Post by Matt Kivel

The F Yeah fest wrapped this past Sunday with an intimate performance by Baltimore's Dan Deacon at Hanger 1018 in downtown LA. Attendance was surprisingly sparse due to a last minute location change (the gig was originally planned for the 6th street warehouse -- an equally obscure locale), but the small crowd was anything but diminutive in its unyielding display of affection and enthusiasm for Deacon's neck-snapping electronica.

100 to 200 hundred kids piled into the hanger's medium-sized front room and formed an ebullient circle around Deacon, who sang and spazzed ferociously. The group's collective body heat transformed the once airy space into a dense, oven-like enclosure. Intrepid fans unveiled a large quilt, which continually rose and receded above the bobbing audience who -- despite the effervescent sweat and body odor -- danced beneath its stitched patterns with reckless abandon. Deacon capped his 45 minute set with the epic sing-along "Silence Like The Wind Overtakes Me."

All in all, this F Yeah Fest was a wonderful celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant youth culture. It rallied independent music lovers and benefited from a truly positive, cynicism-free ethos that all but equaled the transcendent spirit of Arthurfest in 2005.   

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Recently reunited post rock/mathrock/whatever pioneers Polvo (above) graced the Echoplex stage Sunday night in a show presented by the F Yeah Fest. Playing a long (nearly two hour) set of their challenging, extremely tight, mostly instrumental music made for a long -- but rewarding -- night. The quartet sounded as good as they did in their prime -- a decade ago -- and they had a hard time leaving the stage ("No one has to work tomorrow, right?" joked frontman Ash Bowie). A new album is rumored to be in the works, and if the crowd's enthusiasm Sunday was any indication, it will be warmly received.

Openers Trans Am are no slouches themselves when it comes to post rock noise, although their songs have more of an electronic influence than Polvo's guitar-driven rock. Vocals were minimal, and largely synnthesized, allowing the singer/keyboard player to chow down on some chips during their set.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Katherine Stanhope

Many came by car, some by bike and others on foot, but no matter what form of transportation used, droves of teenagers and twenty-somethings congregated at Echo Park Lake Sunday afternoon for the L.A. Scavenger Hunt -- the main event for the second day of the F Yeah Fest.

The scavenger hunt spanned the entire city of Los Angeles, kicking off at 2:30 p.m. at Echo Park Lake and ending in downtown at around 7:00 P.M. on Santa Fe Avenue. Tired participants were treated to not one, but two celebratory concerts at the hunt's end location -- acts included Dan Deacon, Strike Anywhere and Paint it Black. There was a wide cross-section of teams competing in the scavenger hunt, from the Sex Panthers -- who decorated their own vibrant t-shirts -- to the aptly-titled Underage Controversy, who came dressed in full matching ensembles (Red and yellow leotards to be exact). Other groups included the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the M&Ms -- I get the feeling that these guys were unaffiliated with their supposed corporate sponsors.

The list itself included L.A. Scavenger Hunt classics such as having a team member kiss a senior citizen and more extreme choices, like finding anything Bobby Brown-related, photographing an entire team playing air guitar in a McDonalds, getting a permanent LA tattoo, shaving an eyebrow and obtaining a stack of canned corn. Despite all of the participants' sacrifices, the F Yeah Fest made these tasks and the excuse to spend an entire afternoon dressed in costume in August, worth it. The winning team will receive $500 cash, a Gibson guitar, tickets to see Hot Chip & Mogwai, 10 CDs a month for a year and much more. Winners will be announced Sept. 14.

Post by Sammy JC

With two hundred or so young adults sitting on the floor and staircase of the Jensen Recreation Center, the vibe at F Yeah's Comedy Show was akin to that of a college student group throwing a social mixer in the union commissary. There was even a lunch lady maintaining a snack bar, dispensing chips and soda to famished concertgoers.

The show featured Bob Odenkirk, Josh Fadem, Matt Dwyer, Jonah Ray with host Andy Daly. For a festival that revolved around edgy and alternative music, the comedy portion was considerably less adventurous. With group conga lines, hapless dick jokes and George Bush riffs, the audience remained surprisingly polite while rolling their eyes at the goofy social satire and hackneyed shtick.

Post by Matt Kivel

It may be strange to acknowledge, but New York's Animal Collective might just be the most influential indie group of the last 3 years. Ever since "Sung Tongs" came out, bands just keep cropping up with mixing boards and samples pushed heavily to the forefront. Deeply layered reverb, ethereal harmonies and tribal percussion are all components of this now commonly used aesthetic -- displayed in the sounds of artists like El Guincho, Health and now Brooklyn's High Places.

