Posted Mar 3, 2010, 11:25 am
Be careful, drivers, and check your rearview. Share the road with the two-wheelers this weekend, as garage music and scooter madness descend upon Tucson for the Friki Tiki Garage Festival.
Friki Tiki is a three-day event featuring group rides, meetups and a six band bill Saturday at The Hut. It's time to embrace your inner 60s mod, freak or beatnik.
Meet Miss Frankie
Miss Frankie Stein, bassist of local monster garage band The Mission Creeps and co-founder of the all-girl Mary Janes Scooter Club, loves Tucson in general and the music scene in particular.
Stein decided recently to organize a three-day scooter rally and music festival. With the help of her husband James Arr and the other Mary Janes, local venue The Hut and merchant collective Local First, the Friki Tiki Garage Festival was born.
Stein has become increasingly active as both an artist and an arts advocate in recent years. As her profile becomes higher, the places her name shows up become increasingly odd; last November, a small movement sprang up to make "Miss Frankie Stein" a write-in challenger for the Tucson city council's contested Ward 6 seat.
While Stein had no part in initiating the last-minute write-in frenzy, she found it both amusing and oddly uplifting. "It was a total lark. My friends started it up hours before the polls opened. And I felt like the write-in spoke to a lot of people. And it made people feel better that day, which was so important."
Miss Stein has no current political ambitions of late, opting instead to bring her garage festival to Tucson. This is not to say that she is not civically engaged about the festival; Stein says she "just has a dream of starting a scooter revolution."
Of scooters and revolution
Along with fellow founders Traci Miller, Julie Fouts and Michelle Norush, Stein founded the Mary Janes Scooter Club last year, to promote two-wheeled sisterhood among the women in Tucson. While many scooter snobs may prefer vintage Vespas, Stein rides a Yamaha Zuma, which she says gets approximately 140 miles per gallon.
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The Mary Janes are far from alone in the scooter movement. There are scooter rallies all over the country, whenever weather permits. And this weekend, Stein expects over 100 out-of-town visitors. This is Stein's first experience mounting such a large event, and describes the experience as both trying and exhilarating. Turning to the independent merchants of Tucson First and the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association, Stein found like minds willing to help with the massive task of organizing the event.
The rally includes a "rumble" Friday, during which 4th Avenue will fill with scooters, day trips Saturday to Mission San Xavier and mount Lemmon, and a "tiki and kitsch landmark tour." While this is the first Friki Tiki, Stein has every intention to make it a yearly Tucson festival: "We want to make it the Sturgis of scooters," Stein says.
Arizona Highways magazine has taken notice of the festival, and plans to write a feature. Friki Tiki has become a viable tourist event for Tucson, without the support of government infrastructure. It would seem that Stein's strategy, summed up best as "Embrace the weird," is working.
"It's not like we have to clean up everything and put up a Baby Gap to get people to come downtown. Why can't we embrace what we have, and relish the weird? When they put the Baby Gap up on Congress, I'm out of here."
Scooter Soundtrack
The Friki Tiki's other half is a marathon garage rock concert at The Hut on Saturday. Featuring Los Angeles bands Lords of Altamont and Woolly Bandits, Long Beach duo Vooduo, the estrogen-fueled Green Lady Killers of Phoenix, Tucson up-and-comers Lenguas Largas and hometown heroes, Stein and husband Arr's garage freakout, The Mission Creeps, this bill is formidable.
The Mission Creeps has played several times with Lords of Altamont and Woolly Bandits in California. According to Stein, the audience can expect quite a stage show. "These bands are all about live performance. They go apeshit. Just ballistic."
Lords of Altamont keyboardist and frontman Jake “The Preacher” Cavaliere has been known to set his keyboard on fire in past performances, though according to Stein he opts lately to merely "abuse it all over the stage."
Guitarists Johnny “Stiggs” DeVilla, and Shawn “Sonic” Medina, former MC5 bassist Michael Davis and drummer Max “Sicko” Edisonfill out the Lords lineup. Having a member from a seminal garage band like the MC5 gives Lords of Altamont a pedigree to match their live antics in terms of authenticity.
The Woolly Bandits feature frontwoman Christa Collins, who returned to music after a long hiatus, having once been a Disney darling. During most sets, Collins jumps on top of the kick drum and duets with the drummer on an amazing drum break before leaping off.
The Mission Creeps plan to step up their game for Saturday. "We're definitely sticking with songs in the garage/fuzz vein. I'm looking forward to just going for it, balls to the wall."
When asked about why garage music pairs so well with a scooter rally, Stein refers to the authenticity of analog instruments and effects. "This is music that is organic, that cannot be manufactured." She references the ubiquitous Farfisa and Vox organs made popular by garage artists of the 60s, and the Fender Reverb amp, whose effects are "literally springs in the amplifier."
"This is new music for people who like old things, vintage, throwback things." Like scooters, and arguably, like downtown Tucson itself.
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