Live reviews

Primitive Vol. 3 International Garage Festival, June 22/23/24th, Waterfront, Rotterdam

By Jens

Photos by Savage Lady. All rights reserved.

There are r’n’r festivals and then there’s Primitive, the pride and joy of Rotterdam’s Waterfront venue. This visit was my 2nd Primitive experience, and the line-up was just as compelling as last year’s; The Cynics! Thee Mighty Caesars! Insomiacs!

Day 1

After an uneventful (very early) flight I dropped off my stuff at my friend Edie’s place, who were kind of enough to have me stay at her place once again in the more cosy part of Rotterdam. A couple of her friends were also staying in her apartment; two Berliners, Judith and Andreas, and Dirk Ungawa of Belgium, who had arrived yesterday for the warm-up party at Waterfront with The Omens (who I missed, damn!). They others were sleeping, so I went out with Edie to get a huge bag of kitty litter for her cats and some Grolsch beer for me, as I remembered it was Tony Slug’s favourite brand. Edie’s oldest cat is Shimmy, a proud and beautiful looking 22 years old (!) black male. The other woke up, hung-over from yesterday, and we started talking and drinking (mostly me, Grolsch is a damn fine brew). I remembered my last trip to Rotterdam for the Rumble festival, and an excellent Surinam restaurant and their very original dish of spicy chicken with potatoes, eggs, and beans. Lucky for me there was a Surinam/Chinese eatery no less than a 2 mins walk from the apartment, and the others were also nuts about the Surinam cuisine, which blue collar-ish qualities are both cheap & tasty and go perfectly with beer. By 20.30 we were ready to walk down to Waterfront and catch the first band to play the main venue, the local rock’n’rollers The Madd, a very traditional retro-sounding beat combo. John of Fury 161 told me that their drummer also plays in Fury 161, a truly talented young dude. Things started heating up with Dublin’s awesome The Urges, one of the very bands ’new’ bands I saw at this year’s Primitive. Their brand of Seeds/Shadows Of Knight-ish rock’n’roll was packed with raw attitude, and their lead singer Jim really had a lotta stage presence. ”Jenny Jenny” was one of the highlights, a catchy rocker that left me hummin’ while I pursuited to drink as many Palm beer as possible. A Belgium beer not Dutch, Dirk later corrected me. I met several Club Mau Mau guys outside the bar as well as many Norwegians from Rock & Specialreiser, and some Dutchies who remembered me from last time. I’ve seen The Strollers before, who then broke up, but fortunately the Swedish psych fuzz rockers had reformed for Primitive for one final show. They were better than the first time I saw ’em, and the crowd loved them, great show. In between bands this guy called Mr. 8mmMan showed some smutty sleaze loops from 60s, one with a naked black chick masturbating with a banana made a huge impression on me! There’s a lot more people at this year’s Primitive, despite the tickets had skyrocketed to 70 euros for a weekend pass. One of the main reasons was probably the next band on stage; the legendary Thee Mighty Caesars! Yes, Billy Childish and his Medway rockers had reformed this summer, and their presence here at Primitive were surely one of the highlights. Billy is like a god to many, and since ’th Caesars had dressed up as roman emperors, many in the audience had gone toga crazy, which was actually not a bad idea in the summer heat. The show didn’t really started out that well, the guys didn’t look like the best of friends, and the two first songs wasn’t that inspired. But then Billy, Graham and John started cookin’ and we got classics like ”Lie Detector” and ”Cowboys Are Square”. The banter from Billy was pretty entertaining, at one point he said; ”We just play bad authentic music!”, haha. Well, this festivalgoer was more than pleased with their show. And outside the bar at the tables along the pier I met Michael Kastelic of The Cynics, drunk outta his skull of course, haha. Well, not so drunk he couldn’t remember their show in Copenhagen, where he and some of the guys from No Hope For Kids had sung themes from tv series. Gregg Kostelich & the missus also turned up. Can’t really remember how I got home...

