#47: Dispatch from 2022 music festival season
Partiboi69; Whippin Shitties; Moon Pussy; Captain Asshole; I Hate Models; more
It’s that special time of year again, when young people’s thoughts turn to cramming uncomfortably close to thousands of other people at hot, sweaty music festivals. We seemed to be there this time last year, just before the delta-variant sucker punch arrived—not that it stopped many people from getting out there anyway. Now that we’ve reached the “Fuck this shit, I’m done” phase of the pandemic, music festivals have come roaring back. Let’s take a gander at some of the artists appearing at them.
Partiboi69 (Hideout Festival)
Described by Beatportal as a “DJ, producer, martial arts expert, rapper, ketamine connoisseur, fashion guru, sex icon, and all-around renaissance man,” this Australian dude has a song called “K on My D+C” that goes, “I love ketamine so fucking much / I love it so much / I put it all on my crutch / I got ket on my dick / Ket on my dick.”
Whippin Shitties (Treefort Music Fest)
The internet tells me “whippin shitties” is what Minnesotans call doing donuts in a car, though maybe it’s more of a regional Midwestern thing because these guys are from Idaho. Perhaps they watch a lot of Bojack Horseman there, because the band’s most popular song on Spotify is called “Mr. Peanutbutter”: “I wanna feel what Mr. Peanutbutter feels for Diane before I die.” And keeping up with the randomness, the official Twitter account of PBR (?) hailed their music as a combination of Jawbreaker and Modern Baseball (??).
The official Twitter account of Milwaukee’s Best retorted, “Foreigner’s better.”
Moon Pussy (Caterwaul Festival)
Bio excerpt: “Their own unique sounds have been refined over the years, usually in detriment of their profession [sic] careers, through a consistent digging in of their heels on bad ideas.”
I Hate Models (AVA Festival)
This French DJ—with the preposterously French name Guillaume Labadie—hates models… and showing his entire face, judging by every photo of him.
He also eschews interviews, but he gave one to Four Four magazine on the condition “he wasn’t to be quoted directly.” But when I clicked on the link to read the full interview, it gave me a “page not found” error. Guillaume’s always one step ahead!
Pepperoni Prada (Treefort Music Fest)
Bio: “Pepperoni Prada, aka Lil Pep, The Don of pizza rap, is an Italian food gangster rap pioneer and member of the rap group The Al Dente Boys based currently in Boise Idaho, with a wide range of hip-hop sounds including boom-bap and trap.” Sounds like someone who’d collaborate with Partiboi69, and the song “Cowboy” delivers: “Look at my ’roni / Look at my boots / Look at my jeans / Look at my crew / I’m on my John Wayne shit / I’m a cowboy.”
Captain Asshole (Punk Rock Holiday)
If your band settles on the simple, perfect moniker Captain Asshole, you are bound by law to play pop punk. You will also have wiseass song titles such as “Where the Fuck is Kyoto?,” “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater II Had a Really Good Soundtrack,” “Face Him! Yo Dude, are You High?,” “I Literally Have No Idea What the Fuck I’m Doing,” all of them from 2019’s What an Awful Life. Personally, I’m partial to the “Fuck this place and what it’s all about!” refrain from the new “Boy, I’m Homesick!”
Abraskadabra (Punk Rock Holiday)
Never change, ska bands.
Tejano Outlaw (Treefort Music Fest)
The name is a shrug, but I love this band photo for all the Texas mixed with what I first thought was a Burzum shirt.
Black Tiger Sex Machine (Bonnaroo)
The live photo on their homepage makes them look like Daft Punk leather daddies, what with the robot helmets and black leather, but you wouldn’t catch Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter thirst-trapping on IG like this.
But BTSM’s Marc-André Chagnon can at least hang with them in the French Name Department. (They’re from Montreal.) Speaking of names, they took theirs partly from James Brown and something to do a text chain, per Phoenix New Times.
“We just kind of put these words together playing soccer on a Saturday afternoon,” says Chagnon. “It was actually something one of the other group members was texting to another person to get rid of communication.”
Maybe in Quebec, nothing shuts down a text thread like saying “black tiger”? Tigre noir!
Stagedive Suicide (Punk Rock Holiday)
They’re from Norway, so when English is your second language, “Stagedive Suicide” probably sounds super hardcore and dark, when it reality it’s just kinda dopey.
POST-SCRIPTS
Captain Asshole reminds me of Pkew Pkew Pkew, and I’m here for it.
Good for Abraskadabra keeping their spirits up while living under Trump, But Worse.
I had “Jubilee Grabbitz” on my list of contenders, but it turns out Jubilee and Grabbitz are two different artists performing at Lollapalooza. But “Jubilee Grabbitz” is free if you need a stripper name.