completely different ways. Like, whoa, man! Stages that had a bit of a static feel came fully, I-was-just-hibernating to life with projections and mindmeld graphics and animations and liquid drippiness.
Like, what about the music, dude? Right, right, sorry, let my mind wander.
I think I saw like 60 something bands in 3+ days. Friday/Saturday/Sunday were basically non-stop music’n from noon (matinee sets in the campgrounds exclusively for campers) until 3amish, again back in the campgrounds. Thursday was a nearly full day for campers only. It was a lot of music. Besides the “Outer Space” stage at the campgrounds, there was the main big boy stage (the Moon Stage), the adjacent alternating Block Stage, and the Beach Stage at the other end of the, uh, beach, and then a fourth “smaller” stage which I already forgot what it was called. If I had to poorly summarize the vibe at each stage, I’d say the Moon Stage was the “main stage” where the biggest acts played, the Block Stage was the super psychedelic, jammy stage characterized by the Mad Alchemy liquid light show which was off-the-charts awesome, (maybe the best visuals I’ve ever seen at a festival or even concert?), The Beach Stage was kind of the jazzy/dancy shit and the Sanctuary (I looked it up!) was the kind of experimental/weirdo stuff. That’s kind of a broad brush, but it gives you an idea of the vibe in each spot.
The Moon Stage featured the main acts including Tame Impala’s epic Saturday night “Lonerism”-in-full-for-its-10th-anniverary set, a bonkers (“bonkers” was the keyword of the weekend, I think I said it 1000x because everything was, well, bonkers) King Gizzard set on Friday, and Beach House on Sunday. Those were the closers each night. Other acts that played and slayed on the Moon Stage were Fri: Chicano Batman, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets (sick and sicker); Sat: Kikagaku Moyo playing perhaps the jammiest KM set I’ve ever seen; Sun: Inner Wave, Badbadnotgood. I’m not going to list every fucking band I saw, because I saw a lot and sheesh, I’m old and forgetful.
The Block Stage was probably the best overall, with silly good sets from Imarhan, Babe Rainbow, Mild High Club, Frankie & the Witch Fingers (bonkers af), Seun Kuti, JJUUJJUU, Buck Meek, Fuzz, Pond…. Best shit I saw at the Beach was John Carroll Kirby’s Herbie Hancock vibin’, Wet Satin, Surprise Chef, Slift, Mildlife, Vanishing Twin, Working Men’s Club, Automatic, Aldous Harding, Dakhabrakha…. Finally, the Spectrum highlights were: The Space Lady, Charlotte Adigery/Bolis Pupul (whoooah! Best of weekend set), L’Eclair (3rd time seeing ’em, 3rd time loving ’em, that’s a thing in my book “Third Time Test(™)”), Ryu Kurosawa/Sam Gendel (siiiick!), Noura Mint Seymali…. Oh wait! I also very much enjoyed the heck out of a few sets at the campground stage (Outer Space) including Hooveriii and Grave Flowers Bongo Band, two bands high on my want-to-see list, so happy to get them onto the want-to-see-again-list.
Should I delve into a few select sets a little more? Maybe? A couple sentences more for these personal highlights per day (with the caveat that I loved almost everything I saw):
Friday:
I loved Imarhan’s set for a few reasons. There are many bands doing the Tuareg thing, but somehow he’s got more soul or something. What I really loved about this set was watching the kids dance to this music. Something about it just made me smile, just the absolute joy of youngs getting down to this out-of-this-world boogie kind of encapsulated the festival crowd for me. Tangent, if I may. I just loved the crowd at Desert Daze. I’m guessing the average age was around 30 or so and that the average amount of being-stoned-edness was in the vicinity of way stoned, but I don’t think a single person annoyed me, hardly any yapping during the music (this isn’t as big a deal for me as it is for others, but crowd was very good in this regard), people could deal with their shit whatever their shit may have been, good vibes, good random convos with the youngs, great attentiveness and appreciation for the music. It was as idyllic a festival crowd as I’ve been a part of and a grand departure from the east coast jamfest vibe I’m used to. I encourage you to go to Desert Daze, but don’t fuck up the vibe man, don’t. fuck. with. the. vibe. MAN. Where was I? Oh yeah, so Imarhan just had these kids big-time-boogieing and I loved it. Psychedelic Porn Crumpets fucking crushed! I was super impressed with them live, just heavy duty, well-executed psych rock of the highest order. John Carroll Kirby was phenomenal, super groovy, slightly smoothjazzy, but deep in the Herbie-Hancock-Thrust vibe with double keyboards, a flute player that had the most infectious, joyous dancing on stage, and some nice grooves. I loved how the festival had a strong I-could-be-seeing-this-at-the-Stone thread going on. Like part of seeing music-for-being-on-drugs is seeing shit that kind of blows your mind in different ways. This duo called Zo fit into this category, an indescribable audio/video thing that may have had some element of Artificial Intelligence. It was weird and fucking strange as fuck, but also kind of blew my fragile, sober mind. Good Lord, am I really going to mention every damn band I saw. Babe Rainbow was great and may I say that this festival was interesting for so many reasons, but the international/west coast slant was exceptional. There were so many bands from Australia which is like the hotbed of psychedelia right now… just like every great band from Down Under was there. And yet no one covered Down Under? Curious. Anyway, Babe Rainbow are fucking great and they killed it.
