Holy Bunches-of-Random-Moments: A Review of Magma Fest’s Busy Opening Weekend

This year's Magma Festival, Hollow Earth Radio’s city-wide music fundraiser, was in full bloom on opening weekend (March 5-6). Vegan cookies and cupcakes were sold, Kenneth, the fest's wiry emcee charmingly stumbled through his raffling off of CDs and art, and audiences that packed both venues witnessed an array of homegrown talent, ranging from the sweetly shambolic to the completely chaotic.

The festival bookers were able to entice some high-level talent, including a solo set of pouty folk pop by Thao Nguyen (usually backed by her band the Get Down Stay Down), as well as a reunion of sloppy noise garage rockers The Thrown Ups (featuring two members of Mudhoney), a band that hasn't played a show together in almost twenty years.

The fest's opening night at The Vera Project held up the venue's proud all-ages philosophy, bringing Deception Pass, a Seattle band whose members look to be barely into their teens. They played a cute and wobbly version of rock, including a surreal set-closer that mashed together the verses from the Black-Eyed Peas’ hit "I Gotta Feeling" with the chorus from Radiohead's "Creep." You wanted to cheer them on in hopes that it will encourage them to keep practicing.

In a gracious move, the people who cheered the loudest happened to be the other bands on the bill: the all-white, female-led indie hip-hop trio Grrr, whose set ended with them pogoing in the crowd while singing a chorus inspired by Stevie Nicks' "Edge Of Seventeen," and Alaskas, an all noise-and-rhythm band fronted by a bespectacled gent in a skin-tight, blue bodysuit.

The biggest cheers of the night, though, were meted out for Thao Nguyen. She managed to pull in the 21+ crowd from nearby bars, as well as friend and fellow singer/songwriter Mirah, who traded off songs with Nguyen throughout the set. The whole set, though, felt like an odd end to an otherwise fine evening, disjointed with the radical shifts in mood between each singer's material, as well as the rather off-putting flailing stage moves by Nguyen — which would have been welcome at the festival's second evening.

Held in the basement performance space, The Mine, the Saturday lineup swung between paying homage to the Seattle music scene of the '80s and '90s and celebrating folks who are building on or willfully destroying that legacy.

On one end of the spectrum stood the Flipper-style blues punk of Human Skab (a group led by a gent who released a tape of his musical ramblings at the age of 10) and the giddy garage pop of former Some Velvet Sidewalk front man Al Larsen. On the other, you found the nine-piece pure noise combo My Printer Broke, (comma and band member attacking a piece of chain link fence with a saxophone both included) and the short punk-pop goofs played by the duo known simply as Butts.

"...band member attacking a piece of chain link fence with a saxophone included."

Wearing outfits made of garbage bags and bubble wrap, the Thrown Ups shoved out a sound that found some weird middle ground between psych rock and twee, while front man Ed Fotheringham traded off wailing into the microphone and spraying shaving cream on the audience. It was a crazed, cathartic affair that ended with Fotheringham being dragged around the room on his back, while members of the other bands were encouraged to thrash away at the Thrown Ups' instruments during their epic closing number.

As jam-packed with activity as these first two days were, it’s amazing that they managed to squeeze in a moment of real beauty as well. Tom Price, former guitarist for The U Men and Gas Huffer, was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2003 and now walks with a cane, forced to move slowly through the motions of setting up for a performance. And while his set of fuzzy jazz rock was filled with choppy moments, the mere sight of him still wrenching a whole lot of noise and emotion out of his guitar was inspiring and thrilling.

written by Robert Ham

See the Magma Festival 2010 schedule at hollowearthradio.org.

Readers interested in Hollow Earth Radio might also enjoy our profile of musician Levi Fuller. Read it now in the City Arts archives.