Well, to be fair, maybe not COMPLETELY different since music is one of my favorite things to write about. This is my first concert review in some years though and it’s fun to return to the topic. There are a few levels to my comments here. First, there’s the festival organizers, next we look at the venue (in this case the DNA Lounge), and, finally, there are the performers themselves. Clearly all three work hand-in-hand to create the complete experience for the fan. Let’s get into it!
Last weekend I attended Glōm Fest in San Francisco with friends. Glōm Fest is a goth-themed mini festival. This year it hit three cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Vancouver. Plans had originally included Portland as well, however the organizers had to reluctantly scrap that stop. The lineup changes slightly with each stop. Sadly, this was primarily due the current administration’s border policies. Two of the acts, Cemetery Girlz (from France) and Aeon Sable (from Germany) were denied visas to enter the country. (God forbid bands from allied nations come perform in our country; selling tickets, generating income for venues, hotels and restaurants, not to mention music sales.) This meant that the promoters had to scramble to find other acts at the last minute and, since the two bands were some of the bigger names on the bill, I’m sure there were some disappointed fans. I will say that the festival did their level best to keep we the ticket holders informed of developments. Since two of the bigger acts were unable to be there, as a thank you the organizers invited fans to the remaining bands’ sound checks as a VIP experience. (My friends and I skipped this in favor of catching up with one another over tapas and paella, but that’s another blog post.) According to their emails, the promoters wanted to give us all a partial refund however their ticketing system “wasn’t built to do refunds.” Well, nice thought, guys. In addition to regular email updates, Glōm Fest also runs a nice website with news, merchandise updates and information about the bands and venues. The tickets were $45 in advance and $60 at the door for five bands. I call that affordable and I was happy with the value that I received
The Glōm Fest night that my friends and I attended was in San Francisco at the DNA Lounge in SOMA (that’s South of Market Street). It is a super fun place. It’s an intimate club and sports a full bar, great staff, and some killer pizza. Also, and it may seem trivial but it’s important to me, clean bathrooms. (If anyone remembers the days of The Stone and The Omni which were iconic clubs, but FILTHY.) It’s mostly a standing room only place, with just a few tables and chairs. That’s fine by me, I prefer to be dancing and singing along most of the time anyway. That said, because this particular show went until past 2:30am, I’ll admit there were a couple of times I was glad to rest a beat so the chairs had their moments. The drinks are affordable, certainly a third the price of larger venues or sporting events these days, and like I said, great staff. SOMA isn’t the best neighborhood in the city, so pay attention to your surroundings and stick with your group. We parked and had dinner elsewhere then Uber’ed to the show. The best thing about the DNA Lounge is that they consistently have live music and their calendar is eclectic. The night before they hosted Missing Persons (yes, the 80’s band) and they’ve had anything from a 90’s & 2000’s retro dance party to Windrose. I highly recommend that if you are at all local to SF you get on their email list. Thank you, DNA Lounge!!!
On to the bands…which were so fun! Thanks to the small venue and the amazing spirit that exists between the artists, the acts hung out after their set and mingled with each other and the fans. It was an outstanding opportunity to talk to creative artists about their passion projects. For a diehard music lover like myself, it was a night to remember! We started out with an industrial electronic duo from the United Kingdom called Royal Ritual. This project launched by producer David Lawrie (who’s kind of a badass internationally) during the pandemic and has continued with two albums (the first Martyrs received a Grammy nomination) in 2022 and 2024. David and his guitarist Dan Kentley have great energy and we all really enjoyed the introduction to their music.
Next was Dark Chisme who hail from Seattle, Washington. Dark Chisme is also a duo consisting of Christine Gutierrez (Latina DJ & producer) and the performer E. Gutierrez mixes beats ala DJ style with some really fun percussion. Not to mention she has the pipes. She switches effortlessly from Spanish to English and then back again. Also, I always love a little girl power, which she possesses in spades. Highly recommend!!! Dark Chisme is totally on my radar now. We all enjoyed their passion and high energy.
Thanks to Homeland “Security” and the denial of entry for Cemetary Girls and Aeon Sable, we were treated to Oakland’s own Yama Uba who also played the LA show. This was another duo, apparently they are all the rage (duos, I mean). Again I was happy to see some female energy. I love the gentlemen, don’t get me wrong, but I applaud how the rock scene is opening up. Yama Uba had some beautiful guitar work and I enjoyed the way they wove the sax into their sound. They are dark post-punk so sax wouldn’t be the obvious choice, still, it was well done.
For my group, the big draw was the goth band, The Awakening. My boyfriend is originally from South Africa (Pretoria) and that is also where The Awakening hails from. In fact, my boyfriend had seen this band more times that he can count back home. After the show he and their front man reminisced about clubs long gone and a city half a world away. These days The Awakening, led by Ashton Nyte, is stateside. Their music is truly beautiful and Nyte possesses that classic goth voice ala Peter Murphy or Andrew Eldritch. They put in an extended set and I reveled in every song. Incidentally, Ashton Nyte has made seven solo albums which showcase a very different and lovely side of his musicality. They are well worth checking out, and definitely seek out The Awakening. Outstanding set and a live experience whose memory I will treasure.
My sincere thanks to Glōm Fest, the DNA Lounge, and all the performers, especially The Awakening, for providing us with such a dark, joyous evening. We are not so far out of the pandemic that I could ever take this for granted. THANK YOU, my dark lovelies!!! Now, I leave all you readers with one of my favorite songs from the evening, The Awakening’s The Dark Romantics which perfectly sums up the night’s vibe. Please enjoy!!!
We are the Dark Romantics… and our dreams are where the poets go.
Great night all around!