Derek Lindsay certainly knows how to put on a show. For one, he’s
the full-time frontman for two Oakland-based bands — semidefunct
garage-rock outfit the Bleu Canadians, and dork-rockers Bunny Numpkins
and the Kill Blow Up Reaction. He’s also made a name for himself
locally by putting on several offbeat music festivals — all held
at the Stork Club, and all featuring a lineup of local bands playing to
some bizarre theme: capes, for example, or fitness, or fans (both
electric and human). Even offstage, he’s a showman, with a roaming wit
and an unbridled enthusiasm for music, for the East Bay independent
scene, and for anything absurd and over-the-top.Take Saturday’s
Festival of the Drums, which promises to be an all-day celebration of
all three. The inspiration came a few months ago, when Bunny Numpkins
had to play a gig while drummer Miles Steuding was out of town. Lindsay
and his bandmates put an open call out to their musician friends for a
replacement percussionist, and ended up with seven. The result, Lindsay
said, was “fucked up and brilliant and spastic and chaotic —
every bit of sound was filled.” The gig was so much fun for band and
audience alike that Lindsay decided he wanted to recreate that energy
on a larger scale. He set a date with the Stork Club and lined up eight
venerable local bands — ranging from Bitesize’s power pop to
Static Mind-Fi’s experimental rock — each of which were told to
add as many extra drummers as they could get their hands on.
“It’s taking bands that don’t normally necessarily have these
intense, badass drummers and adding them,” Lindsay explained. Paul Pot,
who sings and plays guitar for the Happy Clams, will be playing with
two drummers and a three-piece percussion ensemble, and Julia Serrano
of Bitesize said that her band has lined up several finger-cymbalists
and a beatboxer.
According to Lindsay, the effect will be an all-out, earsplitting
celebration of the often-overlooked drummer — “less Sproul Plaza
drum jam and more like like a freight train, car accident, or volcano
erupting.” To that end, he’s racheted up the insanity by inviting a
cast of larger-than-life acts, including a drum corps, spoon players,
tabla drummers, San Francisco’s Bucketman and a drum circle from a
Christian commune in Humboldt County, as well as famed — and dead
— percussionists Keith Moon, Jon Bonham, and Buddy Rich (“I
figure if you don’t put them on the list, they’ll never come,” he
deadpanned).
Lindsay said that this and other such festivals are, essentially, a
way to experiment musically and explore the weird — “a forum to
express the latest strange idea.” But beneath the happy-go-lucky
appreciation for the sheerly absurd is a more earnest purpose: Lindsay
sees these festivals as something of a community event for many of the
East Bay’s independent rock groups. Miles Steuding — the drummer
whose vacation started it all — said that Lindsay’s festivals,
for all their wackiness, provide a space for musicians to come
together: “It’s a community thing, in a weird way. Everyone is in
everyone else’s band. I think of it as sort of like jazz was in the
Forties.”
Both Steuding and Lindsay credit the Stork Club for allowing this
kind of collaboration and experimentation to happen. “They’re not
always going after the largest bands, they’re not like Bottom of they
Hill. And because of that they’re willing to tap into this local
creativity.”
Lindsay is expecting friends and collaborators of the various bands
— as well as “leg bouncers, nervous tappers, and hyperactive
woodshop dropouts” — and with many audience members who are
musicians in their own right, the vibe will be less like a typical show
and more like a theme party with a really good playlist. Past events
have had audience members drunkenly Jazzercising at the Festival of
Fitness, or wearing dollar-store shower curtains around their necks at
the Festival of Capes. Serrano said that Bitesize is anticipating much
crowd participation. “We’re looking forward to having some of our
friends and fans join us onstage — there will be that blurred
line between where the band ends and the audience begins,” she
said.
Lindsay acknowledged that “there’s a fine line between a hippie jam
and a worthwhile show,” but said, “you know, part of me just wants to
embrace the hippie jam.” He added that even he doesn’t quite know what
shape the show will take. “I don’t even know what to expect. You never
know what’s going to happen, but it’s always ridiculous and beautiful
and takes on a life of its own.”
