PREVIEW: Boston Fuzzstival 2014 at The Middle East

By Nina Corcoran

Poster designed and created by John Magnifico.

Poster designed and created by John Magnifico.

This Saturday, Boston Fuzzstival 2014 will be turning the amps to full volume as 15 of Boston’s best psychedelic, fuzz, garage, and surf rock bands take over The Middle East this Saturday. With hopes of building bridges within the local music community, this year’s Fuzzstival is hosted by Illegally Blind and includes an all-ages matinee show at The Middle East Upstairs (1PM – 5PM) as well as an 18+ show at The Middle East Downstairs (5PM-1:30AM).

We were stoked when we found out Doug Tuttle, The New Highway Hymnal, CREATUROS, and Abadabad were playing. We were even more stoked when we found out Video Joe Turner, Mondo Fiasco, The Lysergic Factory Lightshow, and Wax House A/V were providing visuals. Then we found out an all day pass only cost $20. Bring it on.

To celebrate the mind-blowing riffs that will wash over our brains this Saturday, we asked some of the bands to answer one essential question:

What’s your secret trick for a fuzz-filled set?

Ghost Box Orchestra (Downstairs, 11:20-12:00)
We’re total gear heads when it comes to amps, guitars and toys. I think the real sauce is in the pedal board. I want that sonic buffet of delay, fuzz, hand-wired short run pedals, and obscure things from the bargain bin. You wanna get weird? Grab some more cables, siphon some power and let’s do the thing. And when you’re sick of it, unplug all but two or three and get back to basics. I’m hopelessly into all of the endless combinations and pursuit of “the tone.” Personally, I like Chris’s fuzz made by Mid-Fi Electronics (fellow Fuzzstival performer Doug Tuttle). I think it was a short run of a particular circuit and it’s perfect for what we do. When I hear him kick that one on… I know it’s go time.

Fat Creeps (Downstairs, 9:45-10:15)
The essential part of our sound is the contrast between me and Mariam’s styles of songwriting. Also, my weird-ass guitar tunings.

The Fagettes (Downstairs, 9:00-9:30)
CATHOLOCISM.

28 degrees taurus (Downstairs, 8:15-8:45)
For us, it’s always been a 6- or 12-string guitar in alternate tunings going into a Rackmount Reverb unit into two amps. The best things are the most simple, oddly enough.

Magic Shoppe (Downstairs, 7:30-8:00)
Spring Reverb… lots of spring reverb.

Beware the Dangers of a Ghost Scorpion! (Upstairs, 3:45-4:15)
The essential part of our sound is No Bullshit — we just have our two small tube amps we turn most of the way up, crank the reverb, and let it roll. No fancy pedals or other hoopla.

The TeleVibes (Upstairs, 3:00-3:30)
The biggest player in our sound is the Death by Audio Echo Dream II. It’s our go-to delay pedal for every noisy, feedback riddled, acid washed jam. Whenever shits got to get real trippy, we like the audience to feel as stoned as we are. And for the record, we’re super stoned. Oh yeah, it has a built in ((fuzz(tival)).

GYMSHORTS (Upstairs, 2:25-2:50)
Our energy brings a lot to our sound. Like a lot of what we write is just stupid shit, basically us wanting to have a lot of fun. It’s kinda like when you’re a little kid; you don’t really care about a lot of things — you’ve just got a crazy amount of energy and you just want to run around or some shit.

Black Beach (Upstairs, 1:55-2:15)
Play loud. We have a 7” coming out soon and we called it “play loud, die.” We kinda love bands like Dinosaur Jr who are super loud, so volume is definitely a major part of our sound.

Dinoczar (Upstairs, 1:25-1:45)
Aaron and I started the band in California when we were in high school — we just liked to make noise so everything was super sloppy. We didn’t really sound like any sort of band until we got our bassist Jake, who hadn’t even played bass before Dinoczar but is a killer jazz guitarist. Since then we’ve had a controlled chaos to our sound which still allows me to jump around stage incoherently or for Aaron to blindly smash on the drums.

Video Joe Turner (Upstairs + downstairs, all day)
When I do visuals, it’s because the event is something I’d want to attend myself… and so I want them to look as good as they sound. To stand out from others who do similar stuff, I have the “musician’s sensibility” — being able to learn quickly and anticipate song structures (especially when the band is new to me, for example the opener who impresses me so much that I jump right on the dials and give ’em a good show). I’m not sure non-musicians who do visuals can quite “get” that as easily.  Maybe the essential element is good music to spark my imagination!

You can find more details about Boston Fuzzstival 2014 on Facebook.