Mission Creek Music Festival Official Coverage Overview

As you probably have noticed, for the last week and a half The Bay Bridged has been focused on the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival. We made some calls, sent out some E-mails, and gathered 15 writers, photographers, and videographers to document this great local festival.

This event also marks the very first time TheBayBridged.com has ever featured bands from outside of the Bay Area. This will not be a normal occurrence, but we believe in the ideals this festival was created on and wanted to showcase as much of it as possible.

Below you will find links to all of the writing, photos, and videos we amassed throughout the festival. So enjoy and check something out you’ve never heard of or a local favorite!

Festival Show Reviews

• May 10th: Rykarda Parasol, The Harbours, Caves @ Rickshaw Stop
• May 10th: Extra Action Marching Band, Borts Minorts, Dead Hensons @ The Eagle
• May 11th: Track Star, Vedera, Dear and The Headlights, Calling All Monsters @ Cafe Du Nord
• May 11th: Acid Mothers Temple, Mammatus, Triclops! @ Bottom of the Hill
• May 12th: The Parson Redheads & Love is Chemicals @ Rockit Room
• May 12th: Black Fiction, Lemonade, Head Like a Kite, The Fucking Ocean @ 12 Galaxies
• May 13th: The Dont’s, HIJK, The Junior Panthers @ Cafe du Nord
• May 14th: Pillows & Roman Ruins @ The Make-Out Room
• May 16th: The Herms @ Rickshaw Stop
• May 16th: The Dodos, Two Sheds, The Hallflowers, Alela Diane @ Elbo Room
• May 17th: Ora Cogan, Emily Jane White, Comets on Fire
• May 17th: Petracovich @ The Make-Out Room
• May 18th: Sholi @ The Knockout
• May 19th: Port O’Brien & Andy Tisdall @ Hemlock Tavern
• May 20th: The Music Lovers & The Hot Toddies @ The Make-Out Room

Festival Photos

• Acid Mothers Temple
• Akimbo
• Black Fiction
• Calling All Monsters
• Citay
• Dear and The Headlights
• DMBQ
• Dusty Brown
• Ellul
• Experimental Dental School
• The Dont’s
• The Fucking Ocean
• Hammers of Misfortune
• Head Like a Kite
• The Herms
• HIJK
• Jessica Pratt
• Junior Panther
• Lava Children
• Lavender Diamond
• Ledbetter and his Best Bet
• Lemonade
• Leyna Noel
• Mammatus
• Miguel Z. (of The Harbours)
• Moore Brothers
• Numbers
• The Old-Fashioned Way
• Or, the Whale
• Petracovich
• Pillows
• Pillows 2
• Roman Ruins
• Saros
• Snowblink
• The Spires
• Sugarghost
• Track Star
• Vedera
• The Watson Twins
• Winter Flowers

Festival Videos

• Acid Mothers Temple
• Birds & Batteries
• Black Fiction
• Borts Minorts
• The Dodos
• The Dont’s
• Extra Action Marching Band
• The Fucking Ocean
• Head Like a Kite
• HIJK
• I am Spoonbender
• Jessica Pratt
• The Junior Panthers
• Ledbetter and his Best Bet
• Lemonade
• Leyna Noel
• Mammatus
• Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs
• Miguel Z. (of The Harbours)
• The Music Lovers
• The Old-Fashioned Way
• Pillows
• Pillows 2
• Roman Ruins
• Rykarda Parasol and the Tower Ravens
• Sugarghost
• Two Sheds

MCMAF Show Review: Pillows and Roman Ruins @ The Make-Out Room

Photo by: Reid Williams

Truthfully, I had never seen Pillows play live until this show, despite being a huge fan of Two Step, an album I’ve been replaying since our feature episode on the band over a year ago. I am quite pleased to report that the band did not disappoint, playing through a number of great songs from their debut album intermixed with a few new ones. For the band recently named “Best Musical Duo” by the East Bay Express, the set was an exhibition in how to make big sounds with only two people and a few instruments, as even the songs with more sparse instrumentation felt full thanks to Julie and Jessica’s warm, rich vocals.

