The unofficial beginning of the local summer music season got under way at the Santa Barbara Bowl on Saturday, June 12 with the KJEE Summer Round-Up.
The local indie station sponsors the all-day festival every June, offering a lineup of six chart-topping bands at bargain prices. This year’s event began, like every other, with the ridiculous, including a smattering of cowboy/beachwear-clad radio station employees and fans, as well as more than a smidgen of overstimulated fans.
With a few more arrests for public intoxication than usual, and the occasional aisle-clearing, retching concertgoer, the rowdy crowd seemed tailor-made for the beach party musical theme of the day.
At least four of the six bands in this year’s lineup turned in admirable performances, including Santa Barbara favorite the The Dirty Heads.
The Huntington Beach band brought their own brand of beach rock reggae to a crowd sweltering in the late afternoon sun. The band has been quickly climbing the indie charts since their inception just a few years ago. Joined onstage by Rome, the new lead singer of Sublime, the band had the crowd singing, dancing and sweating.
Cage The Elephant turned in perhaps the most explosive set of the day following The Dirty Heads. The young Kentucky troupe of rockers have an already evolved retro rock sound that would be the envy of many veteran rockers.
Fronted by guitarist Brad Shultz and his brother, singer Matthew Shultz, the band intensely channels a more traditional rock sound into their own brand of sassy rock. Showing an influence from their stay in London, the band has tinges of some of England’s old-school rockers. Matthew Shultz, the Madman, seems to channel a young Mick Jagger or Michael Hutchence with his explosive gyrations and sarcastic vocal delivery. One of the hardest-working bands on the festival circuit, they have played almost every major event of the past few years and may be poised to be one of the next breakout bands in indie music.
Hometown favorites Iration took to the stage next, returning to the dominant beach rock reggae sound of the day. The band, originally from the Isla Vista college district, also has a unique blend of influences that keeps their reggae-drenched sound fresh and different. Their music long has been embraced by the college crowd, inducing an insatiable party atmosphere around their fans.
Headliners Sublime hit the stage just after sunset, but the frenzied crowd was just beginning to heat up. The band, with new lead singer Rome, performed a slew of hit songs with precision. It may or may not be safe to say that the current lineup sounded better than the original group, which had been fronted by legendary lead singer Bradley Nowell. The deceased former frontman was no doubt a genius songwriter, penning many of the band’s greatest hits. But more often than not, his live performances fell short in a drug-induced haze.
To the contrary, the new version of Sublime seems to be all business, flawlessly reproducing their signature songs for an adulate crowd. Fans sang the lyrics of nearly every song, turned the entire floor section into a giant mosh pit and screamed their approval of a band that wrote most of their songs before many of them were born.
“Summertime, and the living is easy” — especially at a Sublime concert in Santa Barbara.
— L. Paul Mann is a Noozhawk contributor.