High Places is a duo comprised of vocalist Mary Pearson and percussionist Rob Barber. The Echoplex stage seemed like a bit of a stretch for the band who have only recently begun to enjoy some notoriety in the online music press. As a result, the crowd was thin and a bit bewildered by Pearson's breathy refrains and Barber's wildly undulating electronic beats.

There are shades of shoegaze, Steve Reich and Tropicalia in High Places' sound, but their live performance definitely left room for improvement. The vocals and looped samples coagulated to form this sort of vague, impenetrable wall of sound that made it difficult to digest the complexity and catchiness of some of the tunes. It's evident that they are very much a studio project at the moment, but their set hinted at a rich and rewarding album lying beneath the oblique sonic constructions.

Post by Matt Kivel

The Glass Candy set was a tale of two shows. If you were up close and crammed into the throbbing stageside pit, the dance beats and tightly-wound synth refrains were all too much to deal with -- boogie fever overtook the entire crowd. Friends of mine came back sweating and sucking for air, claiming they had "seen god" and danced to his sweet funk. The other experience was my own -- casually observing beside the well-lit merch table, jotting down notes and generally feeling bored with what I gleaned to be an average set of mid-tempo disco.

But I give my friends the benefit of the doubt on this one. I should have been down there, sweating alongside them, fixing my eyes on the nodding heads and Ginger Green's emerald tube top. I'm off my high horse -- the ecstatic looks that concertgoers gave one another after the set were enough. Glass Candy rocked the f&%ing house.

Post by Sammy JC

Inside the spacious Echoplex, fresh-faced highschoolers, tattooed punks, neon t-shirted hipsters and local Latinos all mixed and mingled together. Like a visual census of the alternative youth of East Hollywood, there was a rare sense of community and ease as the stagehands set up the gear for hardcore punk legends Negative Approach.

Before the band launched into their jackhammer sonic assault, frontman John Brannon remarked, "It only took us 27 years to get here," noting this as the Detroit band's first West Coast appearance. Even with such abrasive music, the room was large enough that fans at the stage could crowd surf and mosh while those in the back continued to socialize and drink as if immune to the mayhem up ahead. F Yeah Fest founder Sean Carlson himself even stood by the lip of the stage to help the flailing stream of crowd surfers off and on. The songs were short, Brannon struck menacing poses and contorted his face and the kids ate it up. Though abrasive and outwardly inaccessible, Negative Approach is such a powerful band with so much presence that they handily won over people who simply had never seen a hardcore performance before. They devirginized the casual observers and Brannon was just mesmerizing.

Check out our interview with Negative Approach's John Brannon.

(Photo by Olivia Hermaratanatorn)

Post by Sammy JC

Abe Vigoda played a set of highly inventive songs with rollicking rhythms, echo- drenched guitars, dub-thick bass lines and yelping dual vocals that put their sound somewhere between Sonic Youth, Talking Heads and calypso music. However, the jam-packed audience never let their hipster-selves get too lost in the danceable grooves and instead, remained polite and patient even when one of the guitar players took a few minutes to change a broken string.

Coupled with the sweet smell of bar-b-q wafting in from the back of the club, the band socialized with friends between numbers and kept the mood loose and carefree. Fixtures of the LA scene, much of the F Yeah Fest would play out as a celebration of Abe Vigoda and other Smell-based bands like No Age and Mika Miko whose recent success seems to have taken the whole community by surprise.

Post by Matt Kivel

Alright, we get it. Country is cool. Late nights barnstorming, plowing through bottles of Jack Daniels, lamenting broken love affairs, firing a 12-gauge -- it's all well and good, but where is the new angle? Where is the next level of artistic depth that once seemed inevitable when bands like Uncle Tupelo and The Jayhawks roamed the midwest? David Vandervelde is cut from that same cloth of talented country songsmiths as Tweedy, Louris and Farrar, but he really doesn't stray from the tried and true formula of honky-tonk rave-ups and weep into your Pabst ballads that seems to define nearly every band under the alt-country tag.

His trio proved to be a nice change of pace for the Echo stage, whose audience was ready for a reprieve after an altercation with the police and a brutal series of hardcore acts. Bass, drums and guitar, simply played with Vandervelde's axe floating high above the mix. They dutifully channelled the hard-rocking power of Southern rock overlords Lynard Skynard and were met with a modest reception from the weary crowd of punks and hardcore addicts.

