International Pop Overthrow ’24 Marks 20 years at Liverpool’s Cavern Club
Founder David Bash gets a brick on hallowed club’s wall of fame
The International Pop Overthrow festival at the Cavern Club in Liverpool was special this year.
Actually, it’s special every year. The opportunity for 100+ bands to perform a couple sets before enthusiastic power pop fans at the legendary club on Mathew Street that birthed The Beatles is automatically special.
But this year, the 20th anniversary of the festival’s yearly Cavern Club residency proved that two decades of international power pop artists making the trek north to the Mersey River was not just the improbable one-off dream of IPO’s founder, David Bash, but a lasting institution that meets a real need for fans of this tuneful, catchy, enduring genre of music.
David Bash was given the ultimate honor to mark the occasion. Cavern booker Jon Keats (a pop performer himself) presided over a ceremony awarding David an inscribed brick for the club’s Wall of Fame, where he was placed adjacent to Stevie Van Zandt on a wall that includes …. everyone. Every great act that’s marched down three magical flights of black stairs to rock the beer-soaked walls of this synagogue of soul. The Beatles, Queen, Badfinger, Yardbirds, Hollies, The Coasters, Cheap Trick, Big Bill Broonzy, and hundreds of other acts that have contributed meaningfully to the artform developed as much in this charming port city as anywhere else.
Bash, who occasionally writes for these very pages, accepted the engraved brick with appropriate “I’m not worthy” humility, but he really has built something that has stood the test of time. So a permanent spot on a brick wall is a fitting honor.
Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t built to last. The Beatles themselves crammed all of their greatness into just eight short years. And even the rare exceptions that last through the genre’s inevitable threats to well-being, such as the Eagles or Rolling Stones (who also played at the Cavern, and remarkably not a single photograph of that Stones show exists) have to overcome deaths, overdoses, bankruptcies and retirements to keep pursuing a passion that’s meant for younger artists.
As my band Circles took the stage on a couple nights of this year‘s IPO Liverpool, the question of how old is “too old for this shit” was very much on my mind. Last year, I was days away from heading to the airport for IPO 2023 when my heart suddenly stopped beating. I laid dead on the streets of Maplewood, New Jersey, with no heartbeat for 4-1/2 minutes. My wife miraculously recalled the CPR training she received a decade earlier and saved my life, breaking four of my ribs in the process. A saint named Josselyn pulled over her FedEx truck to help Melody turn me over, then calmed her down as the life drained from my body.
So yeah, fully recovered, b’h, at full strength at least for a 55-year-old, performing once again on that magical stage seemed even more like a miracle than it had in years past.
But when is it time to call it a day? I’ve struggled with this question, and it’s so odd to me that every year some of the top grossing acts are decrepit verisimilitudes of the same groups that topped those charts when I was 15. Last year’s top earners included Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, U2 and George Strait. Does the world need Foreigner or Styx to trot out some fugazy version of the act after the usual lawsuits about who’s entitled to use the name enables one original member to take the stage, sometimes literally after being wheeled out to do so.
What other artistic genre allows its creators to stagnate so blatantly? Seeing the Rolling Stones tour out-gross everyone not named Taylor Swift is like discovering that Happy Days has somehow become a top five show or a screening of the Godfather is suddenly beating the latest Dead Pool. Yes, those are great shows and movies, but I’m grateful that they don’t suck up so much oxygen that creators of new shows and movies cannot find audiences. There is no universe where a replay of the ’77 World Series can outperform broadcasts of games currently taking place. That’s as it should be.
On the other hand, who am I to deny anyone access to whatever form of entertainment they choose? If people pay to see REO Speedwagon in 2024 rather than bands making music today, then let them vote with their streaming dollars and attention spans.
What I appreciate so much about what David Bash and his wife and IPO partner Rina Bardfield have done with this festival is combine the nostalgia and appreciation for a bygone genre with the ability to platform many artists who are pushing the boundaries and still producing interesting, excellent art at the present moment.
