80/35 Music Festival, Des Moines, IA 7/9/22

Charli XCX, the reigning pop queen graced us with a headlining spot at this year's 80/35 Music Festival in downtown Des Moines, after a two-year hiatus.

"1999" an ode to her younger years was one of the highlights of the night captured here because they don't give poor bloggers like me Press Passes. ;-)

Now, it's impossible to catch every single band at these festival gigs, but these guys were the BEST musicians, killing it at the "Convenience Store" stage with their neo-funk, neo-jazz, with farts: MonoNeon!

Also at the same stage with their high energy, sugar-meets-lo-fi-meets-808's-meets-kawaii-meets-alcohol crew BLACKSTARKIDS from KC. In this clip they are saying to us: "Let's Get Drunk!"

Honorable mention to Geese from NYC: https://geese.lnk.to/projector. They were an interesting mix of Indie, jam-rock, wielding a swinging whirlwind of a drummer with a Van Morrison/Mick Jagger-like singer. Very cool!

Now, we'll bring it to the locals who were making noise on the Bravo Stage: Mike Vallely and the Complete Disaster who were puttin' down some pure fuckin' Rock n Roll. My first time seeing them "Doing It!"

Now on 12/9/21 there was a show where Widow 7 played and I wrote a blog saying "that show was going to be the one people would remember for a long time." After putting in their work playing some of the biggest post-rona shows of the year, they have really come into their own as an ambassador of the Des Moines scene for the entire country.

And on that note, 12/9/21 saw the launch of Des Moines own Vended! Since that time, with a full scale tour under their belt, they have grown exponentially as a live band. The metalheads finally got some rep from the organizers at 80/35. With an introduction by Lazer 103's Andy Hall, the crowd where whipped into a frenzy!

Being a part of this show and watching the kids go apeshit and taking Vended as THEIR Des Moines band on this glorious night, made me think of Charli XCX's lyric: "I just wanna go back to 1999", I was there in '99 when Slipknot played the bon voyage gig at, then, Hairy Mary's (now Lefty's), before they went to conquer the world that summer. I got the same feeling here with this generation.