As the lineups and feel of major music festivals across the U.S. become increasingly homogenized, the wildly eclectic offerings of Mosswood Meltdown stand out.
Taking over Oakland’s modest Mosswood Park on Saturday-Sunday, July 6-7, this year’s lineup once again featured a refreshing mix of local acts, rare performances and unclassifiable oddities. The 2024 edition included sets from Bay Area queer punk pioneers Pansy Division, a booty-thumping set courtesy of New Orleans bounce queen Big Freedia and a rare performance from new wave legends the B-52s. Even better, all were personally introduced by filmmaker and self-professed “filth elder” John Waters.
Such is the promise of Mosswood Meltdown, where the DIY punk ethos extends beyond the stage.
Established in 2009, the two-day event formerly known as Burger Boogaloo promises pizza, punks and pink cheetah-print galore each July. While the grounds may pale in comparison to competition like San Francisco’s Outside Lands at Golden Gate Park and the newer Portola Music Festival at Pier 80, what Mosswood lacks in size, it makes up for with sublime weirdness — even with it being pared down this year.
Normally featuring two stages, this past weekend’s iteration of the festival had only one — built near the MacArthur Boulevard side of the grounds — due to ongoing construction to Mosswood Park’s amphitheater. Fortunately, organizers managed to keep the spirit of the event intact, complete with a booth run by Berkeley’s Pony Studios offering “free bangs” for anyone brave enough to spontaneously want a new haircut and a special Punk Flamingo Pilsner specially brewed for the event by Alameda’s Almanac Brewing in a nod to Waters’ 1972 cult classic “Pink Flamingos.”
Saturday’s highlights included a downright filthy drag reimagining of the Jellicle Ball from “Cats” during a drag competition hosted by local luminary Peaches Christ and judged by Waters himself, while Hunx and His Punx frontman Seth Bogart left his mark by tossing a sea of flesh-colored beach balls dressed in exotic-patterned thongs into the crowd.
The balls were still bouncing by the time Waters took the stage to introduce the B-52s that night.
“Your headliner and I go way back,” he told the crowd, many of whom were dressed in lobster costumes in honor of the band’s 1978 hit “Rock Lobster” despite a heatwave that reached temperatures into the 90s. “Fred Schneider (the B-52s frontman) once wrote a song called ‘Fruitcake’ and I still go by that description to this day,” Waters said.
Following a short video featuring comedian Fred Armisen and a costumed actor playing a giant lobster named Claudia, the group emerged.
Schneider, Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, who formed the trio in 1977, mined their massive catalog for a 15-song setlist that took fans on a trip through the B-52s nearly 50-year run.
Back in the Bay Area for the first time since 2022 and fresh off a recent residency in Las Vegas, the B-52s sounded exceptionally sharp, offering few words but copious energy during a performance that saw Schneider seamlessly switch from playing glockenspiel to slide whistle to cowbell as the band’s set progressed toward its inevitable crustacean conclusion.
Daisy Richards, 29, of Berkeley, who wore lobster claws on both hands and a beanie crocheted with felt versions of the creature’s stalk eyes, described the spectacle as “the kind of dream it sucks to wake up from.”
The mayhem continued on Sunday with sets featuring pioneering Los Angeles DJ and producer Egyptian Lover, influential Black punk band Pure Hell and Big Freedia.
The latter turned the festival stage into a full-on dance floor when she invited dozens in the audience up for an impromptu booty shake session that included a masterful display by Nick Marshall, better known as San Francisco drag queen Nicki Jizz.
Despite a series of sound issues that plagued many of the later acts on closing night, such concerns proved no obstacle for Southern California “budget rock” act the Mummies.
The bandage-draped quartet sent the festival out in a fuzz of surf licks, screams and absurdity after driving onto the stage in a vehicle dubbed the “Mummiesmobile” and being introduced by Waters as “not the Dead Kennedys or the living Bidens.” The long-lasting commitment to the bit from band members Trent Ruane, Maz Kattuah, Larry Winther and Russell Quan was ravenously received by fans that remained by night’s end.
“The Mummies are always the best kind of insane,” said Mosswood Meltdown newbie Joshua Estevez, 55, of Pleasanton, who wore a “Mummies for President 2024” button, “and that goes for this event too. I’d never been, but I’d totally go back.”
Zack Ruskin is a freelance writer.
