Ahhhh, Trash Fest.
It's getting hard to write about Trash Fest, year after year, celebrating all that is discarded from the rest of polite society. How many times c
an I try to explain what Trash Fest is all about? We're in year 35 of this ungodly mess and somehow it kind of got cleaned up.
Brian (my husband, who is just recovering from a "cardiac event") was working the door and he reports the number one complaint from people was "Where's all the trash?" Organizer Paul "The Fly" Lawson lamented a few years back when he went to go get the classic pieces of trash (
the stop sign,
the broken guitars, the plastic santa sled), "Somebody
actually threw out all the trash!" Unlike last year, where newspapers were thoughtfully
pre-wadded up ready for throwing at the bands, this year they lay flat on tables, almost
neatly. Rest assured, there was plenty of wadded up trash thrown at the bands by the end of the first set, and as I assured
Trash Fest newbies Atheists and Airplanes, "take it as a compliment when you get shit thrown at you." Your host,
Mark GE, started off the night with introductions and aay we went.
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| Opening up: The Nervous Virgins |
Back after a few years' sproadic absence, perennial Trash Fest openers Nervous Virgins started things off, and as I'd mentioned, it's comfortingly reassuring to have this consistency back in my life. Of course they did their mash of of "Iron Man" to the tune of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." Drummer Andy Stilin
handed me their set list ("you're the only one who could do something with this") so that I apparently could make heads or tails of their set, but with titles like "Funk in A, "God Macho Nacho," and "You Got a Job - Soul Ballad in A" (gee, were they going to do everything in A?) you can figure out how it went.
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| The Prettiest Scar |
Equally perennial (or at least getting to be) was an offering from Dave Thomas, this year in the form of The Pretties Scar, and with drumming glam queen Veechka Staff holding down the rhythm, this band was well named as Thomas grinded out 70s glam hits on his big ol hollow body guitar.
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| Gone and Loco |
And yet another perennial act hit the stage: as they are wont to do, Dave Allswager and Marlavous did a duet, this time as Gone and Loco, butchering up a slew of John Lennon hits. I was both disappointed and relieved when they left the stage having avoided any of Yoko's hits. Still, we all have to ask,
Why?
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| Atheists and Airplanes |
"Don't worry, we'll be trashy," the members of Atheists and Airplanes assured me as they prepared for their Trashfest debut, and they delivered. I'd heard them on the radio a few months back, but the recording I heard did not do justice to their brutal punk energy, assertive vocals, and engaging stage charisma and presence. They won me over playing what I assume was their standard set -- which a few bands can get away with at Trashfest.
They were all over the place, j
umping around,
biting each others' instruments and making full use of the stage. Terrific punk, sharp songwriting, and best of all they
got it. It just warms my heart to see the younguns picking up the baton here.
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| The Unmentionables |
So I knew Ted Jorin and his perennial familial gang was going to do a ska act, but I probably should have been prepared to see them all in their skivvies given that the name of the act was The Unmentionables and the first song's chorus was "We Play Ska In Our Underwear." I was chatting with the fabulous Jessica Knurr afterwards, and she told me that she saw the moment when Ted decided this was going to be his Trashfest offering, and she knew then and there he was going to nail it. "When Ted decides on a concept,
he takes it all the way," she correctly declared. I agreed: "And he
skewers it." The band was
skanking all over the stage, and I'm not clear how many of them
actually know how to play the trombone.
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| The Paulettes |
The Paulettes are also getting to be a perennial act, and the moment those cross dressers went into Lola I knew I could count on them bringing down the house again with (and now I can't hear the original without singing) "Everybody's Crazy 'Bout a Cross Dressed Man!" Again, given the crazy ass year I've had, it's nice to be able to count on something like this.
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| Satan's Lil' Helpers |
And of course, Satan's Lil' Helpers -- made up of shreds of Silk Torpedo (including a
Grecian Formula'd Doug Chasteen who later admitted days later he didn't know that the hair dye would last as long as it did) -- helped people come down with a blistering set of jams that
refused to be outdone by the other acts.
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| Primitive Telegraph Service |
Finally, you can also always perennially count on at least one band not showing up ( this year it was the aptly named Sha Na Not) and a noisy band closing (or driving) out the scene. This year's noise band --- Primitive Telegraph Service -- was less noisy and actually, um,
good. Almost too good for trashfest, but it gave us all a chance to actually hear some melody, and get caught up on the trashy gossip. Fly promises to have more trashy trash next year, and I'm hoping the Atheists and Airplanes women scoop up some comrades to keep this going another 35 years.
As you may guess, eight pictures doesn't begin to tell the story of the night.
Here's full photographic evidence.
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