It’s not possible to see every band that plays IPO-Liverpool. The festival has multiple stages, so the math doesn’t work even if you hang out all day for all 10 days of the festival. However, partly because of my sheer joy at being alive for this year‘s iteration, I pretty much parked my lucky ass at the Cavern Club all day for the first four days of the festival, as well as hitting a few spot sets and watching lots of video.
Each year that I’ve reviewed what I’ve seen, there’s been one act that hit me where I live. I’ve come to understand that because the festival doesn’t generate the publicity it deserves, some of these acts view this annual wrap-up I write (handy links to 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, plus a bonus IPO Chicago in 2018) as some sort of gauge of whose music is worthy. That’s a mistake. First of all, like I said, I can’t see all the acts. Second, I’m hardly an unbiased observer. I do my best to be fair, but I always allow for the fact that my mood on any given night and my propensity to bore the shit out of readers with detailed descriptions of my own exploits are not representative samples of proper journalistic disinterest.
All that said, the act that meant the most to me this festival was Kerosene Stars.
The hardest thing to do in pop is write a melody that a listener can remember after leaving the club. After seeing Chicago-based Kerosene Stars at the Cavern Pub, the hooks to “Ants In the Bathroom” and “Where Have You Been” were both locked in my auditory cortex like I’d heard ’em a hundred times. And I kinda had. The first line of “Ants In the Bathroom” sounds like “Who walks in the classroom, cool and slow?” (40 years of writing about music and this is my first article with multiple Coasters references.) And the mondo hook of “hello, hello, hello.” Impossible to be in a city with a tsunami of Beatles references and not hear that line as a reference to “Hello, Goodbye.”
But that’s the beauty of pop music. There are so few permissible chords, tempos, time signatures and subject matters that they inevitably repeat. So a band like Kerosene Stars, with their XTC or Built to Spill-inflected songwriting quirks, can take the rules of rock and create something fresh and exciting and worth seeing.
I bought the songs (and so should you) and went back the following night to catch the band again at the Cavern Club. Even better. Songs like “Eleanor” caught my ear and one that sings “looks to be a pretty time of year.”
Let’s talk a minute about their instrumentation—even that was quirky. The singer, Scott Schaafsma, plays a Steinberger bass that hasn’t been seen since Ben Orr rocked one on 1982’s Shake It Up tour. Then there’s a guitar and a plus drummer and then there’s also a fella playing washboard and a tambourine. I asked Schaafsma what was up with that and he told me the band used to be based in Chicago until he moved to Houston to be near a nice lady who was filming the band’s every move at the Cavern. So when they do have gigs these days, not everyone can make it so having a percussionist means that guy can fill in for the drummer.
A quirky answer for a quirky band, and the Chicago roots make sense, too, as their whole gestalt feels like the kind of music that would have appeared in Easy or another Joe Swanberg mumblecore scene.
Here are some other highlights.
The band Marseille is getting some buzz now and their new EP “GODIVA” has been generating heat. I like a band with a frontman and these guys have a fun look to ‘em. There appears to be two sets of guys in ages — a young singer bass player and rhythm guitarist with an older drummer and lead guitar. It kind of made it look like recital day for a School of Rock but it still worked. The bass player was really rockin his 4003 and brought forth the spirit of Bruce Foxton, another Cavern legend. And the rhythm guitar player on an Epiphone Explorer echoed the Epiphone Flying V on the wall signed by all the members of Wishbone Ash—exactly the kind of throwback that makes a visit to the Cavern as much a museum experience as a live show.
As much as I fight for the rightful place of keys as a core instrument of rock n roll, I don’t love a rock band where the lead singer is parked behind a keyboard. It’s too distancing, putting a big, stationary object between the audience and a band’s focal point. Nevertheless, Sleuth (that’s a group of bears, like a “murder” of crows) had a really nice sound. Their song “First To Leave, Last To Go” has a great sound, sung by a guy whose Pet Shop Boys collection appears to be well sorted. Another song said, “I’ll be frank / you can be anyone.” They even did a song in 3/4, and another had a bridge in 6/8— that’s as rare at a power pop festival as speed metal. Plus, the singer brought his own mic – what’s up with that? A very good band with a different look and feel.
