August 16–23, 2001

music

Indie City

If independent rock is dying, Olympia’s Yoyo A Go Go didn’t get the memo.

by Patrick Rapa

Good news: Sassy Lassy (left) and Beth Ditto get down during the Gossip’s Yoyo A Go Go gig.

Tonight, John Darnielle appears to be cursed. The singer-guitarist-one and only member of The Mountain Goats suffers a plague of small setbacks during his set at the 2001 Yoyo A Go Go festival in Olympia, WA. When his acoustic breaks a string, he borrows an electric and continues.

Then the amp blows, so while it’s being replaced, he jokes around with the crowd and quickly restrings the first guitar. And, just as his time’s almost up, pop goes another string. Undaunted, Darnielle stands up and performs his last song a cappella, just a man, a microphone and a crowd hypnotized by the spectacle. Darnielle appears to relish the onslaught of obstacles if only to prove he can overtake them.

Occasional technical difficulties are bound to happen. The Mountain Goats are just one of 50-something bands taking the stage at the Capitol Theater at this year’s Yoyo. The festival is six full days of music acts from the small Northwestern town and beyond. Each band gets roughly a half hour and sound checks are often worked out on the fly.

Now in its fourth installment (festivals also took place in ’94, ’97 and ’99), this Yoyo A Go Go, July 17-22, is one of indie rock’s biggest, most vital traditions. Most of the bands play rock and roll, but there’s plenty of variety (heavy metal, punk, lo-fi, pop, gay, straight, men, women). The most unifying factor among the acts isn’t so much the independent status as it is the proudly, and sometimes obnoxiously, proclaimed ideals. Plenty of artists from Olympia and elsewhere retain their "indie cred" long after they’ve started making real money in the real world.

Sitting in a cozy little vegetarian café just around the corner from the Theater, Darnielle raves about some of the things he’s seen so far this week: an experimental set by The Microphones, a beautiful bunch of songs by Rebecca Pearcy (both Olympian artists). He’s looking forward to acts that haven’t played yet, especially Japanese rockers The Moools.

But when indie rock in general comes up, he is decidedly less upbeat.

"I think we had a lot of expectations that there was going to be an uncommonly large number of people that made record after record that bore close scrutiny and many repeated listenings," says Darnielle. "That was an unrealistic expectation. There’s never that much good art at once." He sees a waning enthusiasm for the genre; fewer people are going to shows, buying records. He sometimes suspects indie rock is dead, or dying.

After ten years of releasing tapes, vinyl and CDs on about 30 different tiny record labels (this week he’s selling a three-inch disc put out by a Japanese company, a release so obscure its existence was suspect), The Mountain Goats’ music will soon be a lot easier to find. Darnielle will be recording an album in October for 4AD. (As major labels go, this one’s hardly the enemy; think The Pixies, The Breeders, His Name Is Alive.) It won’t mean he can quit his day job, counseling troubled kids, but it should allow him to tour more often.

Darnielle’s perspective is not that of an indie rocker who "made it" after doing his time in indie’s minor leagues — a metaphor he abhors. From his side band with Franklin Bruno to his music-criticism zine Last Plane To Jakarta, he’s still firmly entrenched in the underground. He speaks matter-of-factly:

"In 1994, you could release a seven-inch by a mid-level or low mid-level band like myself and expect to turn enough of a profit to send the band a nice check that they’d be able to buy themselves, you know, a new radiator with, and make money yourself.… That stopped being the case a couple years back."

So what happened? "I think the audience sort of wandered off in one direction where it seemed like the next thing was happening, and that was a dead end." And new listeners never materialized because indie was too insular and self-satisfied to go looking for them.

"They wanted Tortoise records," he says with a poker face. "I blame all the critics who gave favorable reviews to Tortoise." He admits it was probably more complex than that, but feels like things started to turn at the time everybody started praising the Chicago instrumental group for their overt jazz and classical influences. "Suddenly everybody had a Moog. Suddenly everybody was making really boring fucking music."

