Recap by Keavin Wiggins

Here is a little background on how the antiFEST came to be plus a recap of some of the drama that went on behind the scenes to make this thing happen. I pretty much present things from my perspective here but Happenin' Harry the promoter put literally over a hundred hours of work into putting this thing together and I just stepped in to help book some of the bands. So most of the behind the scenes details I provide here are simply my experience, maybe we can get Harry to put  together a bit of his experience in getting antiFEST off the ground, then again he might not wish to relive the experience because it turned out to be a lot more work than we imagined.. in the end it all worked out great and the antiFEST came out a success.  - Keavin

What a wild weekend! Hosting a music festival has been a longtime dream of mine. I’ve always wanted to put together a show that showcased some of the best indie and unsigned or underrated groups making music today. The antiFEST came about in much the same way that antiMUSIC and the first site in what would become the iconoFAN Network, rocknworld.com was started; from a moment of inspiration. 

It all started innocently enough. In early November my buddy Hollywood promoter Happenin’ Harry told me he was booking a weekend at this new venue in LA. He asked me if I wanted to help him book one of the nights since I’m a big supporter of local music here in So Cal and know a lot of really good bands. I said sure, I’d give it a shot. 

Within a few days we had a few bands booked and the Sat night I was asked to book looked like it was going to be a great night of music that would showcase some of my favorite, as well as the most promising, bands from the Long Beach and Orange County music scenes. I had no idea what Harry had planned for the Friday night show at the venue. So a couple of days later, I was driving up to Los Angeles to see a show by Wonderlove (one of the bands I wanted to book for the Sat Night show but wasn't able to due to the fact that one of the members was going to be out of town. At least that was what their manager told me.) As I was driving up the 101 the idea came to me, why not get with Harry and see if he wanted to turn these two separate nights at this new venue into a music festival?  We could call it antiFEST because it would tie in with antiMUSIC but also be an independent answer to the large corporate radio festivals we see every holiday season.  I told Harry the idea and he loved it and said, “Why not do it right and do a third day at the Cat Club?”  I readily agreed and we were off! 

I won’t go into all of the background details but a lot more work goes into putting one of these things on than I ever imagined! We soon discovered that holding it on Thanksgiving Weekend wasn’t the best idea since a lot of people were out of town. Nevertheless, we were able to put together an impressive roster of So Cal’s up and coming bands, a couple of these groups were booked literally within a couple of days of the beginning of antiFEST. 

The morning of the first day of antiFEST we received bad news, one of the artist that was scheduled to play that night had to cancel due to a death in the family. So we had to shuffle things around a little to get the festival off to a good start.

The Friday Night show proved the hardest to put together since it was the day after Thanksgiving and a lot of musicians were still out of town and couldn't play. Poor Harry got stuck with trying to pull the rabbit out of the hat by finding great bands to play on Friday while I had a much easier task with lining up the Saturday night roster. 

Because of the holiday and also a few other factors, the Friday night lineup went through some changes as we came down to the wire. Harry originally wanted to book Josh Todd's new band Shotsfired to play the midnight slot. Josh was really interested in doing the show since it was something special and not just another gig, despite his desire to focus on recording and not playing out with the band at this point.  Unfortunately, a couple of members of his band had plans to go out of town for the weekend, so Shotsfired had to decline. 

Harry then set out to try and book Beautiful Creatures but it simply didn't pan out because they already had some bookings in December and they couldn't book another L.A. date so close to the ones they already had on the books. 

Fortunately, Mark Fain came down to the Cat Club to hang out one night a few weeks before the antiFEST and Harry told him about the fest and Mark was all systems go with having his new band play. That band, aptly called Fain, consists of Mark, bassist Jerred Mueller and Troy Patrik Farrel on drums. Mark and Jerred had played together previously in the group Chlorine who released an album through Arista records. This new project picks up where Chlorine left off and we were excited to have them play a prime spot on day one of antiFEST. 

Some of the other behind the scenes drama included a few bands who were tentatively booked for that night but eventually had to back out for various reasons. One of those acts was Danny Blitz who is currently enjoying success with his song "If Ozzy Were My Dad, That Would Rock!" Originally Danny's record company representative was all for having Danny play but it turned out one of his members had an out of town trip planned. (mental note to self, avoid Thanksgiving next year when planning antiFEST).  But Danny pulling out was a blessing in disguise as it opened the door for us to book WAXAPPLES, an amazing band out of Long Beach fronted by Brian Coakley of Cadillac Tramps and Rule 62 fame. 

For the Friday night lineup Harry wanted to mix things up a bit and provide the audience with an eclectic mix of music that showcased various territories of the Rocknworld (ok I couldn't resist). With that in mind he booked the young experimental punk fusion band Bronco tatonka to open the show, plus the rock meets hip-hop powerhouse Bang Bang Bunny. To represent the modern rock mainstream he booked the Santa Monica band GM and to really throw things for a loop he invited his buddy Jimmy Coup (guitarist for Andrew WK) to come down and do a jam with some special guests. 

Jimmy kept things under his hat as far as the special guests went, he just told Harry it would be a cool shocker for the audience. In deed it was a big surprise when Jimmy showed up with The Rembrandts and they blew the crowd away with Thin Lizzy classics!  So as you can see a lot of work went into making the first night a success but Harry stuck to his guns and his vision and it all came off great! 

