Night Beats and La Luz Close Out MR Fest at The Marc

By Andrew Nogay
MR Fest Press Team

2016 was another great year for MR Fest, which covered numerous venues and various genres throughout the two days. There was everything from garage rock to rap to comedy, and memories to last at least a couple days. The Marc was where the two headliners, Night Beats and La Luz, played the last sets of MR Fest. Though the two bands hail from Seattle, Washington and the crowd was rambunctious for both, they had very different styles.

Night Beats went on around 10 p.m. Friday, April 30, and the garage/psych band hit hard. They mostly played songs off their recent album, Who Sold My Generation, one of the best albums of the year so far. The first song they played was the first song off that album, “Celebration #1,” a nearly spoken-word bit of psychedelia that led nicely into the rest of their set.

The thing that separates Night Beats from other newer garage bands is how good their songs are. Some bands try to go for a sound before constructing their songs, but Night Beats has songs like “Power Child” and “No Cops,” both of which they played at The Marc, that are just a cut above. Their songs are unique and are never predictable.

The energy from the crowd was great throughout their set. Some jerk even started a mosh pit for their last song. Okay, twist my arm. It was me, I started it. What can I say? I got really into them.

La Luz was the last band to play for MR Fest and I am not going to lie, the excitement in the KTSW office was palpable when we booked them to headline. I think it was fair to say they blew the crowd away. People were crowd surfing, jumping, moshing and making dance circles. La Luz fed off the energy. It was like a never-ending cycle of passion.

La Luz’s brand of surf rock was a fantastic way to end MR Fest. They even came out for an encore. One of the coolest things I saw all of MR Fest came near the end of their set, when the drummer announced that someone from the crowd should come up and play drums for a song while she crowd surfed and took pictures of the show. Nestor Vazquez, local drummer and KTSW’s music director, was pushed on stage and he absolutely killed it.

Nestor Vazquez drums with La Luz while their drummer, Marian Li Pino, crowd surfs. Video by DeMarcus Cobb and Austin Yeates.

La Luz was perfect and a fitting way to end a fantastic MR Fest.