10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama
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10 Apr
Recap: Burgerama
OFF!
By Kat Bee http://getbentfm.tumblr.com/post/20845623541/recap-burgerama 1/8 10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama On a recent Saturday afternoon, I piled into a car with fellow GET BENT staffers Mariana and Joey for a journey down to Orange County to witness unruly teenagers let loose in the suburbs — and maybe catch some music, too.
The occasion? Burgerama — the ambitious all-day, all-ages music festival organized by the good folk at Fullerton’s Burger Records. Having just returned from SXSW where we all attended numerous Burger-sponsored showcases, the evening was to be the pinnacle of a very, very Burger-filled week.
After a much-needed stop at a nearby In-N-Out Burger, we made our way toward the venue—an unassuming theatre called the Observatory. Situated in a sprawling business park on the outskirts of Santa Ana, about 45 minutes south of Downtown Los Angeles, the Observatory isn’t exactly the place you’d expect Burgerama’s hyper-exhaustive collection of bands to step foot in — let alone be invited to play; the place looks less like a theatre than it does the shell of an early 80s dance club repurposed into a roller rink repurposed into nondescript medical offices. (I was quite saddened to learn that, despite the Observatory’s disco-esque vibes, the building and the accompanying 1500-person capacity theatre itself were actually constructed in 1994.)
Burgerama’s booking at this bizarre theatre in Santa Ana is the stuff of quintessential California suburbia — something entirely unexpected and strange amidst the miles and miles of shopping complexes, ranch homes, fast food joints, lingering Reagan-era nostalgia. However, despite its über-conservative leanings, Orange County itself is no stranger to punk rock. Heck, punk rock was re-born here, incubated and unintentionally transformed by small pockets of teenage basement dwellers from all across the Southland. From the loins of Orange County came Black Flag, the Descendents, Circle Jerks, TSOL — and with it, inexplicable police brutality, community backlash and mass-media hysteria surrounding the supposed “violent” nature of all things hardcore.
OFF!
For being such a fertile breeding ground of radical ideology in the minds of its youth, Orange County never really embraced its punk rock roots; by the mid 80s, most all-ages venues that catered to the genre were shuttered and the bands were too weary to piss off local law enforcement. Life returned to “normal” in Orange County — Suburbia: 1, Punk Rock: 0.
Armed with my nerdy background knowledge on the history of Southern California’s suburban music scenes, I was rather curious as to how the local community (mainly the teenaged crowd) would react to Burgerama; for me, this evening would be part all-ager rager, part reporting, part twisted social experiment.
But, as I should have predicted, I was soon about to find out that some things in Orange County never really change: Teenagers still love to party, suburbia is still strange and (most importantly) security guards still suck. http://getbentfm.tumblr.com/post/20845623541/recap-burgerama 2/8 10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama
Ty Segall
Since starting in 2007, Burger Records has grown into Southern California’s preeminent DIY label/record store hybrid, bringing the sounds of Orange County (and beyond) to thousands of dedicated Burger Boys and Babes across the globe. A massive festival centered in Burger Country to showcase the label’s best and brightest would seem the ultimate no-brainer. Yet, while Burger successfully throws large- scale events annually in Austin and San Francisco, the label had never attempted to organize an event of Burgerama’s size and scope in the Greater Los Angeles Area — until a chance partnership with a new venue developed.
“The Observatory…switched owners last November,” co-founder Sean Bohrman explains to me via phone several days after Burgerama. “[The new owners] started doing shows other than reunion acts and tribute shows and started booking better bands, bigger bands. They started hitting us up to help them get cool bands in.”
As the relationship between Burger and the Observatory’s new management grew, a much bigger request soon found its way into Bohrman’s inbox: “At the end of last year, they sent an email asking if we’d be down to do some kind of festival, and we were.”
Once the label accepted, planning for the then unnamed festival was soon underway. “I started getting all these emails from Jeff at the Observatory saying he was booking all these bands — OFF! and Wavves and Ty [Segall],” Bohrman recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh! I guess this is really happening!’”
http://getbentfm.tumblr.com/post/20845623541/recap-burgerama 3/8 10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama
Cosmonauts
Burgerama’s final lineup — a beastly 16 bands deep — brought together a strong selection from Burger’s current roster (Cosmonauts, Audacity, Lovely Bad Things) with an assortment of larger related acts from outside the confines of the Orange Curtain (OFF!, White Fence, Strange Boys). A large majority of the bands slated to play the evening had recently returned from SXSW — but the real kudos goes to Bohrman and Cosmonauts who returned to Southern California just hours before, after spending several days stranded in Iraan, TX with a broken tour van.
As one would expect with a lineup of Burgerama’s caliber, nearly every band delivered an enthralling, captivating performance. It could have been my post-SXSW exhaustion (or maybe the In-N-Out) but I couldn’t pinpoint major missteps or slip ups from any of the ten bands I managed to see throughout the course of the evening. King Tuff, FIDLAR, Ty Segall — all killer, as usual.