On the more electric numbers, the band displayed why they don’t fit into easy classification as a folk group. The churning “Incantation,” for example, owes more to garage rock than it does folk, with its simple, effective electric guitar lines and rolling drums. To my mind, the garage comparison extends beyond the sound to the overall quality of the band. Like the best garage rock, nothing feels missing in Pillows’ music, despite the band’s minimal setup. Quite the contrary, the configuration allows the lyrical and musical details to more easily take center-stage.

Roman Ruins performed before Pillows, and delivered a set that made me want to hear more in the future. Although some of the songs on his MySpace page reminded me of the lusher side of California pop–and there were certainly some songs that went in that direction–Graham Hill’s solo performance displayed a greater variety of sounds and styles.

In a live setting, it’s a tough and, from my perspective, unenviable task to be a solo performer in a live setting, especially when some of your attention has to be directed toward coaxing interesting sounds out of the devices on-stage. While there wasn’t an explosive stage show, Hill’s melange of loops and samples kept the sound interesting. With only a single 7″ out officially, I’m curious to see where Hill takes the project in the future, as he clearly has an eye for sound layering and song construction.

MCMAF Photos: Festival Closing Party @ Thee Parkside

MCMAF Show Review & Video: The Music Lovers, The Hot Toddies @ the Make-Out Room

 

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Alas, the Mission Creek Music and Arts Festival had to end. I couldn’t think of a much better way to end this eventful week of local music than by enjoying a pair of bands whose sound could not be lumped in with any local trend or scene. Both bands draw a great deal from the sounds of the past, yet each puts their own distinctive modern spin on it.

The Hot Toddies come complete with tight harmonies and unapologetic “shooby-doo-wops,” welcoming the obvious comparison to sixties female vocal groups. At the same time, they’re playing their own instruments and the lyrical content is not drenched in nostalgia. Instead, the quartet sings about the disappointment of teenage internet dating and missing your boyfriend when you’re in Seattle because, well, you’d like to “ride him like a horse without a saddle.” “Seattle” is my personal favorite, but each song - most sung with tongue firmly in cheek - is a custom-made crowd pleaser. Most importantly, it’s really, really fun, which - on a night before I must return to the confines of my office job - is just what I needed.

I’ve been following The Music Lovers rather closely since I heard them on The Bay Bridged. Under the watchful eye of frontman Teddy Edwards, the Music Lovers are performing well-crafted pop music at its finest. When the band transitions into a sea shanty, it feels totally natural. If you’re going to call yourselves the Music Lovers, you better be fucking serious - and it’s clear the band loves music and loves what they’re doing. Smiles are all around for the quintet who are also, undoubtedly, the most stylish band in the Bay, with each of their outfits complementing the next. The video posted is of a new song called “Saturday” which I thought was just absolutely fantastic.

MCMAF Photos: Or, the Whale @ Cafe du Nord

MCMAF Show Review: Black Fiction, Lemonade, The Fucking Ocean, Head Like a Kite @ 12 Galaxies

Saturday the 12th’s bill at 12 Galaxies traversed the pop, punk, and electronic universes, but provided a good time for the many who swung through for part or all of the night’s festivities.

Photo by: JJ Caguin

In bumming-me-out news, The Fucking Ocean announced during their set that John, one-third of the noisy post-punk trio, was soon leaving for New York, although the band intends to soldier on in a bi-coastal fashion. Having just returned from a cross-country tour, the band was in top form at Saturday’s show, and it’s a real shame that they won’t be playing as many shows in the coming future. Despite the more-than-capable stage at 12 Gs, the band opted to perform on the floor with a few vocal mics and allowing their amps and drums to deliver the band’s tense, immediate songs on their own. If you weren’t there, you may have missed the band’s last performance for a while and, if so, you missed out.

