在互联网时代，可以通过鼠标的点击来交换音乐想法，乐队的成员在该国的另一端，当地场景的概念几乎会感到过时。但是，随着奥克兰周末（Oakland Weekender）（6月23日星期四在Golden Bull酒吧举行的为期三天的节日），无法替代Close Cross提供的创造力。
More than a dozen groups are participating in the first East Bay festival, and nearly all of them share some kind of affiliation. Numerous acts claim mutual band members, most are signed to the same label (Slumberland Records, a longtime Oakland institution, or Arizona-based Emotional Response Records) and the majority call the Bay Area home.
Take San Francisco janglepop band, the Umbrellas, for instance. The band’s self-titled debut, released in 2021 on Slumberland Records, received fawning praise from the national press, buoyed in part by the infectious power-pop number “Galine,” an ode to Galine Tumasyan, the founding member of Seablite, a San Francisco shoegaze band that will also be at Oakland Weekender. Seablite’s drummer, Andy Pastalaniec is himself the one-man force behind Chime School, another Slumberland-signed act that’s on the three-day festival bill.
“There is definitely a lot of overlap here,” said Seablite guitarist Lauren Matsui, who splits her time playing bass for the Neutrals, also playing at Oakland Weekender. “I mean, everyone plays in everyone else’s band. If you see a new musician out there, you almost get confused — like, ‘Who is that, and why aren’t they playing in 5 million bands like the rest of us?’ ”
Matt Ferrara, guitarist and singer for the Umbrellas, sees the synergy as “a very healthy thing.”
“When you go see one of your friend’s bands play and you see something new, you start to think, ‘Oh, we could do something like that.’ It’s a friendly competition,” he said. “Everybody’s unique in their own way, but there are certainly things we feel inspired by from seeing other bands.”
While many of these groups are relatively new incarnations, their members have been focal points of the local music scene for years. Glenn Donaldson, the creative visionary behind the San Francisco indie pop actReds, Pinks & Purples，一直是湾区无数乐队的中流tay柱。Pastalaniec在Chime School于2021年问世的首次亮相，但他一直在其他十年来的集体中鼓舞。著名的奥克兰噪音流行服装Artsick只是吉他手克里斯蒂娜·莱利（Christina Riley）的最新冒险。
The musicians have all stuck around the Bay Area despite numerous upheavals — something noted by Mario Hernandez, frontman for Kids on a Crime Spree and one of Oakland Weekender’s organizers.
“There has definitely been another groundswell, one in many over the last 30-plus years in the Bay Area and beyond,” said Hernandez, who also plays in Artsick. “Historically, I think it can be argued that great art happens during politically dire times. Whether it has to do with Trump and right-wing fascism, the great exodus of working-class artists from San Francisco and Oakland to more affordable pastures, or a worldwide pandemic, we are the tenacious ticks that have dug in and flourished.”
The event’s lineup certainly has an aesthetic foundation — an affinity for combining emotional, guitar-based compositions with atmospheric snyth flourishes — but there is enough variation within each band’s sounds to make for an intriguing experience. Every group has a knack for a catchy hook, but sometimes those earworms are buried underneath dissonance (Seablite) and somnambulant haze (Cindy), or elevated with the brimming ebullience of 12-string guitars (Chime School).
“That’s why it’s so much fun to play with all these bands,” said Tumasyan. ”None of us sound like each other, but we all make sense together.”
奥克兰周末：8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, June 23-25. $20-$60. The Golden Bull, 412 14th St., Oakland.www.eventbrite.com
