#27: Dispatch from 2021 music festival season
#27: Dispatch from 2021 music festival season
Ready to be crowded with lots of people?
We’ve been told for at least 15 months to avoid crowds. The results have been mixed, depending on where you live, but even the most COVID-minimizing places haven’t thrown open their doors to big music festivals—until now. With cases decreasing nationally, music festivals are returning, albeit later than usual. That’s presumably to allow the pandemic more time to recede, but also to give everyone time to wrap their heads around standing in close quarters with thousands of people again.
I think about the many years I covered SXSW, Lollapalooza, Pitchfork, and Riot Fest. All of them are uncomfortable to varying degrees, so add in a pandemic—even a waning one—and it’s a hard pass from me. But I’m an old, married parent. I’m not the core demo.
Speaking of that, few things make aging music fans feel more out of touch than festival announcements. While plenty of shrugs greeted the Lollapalooza lineup Tuesday, there was bewilderment too—and no, not just because Journey is on the bill. As my A.V. Club pal Sean O’Neal put it, “This chunk in the middle aged me like 20 years. I’ve heard of maybe a few of these.”
In addition to reminding us of our increasing disconnection from popular culture and, thus, our inevitable death, festival lineups are also good for trawling band names. Let’s dig in.
Emotional Oranges
Peach Tree Rascals
Where: Lollapalooza, Life is Beautiful (Emotional Oranges)
Despite having a name that sounds like it came from a comedy sketch, Emotional Oranges is deadly serious about one thing at least: merch. Their homepage is a webstore where fans can spend $120 on a hoodie or $40 for one of their albums. The secretive LA duo—who just go by “Emo” or “V” and “A”—claim to work with Drake and Adele and also claim to have met at a bat mitzvah. That all sounds questionable, but the mundane story of their name seems logical: “Yeah, to be honest I was really high one night,” A said in an interview. “I was smoking pot and contemplating life and ending [sic] up going skydiving. That is when it came to me. It just popped into my brain.”
If you know their fellow Californians Peach Tree Rascals, you likely have a TikTok account, because their song “Mariposa” blew up on the platform last year. (It currently has more than 191 million plays on Spotify alone.)
Peach Tree Rascals have a more ho-hum moniker-origin story: “About a week before (our) first song came out, we were camping and we were trying to figure out what to call the band,” said member Jorge Olazaba in an interview. “We were just saying random stuff, and I said ‘Peach Tree Village’—everyone else agreed that ‘village’ wasn’t that great. So [bandmate Pech suggested] ‘rascals,’ and Peach Tree Rascals was formed right there, in [the] spur of the moment. We’ve grown to love it even more over time.” Too bad for Peach Tree Village. This condo complex in Oklahoma could’ve used the attention.
Riders Against the Storm
Where: Austin City Limits
No, they weren’t inspired by the Doors, or the short-lived “Doors with the Cult’s Ian Astbury” project Riders on the Storm (which would be far worse). As the Austin hip-hop duo explains, their name comes from from a song by long-running a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. The song references a speech by Civil Rights leader Ella Baker where she described young people “running against the storm,” so RAS changed it to Riders Against the Storm. I appreciate a deep pull, especially when a name seems to be about something else. To be honest, RAS could’ve been inspired by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and I’d still be like, “Better that than the Doors.”
Meet Me @ the Altar
Where: Riot Fest
Taking this band’s name within the context of Riot Fest’s niche of punk, emo, hardcore, and nostalgia had me expecting this:
Instead, Meet Me @ the Altar looks like this:
Look at the joy on their faces! Here I was, expecting some annoying Christian screamo band with a bunch of sullen dudes, but no! I can’t even be annoyed by the @, especially when the story of their name is charming:
“I just started naming off Mortal Kombat characters and I got to Sub-Zero — which is Téa’s favorite character,” Juarez says. “I told her it was mine too, and she said, ‘Marry me.’ I responded in all caps: ‘MEET ME @ THE ALTAR.’”
That’s drummer Ada Juarez talking about guitarist/bassist Téa Campbell, who describes her “dream show” being Paramore, All Time Low, and The Story So Far. If you didn’t click on the video, Campbell’s hypothetical bill should triangulate Meet Me @ the Altar’s sound for you. They remind me of Take This to Your Grave-era Fall Out Boy, so considering all of that, it’s no surprise they’re on Fueled By Ramen. But so much about them is surprising, and I’m here for it. “And what happened, then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch’s small heart grew three sizes that day...”
LSDREAM
Where: Bonnaroo
“…then shrunk right back down.”
Luzcid
Where: Bonnaroo
Immediate disqualification for having a dream catcher in the logo.
That said, his “portrait of the EDM DJ with his parents” warmed my heart.
POST-SCRIPTS
[Standard note apologizing for this being late.]
The other band in the Meet Me @ the Altar blurb? Greeley Estates. The Devil Wears Prada would’ve also worked. As would nearly every band in Alternative Press from like 2003-2010.
I didn’t include The Soft Pink Truth (Pitchfork) because he’s been around for more than 15 years, but that name grosses me out more than even the most scatological of grindcore monikers. Yes, even more than Binho Incorporis Pussy Putrification Clono Infest.