If Goldenvoice’s No Values festival was on your radar over the weekend, you likely heard about the traffic. Once inside the festival, it was all anyone wanted to talk about, overshadowing the punk event that was set to jolt nostalgia into locals’ bloodstreams while also connecting genre legends with today’s exciting upstarts. But for most, getting into the event was an ordeal. Those who arrived early waited hours to park, and those who arrived a bit later were met with worst-case-scenerio freeway traffic. The latter is obviously not the festival’s fault, and I can’t speak to the logistics of how the former went wrong, but regardless, No Values didn’t begin on the right foot for many in attendance, and that unfortunately will be the lens from which the festival is viewed.
The uphill battle to endure discomfort in the name of fun is essentially the narrative of music festivals in general. If you are going to a fest to drink, get high, and watch bands, generations have decided the experience is ultimately worth it. The task felt a bit more precarious at No Values, especially with an influx of bands several decades past their prime that could make even the youngest attendees contemplate their own mortality, dwell on the passage of time, and question their place in the world. At one point, a guy walked through the crowd offering ibuprofen out like it was LCD at a Phish concert.
But enter Turnstile and The Jesus Lizard, two bands on opposite ends of their careers, but both operating in a perfect space to make a music festival work as designed. For different reasons, these are two bands that can force the audience to put whatever outside baggage they brought into the day to a dark corner to visit later. For an event that asked the audience to wrestle with the adage “punk’s not dead,” you couldn’t have asked for two better bands to testify in punk’s defense.
For The Jesus Lizard, their booking at No Values wasn’t really indicative of the festival’s vision in the first place. They’re a band generally more revered in the indie space, but their post-punk and noise roots tangentially aligned them with many of the more directly punk bands on the bill. Still, seeing frontman David Yow, now in his 60s, immediately look at the audience during his band’s afternoon set and get a huge grin on his face set the stage for an ageless, egoless performance. He smiled because he knew he wanted to be in that crowd, and it only took him a few moments before he was crowdsurfing, joking about needing to give his family his phone, keys, and wallet. Soon he’d be raising his middle finger, kicking his legs in the air, complaining about the lack of beer on stage, and generally showing any of the younger generation of performers on the bill just how it is done. Hell, he probably showed the veterans a thing or two.
But a big part of what made The Jesus Lizard’s set so affecting was the juxtaposition in how Yow looks with how he acts. No shade on a man in his 60s, but, well, he looked like a normal man in his 60s. His hair is mostly gone, his body not particularly nimble. But it all felt like a smokescreen for what he still contains inside. I watched him climb back onto his tall stage with little help, unbutton his shirt and showcase a sturdy physique, and, most importantly, recapture the chaotic energy that made his band a thing in the first place. This wasn’t nostalgia like so much else at No Values. This was vitality.
Turnstile couldn’t be in a more different place. In some ways, they feel like the only rock band right now, showing the kind of meteoric ascent that appeals to critics, passive radio listeners, Taco Bell customers, and angsty teens that is all but nonexistent in 2024. And though people in the audience wore their finest devil locks and Social D patches, Turnstile were in the prime position to actually win new fans that could, and should, fuck with them.
Just as The Jesus Lizard underscored vitality, so did Turnstile. Where one wore their aging bodies as a badge of honor, Turnstile projects the youth and beauty that could make the crustiest old punk feel 22 again. Their brand of grooving hardcore borrows from just about any genre prevalent in today’s youth culture, but it’s the underlying energy and self-belief that makes Turnstile feel bigger than any stage they play on. And the “Free Palestine” flag they brought with them portrayed a band not afraid to ruffle the feathers of the old guard. This is their world now, and they’re not going to put their principles on hold for anything.
Often times when walking around No Values, it felt like a hall of mirrors put through a time portal, everything a little distorted from how it should be and how you remembered it. For many, it might have been a welcome diversion from whatever their current life is like to return to their youth, their innocence, if just for a day. But the festival was at its best when it was in the moment of now, where Turnstile and The Jesus Lizard were operating. When the PBRs are going for $16, they were about as punk as it gets.
Check out some exclusive photos of Turnstile and The Jesus Lizard at No Values festival below.
