Tag: burger records

Birthday Boogaloo: Burger Boogaloo 2019

Nicole Verto July 31, 2019

Words by: Nicole Verto Photos by: Workhorse Studios I’m supposed to be starting this with some glorious cliche about how Burger Boogaloo is “bigger and better” as it celebrates ten years of weird punk fun but I can’t because it wasn’t those things. related content: The De-Evolution of Burger Boogaloo First of all, it was held in the same space but a smaller portion of it. This year, the festival downgraded from two stages to one and closed off access to the amphitheater. Rumors swirled on rays of sunlight. “It’s probably because of low attendance. That’s the only reason it could be, right?” “I heard it was so they wouldn’t displace folks living here.” Whatever the reason, there was one stage and some people did not love that. I am not one of those people — the stage was positioned such that you could hear and see from everywhere. This enabled groups to hunker down in one spot all day and it made the festival seem more intimate — from more conversations to strangers to feeling like you were always close to the music. Basically, for their tenth birthday, the folks behind Boogaloo chose to quietly pull the crowd in

Take This: Win 2 VIP Tickets to Burger Boogaloo W/The Jesus and Mary Chain & Amyl and the Sniffers

Janky Smooth Central Command May 20, 2019

Celebrating its 10th year as one of the most unique and fun weekends in California, Burger Boogaloo is returning to Mosswood Park in Oakland for two nights of the best punk rock you love. From post punk to garage, Boogaloo 2019 has it all with John Waters as the eternal icing on the cake. Can you even imagine how he’ll introduce Amyl and the Sniffers? I’d make my way to Nor-Cal just to hear that. related content: Burger Boogaloo 2017: The Ballad Of John And Iggy Boogaloo 2019 has many firsts and many traditions upheld as far as the lineup is concerned. The Jesus and Mary Chain will be headlining two nights in a row and with a catalogue as extensive as theirs, I’m sure they will be career defining sets, even at this stage of their career. Any mega-fan of the classic, British post punk icons has no excuse not to attend. Some of Boogaloo’s favorites are returning to perform as well such as No Bunny and Shannon and the Clams, Boogaloo just wouldn’t have the same feel as it always does without those two acts ripping through sets and unhinging Oakland into that familiar reckless punk rock zone. related

The De-Evolution of Burger Boogaloo

Rob Shepyer July 5, 2018

Just like in my last Boogaloo review, Janky Smooth apologizes for the opinions herein and advise that anyone below the age of 18 or with an aversion to graphic language, obscenity, or humor, should not continue reading. related content: Burger Boogaloo 2017: The Ballad of John and Iggy Burger Boogaloo 2017 was so good that when we left Mosswood Park last July, we didn’t think 2018’s festival could possibly be better. After all, what band could out-punk Iggy Pop? What sort of headliner could possibly drive the festival further in its evolution? Were they going to bring David Buoy back from the dead? Total Trash productions was clever though, they knew they had to think outside the box if they wanted to make Burger Boogaloo California’s undisputed champion of festivals. So what did they do? They realized that progress doesn’t necessarily have to move forward like we’d expect. No, the answer was De-Evolution. And in the spirit of this movement backward, to the primordial swamp we once infested and called home, what was once the Gone Shrimpin’ stage in 2017, an ode to foot fetishes, was now Toxic Paradise. A mutant stage with tentacles and eyeballs sticking out of the

Take This: Win 2 VIP Tix to Burger Boogaloo w/ Devo, The Damned, The Mummies, and Le Shok

Janky Smooth Central Command March 20, 2018

Burger Boogaloo and Total Trash Productions have achieved the unthinkable, they’ve outdone themselves yet again after having outdone themselves last year with Iggy Pop headlining their Boogaloo. As Northern (and really, all of) California’s premiere garage punk festival, this year’s Boogaloo features none other than Devo, breaking their hiatus, punk rock originators The Damned, The Mummies (the festival’s headliner 2 years ago), and the return of Long Beach electro-punk legends Le Shok. I foresee people flying into the country to attend this festival, so we here at Janky Smooth decided to give you the chance to lighten your financial load by giving away 2 free VIP tickets to the festival. Oh, and did I mention John Waters will reassume the position of Master of Ceremonies? This festival is worth attending just to hear him introduce every band and to see what themes the festival has made for its stages. Last year’s theme was Gone Shrimpin’, meaning toe sucking. What will this year’s theme be? Getting your red wings? related content: Burger Boogaloo 2017: The Ballad Of John And Iggy There’s no other festival quite like Boogaloo, as an Angelino what happens after the festival as you terrorize San Francisco with your

