How The Mars Volta Ended 107.7 The End's Endfest and Became the Baddest Band in the White River (and Possibly the World)

Just outside the strip and super malls of Seattle's sprawl there was supposed to be a music festival. Carnival midway, beer garden, fest food kiosks, Scion raffles, the works. Also, nine bands headlined by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and those other guys touring with them. Modest Mouse and Snow Patrol cancelled. Organizers offered refunds and bumped Wolfmother up to the main stage. They delivered an hour of good sound from their self-titled, but it seemed to be wasted on the lethargic crowd. Only 'Woman' and 'Joker' moved the little mob in the pit and kept the lawn sprawlers awake. Maybe Wolfmother is tired from touring nonstop through the Aussie winter. Maybe Andrew Stockdale's afro sensed the presence of Cedric Bixler's. Maybe the crowd was a little sullen in the late summer. Whatever it was, Wolfmother didn't compare to their last local appearance when they opened the Sasquatch festival. The Mars Volta is next.

The man by me in the beer line says "Who?"
"The Mars Volta," I say.
"The Who?"
"No. The Mars Volta."
"Oh, yeah. Those guys."

When the music started, a few people cheered because of excitement. Some others cheered because it had been difficult to concentrate on the double-layer-ice-cream-cookie sandwiches with all that weird free jazz mariachi shit playing between sets. The Mars Volta left the crowd alone to struggle with its ambivalence. Eight men packed the stage as close as equipment would allow. In the first six or seven minutes they tuned. Clarinet, flute, sax, gourds, bongos, keyboard (times 2), Omar Rodriguez, drums, xylophone(maybe?), Mac Powerbook, bass, and Cedric Bixler bouncing the mic off his boots. As any sense of time withered away, the first few notes of 'Roulette Dares (the haunt of)' drifted out of the cacophony. Bixler said an obligatory hello to those that recognized the impending journey and then took off to see where the music would go.

Encircled and prodded by sound, Cedric Bixler dances manic inside his own space. Sometimes Omar floats like a thin column of smoke rising out of the amps. Precise chaos drifting on invisible gusts. Other times the wails and riffs jerk him punk-like. They vibrate in the music - carried and contained by the band around them. To watch Mars Volta is not to watch a performance but to witness creation.

As 'Roulette' riffs faded, the music swooped low enough for Cedric to address the crowd for the second time. "It's cool to see you all out there dancing shaking your ass - or if you're like me with no ass, shaking your no-ass. But you idiots down there, what is it? Two thousand six? And you're out there slam dancing? This a different kind of shit. It ain't the warped tour. Just leave or mellow out or something."

And they left again, swirling out into an excruciating version of 'Widow.' Three years may have passed, but even the uninitiated could hear the pain and loss and relief of that song. The tribute was not respected. Uncharacteristically breaking out of the music, Cedric called on the appreciative. "Somebody out there who likes us, please find that prick that's throwing shit and kick him in the nuts. Kick the motherfucker in his face. If you don't like us, fuck off. We didn't come here to make friends, if you don't like us go suck some other major label's dick."


Putting the past behind, they launched into new material. The "Big Mutant" fell to the floor and revealed eight figures swirling in echelon under a ten pointed star. The complexity of the music matched the art's evocation of an Aztec calendar. The new stuff seems to extend from the last album, which is not to say in any way predictable. The free-jazz exploration of the high pitch has turned inward and precise. The melody is stretched slower and tighter. Dense complicated sound with familiar intensity. The tension rides over an entrancing percussion track similar to parts of 'Miranda the Ghost... C. Pisacis.' The native traveling pulse of the lows carry the tense introspective highs to new places. (I had all weekend to think of that since I saw them in Portland too.)


Coming down from 'Viscera Eyes' the music completely stopped for the first time. Unable to create on that stage any longer, Cedric explained that "this is what you fucking get. That's what happens when you want to put a fucking venue on a sacred tribal ground. Shit like this. Somebody find that motherfucker, kick his ass. I'll kick the motherfucker's ass. Bring him to the front entrance. I'll give a hundred, no, a thousand dollars. Bring me his head. I've got cd's and merchandise and free Mars Volta concerts for life, whatever. Just find that prick who is throwing urine on this band." By the time he finished, he was the only one left to drop the mic and walk off.

I don't think Omar Rodriguez was in the mood to play with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I didn't stick around to find out.

Thanks to the sound guy in the picture for the set list. As I'm not a bootlegger, the quotations above are paraphrased from memory and don't really reflect the vicious grace of the diatribe.