There are spots of carpet at the San Francisco Fillmore that are so sticky they almost pulled my shoes off. It’s quite startling. I’d be standing with my note pad or camera, trying to think of something snappy to write for this article, and when I’d shift my feet it felt like the floor was trying to pull me deeper into it. If there wasn’t music playing I’d expect to hear an over the top slurping noise, as though I was walking through a swamp. During the headlining set, Norman Blake of Teenage Fanclub paused for a moment between songs and said with a thick Scottish drawl, “Jerry Garcia, James Brown, Hootie and The Blowfish. They all played on this stage. Now we are too.” It didn’t feel like he was addressing the crowd as he spoke. His eyes darted around the ceilings and walls, drinking in the arches and contours, realizing he had the same view now as many legends did before him. He was speaking to the spirits in the room, he was speaking to the room itself. It was a fitting venue to kick off this year’s Noise Pop Fest, The Bay’s love letter to independent music and local talent. What better place to inaugurate something than from a stage with so much history. What better place to watch it happen than from a carpet with just as much.

All I want is to save the world, but I’ll settle for my scene. The Bay Area arts and music community has been taking hit after hit for decades now. Money has pushed generations of artists out to the fringes. The monoculture of tech has homogenized what art and which voices are represented. These struggles aren’t unique to where I live, but I can’t think of many places where they are more severe. So here I am on day one of six, covering an independent music festival, writing an article I imagine only a couple hundred people will see. Fighting the good fight, if you will. And I gotta say, so far it’s been quite delightful.

With how immediate and severe everything in the news cycle is these days, I think we are all prone to forget how nice it feels to have a pleasant time without it being brought into a larger sociopolitical context. I walked into the Fillmore on a Monday night fully expecting to leave with some badass, Lester Bangsesque angle on how to kick this series of posts off, and instead, I noticed how happy the well-packed room was. Everyone just seemed stoked to have something to do on a Monday. The Love Language, the night’s opener, played an energetic set full of swooping melodies and taut, lofty indie rock. Stuart McLamb, a stringy man with stringy hair, sang beautifully about love and loss. The band is apparently well known for their lyricism. I couldn’t really decipher any of the lyrics, but the cadence at which they were delivered left me feeling as though something profound had been said. After I left the photo pit, I went to the back of the venue, and noticed someone in the sound booth had lit incense. Given that most concerts smell like B.O. and stale weed, it was such a welcome change of pace.

During the intermission, I met a guy from Scotland who had seen Teenage Fanclub 17 years prior in their home city of Glasgow. “They were a much bigger band, then,” he told me. “It was a crazy show.” Another man approached us and told us he thought he was the only Teenage Fanclub fan in San Francisco. I’ve never seen someone so excited to be wrong. A lot of people weren’t even aware that this was the first night of a larger festival, which at first was concerning, but then I realized how cool it was that all these folks just came out for a show independent of a larger event.

Teenage Fanclub was peak dad-rock. It took me a minute to get into it. I’m so used to screaming, rapping, and belting that I wasn’t prepared for singing that was softer, flatter, and relied on subtle harmonies. Between songs, Norman would tell non-stories to the crowd. “We sat next to a famous Australian musician on a plane last week,” he said, “we aren’t going to play any of his songs, though.” There was a beat of silence before the crowd realized that he was done talking, someone screamed “WOOO,” and they went into the next song.

It threw me off a bit. Here I am trying to peel back the layers and write something compelling, deep, and masturbatory, and here is a really enjoyable show. No veils were pierced at the Fillmore last night. Instead, another bright layer was added to the venue’s immense history, people had a nice time, and I got home before 11:15. Honestly, that’s how a Monday night should be.