Burger Boogaloo 2017: The Ballad of John and Iggy

Rob Shepyer July 10, 2017

This Burger Boogaloo 2017 review is X-rated, so if your kids are reading it, Janky Smooth apologizes if they develop a foot fetish. Like your baby sister’s pretty pink switchblade, the marriage of legendary filmmaker and filth peddler, John Waters and atomic boy, Iggy Pop, cut the Bay Area deep till it bled out all the outlaws, shrimp pimps, gamblers, hipsters, hippies, hyphys, crust punks, trust-fund punks, rockabillies, rockabetties, and freakazoids to gather at Burger Boogaloo 2017 at Mosswood Park. Two whole beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on an acid infused bun. The trip up the 5 freeway was long and arduous but upon entering the burger’s third eye vortex, the camaraderie of San Francis-folk mellowed me out as straight as a noodle. That’s just how us So-Cal kids see Bay Area babies: hella mellow. This year, the festival’s theme was Shrimpin’ which is fiend’s slang for toe sucking. Four giant legs kicking up from the stage to the sky were inflated behind the Gone Shrimpin’ stage, which became the alter of our collective foot worship. I’m talking about high heels and low-life, sweaty soles and pedicured puppies. related content: Burger Boogaloo 2016- Bringing Rare Vinyl Back To

Redd Kross & The Side Eyes: A Great Case For Nepotism at The Echo

Janky Smooth Central Command May 24, 2017

It was a packed house last Tuesday night at The Echo, as Redd Kross played the last show of a month long tour in their home base of Los Angeles, CA. They have been traveling the nation on their “Beneath the Valley of the Teen Babes of Monsanto” tour. related content: Redd Kross, Melvins & OFF! Commemorate Teen Babes From Monsanto Before Red Kross took the stage, the audience was treated to the high-energy tunes of local band The Side Eyes. They have been gaining much popularity with their punk sound that is somehow peppy and aggressive, catchy and beefy, all at the same time. They drew their own crowd of enthusiastic fans who were rocking out and showing the band tons of support. The band features lead singer, Astrid McDonald- a beautifully fierce front woman with dynamic vocals and an imposing stage presence. If you have yet to hear them, you’re missing out on something special. After powering through an upbeat set, they ended with “Don’t Talk to Me,” a cover from Astrid’s mother and Go-Go’s bassist, Charlotte Caffey’s OTHER band, the Eyes and the subject of a split single with her dad Jeff McDonald’s band, Redd Kross, released by In The Red

Take This:Two VIP Tix to Burger Boogaloo w/ Iggy Pop, Buzzcocks

Janky Smooth Central Command April 1, 2017

Being the pre-eminent garage rock festival requires that someone transform the lo-fi sound worshipped by it’s lovers into a minimal visual aesthetic, at least by today’s music festival standards. A modern minimalism that doesn’t lose that fact that the ruffles and confetti of a senior prom or the tiki torches and teen taboo of a backyard party were over the top, once upon a time. After 7 years, Burger Boogaloo and it’s home in Mosswood Park have achieved that “just right” aesthetic that hits all the right notes in the lineup and it looks like it will do so again on July 1st and 2nd, 2017 in Oakland, California. What Burger Boogaloo does so well is that it achieves a familiarity and comfort without being too redundant. With John Waters becoming a welcome permanent fixture as master of ceremonies, two consecutive years of The Mummies were just what we needed. Omitting them from this year’s lineup was just as necessary as booking them twice and adding the likes of Iggy Pop, Buzzcocks and X achieved an exponentially wider net of legacy being cast without losing that trashiness that a couple bigger name acts could bring when patrons wearing indian head dresses

White Fang & No Parents Escape from L.A.

Janky Smooth Sessions: Beers, Buds & GnarBurgers w/ White Fang, No Parents

Danny Baraz October 14, 2016

White Fang, No Parents and the Birth Defects have embarked on a tour for one of the first lineups of L.A. based bands that has made sense to me in quite a long time. We’ve seen No Parents play with Mystic Braves, we’ve seen The Birth Defects play with Fuzz and while I like all of those bands, having them play together is like having Donald Trump and Martin Luther King follow each other in speaking engagement. My fellow Janksters, Paige, Travis and I went to kick it with the bands at GnarBurger as they made their pre tour preparations that included beef, beer and buds as they got ready to hit a nationwide tour in a caravan of sin and friendship. That brings us to the latest installment of Janky Smooth Sessions with White Fang, No Parents, The Birth Defects and friends hanging at GnarBurger before they shoved off on their Escape From L.A. tour. Sunday 16 October 2016 White Fang The Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL, US BUY TICKETS TRACK EVENT I’M GOING Monday 17 October 2016 White Fangwith No Parents The Majestic Café, Detroit, MI, US BUY TICKETS TRACK EVENT I’M GOING Tuesday 18 October 2016 White Fangwith No Parents The Basement, Columbus, OH,

