ALL TOMORROWS PARTIES cancels Drive Like Jehu-curated festival in Manchester

In news that (unfortunately) shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the tumultuous nature of recent All Tomorrow's Parties festivals, next weekend's Drive Like Jehu-curated ATP festival has been cancelled. Tickets (at press time) are hilariously still on sale here. 

From the Facebook page of Swami John Reis himself: 

After 4 months of a long and bumpy ride, the wheels finally fell off the wagon and crashed and burned. A search party was sent to Monkey Island to scan the wreckage for survivors and only found Barry Hogan/ATP collecting bits of luggage and body parts for his next show “ATP 3.0 The 90’s Deconstructed”. Tickets on sale now at Gofundme.com
It’s a uniquely cruel hoax to appeal to Drive Like Jehu’s ego and ask us to create a program based on personally inviting the bands and musicians that have inspired us and changed the way we hear music and then subject them and their supporters to this. We really wanted this show to happen more than anything. It had all the makings of a legendary weekend. We were so committed to seeing this through that we remained hopeful (blind in retrospect) amongst the ritualistic turmoil and crisis and trusted their solutions that would ensure that the show would definitely go on and the attendees would be treated fairly and the bands would be respected and celebrated. 
I realize people want answers. I have found out about most of the information involving the problems that plagued this from the start the same way as everyone else. And although the internet is hardly a reliable source for fact, this whole mess has the extra sting of this not being an isolated incident. 
48 hours ago word started to trickle in that Barry hadn’t honored his agreement with many of the bands. These bands were not canceling, but rather did not have the promised means to attend. It was only then revealed that ATP was unable to honor the agreement with the ticket holders that purchased accommodation. ATP is out of funds. ATP offered to postpone the event until November as a solution. No thanks. We looked into trying to salvage the weekend by putting on our own free show in Manchester. But at this late date, no suitable venue is available. 
This affects the Swami John Reis & The Blind Shake shows that were to follow ATP as well. We are unable to come over at this time. 
To all the bands and ticket holders, i couldn’t feel more terrible that the fest isn’t happening. We were willing to come over under any circumstance even if it meant we would not get paid, just to see this show happen. I wish i could give you more answers at this point and advice what to do next.

It's a pretty massive bummer for any festival (minus maybe Coachella) to fall apart, but when Drive Like Jehu has pulled all of the talent together, it's a gigantic wasted opportunity. 

Meanwhile, Swami John Reis and Metz just released a collaborative 7" for Record Store Day. The first sample of the madness that lies within is here, and will hopefully brighten your day just a touch. 

 

The Royal Pick: It's Gonna Blow! (San Diego's Music Underground: 1986-1996)

In the magical pre-internet days of 1992, discovering new music wasn't as ridiculously easy as it is in 2015. For a kid growing up in the suburbs of Kansas City, my musical expansions were generally found in pilgrimages to record stores, stocking up on fanzines and whatever used CD's my grubby 16 year old mitts could afford (which, in all fairness, was basically the same as downloading a record these days, but whatever). The gaps therein were filled by having Monday evening watch parties with friends, poring over VHS recordings of last night's 120 Minutes (MTV's version of Pitchfork), occasional lapses in judgment that lead to joining BMG/Columbia House for the 10th time, and picking up copies of SPIN at the grocery store.

The back pages of SPIN were a veritable Etsy shop of alternative culture, and an ad for "Rock Video Monthly" sucked me in. It was a subscription service that delivered a VHS tape chock full of alt-rock videos to your door every month. As a voracious devourer of the alt-rock culture at that time, it didn't take a lot to sell me. Long story short, a tape came one month, full of forgettable cutout bin also-rans, but one video captured the entirety of my brainspace. Rocket From The Crypt's "Sturdy Wrists" was a firecracker in my television set, exploding with air-raid horns and a relentless staccato riff that went supernova during the chorus. 

That video set me off on a Rocket From The Crypt binge that I'll write a doctoral thesis about some other time, but it also served as a wormhole into the world of the San Diego music scene. Singer John Reis is arguably one of the figureheads of the scene, and his involvement in Drive Like Jehu and Pitchfork spiderwebbed into the discovery of a network of new bands that I wasn't seeing covered by the zines that I was reading. Before I knew it, my stereo was stacked with records by No Knife, Heavy Vegetable, Three Mile Pilot, Tanner, Inch, Creedle, and enough Cargo Records samplers to fortify a small jungle hut.

I've always been amazed at the quality and diversity of sounds that came out of San Diego during this time, and thankfully, director Bill Perrine felt the same way. In his new documentary (It's Gonna Blow!), Perrine does his best to fit the tangled web of San Diego bands from the mid-80's to the mid-90's into a tidy 90 minute time period, and does a fantastic job at balancing live footage with stories from the music makers themselves, never focusing too much on one success or failure. While so much has happened in the nearly 20 years since the film's cutoff, it's crucial to go back and revisit this particular time period. From an industry standpoint, it's about appreciating the wheels that were in motion that brought punk and alternative rock into suburban households.  All of this music was happening so close to Los Angeles, the music epicenter of America, and most of these things barely registered so much as a blip on that radar. Something about that was truly magical to my 16 year old brain, and is still befuddling to my 38 year old brain. From an artistic standpoint, this was a musical golden era for a lot of cities, but the growth and body of work that came out of San Diego during this period is fascinating (and a bit overwhelming). It's Gonna Blow does a great job touching on the significant players in this period, explaining why these bands were important while giving live snippets that inspire further inspection of the bands and their respective works. Bring a notebook and be prepared for a few hours of YouTube wormholes soon after viewing.

It's Gonna Blow! San Diego's Music Underground 1986-1996 is showing at the Grand Illusion in Seattle on January 24th and 25th. Saturday night's showing includes a live performance from San Diego band Physics. Tickets are available here.