Nurse the Hate: Burger Boogaloo

I saw a number of photos this weekend from the Burger Boogaloo.  What a great lineup of bands.  King Khan, the Trashwomen, the Dwarves, Lyres, Real Kids, Thee Oh Sees and the Mummies to name some of the bands I would have been most jacked about.  It reminds me of a West Coast version of the old Sleazefest gigs that Southern Culture used to put together of every band that seemingly made records just for you.  The fact that other people knew who these bands were and were as excited about them playing snowballed.  It brought everyone's game up.  Playing those shows was such a boost to the spirit.  When you play in a weird subculture band like we do, it can be discouraging.  Nobody in the mainstream has any idea of what you are doing and has almost no curiosity to find out.  I’m not sure how people live their lives that way.  Jason Aldean at a corporate shed or Fink of Teengenerate going crazy in a park?  It's no decision.

The Sleazefest was great for a couple of reasons.  First off, every single band was really good.  Everyone was unapologetically doing their own thing.  There was great creativity on display, people doing things just because they are fun.  It is a quality on short supply in these politically correct times.  Secondly was the experience of discovering that more people than just yourself had the same off-kilter taste.  The Burger Boogaloo must be the same thing.  Maybe more so than at any other time I can recall, it can often seem like the band is working in a void.  The internet is a screaming contest where everyone is yelling at once and no one can stop to really listen to anything.  It's so tiring to be pulling the wagon on your own.  To play a festival like that is an amazing discovery that all these little pockets of weirdos out there can mass into something pretty large.  Look around in the crowd and see familiar faces from all over the map.  It’s a family reunion of people that you never knew were connected somehow.

The Cowslingers always had one foot in the garage camp.  We just took parts of everything we liked and used what suited us.  At times that made it confusing as we didn’t slip nicely into a genre, but we didn’t care.  We just did what we liked.  It’s the same thing now with the Whiskey Daredevils.  I am working on finishing the final touches for the packaging of our next release.  The songs on it are tinged with country, straight ahead rock, rockabilly, swamp, and blues.  I don’t know how the hell you classify it, but I like it.  I hope all these little pockets of fun people that went to Burger Boogaloo or events just like it find this new record somehow.  Seeing a big event like that attended by enthusiastic people gives me hope that the Kayne West/Taylor Swift culture hasn’t won the war yet.