There is no doubt that David Vandervelde is good at what he does -- especially the ultra morose ballads, which are quite reminiscent of Secretly Canadian labelmate Jason Molina's work. His high wail cuts clear and warbly, much like Neil Young's more somber vocal inflections ("Old Man" and "Mellow My Mind"). But he's just not adding anything new or exciting to the tested songwriting formulas.

Post by David Lewis

Most bands interact with the crowd to form a "we're all together" bond. Some bands stage-dive and let the crowd hold them up, passing them around the venue on a sea of fans' hands. Monotonix tops them all, by playing while crowd surfing. At their late-night Echo performance, the Israeli trio skipped playing on the stage (too pedestrian), opting instead to perform with their instruments set up in the middle of the crowd. It made for difficult viewing, but an electrifying performance.

Before long, singer Ami Shalev was being passed over the heads of the packed crowd, singing all the while. Likewise, guitarist Yonatan Gat was raised up high in the air by a groups of fans, while hammering out sloppy arena-style solos. The coup de grace came when various audience members hoisted seated drummer Haggai Fershtman up high, along with multiple pieces of his drumkit (hi-hat, snare drum). He then played more than just a few bars while seemingly floating in thin air. The music itself, though somewhat of a moot point, was non-stop garage rock, chock full of Zeppelinish riffs.

Best of all was the fact that they pulled off all of these maneuvers with out cordless equipment. Meaning that there was still a length of cord, originating from the amp on stage, snaking through the audience even after Gat had been passed right out the exit. They then proceeded to play outside the venue for the brief remainder of their set.

Photos by Bryce Frees.

Post by Sammy JC

How can music so violent inspire such an odd sense of joyful camaraderie between band and audience? This was the juxtaposition posed by Trash Talk's thrashing hardcore set.

The entire front floor area was cleared out for a young male bonding ritual of tackling and collective screaming. Mirroring the celebration often reserved for college football national championships, twenty or more boys soon rushed onto the stage, bouncing together in a massive group huddle. The band's long-maned lead-screecher even had his mic pulled away by an overzealous fan, but nonetheless, continued to roam the stage -- shouting with a poisoned expression on his face. Chaos ensued and security guards attempted to hurl and elbow a sense of order into the crowd to no avail. The kids won.

Post by Sammy JC

Even while the daylight shown brightly through the Echo's doors, Paint It Black kept the mood dark and foreboding. They played a set of brutal hardcore anthems inspired by Black Flag, complete with their own shirtless and muscular lead screamer.

At one point, an audience member climbed onstage and put the frontman in a headlock before quickly diving off the stage again into the slam dancing audience below. Nonetheless, it was all in good fun and much more the musical equivalent of the tongue in cheek WWE than the rancourous Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Post by Andrew Barker

Considering the band is comprised of only two people, it's simply astounding how much noise No Age is capable of generating. Waves of noise, looped and layered over each other, bubbling over with low hypnotic patterns and building to epic catharses, all the while never dipping below the red. And yet you don't even notice just how loud they are until you step out into the street afterward and notice the painful ringing in your ears, so perfectly controlled and oddly soothing is their deeply original, brilliantly crafted brand of beautiful chaos.

Delivering the headlining set of Saturday's F Yeah Festival, the L.A. duo justified the substantial attention they've been receiving of late, making for a perfect closer to a day filled with excitement, energy and experimentation.

Whereas the band's recordings can often hew too closely to the same formula (a gentle, syncopated instrumental suite followed by a bone-rattling blast of blissed-out noise pop, or vice-versa), here they let the songs stretch, drag and bleed into one another as needed, reinventing a number of them entirely. Guitarist Randy Randall climbed the amps and covered every square foot of the stage like the bastard son of Kevin Shields and Angus Young, while drummer/singer Dean Spunt proved an engaging, watchable frontman, despite being seated for most of the performance.

It was also a perfectly structured show, beginning on a loose, improvisatory note, then slowly ratcheting up the energy to the mid-set one-two punch of "Brain Burners" and "Eraser" (the latter of which would be a top 10 hit in a slightly skewed parallel universe), cooling down a bit to the dreamy "Ripped Knees," then ending on an explosive, feedback drenched cover of the Misfits' "Night of the Living Dead" that likely left anyone within 10 feet of the speakers with permanent hearing damage.

