12th
Annual Miller Genuine Draft Waterfront Blues Festival
Tom McCall Waterfront Park
Southwest Salmon Street and Front Avenue
5 pm Friday, July 2 through 9 pm Monday, July 5
Suggested donation $3-$5 and two cans of food for the Oregon
Food Bank
Vans Warped Tour '99
http://www.warpedtour.com/
The Showplace at Portland Meadows, 1001 N Schmeer Road,
224-8499
1 pm Tuesday, July 6
$26.75
(See HeadOut for scheduled acts
at both festivals)
At first glance, they would seem as related as Charles Bukowski
and Charles, Prince of Wales.
On the one hand, you've got Portland's 12-year-old Waterfront
Blues Festival, a musical institution beloved of civic boosters
and casual music fans of all ages--particularly the middle
ages. On the other, you've got the Vans Warped Tour, a four-years-young
roadshow uniting the most marketably mainstream brethren
in punk's family tree. The bluesfest advertises its view
of Mount Hood, its family-positive atmosphere and the all-star
array of greats it conveniently bundles each year. The Warped
Tour hypes skateboarding ramps, way-extreme BMX squads and
a motley collection of retreads and flavors of the month.
So, yes, the Waterfront Blues Festival is totally Volvo,
while the Warped Tour is more Chevy Malibu on loan from
the 'rents. Look a little harder, though, and the similarities
between the two alfresco fests surpass their cosmetic
differences. You could even argue that the Waterfront Blues
Festival and the Warped Tour are doppelgängers, locked
in cosmic yin-yang kinship.
Punk rock and the blues draw from the same well of existential
anomie--the world is screwed and here we are, stuck in it
without a lousy dime or a lovin' dame. Naturally, the sonic
response to that harsh truth was a hell of a lot different
in the Jim Crow-riven Mississippi Delta of the '20s than
in the working-class time bomb of '70s England. Regardless,
Robert Johnson and the Clash had many of the same hellhounds
on their respective tails.
Of course, these days the two genres have something else
in common besides their elemental discontent: They're both
rumored to be stone dead. It's hard to be insurgent, riotous,
spooky or menacing when you're underwritten by a lite-beer
manufacturer and a teeny-bopper shoe company. This shared
plight brings even more common ground to the surface.
Three
Reasons to Hate Them Both with Equal Fervor:
1.
The Bandwagoneers.
There always seem to be new artists jumping into the fray
in both punk and blues. Unfortunately, those who rise to
the summit of success are usually the most spunkless and
sterile.
With its penchant for snapping up the acts most likely
to be in a suburban 15-year-old's disc changer at any given
moment, the Warped Tour is a particular offender in this
department. A scan of last year's roster reveals quite a
few bands that now, just 11 months later, represent instant
trivia questions: CIV, Cigar, Sloth, Unwritten Law--where
are you now? Can we send Blink 182, Sevendust and Grinspoon
(all acts infesting this year's Warped Tour) to join you?
The Waterfront fest seems to have a less severe newbie
problem. But given that most fans of "contemporary blues"
prefer their 12 bars of angst in an easy-to-swallow, Claptonized
form, here's betting that there will be at least a few excruciating
sets thrown up for the legions along the river.
2.
Reduce, recycle.
Package shows make it easy on oldster musicians, allowing
dehydrated has-beens to keep their pockets moist with fresh
lucre. These reconstituted "icons"--often a few surviving
originals bolstered by hired guns--are chiefly valued for
their names, not their noise. What have Booker T. &
the MG's done for us lately? Does it matter that three-fourths
of the Vandals weren't in the original lineup (and that
the only remaining member now plays a different instrument)?
As for Suicidal Tendencies--where will the madness end?
3.
The Lost-in-Time Factor (a. k. a. the Fool-idelphia Experiment).
Many fans of blues and punk seem to romanticize the lifestyles
that originally produced the music. Too bad white-bread
Portland professionals can't jump in the Way Back Machine
and hitch a ride to the heyday of the Delta blues any more
than their snot-nosed kids can Marty McFly themselves back
to '77 London. But that won't stop Dad from getting all
righteously soulful over a slide-git lick or dissuade Junior
from gussying up in Two-Tone skinhead regalia. Unfortunately.
The
One Good Reason to Be Glad They Both Exist:
They
have their moments.
Sure, both the Warped Tour and the Waterfront Blues Festival
make easy targets for didactic purists (hey, these walls
are made of glass!). But while they both may manifest telltale
signs of genre rigor mortis, they also promise a few valuable
insights into why these bare-bones, angst-ridden forms of
music still have power. When you hear R.L. Burnside growl
about hard times down South or see the no-longer-young Bouncing
Souls bounding around like seventh graders skipping curfew,
you feel something--a spark of life, of inspiration, of
hope. What would these people have done if the blues and
punk had never surfaced? Drowned in despondency, most likely.
So while these two festivals may crassly attempt to pass
off pale Xeroxes as scintillating originals, there are still
a few fierce veterans--or combustible upstarts--who help
keep the spirit alive.
If you can see through the veil of lo-com-denom marketing,
you should be able to glean some true meaning from each
event.
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Willamette Week | originally
published June 30, 1999
|