Day 2

Friday kicked off early with my buddies The Last Vegas at 16.00. Just saw ’em in Copenhagen, they were excellent, the new 5 piece line-up works fine as it did in Waterfront’s bar. The Chicago combo’s brand of unashamed 70s style hard-ass cockrock probably surprised some garage rock fanatics, people were even coming out of the kitchen during Nathan’s drum solo, haha. The boys dished out killer tunes like ”She Won’t Go” and ”We’ll Drink Three”, too bad Chad’s vocals wasn’t loud enough. Afterwards there was a ”Let’s Play Link Wray” free-for-all where every geetar twangsters could join a hired band on stage and play Link’s classic instrumentals, but I preferred hanging out with my Chicago buddies drinking cheap Sangrias. Well, not all of Last Vegas did chill out and party, poor Adam and his brother Nathan barely changed t-shirt, before they did the sound check for The Cynics, being the rhythm section and all. There was a 3 hours break before the next band, so I went little deranged in the vinyl stalls and bought like 16-17 records with The Wildebeests, Fe Fi Fo Fums, Mind Controls, Tractor Sex Fatality, Zodiac Killers etc. I dragged all my treasures back home to Edie, and we sat around listening to the stuff, Andreas had a bottle of vodka and...yeah...we missed The Carnary Sect. But we were in time for Wau Y Los Arrrrhs!!!, a crazed Spanish garage punk outfit, mad as a bag of spiders. They did a killer version of Los Saicos’ ”Demolícion” that brought the house down to it’s knees. A total freakshow! The Insomniacs was next, and what a pleasant surprise, I mean, I dig their Estrus albums, but was amazed how well the trio’s powerpop/garage tunes came across from the stage. It didn’t hurt that the stage was invaded by the sexy Primitive-A-Go-Go Girls, most notable Lucy Dee’s Angels, who strutted their tasty stuff and got the crowd revved up with their boss moves. But the best was yet to come with the legendary Cynics who had came all the way from Pittsburgh to do what they do best and have being doing for the last 20 years; playing full-on no-nonsense fuzzed-out garage/rock’n’roll of the finest kind known to man. Two hours of all-killa-no-filla napalm bombin’ Cynics classics like ”You Got The Love”, ”Baby What’s Wrong” etc. Michael hollered, grooved and worked his tambourine like a nutter, and Gregg was stonefaced focused on some of the sublime geetar strummin’ I’ve heard in entire my life. Brothers Adam & Nathan was one mean tight rhythm section, just as I expected. Definitely my favourite show at Primitive! The rest of the nite was a haze of Sangrias, beer and watching caveman carrying round cavewomen, all dressed up as the Flintstones. Oh yeah, I met my buddy Ron, cheerful and energetic as always, and ex-Wiseguy Joe Cain who’s now in The Quotes. I remember stumbling home with Edie, me mostly zigzagging through the streets of Rotterdam like a blind dog.

Day 3

Spent most of the afternoon at the Waterfront bar tables by the pier talking to Ron and some Fury 161 guys, so I didn’t really saw that much of The Miracle Men, but it sounded okay, kinda retro-beat-ish. Drove down to Waterfront in Dirk’s car, he was gonna sell some 45s, and he sure did. Next up in the bar was The Mammies, a totally sensational French low budget garage punk trash combo, not unlike The Hentchmen. They were dressed up as old ladies, grey skirts, tacky makeup, earrings and all. One of the most energetic shows of the weekend, and definitely the funniest. All covers (”Ring Dang Doo” etc.) some done with different lyrics, like ”Gertrude” instead of ”Justine”. Truly the ’Queens of Un-teenaged Garage Punk’! I met Niels of The Low Point Drains who was kind enough to give me a copy of their latest album, which fuckin’ rocks by the way, pure Cramps/NewBombTurks-punk’n’roll raunch. I bought a dvd, ”Last Man On Earth” with Vincent Price, been awhile since I saw that one. Time to trek home for more Surinam food with Dirk, who played some of his Ungawa radioshows in the car, which was packed with som rowdy kickass garagerock. Sure could use a show like that in Denmark. By 21.00 we were back again, loaded and ready for Thee Fine Lines, a fine American combo who seemed to worship Thee Headcoats, so much I couldn’t hardly tell the difference. Can’t recall much of The Beavers, but I was tired of drinking Sangrias so back to Palm beer again. Chatham’s The Len Price 3 totally blew me away, everyone should get their ”Chinese Burn” debut album, a perfect mix of 60s modpunk and 70s powerpop. They said they were gonna change their ”Amsterdam” song to ”Rotterdam”, but they still sang ”Amsterdam” as far as I could remember, haha. Lotta go-go dance action on the stage. Can’t say I’m over familiar with The Go Nuts (feat. Deke Dickerson of Untamed Youth fame) who ended Primitive. They sorta reminded of The Dickies, they even played ”You Drive Me Ape (You Big Gorilla)”, and tunes like ”Lets Bring Cheese To China”. Food and snacks are a big issue for The Go Nuts, who’s show was a bit like Gwar’s, only instead of blood & semen they showered the audience with candy, donuts and sugar...with snack canons!?! Thank god I didn’t had to clean up the mess, my thoughts were with the Waterfront personnel. Well, that was Primitive Vol. 3, what a blast! See you again, Waterfront, at the Rotterdam Rumble in September. Thanks to Edie for her hospitality.

http://www.waterfront.nl/