For all the obvious attention that No Age put into the instrumental side of their music, Spunt's vocals can often seem an afterthought, and are frequently buried so far down in the live mix that they might as well be -- hopefully this is an area the band will continue to fine tune and develop. As it is, No Age still have more potential than any new band in recent memory.

Photo by Bryce Frees.

Check out the Set List's video interview with No Age's Randy Randall.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

Brooklyn alterna-dance duo Matt and Kim were on some serious happy drugs Saturday night, with keyboard player/singer Matt frequently jumping up from his seat and cutting himself off mid-song, too eager to get to the next one, and perpetually smiling drummer Kim bobbing her head with a maniacal intensity. The crowd responded in kind, becoming an ebullient, throbbing mass, even prompting this reporter to attempt his first crowd surf since a Descendents concert in 1996 (semi-successfully).

Photo by Bryce Frees.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Toronto hardcore iconoclasts Fucked Up (a name somewhat appropriate for this particular festival) have been building a significant buzz over the last few years due to their reputedly raucous live shows and their willingness to experiment on record (unexpected instrumentation, pop sounds, epic-length songs, guest vocalists). Raucous their F yeah set was, but it was short on experimentation and stuck rigidly to traditional, but relentlessly entertaining, hardcore punk.

The sweaty crowd was packed in tight and it was clear from the outset that they came to fuck things up: Many audience members started moshing a split-second before the band even began, anticipating a large, savage pit. Fucked Up frontman, a 300-pound dude named Damian Abraham, was intimidating but surprisingly charming, funny and self-deprecating. He spent half of his time interacting with the crowd, offering audience members the mic and stage-diving in equal measure. Likewise, the band seemed to have a strong sense of humor often missing from the hardcore scene, even playing a few bars of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Having three guitars allowed the sextet to create an endless stream of speedy, distorted crunch, but in the spacious Echoplex, the specific riffs melted away, leaving a deafening wall of white noise.

They're obviously informed by the early days of hardcore (including Negative Approach, who played immediately after them), but Fucked Up push the envelope musically and are significantly more populist and accessible than some of their peers. The F Yeah Fest in general is the same way: Look to the early days of DIY punk, but mix in new elements and invite everybody to contribute in some way.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

Playing in the early evening at the Echo, Bay Area duo Two Gallants' blend of vintage folk melodies, blues riffs and sea shanties should have been a welcome respite from the steady hardcore that dominated the afternoon. They certainly exhibited good taste in the styles they chose to emulate, and it's encouraging to see a roots band dig back further into the blues/folk vault than the simple Mississippi Delta/Woody Guthrie diet that sustains most retro-minded rockers.

But Two Gallants just simply didn't swing, despite a style that demands it. Perhaps it was the strange lack of chemistry between the two men (a drummer and guitarist/singer), or their sour-faced lack of enthusiasm performing, or the fact that their singer sounds far more like Geddy Lee than Leadbelly, but there was something uncomfortably amiss about the whole performance.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by David Lewis

Vancouver's Ladyhawk* suffered one of the day's few major technical glitches. As a result, they took to the stage about 15 minutes late, but vocalist Duffy Driediger passed the time by riffing on Canada, U.S. vs. Canadian money (someone in the crowd gave him a Canadian $5 bill), and, hilariously, the awkwardness that follows when a fellow male compliments his well-groomed beard (it was pretty handsome, to be honest). He later kept the comedy vibe going by jokingly yelling "Yeah Ladyhawk! Worst band ever!" between songs.

Decked out in vintage tees (including the Grateful Dead and Elvis) and vintage sneakers, Ladyhawk is also most comfortable drawing their music from the past. Echoes of Neil Young creep into their largely late '80s-early '90s-inspired (think Dinosaur Jr., Replacements, even Built to Spill) arsenal of rootsy, guitar-driven indie rock. At the 3/4-full Echo they got jammy in a welcomed, My Morning Jacket kind of way, but their final song (for which the drummer and guitarist swapped instruments) was jammy in a bad way. They also played the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," which was itself rather sedated.

*Not to be confused with buzzy New Zealand electro-poppers Ladyhawke (like the Matthew Broderick film), who will be gracing the Echo's stage in October.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

With a name that inspires second-looks and suspicions of pre-pubescent speech impediments, Best Fwends are pranksters with a simple agenda -- to play loud music recklessly without pretense. A swelling crowd crammed into the undersized Annex venue two storefronts down from the Echo to dance and thrash to a rapid set of homespun karaoke freak-outs. The duo, comprised of Austin-based performers Dustin and Anthony pumped-fists and sang their hearts out to a series of ipod backing tracks, which ran the gamut from dance-floor friendly electronica to barroom, Pogues-style punk.