Cosmonauts Interview with Paige Vreede of Janky Smooth

Janky Smooth Sessions: Cosmonauts Interview By The Lake

Paige Vreede October 5, 2016

It’s 4pm on a sunny Saturday afternoon and I’m running amuck at Echo Park Lake trying to track down Cosmonauts, Derek Cowart and Alex Ahmadi after all of our phones died at the exact same time. I saw the boys at a gig the night before so I figured if they were anywhere nearly as hung over as I was, I could probably find them lounging in the shadiest part of the park. Past zooming Pokémon goers on skateboards, beyond the tempting smell of corn on the grill, towards a playground full of screaming children, I spotted two dudes in space-age, senior citizen style sunglasses amongst a group of a dozen 20-something year olds enjoying a picnic. We eventually find a quiet spot of our own to sit down and enjoy a couple of beers and homemade brownies, (no, unfortunately they were not the “special” kind) and discuss weird fan experiences, their recent album release of A-OK! and why having accordions for legs is better than having a ten inch belly-button. Their fourth full-length album A-OK! was released in August, via Burger Records, and it is everything the Cosmonauts have always promised their fans. Its shoe-gaze, its psychedelic, its

Death Valley Girls at The Echo Record Release Party

Death Valley Girls Glow In The Dark At The Echo Record Release Party

Danny Baraz July 6, 2016

There is something different emerging from the Los Angeles music scene. It’s not nice. Or sweet. Or candy-bar-bubble gum. Or a drunken teenage blackout filled with mild regret. And I like it. Death Valley Girls aren’t like your typical Burger Records band. You can’t simply attach the punk, psychedelic or garage rock label to them and be done with it. They aren’t your standard, soft balled psych rockers seeking some type of enlightenment through their experiments with hallucinogens. They are what happens when the acid turns and the faces around you become deranged and unfriendly; surrounded by deeply troubled individuals slipping further and further away from society with each hit of blotter. Death Valley Girls’ second album, “Glow in the Dark” summons the seventies more than it summons the summer of love. When America was in the midst of an identity crisis, amidst events such as the Nixon resignation, Patty Hearst and Jonestown. And even though the Manson murders occurred in 1969, the events surrounding the high profile slayings in the Hollywood Hills reverberated across the forthcoming decade and dispelled the image of hippies as harmless, peace loving druggies. Trust no one. But singer/songwriter Bonnie Bloomgarden insists that, “you can

The Mummies at Burger Boogaloo by Joanna Bautista

Burger Boogaloo 2016: Bringing Rare Vinyl Back to Life For 7 Years

Danny Baraz July 1, 2016

There are many metaphors I could employ to describe what it was like to attend the annual Burger Boogaloo festival in Oakland for my first time, in the year of our Lord, 2016. It’s like going through your mom and dad’s moth-balled wardrobe from 1968 and realizing that you just hit the mother load of cyclical fashion. It was always there. It was just up to you to open that garage, suspend that disbelief that your parents were actually cool at some point in their lives and try it on to see if it fits. It seems that no matter how far technology advances or what new platforms are developed in Silicon Valley to deliver music and culture to the masses, new generations will always dust off old vinyl and make it new again. To transform themselves into a time that seems simpler than their own and to long for the good old days that they didn’t even exist in. Afterall, it is an American teenagers right of passage to be completely disenchanted with the here and now and it is the aging hipsters prerogative to revisit the haunts of their youth. All of these sentiments converge, year after year,

Bleached Bring Catchy Hooks, 818 Pride & Friends to Teragram Ballroom

Danny Baraz May 8, 2016

There are certain taboos in modern day, independent music journalism which you don’t breach, for any reason, lest you be nailed to the cross of insignificance. You don’t speak ill of Ty Segall, John Dwyer or Mac DeMarco, never say anything negative of Low End Theory and never play cards with a guy who’s named after a city. Then again, if classic day journalists from Rolling Stone were able to trash Black Sabbath and Zeppelin and continue to increase their circulation despite saying Jimmy Page was “a very limited producer and a writer of weak, unimaginative songs.” I have very little fear of being judged for “getting it wrong” and most of the time, I’m willing to go out on a limb if I believe in what I’m saying. I think I was the only person who reviewed Tame Impala’s “Currents” that didn’t put Kevin Parker’s musical pee pee in my mouth. And now that I’ve had more time with that album, I stand by every statement, even though 3 or 4 songs on that album have grown on me since the time I reviewed it. That being said, saying that I’ve always thought the band Bleached and their live