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Metal bands. Emo bands. "Haunted-mansion-core." EDM. A rapper more famous for allegedly giving out cocaine to fans onstage than for any verse. Ancient hard-rock dudes. Lita Ford. A Phish tribute act. Burlesque dancers. The Oregon Symphony playing the score from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Fucking Riff-Raff.
If the lineup for the second annual Daze of the Dead festival makes no sense to you, that's the point. Presented by promoter Dead Nation, the festival—which is really more of a concert series—is designed as a kind of satire of bloated music festival culture in general. Or something like that. We asked organizer (he prefers "dictator") Haytham Abdulhadi—who also helms the yearly, and much less anarchic, Soul'd Out Music Festival—to explain further.
Willamette Week: What exactly is your vision with Daze of the Dead?
Haytham Abdulhadi: Cynicism, I guess, is the No. 1 aspect of it.
Care to expound on that?
Dead Nation is presenting the festival, and Dead Nation does so many of these kind of artists throughout the year, like gangster hip-hop, just anything deemed kind of frightening and what most other people won't touch, basically. But the idea is to put combinations together that don't make much sense. It's not happening the way we want it to this year—Riff Raff and Mimosa is probably the closest thing to that. But I think once we get a handle on getting artists to do what we want, you'll see more, like, David Allan Coe with Dead Prez— the idea of something that doesn't make sense and brings two different crowds together.
Is the idea to expose crowds to artists they wouldn't normally be open to seeing? Or is it just about creating chaos?
Yeah, general chaos and confusion. There's no educational aspect to it, aside from being a commentary on our times.
So it's almost like performance art as a music festival.
Right. I would say what's inspired this festival the most would be an Andy Kaufman, Tony Clifton type of humor.
I guess I'm still unclear as to the "why."
It's just a commentary on our times, I'd say.
But what is the comment?
I think it's going to explain itself. This is the music people are listening to. We've seen the stuff we're doing with Soul'd Out start to do a lot better, but there's a lot more of these cynical acts out there that people have glommed onto, and I think it's a platform for them to glom onto. They get excited about these pairings. And I think Halloween is a great time to have this chaotic, cynical, scary festival.
You've mentioned having problems putting mixed bills together. Do you get a lot of push-back from artists?
When we're in the early stages, we have to get routed stuff, so they're already coming with their own tours. Stitches was supposed to play with King Diamond on Halloween, with Exodus as the first of three. The agent was super excited. He was like, "I'd literally fly down for that, just to see what that would look like." But that one just didn't come together. If King Diamond had been able to fit their production into the Roseland we would've had that show on Halloween night.
Where does the symphony playing the Nightmare Before Christmas fit in? Just with the Halloween theme?
The fact that there's so many Halloween events at this time, we're going to be inclusive of these events. This is just one of those events we'd promote under the umbrella of the festival. It's not something we're doing, it's something the symphony is doing and has allowed us to include, in the spirit of Halloween.
What about Shafty, the Phish tribute?
It's just silliness. It makes no sense. Last year, we had Saul Williams, and a lot of his fans were getting upset that he was being associated with all these artists. I had Idi Amin on the poster say something, like, "What the fuck is this?" All these artists posted this poster on their Facebook page, and there was just endless comments, from Tech N9ne's page, YG, with people being like, "What the fuck? This is the worst lineup I've ever seen." There's just something I think is humorous for some reason.
Another point is that a lot of festivals just throw a bunch of bands that don't make any sense into a field together, but it's never called out. I always get, "How do you define Soul'd Out as a festival?" Well, there's a theme, which is soul music. We're not throwing a bunch of artists into a field and calling this a festival. This is kind of expanding on that, saying, "This is what festivals are like these days," but let's go one step further and have it make even less sense.
You're calling it a festival, but there's no wristband or anything. It's really just a grouping of shows happening around the same time. Are there any plans to switch to a wristband model in the future?
Potentially. There's the idea of doing an outdoor series like MusicfestNW did when they were in indoors, but doing it this time of year when it's really cold and just raining on people. That'd be funny. I don't know if they'd go. That's the problem.
In your wildest dreams, what's the craziest combination that would be your dream scenario?
Ted Nugent with Chief Keef, presented by the NRA.
SEE IT: Daze of the Dead begins is Oct. 24-Nov. 1. Go here for a complete schedule.
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