It was one of the more popular shows hosted at the surreal, linoleum-lined Annex venue and the group's extreme DIY aesthetic seemed to resonate with the F Yeah faithful on a visceral level. It's music that doesn't wait for the corroded wheels of bureaucracy to turn, completely obliterating the pedestal we so often place our musical heroes upon.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Matt Kivel

The first day of the F Yeah Fest in Echo Park proudly displayed a veritable all star team of bands from Los Angeles' vibrant counterculture. Hipsters and teenagers decked out in florescent t-shirts and wide-rimmed spectacles engulfed the three block stretch of Sunset Blvd between Glendale Blvd and Echo Park Ave, within which which the Echo and Echoplex venues reside.

Festivities kicked off at around 3: 30 PM and for the most part, early concerts enjoyed moderate attendance. The Mae Shi proved to be an exception. Fans packed into the Echoplex at around 4: 15 PM to catch a glimpse of the band's spastic punk rock -- a refreshingly unpretentious blend of seemingly incongruous musical sub-genres. Some of the songs employ long, avant-garde freak outs and Kraut-flavored improvisations while others borrow unashamedly from early 90s mainstream FM radio with epic hooks and gleeful crowd-bating chants.

Band members propelled themselves across the stage and the lead vocalists screamed and shouted in tandem, echoing each other's refrains and hammering home the choruses. The Mae Shi set was galvanizing in the best of ways, revving up the crowd and uniting concertgoers from different ends of the musical spectrum. Hardcore and punk fans pumped fists with pop-lovers and ska fans alike -- that sort of unity among fans regardless of musical preference continued throughout the night and made for a celebratory concert experience.

Check out the F Yeah Fest photo gallery.

Post by Andrew Barker

For a city so adept at self-promotion, Los Angeles does a remarkably poor job advertising its legacy as  one of the three  major capitals of punk rock. While the closing of New York's punk epicenter CBGB captured nationwide attention, monuments to the West Coast’s underground have usually gone under with a whimper. The much mythologized Masque – home to many an inspired X gig and infected Germs burn – was razed several years ago. Black Flag’s old riot center, the Starwood, is now a strip mall. Downtown dive Al’s Bar, where fledgling Seattle band Nirvana played one of their first head-turning sets, has long since shuttered, as has the storied Jabberjaw CafĂŠ.

But thankfully, there’s a new crop of venues ready to take their place and a new generation of resourceful, ambitious and deeply weird bands eager to make a venue their own. Whereas the city’s past underground scenes were often dirty, druggy, dangerous and covered in graffiti, L.A.'s new crop of D.I.Y. venues are largely collaborative, dry (or else discretely BYOB), vegan …and covered in graffiti.

Compared to the transuranic half-life of so many of the city’s underground venues, Downtown's post-apocalyptic hotspot the Smell boasts a cockroach’s tenacity. Founded in 1998 in North Hollywood, the venue quickly moved to its current space adjacent to Skid Row, where it has been the nucleus of the all-ages LA experimental/punk scene for years. Recently, greater outside attention for the club has come with the success of favorite sons No Age (who used a photo of the club’s street-facing side for the cover of debut “Weirdo Rippersâ€?), as well as regulars Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda and HEALTH.

Accessible only through an easily-overlooked alley entrance, the venue is a circuitous, cramped, underventilated mass of noise, sweat and graffiti. Yet for all the tumult, the Smell is a quasi-anarchist labor of love. Members of resident bands put in time  as volunteers when offstage. There is no booking agent. Keeping the place up to code is a full-time job (it was temporarily shut down in 2003) and the venue’s homeless neighbors occasionally function as bouncers. Somehow -- improbably -- it works.

Smaller, cleaner, and less intimidatingly located, Echo Park’s Pehrspace nonetheless has much in common with the Smell – it’s also nonprofit, all-ages, staffed by volunteers and nearly impossible to find on first attempt. The relatively new space (which also exhibits art and photography) has seen its profile rise recently with onetime habitué Dan Deacon moving on to larger pastures. Smaller still is the nearby Echo Curio, an art gallery/curiosity shop that plays host to crowded concerts with a living room vibe.