This is still Friday, right? So, the best two sets on Friday, amazing for different reasons, were King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard who closed out the night and just were bonkers gobbling up and shitting out genres like a generic jamband but sounding absolutely nothing like a generic jamband. You want to pass your torch to the next great thing, pass it to KGLW. They make your next-best-jamband look, smell, and taste like diarrhea. Their DD set was phenomenal top to bottom and ended with Stu stripping down to his unmentionables, crowd swimming his way to the lake and jumping in for a swim while the band kept jamming, eventually returning, like holy shit that was bonk-ers. The other best set from Friday was Charlotte Adigery & Bolis Pupul who played at the Sanctuary Stage and were kind of indescribably funky, fun, dancey, but also thought-provoking and deep and kind of weird (they’re French!) in a deliciously fun, funky, and thought-provoking way. I have serious festival ADD, I can see 15–20 minutes of a band and be ready to move on to the next. I think quality beats quantity and just enough is just enough. But for both KGLW and Adigery, I could have watched them all freakin’ night. Charlotte especially, every time one of her songs would end I would die a little because they were so fun and awesome and just made you feel good and smart and all of that. I loved that set. I think everyone who saw that set felt the same way and if you didn’t… well, make sure you don’t miss her next time she comes to the US. Her album is awesome.
Saturday highlights!
This review is losing momentum fast, but I don’t want to sell the rest of em short, so Saturday shit I loved was the early (11am) set in the campground with Randy Randall & Andrea Domanick which was a guy doing ambient guitar and a woman spinning knobs and whatnot. Perfect earlyday vibing. If I have one major complaint (and it’s really pretty minor) about the festival it’s that some of the sets could have been shuffled around so that some of the this-would-be-better-in-the-afternoon stuff was earlier and this-would-be-better-late-night was later. This was especially true for some of the “postshow” stuff in the campground which I think should’ve been livelier (dancey/funky/rocking) instead of some of the sleepier stuff which was fine, but not suited for the slot. Ah well… this one was perfectomundo. I really liked Wet Satin which was members of Lumerians (RIP?) doing instrumental synthpsychgroove. Dig it! L’eclair is awesome and was awesome and I had a, dare I say, awesome session in a hackey sack circle while they were playing that made me feel simultaneously old and young like I haven’t before. I could write a paragraph on that one, but will spare you! Surprise Chef & Mildlife were both funky af, best grooves of the weekend. Frankie and the Witch Fingers were oh-my-goodness sick, just flat out one of the best rock bands running right now, serious jammers, like a lighter more accessible Oseest, but fuuuuuck, I love those guys and they delivered big time. Bonus points for the Allman Brothers tease by the guitarist in one of their jams, which brings me to another interesting thing about this festival. Like, very, very few covers. Most bands had none at all, and the ones that were out there were few and far between. This festival is where interesting, original music is being made and delivered to the hallucinating masses and every band came hard with very original original material. I kept going back to the typical jam festival and how 50% of it might be covers and how this is really where the spirit of original, awesome, creative psychedelic music is being made. There were a few Dead and/or Phish shirts out there, but very very few and it felt kind of nice, tbh. Slift was a great discovery.
