El Beasto Bookings

  The Fuzztones Oct 20 You don’t walk into a Fuzztones 40th anniversary gig sober in spirit — you stumble in, brain already humming with distortion, clutching a tall beer and some vague idea that tonight might rattle your spine into a different alignment. And on October 17th at Valencia’s 16 Toneladas, the gods of garage rock did not disappoint. They came bearing fuzz pedals, Farfisa organs, black shades and the unmistakable musk of four decades’ worth of sonic sacrilege. The night cracked open with The Smoggers, Spain’s own snarling emissaries of trash-beat bliss, and they didn’t so much open the show as set it on fire. Clad in the usual black, these Andalusian freakbeat evangelists spat out tight, vicious little garage anthems like they were hurling molotovs at the altar of polished pop. You could practically feel the ghosts of The Sonics and The Seeds grinning down in approval. The crowd — a gloriously ragtag brigade of old punks, new mutants, and leathered-up lifers — was insta...