The lineup for this year’s Mosswood Meltdown festival in Oakland is here. Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill are headliners, along with a stacked schedule of openers that includes Otoboke Beaver, the Dead Milkmen, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney with Fred Armisen, Scowl, Frightwig, the Dirtbombs and more.
Add the already announced festival “pre-party” with Pavement and annual host John Waters, and it’s safe to say: this is the biggest and most impressive Mosswood lineup yet.
Both Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill are returning to the annual trash-rock soirée in Mosswood Park. Perpetually shirtless Iggy Pop played the park in 2017, while Bikini Kill last appeared in 2022. (Onstage, singer Kathleen Hanna, who also led a set by Le Tigre the following year, expressed special gratitude for the festival’s deliberate inclusivity.)
Otoboke Beaver, four women from Kyoto, are one of the most exciting live bands on the planet, and the Dead Milkmen, four men from Pennsylvania, are one of the funniest Camaro-driving bands to ever sing about what the queers are doing to the soil. Meanwhile, under the name “The Return of Jackie & Judy,” Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker team up with drummer and funnyman Fred Armisen for a set of Ramones covers. And Scowl? The Dirtbombs? Frightwig? It’s nuts.
If there’s anything missing this year, it’s the festival’s welcome tradition of undersung ’80s rap hitmakers; in recent years, that’s meant sets by L’Trimm, Egyptian Lover and J.J. Fad. Maybe next year we can have Oaktown’s 3.5.7. In the meantime, though, this is a damn fine lineup.