Of course, Darnielle’s originally from California. He lives in Iowa. Nobody from this rainy little lakeside mountain town says anything like "indie rock is a corpse," like Darnielle first declared three years ago. Maybe Olympians are fooling themselves, but most seem to think this is a just a valley between peaks.

	Stand and deliver: John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats puts down his ailing guitar and goes a cappella.

For over two decades, Olympia’s been an epicenter for independent music. Everyone likes to call the phenomenon "unlikely." After all, how could a town with a population small enough to fit inside Vet Stadium possibly host four nationally successful indie labels (namely Kill Rock Stars, Yoyo, Chainsaw and K Records) and become a mecca not so much for a particular sound, but an attitude that it can be done?

It’s thanks mostly to institutions like KAOS and K. The former is the 28-year-old radio station that requires no less than 80% of its playlist come from independent artists; the latter is the record label founded in 1982 by Calvin Johnson, the deep-voiced extrovert behind pioneering indie punk band Beat Happening. His International Pop Underground Convention in ’91 started the tradition of week-long independent music festivals in town including the Yoyo A Go Gos and last year’s Ladyfest. Each gives local bands a chance to try out the big stage.

Johnson has no problem with indie changing, adapting and evolving. "Why shouldn’t it? If it didn’t it would just be dead."

His current band Dub Narcotic Sound System whipped the crowd into a frenzy at this year’s Yoyo. As always, Johnson leads by example: The band shifts from math rocky instrumentals to dancy hip-hop group during their half hour onstage. Says Johnson, "To me, independent music has always been about a process, not a kind of music."

Johnson’s unabashed genre-crossing continues on his current tour, an improvisational "paper opera" with fellow Olympians The Microphones, Little Wings and Get The Hell Out Of The Way Of The Volcano. Expect combined performances, crowd interaction and sets made out of newspaper when "The Moon Is Up There" comes to the Rotunda this Sunday. Johnson plans only one or two rehearsals before hitting the road. "Hopefully by the time we get to Philadelphia it’ll be worked out."

Volcano, with loonybin singer-songwriter Khaela Maricich at the helm, should be particularly intriguing. Their lo-fi set at Yoyo ended with the crowd passing Maricich to a makeshift bed stage left where she curled up with a microphone. There she cooed back and forth with the Greek chorus of lounging friends she left on stage.

"What I think people who play music are looking for is attention. And an outlet for expression," says Pat Maley, who runs the Yoyo label and recording studio and co-organized the festival. A transplanted South Jerseyan — he saw Stranger Than Paradise at the TLA back in the day — Maley drove his VW microbus to Olympia to attend Evergreen College in ’81. First attracted to the laid-back, hippie atmosphere of the place (Evergreen’s "distinctive approach to education" means no grades, if you can believe that), Maley eventually took up with the punk rockers. In the ensuing years he’s played drums in bands like Little Red Car Wreck and Courtney Love (a duo with Lois Maffeo, not the Hole singer). At this year’s festival he sat in on keyboards for Australia’s The Cannanes.

Maley and friends begin work on one Yoyo almost as soon as the previous one ends. "I start saying there’s only 18 months [until the next festival]," says Maley "And everyone’s like, ‘You can have two babies in 18 months.’" So he sets about getting insurance, booking the bands, finding places for all the musicians to stay (Darnielle and many of the Japanese musicians crash at his house), compiling a CD from the previous festival to sell at the current one.

"The hard thing right now is just that there seems to be somewhat of a waning interest in it," says Maley. It’s true, the turnout is not what it was at previous Yoyos. Though he hasn’t decided whether or not this is the last Yoyo, Maley says he’s only a little discouraged. "This level of attendance in 1991 would have been just fine — back when things were as punk as you got and there weren’t really any major labels paying any attention to us."

He’s talking about the pre-Nevermind era, when Nirvana was still a bar band and Olympia was arguably a more influential — if still generally ignored — music town than Seattle. The Emerald City is only about two hours down the road, and the grunge hysteria drew a lot of eyes and ears Northwestward, making names out of some of the artists who played there.

