Historic Bakersfield-Fresno show at Fresno's Club Fred - by N.L. Belardes

Club Fred in Fresno, California. This is ground zero of the Fresno music scene, but with a plush blue carpet. And it’s not just lining the stage. It lines the walls too. Club Fred. This is a venue with sound like no other. It’s a rich tapestry, thick and melodic as the plush walls with electric pink and purple lights beaming for a full texture background. Club Fred, near Tower Centre, near the home of Aaron Wall of 40 Watt Hype, along North Van Ness, where every band is a star onstage. This was the place Friday, April 15th when representatives from the Bakersfield scene met the kind-hearts of the Fresno scene face to face.





The club was dark, a wide room filled with tables and a wide bar as rural rock punksters The Filthies set up shop. Whap whap whap whap came Guppy with his sound check. The audience had never heard such a drum set check, but then Guppy, he had to get his sound right. It was a steady, droning beat on each snare and tom, and it set the attitude that just maybe Bakersfield was putting its most professional foot forward here tonight. Although I seem to be ignoring the Dalloways, I’m not. The Dalloways are a fusion of Bakersfield and Fresno folk. They are the true scene-breakers, scene makers, the true bridge to the unity of a valley scene in the making. The Filthies had never played in Fresno. The scenes had never merged, they had only the cold fusion of the Dalloways: Bakersfield meets Fresno meets Latino, meets Brit Pop Dream Pop meets urban meets rural meets lyrical wit and neo-hip-hop stylists.

Why not? Why hasn’t this happened before?

The sound check didn’t seem extraordinarily long. Maybe it was the blue plush moment, the lights and the grandness, the way Kenny Mount sipped his Pepsi, stood for a moment in deep thought, tuned his guitar, repeated the process. Maybe it was all inside my head. I knew the historical importance of this meeting. That new rural rock punk was being heard, that perhaps in Fresno there are other bands who are a part of this agricultural movement in punk rock sounds; that Frank Delgado of KFSR 90.7 FM was in the house, and I knew our conversation was going to be great. And our talk was. It was a fusion of minds, an interaction of communicators of the southern valley music happenings, a building and maturing of the beating heart of the Valley Music Scene. Did Frankie D even know that these punk boys from Bakersfield were walking history? The mortuary man himself, Kenny Mount, like a character from Six Feet Under had walked right onto the stage; these men had literally helped create the Bakersfield punk movement on the streets and in sound; that Kenny had named the band Adema, Adema; that he was friends with Korn, but that like most of the Bakersfield music scene, the Filthies had nothing to do with Korn. There was no financial backing, there is no big label connections, The Filthies were just another band working hard to make ends meet, to get their name out and heard, to see what they could do to get signed. No, Frankie D didn’t know these things. But he does now, and he was just as aware as I was, that valley music that night was to mark a new era for the Bakersfield/Fresno connection.







The Filthies led into a great set with songs like the Dramarama cover, Anything; with Donut Shop, Insomnia, and even ended their set with Embalm You—not just another punk song about death and anger. Here’s a ‘rural rock punk’ song from an entrepreneur who deals in the business of death, who recently buried his stepfather, and whose heart is in his music the way a farmer’s soul is into his crops. And the sounds are as rich as valley soil, and fresh as just tilled land ready to be planted with a new hybrid. Only we’re not talking corn/Korn, and a hearty hybrid/post industrial crop/sound, but punk.







Don’t take the Korn movement lightly. It’s strong and there are many bands in Bakersfield following suit. But that isn’t what Bakersfield is totally about. It took years after the band’s success to even hear a Korn song on the radio. It took the demise of the band with Brian Head Welch to even get much Korn-related press in the Bakersfield News. Of course the entire controversy surrounding the recent firing of radio DJs was never brought to light as it could have been. In fact, it was nearly ignored. Though there is a massive witch hunt in Bakersfield to currently discover the true bloody scapegoat of the Sepeda murder that took place in a dance club (in downtown Bakersfield in the heart of the scene through location only; no bands played there), these normally potty mouthed disc jockeys were fired for being what they normally are: potty mouthed. But I guess when in a fundamentalist town and you say, “Korn gives head to God,” and you have a radio station whose advertisers just may threaten to pull out… then the little paid DJs having all the fun now have to pound the streets for a new job. There you go, a city that never writes about Korn except as potty-mouthed haters of Bakersfield now defending the Godly-nature of men who sometimes have to endure rock stardom to be able to somehow reach a conservative town’s disenfranchised Christian youth. A strange twist don’t you think?

The Bakersfield scene is full of fire right now, more than ever before. I tried to explain that to the Fresno folk. They brushed it off as, “There’s always violence in big cities.” No offense Frankie D and company but we have got to get on the same page, brothers… The Bakersfield music scene was ignored until just a few months ago. It took a cohesive effort from local writer, Jesse Rivera mixed with the timely institution of nlbelardes.com to put a voice to the Bakersfield music scene. The local granddaddy newspaper, The Bakersfield Californian saw the impact of the music scene online traffic and so wanted to be the biggest voice of local Bakersfield music controversy, because it sells newspapers. (read more)And that’s not a bad thing, except that kids are still scared away from the downtown scene, this time because of murders. Parents don’t realize downtown murder is easy to avoid. It’s called, ‘avoid trouble’. Leave punks alone, they leave you alone. Leave people alone; they leave you alone. Respect one another. It’s not a difficult concept. The scene in Bakersfield is really alive right now. Its beating heart is exposed, now Fresno can take advantage of that… How? Well that’s what Frankie D and company and I are going to talk about. Want to be a part? Send an email…

The Filthies were followed by the Dalloways. Their rich textures in Brit Pop sound punches a hole in Quiet is the New Loud with some rocking transitions in songs like Marriage Arranged and Penalty Crusade. Now, they are part of the Quiet movement, but in a unique way. Gerhard Enns has single-handedly pushed forces together in the Central Valley by helping unite the Quiet movement with the Fresno-Bakersfield scene. His richly woven musical dream pop sounds and lyrical wit in story-making sure captured the Filthies who became instant fans. “We all walked out of Club Fred feeling the excitement of the Dalloways songs, and thinking: here is a band that could easily get signed,” said Kenny Mount of the Filthies. When someone walked out of club Fred, unable to handle the mellow sounds of this music movement, Kenny was quick to confront by saying, “That’s not nice.” Here was Bakersfield in Fresno, in defense of Bakersfield-Fresno. That’s a far cry from my old self-ranting grunts about the pretentious nature of the few Fresno Poets I have stumbled across. Gerhard broke that dismal stereotype the day I met him. He showed me the complexity of Fresno’s literary movement, and the intricacies of its sounds, venues, people, bands, and more.









2 am Orchestra followed up the Dalloways with some fresh sounds in valley music. Meet Coldplay turned electric vocalizing masterminds with a rural heart twist. These guys have a fresh sound that really only hints of Coldplay in that the vocalist sounds like he’s two front men singing at once. Their sounds really come alive and if you haven’t heard them I hope you soon will. This bands needs to head down to Bakersfield for a few shows.

(sorry, no pics...)

There’s more to come on the Bakersfield-Fresno music scene. In the meantime, read one of N.L. Belardes favorite self-made quotes on the 40 Watt Hype home page. Yes, they are a Fresno band. And their main theme? Let’s unite. So let’s.

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Sunday, April 17, 2005. You can leave your response.