Livereviews

PRIMITIVE!
Vol. 2 Garage Festival 2005 : June 30th, July 1st, July 2nd - Waterfront, Rotterdam

By Jens

"Rock'n'Roll is a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac" Frank Sinatra once stated, but more about The Black Lips later. There sure wasnt much rock'n'roll about the crummy Roskilde program this summer, so, on a whim, I decided to trek down to the Netherlands and witness this garagerock festival my friend Peter 'Retrosexual' Markham has been babbling on about for some time. I jumped a plane and arrived in ol' Amsterdam the day before the event, hooked up with my buddy Tony Slug (of The Nitwitz) who were kind enough to have me sleep over. Peter and his girlfriend had already been in Amsterdam for a few days and together we took a train to Europe's biggest habor on the day PRIMITIVE! started. I checked in at a Stayokay hostel, while they had a room on the Clipper houseboat hostel which sounded a bit more attractive than my place. Stayokay was packed with 100s of healthy (yikes!) fresh-faced hockey youngsters who were in Rotterdam for the national hockey championship, so I was more than happy to leave for Waterfront in the late afternoon. A few hours before I headed for the plane in Copenhagen I realized that PRIMITIVE! wasn't an outdoor festival with tents and shit, which was a blessing since Rotterdam suddenly erupted in a massive outerworldly rain storm that nearly killed my umbrella. I finally found the Waterfront club located under a bridge (!) but the minute I walked in I knew I was in one for some wild r'n'r days of drunken fun. Loud fuzz drenched music blasted from the DJ at the bar, cool r'n'r posters everywhere, booths with records (incl. Crypt guys), and delicious little r'n'r cheerleader hotties (Lucy Dee's Angels International Go-Go-Go-Go Girl Galore - give'em a Nobel peace prize award NOW!) were running around with pom poms! Oh yeah, I had arrived in heaven!! I started consuming very reasonable priced Palm and De Köninck beer 'n' eating ham toasts, and quickly met some of Peter's friends of Copenhagen. We found a restaurant that had some very lethal beer (9.5% alcohol!) the day before, some wicked poison called Triple X Delirium Tremes, brutal stuff!

The club inside the official stage was pretty neat, a medium sized club who could hold around 500 people. At 21:30 the local Fury 161 took the stage and delivered a bloody fine show of speedy fuzzpunk not unlike Defectors or Cynics. Their recent "Los Reyes de la Carretera" EP impressed the hell out of me and the tunes were expertly performed by the guys in black fronted middle aged bald dude with black gloves. The dancing cheerleaders looked good and so did the drummer's Kraut steel helmet. What a start! But then it went downhill with two English VERY retro sounding bands; The Unchayned (pure amateur hour, outrageously weak) and the Beatles-esque The Rapiers - completely snoozeville. Surf music never meant jack to me, I consider it strictly elevator muzak for the terminally bored, but The Phantom Surfers is like an über cultband among connoisseurs. Well, the amount of beer (and a reefer or two) had finally kicked in, and according to Next Big Thing's website I called the San Francisco combo 'piss-weak bloody surf music with not enough testicles'. But it'd be fair to state another subjective opinion from my pal Peter who thought Phantom Surfers were the very best band at PRIMITIVE!, he was quoting Andre Williams all the time who apparently have said that 'surf music is sexy music'. Well, I wasnt aroused, buddy! End of Day 1, a so-so experience, music-wise, that ended with me having serious trouble finding that damn Stayokay hostel (took me like a fuckin' hour!) after some excessive drinking outside Waterfront by the sinister looking river.
The next day I checked in at the Clipper houseboat which was located a 5 minute walk from Waterfront, perfect! After walking around with Peter and his pals in the shopping area of Rotterdam (they shopped, I toked), I ate a strange thing which I thought was a sausage. It turned out to be cabbage, cheese and (according to Tony Slug) cow udders?!? I then hooked up with some southern Ducth hillbillies I met the nite before who was in a retro beat combo called Franky Vampire And His Virgin Shooters. We downed a few of those lethal 9.5% beers and I preached the gospel of Jean Rollin's 70s lesbian vampire sexploitation flicks and they were commenting on the breasts sizes of the unfortunate women walking by. Okay, Ducth chicks are fine, but Scan vikingettes are the foxiest in the world, goddammit! Prior to meeting these fine fellas I went down to the Waterfront (full on cow udder sausage) and I caught ET Explore Me (Harlem, Holland) at the bar around 4 pm. A fuckin' awesome trio which revelled in that lo-fi frantic Headcoats sound with a noisy organ as well. Next up was The Hara-Kee-Rees, a more traditional 60s garage sounding German combo, pretty decent. DJs are DJs, sometimes good sometimes less exciting, but the DJs at Waterfront were absolutely sensational since some (especially a blonde gal) played a lotta obscure 60s punk by Dutch artists I've never heard of like Bonnie And the Clydes. Norway's The Indikation started the party inside the club, a suave sounding and sharp looking outfit which dish of elegant organ-fueled fuzz beat impressed the hell out of me. Sexy shit! The Thanes' garage folk were less impressive, but then it was time for The Masonics. Two thirds of the band (Mickey Hampshire and Bruce Brand) are honorable members of Billy Childish's Milkshakes, and like that immortal Medway combo The Masonics excelled in primitive r&b raunch which envoked the likes of Kinks, Bo Diddley and Link Wray. Absolutely outstanding, best band of the day! I've probably seen King Khan & The Shrines too many times cuz his usual bag of James Brown-esque soul antics didn't impress me that much after seeing The Masonics, or maybe I was just tired'n'sleepy from excessive boozin', I dunno. The rest of nite I spent drinking and socializing with the party crazed Norwegians of 'Rock & Spesialreiser' and some friendly spliff sucking Scotsmen.

