King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard/Geese @ Forest Hills Stadium, Queens, NY 8/16/24

 

Bill: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard/Geese/DJ Crenshaw

Venue: Forest Hills Stadium, Queens, NY

Date: 8/16/24

Door: $90.19 (WON TICKETS ON DONYC)

Headliner: King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard

Latest Release: Flight b714 ((p)doom Records, 2024)

Active: 2010 (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia)

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Opener: Geese

Latest Release: 3D Country (Partisan/Play It Again Sam, 2023), 4D Country (Partisan/Play It Again Sam, 2023)

Active: 2016 (Brooklyn, NY)

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King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard have been a curio for some time now.  Since I won tickets to their big 3-hour (announced in advance) show at Forest Hills Stadium, it was time to put that question mark to rest.  Although they started in 2010, they have about 183 releases at this point including singles, comps and so forth, so "touring on the new album" is not what they are about.  A new album might come in 2 weeks or 2 months that will briefly be the "new album."  

In the spirit of their relentless approach to releasing music, it is no surprise the band genre jumps.  Sort of like a cross of Ween, Phish,  early Metallica, and some newer indie stuff like Ty Segall.  I had about 18 hours of the bands music on my hard drive and listened to whatever I had on random shuffle for 5 hours to get an idea of their music.  Until then, I never really spent any time listing to this band.  After all that time, I didn't really feel like I was any closer to getting their songs.  Style wise they kind of broke down to whiney detached vocals with guitars sounding like video game music.  Sometimes those vocals would be electronically processed hence the Ween comparison.  Sometimes a thrash metal song would appear, hence the Metallica comparison.  Then I looked at setlist to see what was their most played song of their career, which was "Cellophane."  This was played in the middle of the show and the kids got excited after being lulled by some insufferable jam band stuff.  The person in the pit with the red wizard hat disappeared around this time.  

To say this was a gen Z crowd and all that that implies is an understatement.  Yet, you could see the influence of the older generations of their influences.  This is a party band now and the kids today will bop to whatever these guys dish out, even thrash metal.  I have no idea what inspires the guy next to me to yell out "King Gizzard. And. HIS Lizard Wizard" in a false British accent throughout the show any more than I know why 500 kids were suddenly fake rowing in the pit.  It's all lost on me.  There was some dance rock band in Brooklyn 10-15 years ago that had this kind of thing going on a bigger scale to smaller audiences.  Trying to remember the name is driving me nuts.  Late aughts band maybe early '10's and I think the name was long.  (ED NOTE: later identified a couple weeks after publishing as Dan Deacon) 

The 3 hour show went like this.  The first hour was annoying jam band stuff and the crowd reflected that.  About 30 minutes in I thought to myself "I hate this band!"  The song was "Mr. Beat" which I had heard earlier in the day from the random batch of songs.  But I was there and I had to see it through.  After the sun set (10pm curfew so they went on at 7pm), the band kicked into a few of their thrash metal songs which made me like them a little bit.  "Self Immolate" was pretty good and so was "Organ Farmer" though now that one sounds a little more like Ministry.

The rest of the show was about what you'd expect from listening to the band 5 hours on random shuffle.  It sounds a bit like video game music with that kind of imagery.  The subject matter is along the lines of comic book fantasy.  The name of the game here is devolution and time.  This stuff had a serious root--science fiction and even Rush took themselves seriously.  This is filtered through media that got dumber and dumber for a target audience younger and younger.  Sort of like if you merged a Sid & Marty Kroft TV show with a modern video game.   Now there is no attempt at a functional maturity, just aesthetic.  Sure, the work aesthetic is adult and so is the veteran band coming up on 15 years.  Still, it seems stunted in some way even if it tried to break out busting genres.  The only thing "weird" (bands description) to me is a sense of blanket conformity and safety at the mass appeal level.  They want to be policed if someone gets out of line, but I don't think security would have gotten through that crowd even if someone had the kind of problem the band warned about on screen before the show.

The opening Brooklyn band Geese seemed a bit of a slop fest.  The studio recordings sound more evolved.  They were a high school band 8 years in that  grew up to put out internationally distributed albums, but live they lacked something on a stadium stage that might not have been their fault. I got the vibe that the band leader didn't really want to be there.   KG&TLW have got that part down--they have a lineup, visuals and a crowd that loves them.  Geese still came off like 12 year olds on that big stage despite being almost a decade in and established recording artists.   

DJ Crenshaw played some records on stage as people were coming in shortly after 5:30.  Background to the nth degree, I'm surprised he warranted a credit on the bill.  I guess that's how you get paid.

KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD

GEESE