Photo by: JJ Caguin

The band followed a performance by Seattle duo Head Like a Kite, who may have been the anti-Fucking-Ocean in their sharp suits, synth and drum machine-fueled set of electronic pop, and the backdrop of home movie clips projected onto the stage’s screen. Like their visual presentation, HLaK’s sound is a well-orchestrated mix of live instruments and programmed sounds that I’d like to hear more of in the future.

The Head Like a Kite-Fucking Ocean trajectory made more sense when Lemonade took the stage and provided the surprise highlight of the evening. This trio mixed samplers and delay-soaked vocals with live bass and drums to create anthems that worked the crowd into quite a frenzy. It was clear that a good portion of the crowd was there to see them, including one guy who looked so much like a young Kevin Bacon, that it made me long for a contemporary remake of Footloose with a Lemonade soundtrack. I understand that these guys have multiple 12″s and a full-length that they have been working on, and I hope these recordings can capture the amazing energy they can create with their live show. Until the recordings come out, check them out if you’re looking for some psychy mind-blowing, forward-looking dance rock.

Photo by: JJ Caguin

Rounding off the night was a thoroughly enjoyable set by Black Fiction. As we learned in our interview with the band a little while back, these guys are not only working on new material, but are also continually reworking their older stuff too. To that end, Saturday’s set featured a more intense rock take on some of the material from Ghost Ride, including a version of “You Must Not Bury Someone” that ratcheted up the tempo and the guitars to powerful effect. It was an appreciated take on the material, although I’m also a fan of the band’s poppier, quieter moments as well (see: “I Spread The Disease”). Still, I have to give a lot of credit to a band willing to challenge its own performance abilities and its audience’s expectations by evolving on the stage–it’s one of the things that makes me keep wanting to see this band again.

MCMAF Show Review: Port O’Brien and Andy Tisdall @ Hemlock Tavern

Port O Brien

For Port O’Brien, Saturday’s set at the Hemlock Tavern served as both a homecoming and a farewell for a large and enthusiatic audience. The band’s set was certainly a more personal show than the well-received performance I saw when they opened for Bright Eyes’ at the Great American Music Hall a few months ago, a feeling generated more by the mixture of big fans and old friends in attendance than by the size of the room. The band played with an enthusiasm likely enhanced by the knowledge that this show was their last show for several months, as three of the four members are heading up to Alaska to spend the summer working in the salmon industry.

The receptive room ate it up as the band moved from one catchy, driving number to the next. Despite being a relatively young band, Port O’Brien seems to have already mastered the art of big choruses with group shoutalongs, an audience participation element that will no doubt help them win new listeners, and, which, in the conifnes of a room already on-board, brought things to a frenzy ablely sustained throughout the set.

It was during this frenzy that you sensed that this is a band nearing a turning-point. This might have been obvious before Saturday’s show, with a new Port O’Brien CD to arrive in a few months, shows booked at two British festivals in September and plans to tour sometime after that. Their performance at the Hemlock, though, confirmed to everyone there that the attention this band is about to receive is very well-deserved.

I was excited to see opener Andy Tisdall for a first time, since I’ve been listening to his 2006 solo CD I Want Your Brain regularly since we received it at the headquarters last year (and we’ve included songs in these two mixes). At Saturday’s show, Tisdall and his rhythm section played a strong, straightforward set of material from the CD, with Andy’s voice leading the charge. The live setting limited the opportunity for Tisdall & Co. to recreate some of the production and instrumentation nuances that pepper the CD, but Tisdall’s strong, emotive singing and songwriting, neatly balancing melody and passion, are the biggest draws.

MCMAF Show Review: Petracovich @ The Make-Out Room

Photo by: Reid Williams

Thursday night, The Make-Out Room hosted a relatively rare performance by Petracovich. Playing some new songs amidst the favorites from her two albums, Jessica was joined onstage by a drummer, which enhanced the organic, folk-oriented side of her folktronica sound. The electronics made their appearance as well, in the form of loops of voice and sound recorded and played back live, which is a great detail I wish more artists would use to keep the audience engaged while incorporating samples. As warm as the instrumentals were, though, Jessica’s voice was just as compelling, and the large audience responded to her set with appreciative cheers.

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