Concert Review: D-Pollen Music Festival

The D*Pollen Festival has come and gone, and all I seem have left to show for it is a cool-looking media pass and the lingering aftereffects of a case of pneumonia. Consensus seems to be that D*Pollen went off without too many hitches this year, with the only major problem being the frequent weekend storm squalls that rolled through and pretty much terrorized whoever happened to be playing at the Buzz Stage Tent behind the Tangent Gallery.

Unfortunately for the crew at MCR, D*Pollen weekend was plagued with scheduling conflicts as well, with the staff running off in eight different directions at times to make necessary appearances at going-away-party-bar-crawls and other unfortunately pre-planned social events. Still, from what the crew did manage to experience, it seems that the organizers of D*Pollen can write this year’s event up as a success.

Friday night was a bit of a wash for me, as I wound up not even leaving for the event until after 8:30 p.m. courtesy of a combination of unexpected overtime and the massive amounts of flooding that took place downriver after that afternoon’s barrage of thunderstorms. Thankfully, the rain hadn’t kicked back in when I got to D*Pollen, allowing me to catch half of Whiskey Tenor’s set out on the Buzz Stage. As low-key as ever, the mostly acoustic act sounded crisp, especially on the few numbers that featured guest trombone and trumpet players. Whiskey Tenor’s brand of ‘drinking music’ drove me to grab a few drinks, and the MCR crew headed inside to the Hastings Stage to unwind from our respective workdays while checking out the international beauty pageant put on by the Hell’s Belles Burlesque troup (which came complete with Vegas-style comedienne dropping cheesy schtick that had me giggling pretty hard for kitsch value).

I managed to check out a bit of The Dollfaces set on the Tangent Gallery stage as well, and it seems that based on the band’s EP and live performance, I’m stuck sharing a similar sentiment as many others I’ve spoken to about the band: The Dollfaces sound decent enough live, and the band plays its influences well. It’ll be interesting to see if, over time, these kids can mesh the effects of their influences together to create a more individualized sound.

MCR’s highlight of the night, yet again, seemed to be catching Back in Spades rip shit up on the Hastings Stage (once again, feel free to direct all hate mail to derfsucks at hotmail dot com). Stephen Palmer led the band through a few new tracks, and Jackson Smith even popped up to a microphone to take a lead vocal on the band’s last song of the set. Still, the band’s high point was another killer performance of “Five Years Ahead of My Time,” which brought as much punk ferocity as it did guitar solo madness.

I also caught most of Whirlwind Heat’s set, which was oddly subdued. I was expecting madness and balls-out insanity, but things never really came around to that. Most of the band’s set was new material (including a massive 10 minute, cut-and-paste-the-rhythms number that absolutely slayed), and while everything the band played was tight, the set was a lot more low-key than anyone at D*Pollen was expecting.

By that point, most of the MCR crew had all wandered off in separate directions, which left me to check out The Elevations for the first time. This seemed like a nice choice as a closing act for Friday night, with a lot of the crowd clapping along and shimmying about to the band’s Motown-esque stylings. The male/female vocal dynamic came off well live, with the horn sections permeating each song just enough to add a soulful touch without completely overtaking the rhythms.

From there, a majority of the crew reconvened at MCR headquarters for a healthy after-party, and within 12 hours, everyone was back on our feet in Detroit, as slaves to the rock-and-roll once again.

Unfortunately, the MCR crew doesn’t handle after-party combinations of MGD and Jack Daniels very well, so most of us wrangled into D*Pollen somewhere around 3:00 Saturday afternoon with hangovers firmly in hand. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the band I was enjoying on the Tangent Stage was The Grande Nationals, since I’d gotten really mixed reviews about the band from various sources. The band had a little rock rumble going (albeit a pretty radio-friendly, barroom atmosphere type one), and things were actually pretty intense for the few songs I caught.

I wandered over to the Hastings Stage to find the fury of shredding and hair that was The Motorpsychos, who chugged out song after song of capable metal despite the fact that the guitar solos kept getting lost in the band’s mix. Ryan and I also made our way out to the Buzz Stage to catch what was probably MCR’s favorite ‘foreign’ act of D*Pollen, Seattle punk-rockers The Briefs. The band looked like something from the 80’s (especially the frontman, who wore a skintight, pink-and-black leopard print tank top with skintight white jeans), but they sounded more like The Ramones and Green Day, sporting catchy riffs and snotty-sounding three-part vocals. Much spazzing about on stage occurred as well, and the audience reaction to The Briefs was about as positive as D*Pollen got. From there, I took in a few minutes of Broadzilla, which reminded me of Motorhead, (and that’s never a bad thing to me).

Unfortunately, the next few hours of the day involved bounding about the Downriver area, meaning I missed a few acts that I desperately wanted to see (including Bedford Drive and my recent favorite act, A Thousand Times Yes). The action did pick up later on in the night (though tragically late, admittedly), courtesy of the Causing a Scene troupe’s hilarious momentarily male-only revue set to the Electric Six’s “Gay Bar.”After the troupe’s big ‘techno-Ballroom Blitz’ closer, most of the MCR posse bounced to the front of the Tangent Gallery stage to check out The Ruiners. Frontman Rick Ruiner must
’ve been feeling especially ‘hot’ that night, as he wound up spraying himself with lighter fluid and setting his crotch and legs on fire multiple times (which, if nothing else, gave the MCR crew a massive butane high). This was my first time checking out the Ruiners, and I was surprised at that fact that so many of the songs actually had simmering hooks to them. In all seriousness, though, I can’t say that I took a lot away from the music, because I was pretty lucid from both the butane fumes and the fact that just feet in front of me, a man had just set his own crotch on fire … repeatedly …

