Report from International Pop Overthrow

On Thursday, I attended the IPO music festival at Kenny’s Castaways on Thursday and Saturday. Thursday night started with a bang. The group Bubble was so loud, the entire club shook with those heavy garage pop sounds. Then I was treated to some great psychedelic rock from Maple Mars, where the band got the crowd psyched up. The band played a lot of tunes from the latest album “Beautiful Mess” and got the groove going that night. Afterwards, I was able to introduce Readymade Breakup (shown here) to the stage and those guys had the crowd on it’s feet for “Honey, You May Be Right.” It was the highlight of the night.

I returned on Saturday night and very early on got to introduce The Third of Never to the stage. Bandleader Kurt Reil and the rest performed as a tight unit that got both progressive and melodic. The other band Reil is in, the Gripweeds currently are working on a new album and have a “Best of The Gripweeds” album out now. Then The Private Jets took to the stage, dressed in full airline pilot uniforms. They put on a superb performance from their album “Jet Sounds” and the crowd really started to grow and get into it.

But when Andy Goldberg and Dean Basil got on stage as The Sun Kings, the crowd went nuts. They played a variety of hits from their album “Grin” and from Andy Goldberg’s solo albums. The crowd cheered for an encore and The Sun Kings shined brightly (shown here). Then, The Wind reunited onstage for a very cool quirky experience. Lane Steinberg and Steve Katz are like a throwback to The Beatles and Big Star and kept the audience primed. The drummer let it all hang out on stage, to the point I thought he would spontaneously combust onstage.

Then Buddy Love took to the stage. I witnessed the reunion of this local New York legend last year, this time the band was much looser and confident as they played to the audience in a very animated, finely tuned set. Joey Kelly (shown here) made the stage seem 20 feet long and both Doug Khazzam and Scott Schiller displayed good musicianship and stagecraft. Overall a thrilling night. Loads of thanks to David Bash at IPO for making a great festival.