Miss the days when Goldenvoice was a scrappy punk promoter booking shows with the funds from founder Gary Tovar’s weed dealing? No Values hits right in your safety-pinned sweet spot.
This weekend’s classic punk fest at the Pomona Fairplex is the latest smaller, genre-themed outing from the Coachella promoter. It harkens back to its very early incarnation with acts like the Misfits and Social Distortion atop the bill, and the day is packed with ageless legends (Iggy Pop) and SoCal fixtures (Bad Religion, a Coachella-reunited Sublime, the Vandals), along with a swath of modern inheritors (Turnstile, Ceremony).
Here are five of the best acts worth seeing as you sweat through your long-retired battle jacket.
Power Trip
The metal world lost one of its most exciting frontmen when Power Trip’s Riley Gale died in 2020. Power Trip, beloved for its mix of Texas thrash and hardcore pummel, was well on its way to becoming a festival-caliber headliner. After Gale’s death, the band earned a Grammy nomination for metal performance but was uncertain how they’d continue. Now fans have their answer, at least for now. This year, the surviving quartet will perform a run of shows with a longtime friend of the band, Seth Gilmore, on vocals. No Values will be the first chance SoCal fans have to see them since Gale’s death, and given how their legend has only grown in the interim, it will hopefully be the start of a new era for one of heavy music’s best bands.
Soul Glo
The NPR Tiny Desk studio doesn’t leave much room for a circle pit, but the Philly group Soul Glo did its best as the first hardcore band to take a crack at the format back in March. Soul Glo is part of a small wave of young Black hardcore acts (including L.A.’s Zulu) who are upending the genre and calling out its blind spots while delivering some of the most exciting, boundary-pushing music the scene has yielded in a generation.
Hepcat
Any fan of punk and adjacent genres has seen tragedy strike a favorite act. But few in the classic ska world were prepared for Hepcat’s singer Greg Lee to die of a brain aneurysm and cardiac arrest at the terribly young age of 53 on March 19. Lee, who co-founded the band in the late ’80s, released six albums with Hepcat that informed the SoCal ska wave of ’90s acts like No Doubt and Sublime. The band were standouts for their velvet-smooth harmonies and jubilant choreography. They were booked for No Values before Lee’s death, and this short set will be a bittersweet tribute to one of the scene’s most universally beloved singers.
The Jesus Lizard
The late, great Steve Albini was best known for producing Nirvana’s “In Utero,” but might be best embodied on his work with the Jesus Lizard. David Yow’s scabrous post-hardcore band took Albini’s legacy of honest, blistering noise and made some of the best rock records of the ’90s like “Liar” and “Goat.” They’ve toured intermittently in the decades since, but now 26 years after their last LP, they’ve finally returned with a new album, “Rack,” that’s every bit as squalling and churning as the rest of their catalog.
The Damned
Quick, name the first punk band. The Sex Pistols? The Ramones? Wrong! The Stooges? MC5? Allowed, but debatable. The real, undisputed answer is The Damned, the UK combo whose 1976 single “New Rose” is generally regarded as the first true punk record, beating “Anarchy in the U.K.” to the punch by five weeks. It still sounds incredible today, with a ferocious musicianship and songcraft and a visual aesthetic that would inspire goths for decades. Even more incredibly, the band (vocalist Dave Vanian on vocals, guitarist Paul Gray, bassist Captain Sensible and drummer Rat Scabies) is back on the road after first reuniting in 2022 for their first classic-lineup tour of the U.S. in 35 years.
