Tucson, Arizona, Sports Park
Headlining, other bands on the bill: AFI, Rise Against, Rock Kills Kid, The Strokes, 2Cents
While Ian Astbury and the Cult belted hits from over two decades ago, looming to
the left of the performance was Tucson’s large water-treatment plant.
Luckily, the plant’s sulfuric smell was masked for most of the show seemingly by
a combination of cigarettes, herbs, beer, and sweat.
By the time Astbury took to the stage around 8:30 p.m., the some 10,000 crowd had
significantly thinned after high energy sets by AFI and the Strokes and a nice
breeze had set in.
Perhaps unaware of the monstrous treatment plant visible to the crowd but not
performers, Astbury had to comment on the putrid stench.
“Get some decent toilets, man,” he said, which was odd considering the nearest
porta- potty was well over 200 yards away.
Such were the quirks of Saturday’s KFMA Day at Sports Park that also included acts
AFI, The Strokes, Rise Against, Rock Kills Kid, 2Cents and Fivespeed.
A healthy all-ages mix of fans that included tattooed and mohawked-punks, bikini-clad
girls, grey-haired moms and dads with eager teens, tweens and small children, Hot
Topic-shoppers with half-grown mustaches and shirtless overly-inebriated beefy
gym-rats in baseball caps gathered like some mock social experiment.
It’s a good thing the music was there, otherwise there might have been anger and
fights. Well, more so.
AFI was the first of the three big draws, going on close to 6 p.m. and playing a
strong set of their anthemic gothic punk-pop heavily peppered with hits from their
2003 album Sing the Sorrow.
Energetic lead singer Davey Havok twirled, twisted, fell to the floor, crouched, jumped,
ran across the stage, and into the crowd while holding his tattooed arm parallel to his
chin, clutching the microphone, fluctuating his nasally-theatrical vocals from throaty
screams to dramatic crooning for hits like “Silver and Cold,” “The Leaving Song, Pt. 2,”
and lead single “Miss Murder” from AFI’s upcoming album December Underground.
Fans responded with raised arms and fingers in the traditional “devil horn” position,
screaming back lyrics to Havok. At times, the crowd and AFI seemed to mirror each other,
with the band almost exclusively dressed in black.
Havok wasted no time buttering up the locals.
“I was sucking in dust for about a half-hour before I took the stage,” he said.
By the time the Strokes sauntered one-by-one onstage to the pulsating thuds of Pink
Floyd’s “One of these Days,” the sun had set and it was clear who several attendees
had saved energy for.
A lone drum beat started opener “Hard to Explain” off the NYC five-piece’s debut, and
the band’s sonics exploded, sounding clear compared to the sometimes-muffled AFI.
New selections from 2006’s First Impressions of Earth like “Juicebox,” “Heart In a Cage”
and “You Only Live Once” frenzied the crowd, resulting in girl-fights and mosh pits- perhaps
a first for the band.
There are some new components to the 2006 Strokes that KFMA Day goers watching the rockers
live for the first time might not have noticed.
First, there’s sobriety in lead singer and sole songwriter Julian Casablancas. If you saw
the Strokes pre-2004, there was a pretty good chance ol’ Jules was slurring his vocals,
muttering, standing perfectly still and clutching the microphone stand.
Saturday Casablancas just seemed to be having fun, doing what looked like a rain dance at
times, enjoying the music of a band that sounded stronger and tighter than ever.
Secondly, an expanded sound. If you would have told wide-eyed hipsters in 2001 that
Casablancas’ early minimalist approach would eventually lead him to write a song who’s
title and sound, “Electricityscape,” could pass for commercial U2- well, let’s just say
there might have been a few less shaggy haircuts.
Somewhat surprisingly, the new songs thrived live and mixed well with oldies like
“12:51” and “Last Night.”
For the old school-Strokes fans, the band closed with a tearing version of the guitar-heavy
“New York City Cops,” a B-Side from their 2001 debut that was originally included on the
U.S. version of the album but removed after September 11.
The only band that got their own, non-KFMA-logo backdrop for their performance was the
reformed Cult, which made use of a black tarp emblazoned with a silver cat in front of
criss-crossed lightning bolts.
Lead singer Astbury, wearing think wrap-around shades and a full beard, resembled Jim
Morrison circa L.A. Woman. His appearance would have made more sense the last time he was
in Tucson, in 2003 singing for The Doors at Ava Amphitheatre. As front man for the Cult,
though, it warranted head scratching.
The Cult-ers looked a little stiff for the first couple songs, possibly weary of how they
would be received to such a diverse crowd.
Following opener “Spiritwalker,” off 1984’s Dreamtime, Astbury spent segments of the show
trying to bridge the generation gap, calling for mosh pits, dedicating songs to “the kids,”
chiding the crowd and tossing tambourines at fans.
The Cult’s brand of self-described “psychedelic punk rock” with Astbury’s deep, husky vocals
drew three or four full rows of devotees near the front of the stage for songs like “The
Phoenix” and “Rain,” but as the set wore on, the initial crowd faded and those left seemed
to be in the hundreds rather than thousands.
Still, Astbury thanked the “die-hards” that stuck it out and said we would be “rewarded,” a
sentiment that preceded the immediate recognizability of the screaming guitar chord from
the Cult’s 1985 smash “She Sells Sanctuary.”
In that instant, the Cult’s sometimes spotty set, with clunkers like “Libertine,” immediately
gained legitimacy to all who recall the song’s prominence on classic rock radio.
Somewhat ironically, by almost 10 p.m., it was the older adults who had stuck around into
the night to see their band and the teens who had driven home.
Kevin Smith - AZNightBuzz
Setlist
Spiritwalker
The Phoenix
Rain
Lil' Devil
Sweet Soul Sister
The Witch
Electric Ocean
Wonderland
Rise
Libertine
Peace Dog
Wild Flower
She Sells Sanctuary
Love Removal Machine