It’s probable this year’s lesser attendance (maybe 400 or 500 a night rather than 700) is just a matter of starpower. Previous Yoyos featured the likes of Sleater-Kinney, Quasi and Built to Spill plus the occasional mainstream representatives (with indie roots) like Beck and Elliott Smith. Maley’s got no problems with this year’s lineup. "We put on a festival [of] the people that you’re going to be paying attention to in two years."

And he’s probably right. The Gossip, a bluesy Olympia-based rock trio (quartet if you count "Sassy Lassy" who dances onstage at every show), is already garnering some national attention, and is only just getting started. The Kill Rock Stars rock stars rocked the first night of the festival with a fiery, engaging set.

The impish Mirah, an Olympian singer-songwriter who’s moving to Philadelphia next year, only has one full album under her belt. Released on K last year, You Think It’s Like This But Really It’s Like This shows great poise and vision. Her Yoyo set was charismatic, smart and sensual.

And the festival did have its share of "big" names. Local mainstays Unwound made the second-to-last night their 10th anniversary show, packing the theater. The pesky, poppy Bratmobile and Portland rock legends Dead Moon drew a sizeable crowd the next night, too.

Regardless of the audience’s size at any given Yoyo show, the mood is always overwhelmingly supportive. With all these bands on the bill and a week-long pass costing just $55, it would be understandable if unknown acts found themselves playing to an empty house. But it’s not the case. Applause is enthusiastic. Friendly conversation breaks out between the crowd and the musicians onstage. Between bands, the counter upstairs is packed with people checking out the records corresponding to what they’ve just heard.

This reputation for non-cynical acceptance is a big reason aspiring artists relocate to this out-of-the-way town. But, says Phil Elvrum, the singer-multi-instrumentalist behind The Microphones, "A lot of people move here with the expectation that things will be done for them, and then get sort of grumpy and move away with this attitude that Olympia’s really cliquey."

Elvrum’s one of those who’s made a life for himself here. Since he moved from an even smaller fishing town in northern Washington four years ago, he hasn’t taken a day job. He makes his money putting out records on K and selling them tax-free on tour. "It’s not the place," he muses, "it’s the person."

If you only saw Olympia from inside the Capitol Theater, and around it where kids sit on the sidewalk selling zines and homemade vegan burritos, you’d probably assume the whole town was a left-thinking, hippie little arts village. But you’ll get a clearer picture sitting on the crunchy yellow grass at Lakefair, the annual week-long carnival Yoyo A Go Go latches itself onto. There you’ll see almost no punks or indie kids — just families eating sugary elephant ears or riding the Zipper. Hundreds gather to see who will be crowned Lakefair Queen. Why look, it’s Beccy Gordon, aspiring nurse! Locals lock folding chairs to lampposts three days before the annual Lakefair Parade to ensure a good view. The dancing Yoyo people are just one of a hundred groups who march down Capitol Way.

Music is only a small part of this tiny town, observes Johnson. "I think most people who live here have no idea that there’s Yoyo or K or anything." Which is really the way it is for indie everywhere, even a place like Olympia, which Time magazine dubbed the "hippest town in the West" last year. (Kinda sounds like your mom calling you cool, doesn’t it?) Independent music has always been, pardon the word, the alternative. It wouldn’t make sense for it to be a dominant cultural force anywhere.

"I think the whole point of indie is what goes on in Olympia," Darnielle says, putting down his coffee. "The way the music business is run sucks the blood out of music."

A lot of times, indie is propelled by sheer force of will. Which makes the music scene here not so much the brave homebase for a rising or failing revolution, just a clubhouse with lenient membership requirements. "There’s nothing in the world, for those of us who love music, like good music. There’s nothing like it," says Darnielle. "So in that sense, it can’t die." He means people like him won’t let it.

Calvin Johnson, The Microphones, Little Wings and Get The Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano will perform Sun., Aug. 19, 7 p.m., $7, at The Rotunda, 4012 Walnut St., 215-413-1291, www.r5productions.com.