Partaking in the pop narcotic
Third annual SummerShine Pop Festival has nothing to prove
By David Cotner 06/25/2009
Sandwiched between the ambitious swagger of the California Music Fest — the July 4 weekend festival festooning downtown Ventura with celebrations of art, surf and Unwritten Law — and the Vans Warped Tour, the SummerShine Festival offers a simple promise: jangly 4/4 pop.
That it enters its junior year of life is almost as shocking as the venue in which it’s to be carried: Megasound Studios, a place previously devoted to slightly heavier manifestations of the pop narcotic, i.e., metal. Strange bedfellows are the implicit order to — and secret history of — the DIY (Do It Yourself) grassroots ethic; and upstart Port Hueneme label YAY! Records has dug deep in the dirt to pull up these hidden tubers of musical satisfaction.
Hotly tipped for the festival are headliners St. Christopher, the ’80s York veterans of a scene that evolved out of cassette culture, flexi-discs and Xeroxed fanzines dating from the dreaded year of 1984. Also on the bill: multiple YAY! Records offerings alongside DJs Michael Stock (from future legends Part Time Punks, the prime movers responsible for bringing interest in acts like seminal British post-punk bands A Certain Ratio and Section 25 to Echo Park), Tita, B-Rok (of Hungry Beat!, the downtown Los Angeles northern soul salon at La Cita) and El Buki — and, just added at press time, Lavender Diamond guitarist Devon Williams plus breathy, spazzy Angeleno pop ciphers Champagne Socialists. Exhale.
The “jangle” in “jangle pop” doesn’t refer to an alienating effect on the nerves, but rather, its main influences number the perfect pop of the Byrds and the Smiths. A British journalist once asserted that pop bands are influenced either by the Byrds or the Velvet Underground (with British iconoclast music-maker Momus falling under neither category). Consequently, as the Velvet Underground-influenced bands get more press than do the ones influenced by the Byrds, jangly pop tends to be a rather underrated proposition in the modern music landscape, save for its 1980s rebirth via the short-lived Paisley Underground scene in Los Angeles.
As for the modern Ventura County landscape, Sea Lions purportedly works as one of the burgeoning “Sound of Young Oxnard” bands (don’t tell Dr. Know), celebrating its recent 7-inch, and hawking a blend of ’60s soul, organ grinding and finger-picking guitar style. The Tartans, Los Angeles veterans of pop festivals far and wide, also shill for their presence on YAY!, as well as the male-female harmonies of Nick Hessler and Kristina Maples in Catwalk. From Los Angeles by way of Oregon, come The Parson Red Heads, folk merchants of driveway moments par excellence for KCRW, NPR and beyond, make a surprising appearance at the festival as does Bridgess, the solo project of guitarist Ben Knight of L.A. surf-pop outfit the Tyde who previously appeared in Ventura at the old Buffalo Records and the now-defunct The Lab in Ventura.
Listening to Bridgess, you wouldn’t think that surf had spawned anything but a pleasant afternoon in this case, so shimmering and halcyon it all is as it floats gently out the speakers and past MySpace signifiers like “shoegaze” and “jam rock,” signifiers so surprising to see that you keep listening to see if those particular disciplines are present in the music that follows.
One of the happier aspects of this scene is that, despite the catch-all concepts of “jangle” and “pop,” all involved in it have their own sound; they pursue their own themes — mostly emotional, but not overly demonstrably so — and generally exist as their own persons. Pop was always just a way for like-minded individuals to find themselves, not necessarily to prove themselves; and while this may imply that there are in fact no goals to this strain of pop music, the wider aim is one of self-knowledge. It’s a kind of awareness that only the pursuit of one’s art can secure, a star followed that sometimes dims, sometimes shimmers, but remains obstinately, stubbornly steadfast as a beat that is here for a time and then, just as surely, is not there.
SummerShine Pop Festival happens Saturday, June 27, 2 p.m. at Megasound Studios, 3203 E. Main St.,Ventura. 805 644 MEGA, www.myspace.com/summershinefest08. All ages, $10.
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