Yet for every new space that opens up, it seems just as many shut down. Among the most recent casualties are Zero Point (an offshoot of legendary fallen club Il Corral), which hosted many a sui genris event from the second floor of a warehouse in the industrial wasteland south east of Downtown. The venue closed its doors last month, going out on an appropriately idiosyncratic note: a showcase of experimental noise bands, followed by a book club-style discussion of Slavoj Zizek.

Mika Miko @ The Smell

Dan Deacon @ Pehrspace

F Yeah Fest founder Sean Carlson chats with Variety's Abe Burns about the history of his 5 year old festival, the LA music scene and the importance of DIY venues.

Post by Matt Kivel

A large portion of this week's Set List content has been devoted to a dynamic, locally-run Los Angeles festival called the F Yeah Fest. Each year, the promoters and festival operators generously give their money, time and effort to the maintenance and  independence  of the  F Yeah brand -- often receiving little  to no recompense for their tireless work. So it saddens me to report that those same, well-meaning festival volunteers were attacked outside of Radiohead's Hollywood Bowl performance Monday night.

The harrowing scene is depicted vividly in Randall Roberts' report for the LA Weekly.

Basically, F Yeah Fest  founder Sean Carlson, promoter Phil Hoelting  and  filmmaker Robert Reich were  allegedly stationed outside of the Bowl Monday night, distributing flyers for the weekend festival when they caught site of a grizzly altercation between Bowl security and a concertgoer. Reich -- who was filming the scene  for an upcoming F Yeah documentary -- captured much of the action on camera. What followed was a disturbing chase down Highland Blvd, in which Carlson and Reich were physically attacked by security guards. The tape was confiscated and the young men were left bruised and bewildered -- Carlson's cell phone and keys were stolen.

A sad situation to say the least. If any Set List readers witnessed this event, please leave your account in the comments section.

Interview by Sammy JC

When Negative Approach formed in 1981 the term “hardcoreâ€? hadn’t even been invented. The vernacular was still wanting in terms of adjectives to describe their break-neck style of punk rock, but John Brannon and N/A ended up setting the standard for all of the hardcore bands that were to follow in their wake. The band originally only lasted for three years -- before John went on to start other trailblazing musical projects. Yet even during that brief time, N/A’s impact was firmly cemented with the release of several genre-defining EPs on the Touch and Go label.

With almost 25 years gone by, the legend of Negative Approach has only grown larger with band recently bringing back the noise to festivals across the U.S. and Europe. While Negative Approach never played in California in their original ’80s prime, Keith Morris of Circle Jerks has taken the opportunity to invite the band to unleash their punishing force at The Glass House in Pomona (supporting the Melvins) on Friday and at the F Yeah Fest  in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Q: Negative Approach originally disbanded in 1984. What spurred your recent return and why didn’t you reform with all the original members?

A: Touch and Go contacted me and said, “John, what are the chances of putting Negative Approach back together?â€? Me and Opie, the drummer, have always been in contact even though he lives in New York. We’ve maintained a friendship but kinda lost touch with the other guys.

I was talking to the guitar player and he was like, “I haven’t picked up the guitar in 15 yearsâ€?, so it was kind of a thing that it was too weird to get together with all the original guys. So we got a couple of guys from Easy Action, the other band I’m in now, and along with me and Opie it’s been good.

Q: At the time that N/A originally reunited for the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Party in 2006 was it supposed to be a one-off gig or did you intend to keep it going?

A: It’s like the weirdest thing. We just thought it was gonna be a one-off and that was really cool. But a couple of weeks later Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth calls us up and he’s like, “Hey! Do you guys wanna fly out to England and play with The Stooges and The MC5?â€? We were like, “Oh fuck!â€? and at that point we kinda got it together for that. He was the curator for that All Tomorrow’s Party festival and then while we were over there we picked up another gig in England. And then we’re thinking, “This is great!â€? It was like a dream to play with The Stooges and MC5. We all grew up on that.

Out of that, it’s been kinda sporadic one-off gigs that come up and we just have so much fun doing it. It’s kinda like if this comes up and we’re not doing anything, we’ll just do this. And with that we’ve been to Europe like three times. Before we went to Europe we also did a little East Coast thing. We did Boston. We did Brooklyn. We did Rhode Island. It’s not like we’re trying to cash in or anything but with the whole history of N/A, we never made it out to the West Coast and we obviously never went to Europe. Back in the day, we did a few East Coast tours, but ya gotta think the guys in the band were like 15, 16 -- still in high school. I was the old man at 19. We never really had a chance to do the things that we wanted to. It’s 25 years after the fact but the energy is still there the shows have been great.

