I suppose that venues up in the Rocky Mountains are no strangers to live music. There's an annual New Age music fest and flowing spiritual happening up there. But that one takes place, I believe, on privately owned land. Music fests on publicly owned land are subject to county approval. One such festival, Riot Fest, made its debut last year on county land. This year, the county denied the fest a permit. The county didn't come out and say that Satan has kids into punk rock, thinking that Hell will be fun, but those of us who saw this movie '(Punk Rock vs. Municipal Government') some thirty years ago are familiar with culture's relationship with music which Quincy referred to as "a killer of hope." I never thought that I would be thanking Quincy for influencing a generation of local government saps, but as a direct result of a certain vote by a certain county board, Riot Fest was moved to just up the street from where I live. Thank you Satan for a jaunt back to my youth.
I didn't make it Friday or Saturday. Saturday morning, I was on a bus home from work with three drunks, one of whom mentioned the "heavy metal fest. Slayer played last night." According the schedule, they were on right after the Flaming Lips. I flashed back to a show at the VFW in Norman with the Lips and local heavy metal band Oliver Magnum. On Friday you could have watched Slayer, or on another stage at the same time, you could have seen Primus. All played earlier in the afternoon. Most of the bands I've never heard of. On Saturday, Descendents and Social Distortion played. The Cure closed the the evening with a two and a half hour set. Sunday afternoon was in the 60s, and an overcast sky meant that there was no burning sun. Out on Federal Boulevard, tricked out diesel engine pickup trucks were drag racing each other. They were cherried out dude, it was sweet.
I wasn't planning on going, but I saw that Bob Mould was in the line up. I decided to at least see if single day tickets were available. I saw Sugar when they came through town in the 1990s. As far as I can remember, this is the first time I've stepped foot in the parking lot of Sports Authority Field. Never been to a game or seen the psychic who was here last autumn, didn't see the president accept the nomination here in 2008. The place is kind of a modern self-indulgent trip. As you walk toward the steps to the box office, there are big sculptures of individual pieces of football equipment. And the name of each municipal area county has its name on a pole. The parking lot was host to four stages, carnival rides, merchandise, miniature golf, food vendors, and a line of Porta Potties. There were attempts to make it feel rural. Hay bales were everywhere to sit on, as well as a couple of tractors. I found my way past a long banner with an illustration of a corn field. I found the May Farms Stage just as Bob came bounding out. He plugged in his turquoise Fender, and once again the air was filled with the psycho-sonic vibrations.
His CD Last Dog and Pony Show comes with an extra disc. It has an interview in which he has decided to give up the heavy rock performance stuff. "That's a young man's game," he describes it. In his grey beard and David Letterman spectacles, Bob is no longer a young man. But he is far, far from the end of his game. With his band, including a drummer who looks a little like Grant Hart, he blasted through songs both old and new. For the next short 45 minutes he hopped and bopped all over the stage as the lot was swept with his beloved layers of electric harmonies. He describes his sound as "almost like a Gregorian chant." All three band members, rather than tired (Riot Fest is in just a handful of cities), appeared to be having a great time as they slowly won over the crowd. And as he won me over once again. A song from Sugar, Changes, as well as I Apologize, Celebrated Summer, Something I Learned Today (which I last heard live precisely 30 years ago). These are some old, old songs. (Some of us there are just as old.) Where does the time go? But they didn't sound old. Because neither did Bob. The sound was like a light, like a force. I remember a radio broadcast from Hank Hannagraph, the Bible Answer Man, talking about some church service. Was a rock band there? The congregation was "as if subject to a nuclear fire. People tore at their clothes as if on fire." I didn't see anyone tear their clothes off, but hands went into the air.
Bob has never been a rock guitar god, either in any conventional kind of sense or popular mold (no pun intended). It's been written of him that "he can play rings around" any performer whose hype was far more widespread than his own. 'Twas the nature of punk's relationship with the establishment to court no establishment record labels. If I can borrow a line from a Saturday Night Live sketch, I want to throw up in my mouth a little bit when I think of popular music from the 1980s. But Husker Du was inching toward pop music, their lyrical story telling compared with that of The Beatles, and eventually signed with Warner Brothers. And Bob would go on to play with Pete Townsend. Forming Sugar in the 1990s, he played during a decade when bands which he had inspired found commercial success. During the previous decade I lost touch with Mr. Mould.
Now, here I was standing in the midst of the spinning sound. They closed the show with Chartered Trips, at the end of which Bob took off his guitar strap and began spinning his guitar in front of the amplifier stacks and throwing it around. A roadie sneaked out to pick up the strap and Bob almost knocked him down. Watching over the entire affair were two two fifty foot images of Denver Broncos players attached to the top of the stadium. I didn't stay for Violent Femmes or anyone else. I didn't get the T-shirt which reads "Stay Positive and Hail Satan." I had what I came for.
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