Saturday morning. Apparently I stole some cheese from the houseboat's fridge during the nite which was lying next to my pillow and stinkin', yikes! Some of my friends woke up in wrong rooms feeling kinda confused. I had three cups of strong coffee trying to erase the apocalyptic hangovers while listening to my pal Rune's latest job in Uzbekistan where he was trying to teach the local police about human rights. "If you have to, then slap'em, dont boil'em!" was sorta the essence, haha. Him and his lovely Norwegian girlfriend, who preferred Gutter Island to PRIMITIVE!, are huge Lyres fans so this was THE day for them. The Dutch rockers, The Stillettos, kickstarted the music around 4 at the Waterfront with an awesome not-so-60s-retro show of fast-as-fuck punk'n'roll not unlike Columbian Neckties. Outstanding! Garage rock karaoke, anyone? No, I'm not talking about drunks howling over some records, but a nearly three hour live show with The Nederbietels Garazie Karake as backing band with drunks howling songs by Sonics, Easybeats etc. in a microphone! Quite a spectacle, though some of the more tuneless 'singers' got to be a bit much in the end. At 21.00 it was time for the 'professionals' inside the club, the Swedish Dee Rangers. I've seen'em before but this time they'd changed the line-up with a new singer (the brother of Anna from the Stomachmouths) and an organ grinder. The tunes were slower and more soul-ish, and they did a killer version of Joe Tex's "Show Me". Great! The Cool Jerks' brand of Beatles-esque sounds bored me, and I went outside drinking by the river (again). There's been a lotta buzz and controversy surrounding Atlanta's The Black Lips due to the fact that their singer ends their shows by drinking his own urine! I KID YOU NOT! I was standing like 10 feet away from the fucker when he jumped down among the audience and started swallowing piss with his pants around his ankles like there was no tomorrow! I'm not talking about a little sip but half a pint of that yellow stuff!?! Quite a detour from the other PRIMTIVE! bands, music-wise they also differed a lot with an onslaught of superfucked-up noisy chaotic garagepunk which was not to everybody's liking, but I sure loved it! The last band at PRIMITIVE! was Jeff "Monoman" Conolly and his glorious Lyres who's seen a lotta members come and go during the last 25 years. Jeff had brought the classic line-up from "On Fyre" and "Lyres Lyres" days with him, and we got a lot of tunes from those excellent albums like "Help You Ann", "Dont Give It Up Now" and "She Pays The Rent". Tony Slug informed me that his pal Ronnie Splinter of the Outsiders were gonna play guest guitar on a few songs, which he did perfectly. Apparently Jeff had been drinking all day prior to their performance, but this guy sure did hold his liquor as he energetically banged his organ through a 1½ hours showstoppin' set of pure garage rock excellence. Definitely my favorite show of the festival! More drinking and yet more drinking. At one point a crazy Norwegian dude started throwing beer bottles in the river so the cops came and close the drinking outside for an hour. And then people started boozin' by the river again.

By sunday morning I had almost OD'ed on rock'n'roll, but lo and behold, Rotterdam had more r'n'r action to offer! Rotterdam must be the ugliest town in Europe, most of the city was bombed to pieces during WWII thus giving room for some hideous new buildings (were the architects on acid?!?). Ever walked the Rotterdam 'hall of fame'? I were lucky enough to see the footprints of Latoya Jackson!?! But fuck that since there was yet another festival down south in the city called 'Metropolis'. The sun was merciless as I walked around the huge park area with 6 stages, but a tiny spliff in pocket and some unhealthy chips'n'mayo got me going. First up was The Monroes, an exellent female-fronted combo which brand of r'n'r, garage and r&b really shook me up. The Dutch answer to Detroit Cobras? The guys of Franky Vampires recommended Low Point Drains and for that I'm truly grateful. Full-on anti-social chaotic trash punk deluxe! Kinda like a mix of Oblivians and a more fucked up Burnouts. The bands also dissed the PRIMTIVE! festival; "Why the hell should I pay good money to see some middle class garage shit?" the singer screamed, haha. I saw most of Wiseguy's set of Gluecifer-inspired cockrock, pretty decent. Black Mountain is strange combo; part Jefferson Airplane, part Sabbath, which created a very unique sound fronted by a female singer during the 8 minutes jams. Recently The Ponys have been hyped as some sorta rock'n'roll saviors from both the mainstream media and underground punkrockers, but I was a bit disappointed with their stage performance and Richard Hell-ish tunes. Nothing special, so I left after 20 minutes to see Hayseed Dixie, a sure thang! Our Tennessee country hardrockers gave their usual brilliant energetic bluegrass takes on AC/DC plus some Sabbath, Led Zep and a couple of their own compositions ("Kirby Hill", "Marijuana", "Mountain Man") from their new "Hot Piece Of Grass" album. Barley said sorta the same things between songs as he did earlier this year in Copenhagen, but Deacon Dale Reno went pretty crazy with his mandolin, Angus Young-style! Damn fine show. Well, here ends my Rotterdam r'n'r trip. Mucho thanks to the people of Waterfront and PRIMITIVE! for making my summer a bit sweeter - I'LL BE BACK FOR THE 3RD ONE!

http://www.primitive-festival.nl