We caught up with Randy Randall of LA-based noise rockers No Age and asked him about the band's recent success and their upcoming performance at this year's F Yeah Festival .

Interview by Matt Kivel

Baltimore music maverick Dan Deacon has had quite a year. After toiling in the indie underground for the better part of a decade, his schizophrenic dance music finally caught on with bloggers and casual music fans alike. Deacon went from playing Pehrspace (a tiny 60 person venue in Echo Park) to a packed tent at Coachella  and an equally rabid crowd at the El Rey Theatre in January. Musically restless and defiantly broad in his tastes and artistic endeavors, Dan Deacon will perform this Sunday at an undisclosed location as the headliner, and final act of the F Yeah Festival .

Q: How did you come to be involved with the F Yeah fest?

A: I really like playing LA and I was asked to play the fest last year, but I was already on tour elsewhere -- I think on my first tour of the UK. So here I am this year! What a crazy world!!!!

 Q: What do you think of the LA music scene? Do you see similarities between the artistic community you are a part of in Baltimore and the tightly-knit collection of bands here?

A: LA is just so massive. It’s hard to compare a city like Baltimore with LA, but I think what’s going on in LA is wonderful. They have a great collection of venues and a really strong, supportive community of people. Also, Kyle Mabson  is there, so it’s of course the best. Community is the most important part of anything. The most important aspect of the DIY and independent scene is the community it breeds. To a lot of casual "members of the scene" shows are just a place to meet people and get laid or be "seen" but to people who devote their lives to it, it’s a lot more. It’s about bringing people together and being proud of our city, neighborhood and the people who inhabit it. I know this sounds really dorky or like I'm giving the piece sign while cumming on a tree, but it’s true.

 Q: At your El Rey show earlier this year you chose Health and Abe Vigoda as openers -- bands one wouldn't normally associate with the type of music you make -- do you think pairing disparate bands on a bill makes for a rich and more rewarding concert experience?

A:Weird, I would think my music would be associated with theirs. I guess I'm made out to play dance music in the press, but all of my shows starting up were with noise-based bands. While our immediate sounds are different, I think we are based in a similar root idea. That idea being expanding upon pop music with large levels of dissonance and arhythmic sounds over a steady rhythmic pattern. I do think a diverse bill makes for a better show, but again, I think the only thing making my music so different from Health's is the perception the has been attached to it. Health and I have been playing shows for years. It still blows my mind that people say I write dance music. Sorry, I'm venting. I think your question is valid, but I just disagree with thinking that we are vastly different bands. I think it’s weirder when I play a show with just DJs. Health and I played a show at Perhspace in June of last year before either of us were very well known. It was awesome. That was one of my favorite shows. I guess the main difference is that I play music you can "dance" to. Most of it isn't dance music and I don't think most people dance to it, they move around really fast. I don't know, I can't really see what’s going on when I play. I have the worst seat in the whole room.

Q: You've done a number of shows with Gregg Gillis (aka Girl Talk ), what artistic ground do you two share and what separates you as musicians/producers?

A: I guess we are most similar as performers. We both are very focused around the audience as being the major part of the event. After that our approach to music creation is very different. We use a very different pallet of sounds and instruments. Gregg and I met in Pittsbugh years ago. He was one of the only people who went to my shows there. The night we met we both got completely wasted and went to this bar called Gooski's and almost got the shit beaten out of us on several occasions. Luckily our friend Lord Grunge is a well respected and HUGE man.

Q:    Do you have plans for more video projects in the vein of "Ultimate Reality" ? How did the experience of touring a visually-projected show differ from your standard touring experience?

A: The tour I do in 2009 for “Bromstâ€? [Forthcoming album] will be a large scale production with a full ensemble and a large visual aspect to it. Now that the show has grown in size and I'm playing facilities that have really nice PA systems, lighting rigs and lots of open space it’s fun to experiment with those aspects. It’s still fun to play a house show or a warehouse, but it’s also a lot of fun to have technology at my disposal and also to do performances in large, open rooms. That’s more of the direction I want to go in. Fancy, ritzy-ditsy places, but still push it to the limits.

Q: What were your intentions with "Ultimate Reality?" There was an obvious political message – what was the dynamic between you and Jimmy Joe Roche as collaborators?