At another point that night, I made the same mistake in stepping directly in front of the Hastings Stage for Bad Wizard’s set – within two minutes, I was wearing two beers and two bottled waters, and I’d had to duck out of the way of a flying guitar neck a few times, as well. Not even four songs into things, the two guitarists were wailing a patented, oft-repeated riff-and-solo combination that fell somewhere between AC/DC and Nebula while the singer brazenly threw himself around the stage with one hand wrapped around a bottle of gin, and the other shoved down his pants … let’s face it, not many things are more rock and roll than thrashing around on stage with your cock in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other. I figured I’d had my quota of rock for the evening – and then I laid my eyes and ears on one of the greatest, most inexplicable things I’ve ever experienced: Lee Marvin Computer Arm. When this band was on stage, there was yelling and hollering and thrashing and jumping and riffing and TRUMPETING, and the combination of all of it was just dumbfounding, stupefying and terrifying … and, well, yeah, it was impressive as hell, too. Lee Marvin Computer Arm kicked my ass hard.

Even with Detroit’s beloved Sights still to hit the stage at some point, the members of the MCR crew went their separate ways and called it a night at some point after 1:30 a.m., and visions of Lee Marvin Computer Arm danced in my head throughout my entire drive home.

Sunday was very much the slow day of D*Pollen, as most of the MCR crew was moving at about half speed after the previous two nights of beers and musical mayhem, amongst other activities. I was lucky enough that the Hastings Stage was about an hour behind schedule-wise, which meant that I got to the gig just in time to catch the entire set from the Bill Davis Rhythm Machine, who spooled out some soulful, guitar solo-laden blues for D*Pollen’s early crowd. Pop-rockers Spy Radio played at the same time on the Tangent Gallery Stage next door, with one of the songs I caught sounding a bit like Paul Westerberg solo material – a (pleasant) surprise, since the rest of the set seemed much more straightforward than that song.

I saw about half of a really good set from The Yarbles outside at the Buzz Dome Tent. The young band seemed to have a decent little instrumental prog-rock thing going on, with a lot of extended pieces and ‘duals’ going on between the bands guitarist and organ player … That is, of course, until The Yarbles’ lead singer showed up late during what would amount to be the last song of the bands set. Whoops. Singer or not, though, the band’s set was impressive. The Hastings Stage was also home to Haf Life’s set, which musically, fell somewhere in-between White Zombie and Linkin Park. I don’t think anyone in Haf Life stood still for longer than two seconds, as the bassist climbed on top of speakers, the singer skipped around, the guitarist walked all around on the stage, and the band’s random girl (eye candy?) followed the singer around, shining a small floodlight on him as he paraded around.

Jawbone put on a really solid one-man-band blues performance with his cymbal, harmonica and guitar, which lent some credibility to John Peel’s recent obsession with his material. Ten Words for Snow played in the tent and put on what was easily the best show I’ve seen the band play, coming off a lot harder and more direct than the last few sets I’ve taken in. While a majority of the material played came from the band’s Spit for Electronics EP, the set sounded more vibrant and polished than the EP would suggest.

Despite everything else going on, though, Sunday at D*Pollen belonged to The Salt Miners, who pretty much schooled every other band that played over the weekend with a tight, energetic set of bluegrass. Tim Pak made a few light hearted jokes about the band being unable to perform sober and dry (as the band had played an alcohol-fueled Friday night set on the tent stage in the midst of a huge thunderstorm swell), but no apologies were necessary, as The Salt Miners were tight in every sense of the word.

The Twilight Babies were fortunate enough to get off a tent stage set before more storms rumbled through, and I was glad they did. The band’s set-up (DJ, female vocalist, guitarist) and overall sound faintly reminded me of Portishead, though the Twilight Babies’ material isn’t quite as slow or trance-oriented. Still, the vocals were velvety smooth, leaving most folks that wandered out to the tent smiling by the end of the set (including me). Back inside, the few songs I caught from unconventional three-piece El Boxeo (violin, bass and drums) were interesting, though the strongest track I heard was the shortest (and the only one to feature vocals, which came courtesy of violinist Lisa Norton). Norton doubled as a percussionist as well, as her tap shoes were mic’ed and used as an instrument a few times, as well.

I only managed to hear a few songs of This is Adelaide’s set, but what I heard was loud and intense in a Quicksand sort of way, which made for big smiles on the faces of me and my buddies Ed and Ryan (of Bedford Drive). Somewhere around that point, all of the stages were shut down to better accommodate a Planet Ant performance of the mini-rock opera, Manny in the Mirror, which was surprisingly capable (though, as someone with absolutely no knowledge of theater, far be it from me to even attempt to judge or criticize any sort of organized theatrical performance).

From there, things went downhill, however. Another round of thunderstorms had rolled through, and after Manny in the Mirror, all three stages were devoid of musical acts for a while. The downtime proved to be too much for me, as I’d already begun my coughing-induced descent into an upcoming week of pneumonia, brought on by a nasty combination of crappy weather and rock-star lifestyling. It was at that point that the D*Pollen festival officially came to a close for the MCR crew, and while we admittedly weren’t able to take advantage of the entire weekend event, there’s still no denying that this year’s festival was a lot of fun, to say the least. -Mr. Gary