On a road trip to San Francisco with some friends, Arthur
Magazine’s founder Jay Babcock began writing down the names
of the best performing musicians who were the least well-known. It
was just a few days after Arthurfest, the magazine’s first
music festival. Without excessive corporate sponsorship, the
festival managed to attract thousands of fans and an inimitable
gathering of avant-garde artists both in and outside of the
mainstream, ranging from Cat Power to Vetiver to
Sleater-Kinney.
Soon afterward, the casual brainstorming between friends became
the set list for Arthurball, the follow-up festival which is to
take place in various Echo Park venues on Feb. 25 and 26.
Rather than bringing together artists who have garnered at least
a modest celebrity status, as was the case with Arthurfest, the
ball showcases bands who reflect the organic and natural sentiment
of Arthur Magazine, but who are still flying under the radar.
“There are a lot of us who are feeling extremely alienated
from the mainstream politics, culture (and) religion,”
Babcock said.
“In a way we feel like the festival can be a short-term
sanctuary space … that operates with different assumptions or a
different set of parameters about what is considered acceptable, or
where there is just more freedom.”
The bands featured at Arthurball embody a wide range of musical
genres, from acoustic-electronic French musician Colleen, to the
Bay Area mantra metal group OM.
Babcock hopes the eclectic blend of artists will give musicians
just outside the limelight a chance to introduce themselves to
different audiences.
“All the cults combine and get to check out other stuff
that they otherwise might never come across because they’re
just so into their niche,” Babcock said. “But then they
will often discover that the same values they enjoy in the music
they customarily are interested in is present in other forms of
music, too. It’s fun to be in that type of audience where
people are discovering and opening themselves up to new
things.”
The perfect representation of the festival’s diversity can
be seen in the unlikely pairing of harpist Joanna Newsom with the
hard-rocking Pearls & Brass, a young trio with a sound too big
for its small hometown of Nazareth, Pa.
“(Multi-genre festivals) are probably our favorite shows
to play,” said Joel Winter, the bassist for Pearls &
Brass. “When you get put on a bill with a bunch of heavy rock
bands, everything sounds pretty much the same by the end of the
night. Trying to change it up makes people pay closer
attention.”
The band’s energetic fusion of blues melodies with
elaborate classic rock guitar riffs and a punk-rock attitude has
attracted fans of all ages as it tours across the country, which
adds to the multigenerational appeal of Arthurball.
“We definitely get a mixed audience wherever we play.
Kids’ dads have even come out to watch us. It’s
bizarre, but it’s cool,” Winter said.
The festival’s location at Echo Park provides for five
different spaces for shows. The two-day event will be filled with
an inexhaustible number of opportunities for those in attendance,
including poetry readings, panel discussions with comics and
authors, and the screening of three musical documentaries.
The films were all made by the pioneers from Sublime Frequencies
and trace the musical endeavors being pursued outside the
mainstream, a subject which seldom receives much attention. The
filmmakers will also be in attendance to answer questions and
further narrate their footage.
“(Sublime Frequencies has) a reputation for ground-level
documentation of vital and vibrant music going on outside the first
world,” Babcock said. “This isn’t a collection of
kitsch. But it’s also not dry documentary-making. It’s
guerilla filmmaking by people with taste who aren’t afraid to
wander off the approved paths through Thailand or Morocco.
We’re going to see extraordinary stuff, and it’s
important to see that because it reminds us of the small world in
which we live.”
While the ethos of Arthur Magazine and the festivals it sponsors
may work to promote cultural awareness and reject the more
commercial aspect of the music industry, its primary focus is much
simpler, but equally important: bringing the artist and the fan
together to experience music with one another. So far, Arthur has
been able to accomplish this feat.
Third-year English student Scott McCarron attended Arthurfest in
September mainly to see The Olivia Tremor Control perform. By the
time the festival was over, he had not only seen the band’s
show, hugged Devendra Banhart, and watched Yoko Ono perform with
Sean Lennon from a few feet away, but also spent the entire day
walking around the grounds with the members of OTC and talking
about, what else? Music.
“I love festivals because music is making an impact in
bringing that many people together,” McCarron said.
“And that’s the environment in which music has been and
can be most powerful.”