Mansfield from Denmark was a big highlight of the festival in 2022 and their recent record earned a positive review in these pages. This year, they featured a semi acoustic set that really highlighted the quality of their songwriting, featured on Come Rain or Shine. And lead singer Christian Stage sported a Pretty Green shirt maybe in honor of Paul Weller having turned 66 just a couple days earlier.
The band It’s Karma It’s Cool has a legit front man who practices the lost art of “working the crowd.” And the guitar player gets points for using a wireless unit to wander through the crowd but loses a few for wearing shorts. This is a weird situation. Their best song was “Raised by Engineers” — live, it completely rocks and the singer has a kind of Shane Gillis charm. The recorded version is super jangly and R.E.M. sounding. Same with another good song, Bubblegum Monsters.
The Heidelberg band Used had a great look to em and harmonized like only brothers can. Just these two gorgeous fellas with a good drummer with a plus mullet. The guitar brother used just one pedal – a tremolo thing that sounded amazing and warm. I remember Howard Stern asking Stuttering John why he hated The Scorpions and John said he just didn’t feel like getting screamed at in German by a short guy. I get that, and the drummer’s counts of eins zwei drei vier definitely put me in Otto Frank mode. But the band was a delight and stayed around to enjoy the acts that followed them, a trait I highly prize.
Holly Henderson has a great psychedelic look and real guitar chops on an odd Les Paul with a whammy bar. Her band featured a rock-solid female drummer and a great piano player hitting the Sgt Pepper era John Lennon look hard. “Sunflower” is a gorgeous song with a soaring lead vocal that Holly dedicated to her mom; another was a love song to her dog Wendy.
The Detroit outfit The Incurables has a really catchy song called “Down” whose video seems to feature all their very real-Detroit looking friends. The Incurables also played in 2022 and their singer Ray made a point of catching Circles so he could commiserate with me about the demise of Material Issue frontman Jim Ellison, who wrote the song “International Pop Overthrow,” and tell me he’d read my obit. Also of note are The Oh Boys, a very fun combo with roots in Toronto but now making noise in Chicago.
One of the rituals of playing any festival is the hang with other bands. The dressing room at The Cavern Club is the typical mess of guitar cases and cymbal stands and 3-4 bands jockeying for limited space to tune up and write setlists and compete for wardrobe excellence against Jose Estragos, the rockabilly Spaniard who was the best-dressed guy at the festival, night after night.
When Circles was about to take the stage for our first show, I got to talking to the drummer of mylittlebrother, and he turned out to be the most fascinating guy I met all week. The band, from Cumbria, is lead singer and songwriter Will Harris’s baby, and he’s got a couple really great songs up his sleeve, including “You Know Better” and “Chicago,” which not only sings about the Windy City but kind of builds on a “25 or 6 to 4” riff.
But it’s the drummer, Simon Buttress, who turns out to share my fascination with the business behind rock. He told me all about the British Drum Company being birthed by some disillusioned guys who formerly worked at Premier. Premier had outfitted every great British drummer, from Ringo and Moon to Rick Buckler, Phil Collins and Nick Mason, before falling on predictable hard times and being acquired by gear4music. Then he described how a similar situation happened with the company that used to make the high-end drum heads for Yamaha kits. As I type this, it doesn’t sound so interesting but I promise you, this guy had a ton of rock and roll racanteuring juice. And if that’s not enough, his brother is Wolfgang Buttress, the immersive artist who creates giant works all over England and happened to have a huge exhibition at Liverpool’s National Museum.
That idea of automatically engaging with other musicians playing the same festival brought memories of my musical past roaring back to the surface.
