This long FYF fest night (yeah, four bands in the same night!) kicked off with a fun set by the Tijuana Panthers, who had totally decided to play the game and came dressed up as,…. I am not exactly sure,…may be, one-of-the-three-kings-turned-wizard, a creature-of-the-lagoon, and a green-face-mad-hatter, whatever, they stoically played their surf-pop-rock with a tight confidence.
They may be one of these bands I was writing about yesterday, with that surfing 60s-revival sound, but they definitively occupy their own niche inside this intricate ecosystem, a not-taking-themselves-seriously niche, with plenty of sunny beaches that could suddenly give you an irresistible desire to visit South California right away, and a re-imagined punked out version of the 60s, but still close to the original at the same time.
With their Dick Dale-esque riffs and bouncy-happy-in-the-sun rhythms (so real in ‘Crew Cut’ or ‘Bainbridge’), their well-crafted songs evoked the first Technicolor 60s TV shows, when everything seemed so clean and neat.
The Long Beach trio was singing in harmonies, and the two frontmen were holding their bass and guitar like the British invasion, playing their hits without any pretension, ‘Redheaded Girl’, ‘Girls Gone Wild’ and especially ‘Creature’, that a drunk girl, who had totally gone wild, had been asking for, shouting the title in my left ear during the last 5 minutes. The crowd loved them, and had started a real dance revival, but the night had only started
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