Day Two:

As I pointed out earlier, this whole thing started out with me agreeing to help put together a lineup for Saturday night for Happenin’ Harry and that evolved into antiFEST. When I setout to originally book this night I had a firm focus in mind, that was to put together a roster consisting of some of the best bands from the Long Beach music scene. Regular readers will recognize some of the bands that made up night two from current and past coverage here on antiMUSIC and the other iconoFAN sites.  Because of the holiday weekend, a couple of the bands I wanted to book were unavailable, so the focus expanded a bit to include L.A. and O.C. bands.  We only had seven slots to work with this night and I had a list of 12 bands that would be ideal. Fortunately, most of the bands at the top of the list were available including twelvehourmary, bird, Solarcade and a band that was on my “A” list for Friday night but already had a gig booked, Motorsoule! 

Since the bands booked on this night are headliners in their own right, it was a bit difficult to figure out the itinerary. Because of this we did away with the traditional headlining/supporting act idea and gave all of the bands equal billing and equal time on each night, so basically we had three nights with multple-headliners. 

We had the core of Sat night booked but were having a bit of trouble filling the 12:00 and 7:00 slots. We initially set out to have Steve Bertrand of The Tories to play the 12:00 slot followed by Donnie Vie but Steve wasn’t able to make it. Then we approached Veruca Salt, who tried to coordinate it but with the Thanksgiving holiday couldn’t. Then we approached Tonic to see if they were into, which they were but unfortunately Emerson had already booked a flight to visit his family, so they were a no go.  It all came full circle when I spoke with Greg from Low-five, a band I had on my A list from the start but thought we couldn’t book because they were in the studio. As luck would have it, they weren’t in the studio that week and were all going to be in town so we were able to sign them up and make an already incredible lineup that much better. 

The 7:00 PM slot still proved a bit of problem. It seemed every band we approached had a member out of town. That’s where Frankie from Boobie Trap helped save the day by putting us in contact with Jason from Devil’s Junction. Like the other band’s booked, Devil’s Junction was deserving of a primetime slot but after filling Jason in on the details of the show, he said the early slot wasn’t a problem, they were just happy to be able to take part. That showed another cool thing about the band’s booked to play the antiFEST, they may know they are good but they don’t carry the ego that could easily spring up from that knowledge!  They all just wanted to come out and rock, and they definitely did that!

Because the antiFEST was intended to be a showcase of some of the best bands on the So Cal scene, I knew we had to get Motorsoule to play it. These guys have been a long time local favorite here at antiMUSIC, in fact they were even Artist of the Month here back in September of 2000. So once we firmed up plans to put this together Dan was one of the first people I called. Once I told him what we were up to he said that Motorsoule would be delighted to take part.  I originally wanted to book them in one of the later slots on Friday night but they were booked to open up for Better Than Ezra on that night but were available to play Saturday night. At that point it looked like Veruca Salt was going to play the 12:00 AM slot, so I offered them the 8:00 slot that had opened up when another band that we originally booked had to pull out. Fate was smiling on us and it all worked out! 

So those bands joined the ones we originally had booked for the standalone night, Bird, twelvehourmary and Solarcade. 

As I point out in the review of Sat night's show, Donnie Vie who closed out the night was one of the artists I knew I had to book since he has been such an inspiration to the development of antiMUSIC and the entire iconoFAN Network.  Donnie was originally booked when it looked like we were going to have Steve Bertrand and the Tories play the 12:00 AM slot. That would have been a perfect match up and it was with that in mind that Donnie decided he wanted to put together a full band for the night, so he could ROCK! I go into more details in the review, but let's just say things didn't go as planned with Donnie's set. Fortunately, at the last minute, Greg from Low-five was more than happy to jump feet first into the fire and jam with Donnie and Troy from Fain. Without so much as a rehearsal, they decided to give the crowd a fun set of Beatles covers and despite the setbacks everything worked out in the end. 

Day Three: 

I really can't give too many "Behind the Scenes" details for Day Three. Harry had that one pretty much all booked within a couple of days after we decided to do antiFEST. One late addition was Johnny Jones and Suffering Halos, a kick ass band of rockers from Long Beach. 

Originally, Slim Jim Phantom's Starf***ers was set to play on Sunday night and Slim Jim, Gilby Clarke and other members of the group were at the Cat Club but for some reason they never took the stage, instead we were treated to an extended all-star jam from Happenin' Harry and the Haptones. You can read more about that in the review but let's just say that the jam ended up being the perfect way to end an incredible weekend of music! 

I want to end by thanking all of the bands that took part in our very first antiFEST! You were all amazing and really made it a success! I also want to throw a few shout-outs to other people who helped pull this thing off. Of course, Happenin’ Harry. the man with the plan! Without Harry there wouldn’t have been an antiFEST and this guy put literally hundreds of hours into making this thing happen! (We won’t talk about his phone bill or mine for that matter.).  A big thanks to Frankie from Boobie Trap for helping lineup some of O.C.’s finest bands. Spooky for working the door on days one and two after pulling 12 hours at your day-gig, you’re the best! Some of the artist managers who were instrumental in helping get the best possible bands to play, these include Buddy Blaze, Barry Solomon, and Tim Heile, not to forget publicist extraordinaire Traci Harper! Also a big thanks to antiMUSIC’s Goth Brooks for coming in at the last minute to help out and for hitting the pavement with flyers. Thanks to Johnny Foxx’s and The Cat Club for hosting the event. Sorry if I forget anyone, you all made this thing happen and we thank you… last but certainly not least, thanks to all of the fans who came out on a family holiday weekend to help make antiFEST a success!