A: Jimmy and I are really old friends and have worked together on many projects. As for my intentions with the music, I just wanted to create something that was vast and would fill the space with sound -- very intense but at the same time really droning. The main thing I like to accomplish as a performance artist is to re-contextualize the space with my work. I sound like such a pompous dick-head, but isn’t that what interviews are all about?

Q: What can we expect from you, in terms of album releases and new projects, in the coming year?

A: I'm working on “Bromstâ€? right now, which is my next full length record. I've been working on it for a long time now and I'm going to miss working on it. But I'm really excited about it coming out. I've been drifting away from computer music and electronics as the main instruments I compose for. I've started writing more for small and large mixed ensembles, but in the same sort of pop based, dance-tempo style I'm known for. This album is mainly live instruments with a focus on marimba, glockenspiel, drum kit, and player piano. There is also a much larger lyrical aspect to the record. Most of the songs are about becoming a ghost and my views on the coming dark age of the future -- the ancient past getting older as a positive thing. I guess it’s mainly about cycles and balance. It’s the first album I've worked on like this and I'm really happy with how it’s coming out. The tour of the record is going to be with a full ensemble so that everything will be performed live. I'll still do most of the old stuff solo -- I hate when a solo artist (or duo or whatever) that normally plays solo gets a band and then never goes back. I still really like playing solo but if I did only that forever I would go insane. After “Bromstâ€? I'd like to start working on more site-specific compositions and sound installations. When I tour I want it to be a production that’s worth coming out to see.

(Photo by Uli Loski)

Interview by Sammy JC

This year’s F Yeah Fest, the brainchild of 23-year-old promoter Sean Carlson, takes place in Echo Park and downtown Los Angeles on Saturday and Sunday. The Set List will be running a series of articles to introduce readers to the festival and the bands involved, beginning with musical curator Keith Morris.
As a founding member of hardcore pioneers Black Flag, Keith Morris quickly established himself as a powerful creative force in the nascent ’70s American underground. After leaving that band in 1979, he became the lead singer of the Circle Jerks. With both groups, he helped to propel the musical ideals and aesthetics of punk rock across America, setting the standard for DIY-style music careers -- decades before any band would be labeled as “indie rock.â€?

Q: How did you get involved with Sean Carlson and the F Yeah Fest?
A: I met Sean when he was an intern at Epitaph Records and later he had asked me to do spoken word at one of the earlier Fuck Yeah Fests. We were upstairs at the Echo and there were so many people inside that it would have taken me a half hour to get to the stage so I never made it. So I go outside and there were as many people out front on the sidewalk as there were inside the club.
And I’m really into this because there’s all this chaos. It got to the point that it was difficult to see the bands. It was so thick; it was difficult to breath. And I go looking for Sean and he’s nowhere to be found.
So I walked out to the front, decided to walk over to the bus stop and get a bus ride home. I’m sitting there on the bus bench and Sean is sitting on the bus bench drinking whisky or scotch or some really cheap booze.
I’m like, “Dude, this is your music festival. Why aren’t you over there in charge, chiefin’ out, acting presidential?â€? He was like “Dude, there’s so much anarchy. I just had to throw in the towel.â€? So I said, “Look, give me a ding when you want to do this again, I would like to be part of it.â€? I’ve now been working on it with him for three years and he’s been doing it for about five.

Q: Even though Circle Jerks are not playing at F Yeah Fest this year, you are the festival’s musical curator. What makes the music at F Yeah Fest different from other music festivals, particularly among the many this summer in Southern California?
A: Well, it’s actually really simple. If you look at the roster of bands, it’s not a roster of bands where we gotta charge $40 to $50 for a ticket. We have certain local bands that we want and certain national bands we want. If you notice, none of the bands are anyone who would be on any of these other festivals. But maybe in a couple years if somebody blows up they might be.

Q: In your opinion, what’s the state of the music industry?
A: The scenario is all of these people that work at the record companies became more important than the most important part of what they’re doing, which is finding good music to turn loose on the public. But the fact is no matter what’s happening, people are always going to want to listen to good music. Just like women and cosmetics. Women are always going to want to put on make up, So there ya go …

Q: When you formed the Circle Jerks in 1979, did you ever imagine you’d still be performing 30 years later?
A: Well some of the stuff we wrote back then is just as important now. With the events in the world and a lot of the anger it’s just as important now. Actually, now we have even more things to be angry about.