Cruel World 2024 returned May 11 Saturday with yet another great lineup that simply could not be missed, as detailed in the official flier below.
Last year, the amazing 2023 Cruel World Fest got shut down early by the fire department because they saw a flash of heat lighting somewhere. Iggy Pop and Siouxsie got rescheduled for the following day. It never did end up even raining that day the city shut them down. Go figure. This year, there was no heat lightning, there was just one of the biggest solar flare events of the past 100 years or so–nothing major, just a space event from the sun 14 times larger than the Earth that could potentially wipe out the electric grid, and reportedly causes people to become dumber and more irrational, going into fight or flight mode more readily due to massive radiation waves charging certain parts of their brain. Or in other words, just another political national convention.
A great writer can make heaven sound like hell, or hell sound like heaven. And a punk rocker can bitch better than anyone I know. With that said, what’s a (mostly) punk rock show review without keeping it real? So here it is.
We rolled out of bed and got ready, heading over to The Rose Bowl. Once we arrived in the area, what should have been a one-minute trip to enter the parking lot area took around 2 hours. Evidently some Rose Bowl area neighbors got together and successfully banned concert goers from driving down their street. Not that we can blame them. This however resulted in us being re-routed by some Rose Bowl street team in the exact opposite direction our navigator sent us, in a giant loop, back to where we started. Finally, we were able to go down another road, and moved an average of a tenth of a mile or less every 5 minutes or so. Why you may wonder? Parking.
The Rose Bowl, or in this case, the parking lot adjacent to the Rose Bowl which is a golf course, owned by the City of Pasadena, decided to charge us all $30 or more to park around 2 miles away from the actual venue.
As a result of this madness, we unfortunately missed a number of the bands we planned on seeing that started at around noon.
One male and female guard team at one of the parking entry gates began to wave us to continue to another gate of general parking, after we had already been forced to drive over a mile away from where the actual venue was, even though the area they were at and we wanted to go into was clearly not even close to full. “Why can’t we go in here I asked?” Which was less farther than where they were trying to make us go.
“Man, I’m tired of arguing with you people, forget it, just go man.” He opened the gate and let us in. “Thank you,” we told him. “I like to argue!” The black woman next to him literally declared. Fortunately, we were already in, and his sanity overruled her cruelty.
We then walked the nearly 2 miles along the trek with hundreds of others to pick up our tickets. I could hear Mission UK in the distance. I’d seen Mission UK before years ago in LA. Wayne Hussey had press interviews scheduled back then, including with us. Instead of doing them, he just blew them all off and ended up instead talking to a small group of fans, and in particular, one cute goth girl who was clearly trying to hook up with him backstage. His manger apologized to us. Evidently, this was a common occurrence, and why we didn’t bother asking for an interview him this time. Wayne was reportedly raised Mormon, which caused him to greatly rebel.
After waiting around another half hour to get a ticketing error caused by The Rose Bowl staff straightened out, we finally got it.
Promoters Goldenvoice themselves, who are totally separate from the venue, are cool as hell. With an amazing punk rock history, there simply is no other promoter as cool of their size. They treat their fans right, they treat the bands right, and they are just totally badass. We love them.
Al Jourgensen of Ministry performs material from the albums Twitch and With Sympathy at Cruel World Festival 2024, Brookside at the Rose Bowl on May 11, 2024, Pasadena, California. Photo Credit: Bruce Edwin.Where else could you see Al Jourgensen and Ministry strutting around to songs from “With Sympathy” and “Twitch” under the warm California sun? No where else by Cruel World Fest 2024, that’s where. It was phenomenal, it was legendary, and it was a chance of a lifetime that you had to experience to believe.
Just after that, the iconic Adam Ant mesmerized the massive crowd for nearly an hour, with a heartfelt, powerful performance.
Gary Numan delivered again his second year in a row for Cruel World Fest, and sounded great as always.
Dreamcar was a huge hit, being all the members of Gwen Stefani’s band No Doubt, minus Gwen, doing retro sounding new wave. They even had No Doubt gear they used on stage. They sounded amazing.
Simple Minds played the medium sized stage, yet had a huge audience, and sounded great as always. Singer James Kerr stopped at one moment, randomly telling us about how “his pizza was getting cold backstage.” Uh, OK. I’m guessing maybe someone delivered it to him late and he felt like complaining about it to all of us. Who can blame him? Microwaves suck.
Trivia: Did you know that Simple Minds frontman James Kerr was once married to Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders for 5 years? It’s true. Also in 1977, James was a founding member of the punk band called Johnny and the Self Abusers. He reportedly owns a hotel in Italy.
Soft Cell, who I also saw many years ago, also sounded great as usual, performing of course their biggest hit “Tainted Love,” and every parent’s favorite’ “Sex Dwarf.” Unlike Al from Ministry who merely wears pentagrams and blasphemes Christianity, Soft Cell’s Marc Almond literally worships the devil, as a card-carrying member of the Church of Satan. He’s also gay. He came out in 1987.
Well, let’s clarify that Satan part. Marc said he was once invited to join the COS and did for the theatrics, but says he is not really into Satanism anymore. He says that he has also kicked the rock n’ roll lifestyle and is the biggest “puritan” now. Of his career, he told “The Herald,” I wanted to make my life into a big adventure. But that doesn’t mean I wanted to have more money or success, that’s never been the plan.”
The Jesus and Mary Chain I have had the pleasure to see numerous times live, including way back when Jim was dating Mazzy Star, and they toured and performed together. Amazingly, they still sound as great as ever, even better, both vocally, and musically, and get our vote as one of the best bands ever to see live, with just other-worldly, masterful guitar work and musicianship. Here at Cruel World, they of course were once again as always–amazing.
I’d also seen Blondie before ages ago. Here at Cruel World, she appeared on stage looking like a TSA guard in all black military type uniform, and sunglasses that looked like Ray Bans in the dark–now cool night. She opened with “One Way or Another” and sounded great as always. The crowd literally went nuts for her and many would not shut up screaming and hollering for her, with some badly trying sing along with Blondie which is always super annoying. No one paid to hear you try to sing. Shut up and listen to the artist people!
Duran Duran opened with The Chauffeur (Blue Silver) after emerging onto stage after a cool space scene video. The backing video for this opening song featured festishy fashion scenes of a model looking woman putting on her garter straps and stiletto heels, beautifully shot and lit. Duran Duran are simply one of the best bands on the planet who have more great hit songs than so many other artists–they are just simply amazing.
When Duran Duran first started, they were truly great back then, but many in the music world dismissed them as pretty boys that had no talent. In reality, they have always had massive talent, and their music videos have always been masterful, helping to create and define the success of MTV back in the day.
Tons of other bands performed here, and literally, all of them are awesome and were worth seeing. To have so many great bands in one place, at the same time, with tens of thousands of the coolest people out there that love the scene like you do, is a beautiful, special, magical thing. It makes me feel all emo just thinking about how unbelievably powerful and amazing it all is. It’s a day you will at times want to be over as you try to get there and try to leave, then wish it never was.
There are no other words to describe Cruel World Fest 2024 other than to say that if you were there–you know, if you were not, you never well, and if you have the chance to go next year, by all means you should. You may get annoyed, you may bitch more or less than we do, you may get tired, you may even cry when you get home after walking so far. But you will love it, you will be glad you did it, and you will never forget it.
Thank you Cruel World Fest–we love you. Thank you Goldenvoice. And thank you to all the amazing bands.
