August 16, 2004
MUSIC REVIEW | LITTLE STEVEN'S UNDERGROUND GARAGE FESTIVAL
More Acts Than Attitude at Garage Fest
By KELEFA SANNEH, The New York Times
On Saturday at Randalls Island lots of performers talked about Hurricane Charley, sounding either nervous or cautiously optimistic. But Julian Casablancas, the leader of the Strokes, was the only one with the gall to taunt the storm. "I don't see any flippin' hurricane," he sneered, more or less, before telling slightly damp fans, "You're not horny enough," and slithering through yet another oily, petulant song.
The event was Little Steven's Underground Garage Festival, a 12-hour celebration of rock 'n' roll nostalgia, headlined by Iggy Pop and the Stooges. Nearly four dozen bands squeezed onto a single stage, many playing no more than a single song, which meant that the celebration sometimes seemed more like a stunt. You couldn't help but wonder whether Steven Van Zandt had organized the concert in hopes of breaking some obscure world record.
Certainly the 16,000 resilient concertgoers who filled the front third of the field (the concert was nowhere near sold out) often seemed more like bystanders than fans, although only Mr. Casablancas had the bad manners to point this out. "It's not loud enough," he declared, after yet another faint smattering of applause. When that didn't work, he tried flattery. "You're pretty good lookin'," he added, emphasizing the "pretty." "I'm a shallow guy."
If nothing else, the festival was a tribute to the unstoppability of Mr. Van Zandt, a longtime Bruce Springsteen guitarist who also acts on "The Sopranos" and serves as host of "Little Steven's Underground Garage," a syndicated radio show. Somehow he persuaded a doughnut company to underwrite a big, unwieldy concert of garage rock, a genre devoted , as he once wrote, to rock 'n' roll's essence: "Attitude, anger, angst, anxiety, frustration, bravado, guitars, fuzztones and Farfisa organs."
Too bad, then, that many of the bands on the bill - some old, many just old at heart - ignored the first six to concentrate on the last three. The first two or three or eight hours were mainly given over to interchangeable revival acts that seemed content to bash out a few fuzzy chords and march offstage, displaying neither attitude nor anxiety nor any of the other attributes Mr. Van Zandt wrote about.
There were competent but boring sets from the Fuzztones and the Chesterfield Kings (who were introduced by Mr. Springsteen) and the Mooney Suzuki and the Woggles and (yikes!) the Pete Best band and dozens more.
There were exceptions of course. (With this many bands, how could there not be?) The Shazam, a decade-old group from Nashville, played a couple of ridiculous - but memorable - songs that mimicked the sugary bombast of mainstream 1970's rock. The great British mod band Creation exhumed "Making Time," a riotous hit from 1966. And Nancy Sinatra performed the day's most deliciously weird set, singing the ballad "Let Me Kiss You" (written for her by Morrissey) as well as the cryptic and fragmented "Momma's Boy" (written for her by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore) before she finally got around to those walking boots.
By evening, as things got darker and wetter, the big names took over. Bo Diddley's invigorating set included the only rapping heard all day. The New York Dolls - mourning the death last month of their bassist, Arthur Kane - were every bit as loud and rude and ragged as they were supposed to be. And Iggy Pop and the Stooges (joined by the bassist Mike Watt) charged through faster but cleaner versions of songs from the Stooges' classic first two albums: he has sandblasted his back catalog, stripping the songs of everything except savage joy.
Still, thank goodness for the Strokes, who have figured out ways to smuggle ambivalent poses and feelings into seemingly simple songs; their set hinted at something much more complicated than joy. The songs from "Room on Fire," the disappointing second Strokes album, sounded much wilder and more unstable onstage than on the CD. "Reptilia" sounded particularly good, an accusatory love song ("You're not trying hard enough") pockmarked with sudden guitar cutouts.
Even better, Mr. Casblancas's between-song monologues helped puncture the day's single-mindedly celebratory attitude. Baiting the fans, mocking the organizers, messing with the cameramen, he provided a welcome infusions of bad vibrations. When nearly four dozen bands get together in a park, who says it has to be a celebration? Who says it can't be a fight, instead?