Let me provide a little background. The first time I played International Pop Overthrow was in 2017. David Bash was kind enough to let me perform a couple songs solo on stage as the other acts changed over. The excellent band B-Side, whose hit “The Sun Brings Out The Girls” would by any fair metric be on the radio everywhere, picked up on my embarrassingly simple songs and played along. It was a magical moment for me, in my late 40s, having never achieved the rock ‘n’ roll success I had longed for. But the truth is, I had gotten at least the taste of it earlier on.
After graduating high school in 1986, I joined Chicago rock band Green. At the time I joined, the band had serious buzz. The Village Voice had credited the band’s debut album as “the most startling music to come out of the Midwest this year”; tours with The Replacements and opening slots for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Hüsker Dü were common.
We worked hard and recorded good records, and powerful industry individuals came out to support us. The band got hooked up with a promoter in Europe, who brought us over several times. During the summer of 1989, we played Europe’s festival circuit. At the Waterpop festival in Rotterdam or the Neurorock Festival in St. Truiden, Belgium, we saw audiences in five figures and it was every bit the miraculous and energizing experience you’d expect.
Green’s leader was the singer-songwriter Jeff Lescher. (Still is – his new solo record Larks of Avon is excellent and contains a couple songs as great as anything he’s done, including “I’m Not Going to Cry Today” or “What About Me.”)
Jeff had a lot of theories about what made a rock group special, and thought deeply about everything he did. As I sat in the dressing room at the Cavern Club, automatically buddies with all these other bands, I thought of how Jeff seldom fraternized with the other groups we played with. He never wore their T-shirts or other signs of ass-kissing sycophancy. Jeff believed Green was special and didn’t need to forge alliances.
A lot of this comes from personality, obviously. I’m a Chatty Cathy so naturally I’m going to BS with mylittlebrother the same way I did with Wreckless Eric or the Average White Band or Green On Red when we played with them in Holland 35 years ago. But I love Jeff’s point. When you’re practicing an art form whose rudiments are so simple that practically anyone can perform it, sometimes the only thing you have to distinguish yourself from other bands is attitude. Johnny Ramone wasn’t who he was because of three chords and eighth-note down strokes. He was Johnny Ramone because he just was.
I favor congeniality. Bands helping each other out and acting like bros in the dressing room. Who am I, Noel Gallagher? But I get it. All these acts, 130 of them at this year’s IPO Liverpool, wouldn’t be up there if they didn’t believe they had something special to offer. Not all are continuing to pursue fame. A guy like Dave Rave played something like 50 IPOs in a row and is an excellent songwriter and energetic performer — he got a Grammy nomination and is in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame! — but he seems to understand from his bearing the low likelihood of some A&R guy wandering into the Cavern Pub to say, “I’m gonna sign ya, kid.”
If notoriously prickly musicians are also great artists—and I put Noel Gallagher, Johnny Ramone and Jeff Lescher all in that greatness category—I can tolerate a good deal of attitude.
So that’s what Circles was about this year. My band post-Green, The Lilacs, had a few mesmerizing performances at IPOs in Chicago, New York and Liverpool. We killed, and even attracted some fans as our hit record The Lilacs Endure had come out and started to earn some traction right around that time.
But the tragic death of our bass player and various other health and legal problems made it impossible for us even to consider putting in another appearance. For this year’s IPO I went back to my roots. My best friends and I have been playing music together as Circles since high school. And what united us was our undying love and respect for Green. So I put together a band consisting of Green’s original drummer, the great John “Freight Train” Valley, plus my nephew Nate on bass and a ringer named Max Kyrillos on lead guitar.
We delved deeply into the catalog, playing several Green songs that never really found the audience they deserve, plus some hits from my catalog. We sounded pretty amazing, actually.
Again, no delusions of stardom. I know that my window for that, which was never open more than a tiny crack in the first place, has long since slammed shot. The quarterly royalty checks I get for 10 bucks or so are all I have to remember that this was once a viable dream.
But that’s what David Bash has created in International Pop Overthrow. As we watched him being honored for two decades of bringing a couple thousand bands to town, it’s not just a fantasy camp for overaged rockers. It’s a living, breathing opportunity for vital artists of all ages to entertain people who just wanna rock.
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