One notable exception: Strange Boys played a paltry five or six songs before ending the set, much to the disappointment of audience members. (Immediately afterwards, I witnessed a sobbing teenage girl kick a wall before shouting, “Fuck that band! My night is ruined!”) Another summer bummer came from Wavves frontman Nathan Williams, who apparently forced his band to replay a song during the band’s set. However, considering I was elsewhere and only heard about the incident after the fact, we’ll let that one slide for the sake of “journalistic integrity.”
http://getbentfm.tumblr.com/post/20845623541/recap-burgerama 4/8 10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama
White Fence
While I expected as much from Burgerama’s lineup, I will admit I wasn’t entirely prepared for all the fucking people filling out every inch of the Observatory during the entire span of the sold-out event.
The Burgerama crowd was a remarkable one, though not as much for its size as for its baffling variety: Hordes of expectedly rowdy (and possibly intoxicated) suburban teenagers; visibly frightened and/or overwhelmed parent chaperones; young female scenesters in sparkly lipgloss overheard explaining, “I’m only here to see Wavves.”; two brace-faced tweens donning Blink 182 shirts — seriously or ironically, I couldn’t tell; bewildered and disoriented Los Angeles 20-somethings simply trying to figure out where the hell am I and why are there so many 13 year-olds? (I fell into this latter category.)
Don’t get me wrong, I love enthusiastic teenaged music fans; the symbiotic relationship between disaffected suburban youth and equally disaffected, angry music just might be the most authentic display of genuine enthusiasm and emotional attachment in modern history. But when a visibly wasted teen is thrown out of the venue less than an hour after doors open or an underage girl posts on Burgerama’s Facebook event wall, “Lemme make this clear…WILL GIVE ORAL SEX FOR TWO TICKETS,” I am inclined to get a bit confused and perhaps remorseful at my own decidedly tame youth. Clearly, I underestimated how hardcore these Orange County teenagers truly are.
Unfortunately for Burgerama’s teenaged crowd, the hired security for the event knew exactly what sort of shenanigans local youngsters pull at punk shows and, for the entirety of the evening, seemed bent on preventing any sort of rowdy activity from happening.
“[Security] overstepped their bounds,” Bohrman claims. “As the night grew on, they just got more violent and restless.”
http://getbentfm.tumblr.com/post/20845623541/recap-burgerama 5/8 10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama Clashes between security and Burgerama attendees started with the expected enforcement of no moshing/no stage diving/no fun before quickly escalating into various unnecessary uses of force. At one point in the evening, I witnessed a security guard repeatedly slam a young man against a door in an attempt to throw him out of the Observatory’s backstage area; would-be stage divers were met with similar fates.
The conflict came to a head during Pangea’s set when guards violently attacked Ty Segall after stage diving, causing bassist Danny Bengston to stop playing and address venue management on stage: “This fucking security guy is out of fucking control. Somebody take care of him,” he yelled. “You’re not doing anything but hurting our friends, so get out.”
Here it was: 1982 in Orange County happening all over again.
“The point of security is to protect people,” says Bohrman, when asked about the Segall incident. “They don’t want people stagediving because they don’t want to get hurt. But, when you’re punching the people who are stagediving and tripping them? It doesn’t make any sense.
“It was crazy. It was the only shitty thing about Burgerama.”
FIDLAR
Near the night’s end, we’re huddled backstage, catching up with Zac Carp of FIDLAR and getting a much needed break from the densely packed crowds inside the venue. Amidst talk of SXSW mishaps and the band’s upcoming projects, I ask Carp to share his thoughts on the madness of Burgerama thus far — especially what it felt like for FIDLAR to kickoff the event while playing to a near-capacity crowd on the Observatory’s main stage.
“This is awesome,” he beams. “I used to come to punk shows here all the time.”
“All ages venues and shows like that — especially in Orange County — they’re very crucial,” he continues, before referencing the storied culture clash between underage punk rockers and the less- than-hip authority figures of Southern California’s suburbs that I was now all-too familiar with.
Carp laughs, adding, “We would love to play only all ages shows. It’s for kids, you know? Not for old people.”
Old people? I dunno, dude — by that point in the evening, I was starting to feel pretty close to “old person” status. Perhaps I truly was getting too old and jaded to understand the thrill (and potential risks) of being in high school and having your mom drop you off at a punk show. I http://getbentfm.tumblr.com/post/20845623541/recap-burgerama 6/8 10/26/2015 GET BENT!: Recap: Burgerama grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent the past six years of my life living in Los Angeles; the pangs and disillusionment from uncultured suburban living have long vanished from my vocabulary.
But it seems for those who spent their awkward teenage years in Burger Country, that memory of wanting somewhere to see music, to meet cool people, to rage never leaves your subconscious; it’s something that sticks with you and, perhaps, even brings you back every once in a while.
Ty Segall
Just before launching into his set, Laguna Beach native Ty Segall addressed the crowd with his own tale of Southern California teenaged blues: “When we were growing up here, there wasn’t this,” he shared. “I mean, it’s the reason why I left here to go to San Francisco was because there wasn’t anything like this going on…I just wanna say that it’s really great that there’s this now.”
So, despite the security snafus and several occupancy codes clearly being broken on that outdoor smoking patio, I’m willing to bet you made a lot of drunk, rage-filled, horny teenagers extremely happy on Burgerama day. Keep it going, Burger, if only for them.
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