By: Lucas Fink By: Lucas Fink | July 5, 2022 | People, Lifestyle, Parties, Culture, Music, Party, Events, Women of Influence Latest, Entertainment,
Few things scream “Oakland, California” with more gusto than a punk music festival held the weekend preceding July 4th at which all the headliners decried the current political status quo in beautifully bombastic fashion. This past 4th of July weekend, Oakland’s punk-rock music festival Mosswood Meltdown - formerly known as Burger Boogaloo - finally returned to the city after its pandemic hiatus.
See also: A Crash-Course On The San Francisco Bay's Punk Culture And Its Most Prominent Bands
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Held at Oakland’s Mosswood Park, this year’s festival touted a formidable lineup - especially for those steeped in punk culture (particularly the 1980s-1990s counterculture). Helming the reveries and acting as a host was legendary filmmaker John Waters who, along with Roger Corman, were the undisputed kings of unpretentious pop cinema and low-budget gross-out flicks throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
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Waters, one of the lords of transgressive cinema, was then a perfectly apropos host for a festival centered around equally transgressive music. Genre-bending pioneer of country-punk Shannon Shaw and famed Detroit-based garage rock outfit Dirtbombs kicked the festival off on Saturday. Shaw spared no expense for her set, which utilized a synth player, trumpet player, and even an electric violinist.
See also: Rage Against the Machine at These Best Underground Bay Area Punk Venues
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The Dirtbombs and Shaw whet the eager crowd’s appetite for Saturday’s featured attraction: Kim Gordon. Gordon - a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and lyricist - has achieved the status of myth in the annals of punk history, having been a crucial component (some would argue the essential component) of Sonic Youth, one of the most influential alternative rock bands to emerge from the 80s and 90s.
Though countless fans rushed to the stage at sundown and shoved like sardines up against the crash barricade to ensure a prime moshing position, the first half of Gordon’s set was a bit more sedate, carrying on Sonic Youth’s spirit of experimentalism and live improvisation. A true disciple of the shoegaze sound, she made liberal use of distortion pedals and unconventional guitar-playing strategies (with one of her guitarists sliding a screwdriver up and down the strings).
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The latter portion of her set, though, boosted the energy significantly, thoroughly enlivening the crowd and inspiring multiple brave souls to crowd-surf. Gordon infused the entirety of her set with indignant political fervor, lambasting the modern socio-economic order and its utterly galling backrolling of rights and liberties to which women have had access for over 50 years. Fireworks went off at a nearby July 4th celebration as Gordon’s set came to a close. The irony couldn’t have been more poetic.
Mosswood’s Day 2 boasted a similarly impressive lineup, featuring classic 90s rock artists and promising younger punk acts. San Francisco’s very own Pansy Division prompted many a mosh pit with their queer rock ballads, and The Linda-Lindas - the teenage punk-rockers that went viral with their utterly incredible diatribe “Racist, Sexist Boy” - whipped up the crowd with such ease that one might forget one of their members is 11 years old.
Surrounded by legendary older punk acts, the Linda-Lindas served as a heartening assurance that the genre’s future is indeed very bright.
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The Linda-Lindas were the ideal group to prepare the crowd for Mosswood’s closer, Bikini Kill. The unofficial founders of the riot grrrl sound - known for explosive live performances and unapologetically scathing feminist lyricism - Olympia, Washington’s Bikini Kill took the scene by storm in the 90s, broke up, got together again for a reunion tour, and halted the tour due to the pandemic.
Sunday’s performance, then, was a long time in the making and, thankfully, the all-women group delivered starving fans a once-in-a-lifetime performance, affording everyone in attendance an opportunity for group catharsis.
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As Rome burns around us with ever-increasing speed and ferocity, it can be easy to lapse into resigned pessimism. Mosswood Meltdown, though, offered all those disillusioned by the status quo a space to dance, mosh, and scream at the world, and functioned as a reminder that if we have enough angry people to dance and make music with, we have enough angry people to change the world with.
See also: Awaken Your Inner Music Geek At SF's Best Alternative Independent Record Stores
Photography by: Big Bag Films/Pexels