Mosswood Meltdown, the Music Festival for People Who Hate Music Festivals

Mosswood Meltdown is for the diehards. The people who heard that you’re supposed to stop caring about new music at age 30 and rolled their eyes. They don’t want distractions like a silent disco, a culinary stage or a “Chocolands,” and they sure as hell don’t need Vitamin B12 infusions. They sweat out their hangovers like they always have: in the pit while their new favorite band plays. 

That much was clear this past weekend at Oakland’s Mosswood Park, where the opening acts, 20 in all, were sometimes celebrated more actively than headliners Pavement, Iggy Pop and Bikini Kill. On Sunday, Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna even saluted the bands that hadn’t formed yet, but would after attending the festival: “I can’t wait,” she said, “to open for you in 10 years.”

Or consider the scene Friday afternoon, when Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus emerged from his tour bus, a few feet away from the long line of fans along MacArthur Boulevard. No one so much as twitched. Instead, they filed into the park and held aloft a Rasputin-looking septuagenarian crowdsurfer while Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman erupted in otherworldly screams, which she dedicated to those dead from the wars promoted by recently deceased Republican senator Lindsey Graham.

On Saturday, the Dirtbombs slayed the concrete amphitheater and Otoboke Beaver, from Kyoto, won over new recruits with their frenetic energy. Oakland’s Bitchfit played a furious stageless set on Sunday, and drag queen Kochina Rude performed as Pee-Wee Herman singing the Germs’ “Lexicon Devil.”

For annual music festivals, this sort of renegade authenticity is all too easy to lose after a few years. A festival will have some success, organizers decide to maximize their investment, and slowly, enshittification creeps in: more branding, more advertising, more “experiences” and more pandering to people with money. Somehow the Foo Fighters are always involved.

Mosswood has grown plenty in its various iterations over the past 17 years. It’s now large enough to attract Pavement, who amusingly covered part of “Stairway to Heaven”; Iggy Pop, who proved that one can still embody rock ‘n’ roll at 79; and Bikini Kill, who brought out Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney for “Rebel Girl.”

This year, a completed renovation of Mosswood Park also meant a more spacious layout. Newly situated at the north end of the park, the once-modest main stage was replaced by a more standard festival-issue truss stage, complete with a giant LED screen and tall scaffolding.

But wouldn’t you know it? It only took two days for a band, Snooper, to climb high up the scaffolding. As for sponsors and branding, when representatives of a tequila company sponsoring the festival gave their onstage product spiel before Pavement’s set, the crowd responded with jeering and scattered boos.

One could scoff at this as Gen-X groupthink, of sheep in different clothing. (To be sure, there is something of a uniform coalescing among this cohort. For the men, black zip-up hoodies, mesh caps, jeans and a beard. For the women, either a Nooworks jumpsuit or black skirt, denim jacket, nice-but-orthopedic shoes and a bob.) 

But really, who likes advertising? Who wants to download some app? Who genuinely wants to go to a Verizon tent and talk about data plans? Who wants to stand in front of a plastic foliage wall with pink, faux-neon cursive, brought to you by some “artisanal” snack company actually owned by Nestle?

Not the grandparents and teenagers alike that flock to Mosswood each year, and not the organizers either, thank goodness.

Take the set finale of the Dead Milkmen, who played classics like “Punk Rock Girl” and “Life Is Shit” to a massive crowd that took over the small amphitheatre’s fences and trees on Sunday. (Sample improvised lyric: “Hey Stephen Miller! / I don’t wanna see ya / I think you’re the cause / of explosive diarrhea!”)

In the wings, Mosswood cofounder Marc Ribak stood watch, singing along and simultaneously trying in vain to curtail the steady flow of stagedivers.

But by the last song? Ribak said the hell with it, stood atop the monitors — and then leapt with abandon into the tattooed arms of the crowd.

More photos below.