The big one-two punch finishing out the Moon Stage was Kikagaku Moyo whom I saw for the last time Saturday night and just crushed in one of the jammier sets I’ve seen from them. Felt like they squeezed a full 75 minute festival set out of 4 songs, although I think they probably played more than that. The headliner of the night and the festival was Tame Impala’s Lonerism 10-years-old set. I remember my 10th birthday party quite well, we went to Aladdin’s which was the arcade in the mall and it was like quarters for everyone! Good times. Lonerism’s birthday party was more like lasers for everyone! And good, good times indeed. We’ve all seen or experienced these big-round-number play-the-whole album shows before. They’re cool or nostalgic or they suck and are big money grabs. As far as the genre goes, the Tame Impala one was kind of fascinating in seeing how far the band has evolved in that time and yet how the spirit and sound of this tide-turning release still lives in their current sound. I mean, first of all, they used to be a guitar band. I have a distinct memory of seeing Tame Impala at Webster Hall and it was the first time I had been upstairs in the VIP in that club and I was right over the stage and at one point Kevin Parker was taking this ridiculous guitar solo and was on his back writhing around the stage right under me and I was just kind of like fuck. yes. That was the kind of band they used to be before and around the time Lonerism came out. They’ve morphed quite a bit, I don’t recall Parker touching a guitar for too long when I saw them at MSG last. So it was cool to see him with a guitar the whole time, working the old material, but also the band kind of making it feel like the current version of Tame Impala at the same time. The album also kicks ass top to bottom and has a pretty great flow for a live set, with songs they’ve never ever played live before and songs they’ve probably played at every single show they’ve done since the album was released. So there was a lot going on in the set but also it was just kind of an epic set on its own, just on the merits of the music, the energy, the lasers, the crowd digging it, etc. They didn’t mail it in, but rather rose to the occasion and fucking nailed it and maybe just for this single performance… although maybe they’ll do it again, it would be cool as heck if they didn’t. Regardless, a damn fine centerpiece for the weekend.
Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!
Early-riser set from Grave Flowers Bongo Band was excellent. I love their album, was psyched to see ’em, and despite some shaky vocals, I loved this set. Pedal steel ftw. Check these guys out. A best-in-weekend set that kind of surprised me was the early set in the Sanctuary with Ryu Kurosawa + Sam Gendel. Ryu is the dude who plays sitar in Kikagaku Moyo and Gendel is a cosmic sax player who is just kind of all over the place. I saw Gendel at Newport Folk, Newport Jazz, Big Ears, and now Desert Daze… what I called in a tweet the neddyo EGOT. This was another one of those sets that could have been seen at the Stone, serious experimental, improvised ambient soundscapes of the highest order. I talked about the heat, this set was like 1pm-2pm with little shade and the unbearableness of the weather made the music extra dreamy and lysergic. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the first time these guys even met, let alone played together, right there on the stage and it was really wonderful. Seeing Ryu do some high level improvising like that has me curious what’s next for him and the rest of the KM guys as they hang it up. Could be some interesting music coming our way! Vanishing Twin was a band I’ve been digging and was excited to see and they did not even come close to disappointing. British band bordering psych and funk in fun and interesting ways. Delicious. Working Men’s Club was a new discovery for me — not a lot of new discoveries over the weekend, but I enjoyed these guys a bit. Buck Meek was a rare taste of cosmic country, excellent afternoon energy. I loved Noura Mint Seymali back at the Sanctuary and Dakhabrakha was just as awesome after sunset at the Beach Stage. Both of them were excellent examples of the breadth of world cultures represented at the festival. Kudos to the organizers for finding the heady shit all over the globe. There’s more than one way to psychedelic. Ty Segall’s Fuzz were b-b-b-b-b-onkers!, and Pond was as good as I’ve seen them, dipping into their ever-growing catalog. What an evolution those guys have had over the years, still doing it. Aldous Harding is so fucking weird, I love her. Her set seemed slightly out of place in the schedule, but I’ll take it. We missed most of the closing ceremonies which was billed as JJUUJJUU (the festival organizer) and Friends at the Outer Space, but the little bit I caught was some freeform jammed-out goodness that made me bummed they didn’t play longer, but also I was overflowing with good music by that point, another measure or two of jamming wasn’t going to make a difference.
There’s a bunch of other shit I wanted to say, but I’ve either forgotten or have decided it’s not worth taking up any more space or time (are you still reading this??). I’ve got nothing but good things to say about Desert Daze. There is a lackadaisical energy that took me a short bit to get used to: some sets go long, some go short, there’s a bit of an aw-shucks whatever thing going on that chafed my east-coast sensibilities for a few moments. Once it clicked — and it clicked pretty quick — it was everything in its right place to the last moment. I found the festival well-suited to my general at-a-festival philosophy of seeing as many sets as possible while, for the most part, sacrificing full sets. The grounds were easy to navigate, there was some sound bleed from one stage to the next at times, but I found it endearing and adding to the psychedelic weirdness of it all (at one point there was a very quiet waft of mariachi (yes, there was an all-female mariachi band that was pretty great Sunday early) mixing in with the Kurosawa/Gendel set and it was so delightfully weird I could only hope it was intentional. I think you should go next year, but only if you promise not to fuck it up. See you there.
