It's settled,
Fun Fun Fun Fest is roughly 100 times more enjoyable than
Austin City Limits. Sure, it doesn't have the lineup
or any of the things that make ACL so renown, but it does
have heart. There's no AT&T/Dell sponsored stages,
interactive zones or any of that other crap. Nope,
it's just a gathering in the park that just so happens to
feature some good music Maybe that's weird to some,
but for me it makes for an experience that I normally
despise feel like something I could do every weekend.
See below to check out what I saw over the course of
Saturday, and then drop by tomorrow for Sunday's rundown.
Enjoy.
- Zykos (Top Left) - Down To Nothing (Top Right) -
Small Sins (Bottom Center) -
My weekend
began with Zykos. If you don't already know, they're
local. They're also really good, which made them the
perfect choice to kick start the festival.
In my only trip to Stage 2 over the course of the weekend I
caught about three songs from an act called Down To Nothing.
The band and the crowd were jumping all over the place and
having a blast as I watched and wondered why I couldn't hear
anything pop related at all. Ok, not really. But
it did remind me of days when I was only concerned with
pumping my rock fist.
The biggest surprise for me over the entire weekend was
Small Sins. The quintet from Canada had quite a few
crafty numbers that had witty songwriting and a lot of
bounce. I hope to have some more about these guys
soon, but until then I definitely recommend clicking on the
picture and giving them a listen on Myspace.
- Evangelicals (Top Left) - White Denim (Top Right) -
Prince Klassen (Bottom Left) - Final Fantasy (Bottom Right)
-
I'm not a huge
fan of Evangelicals, but since I had heard so many different
things about their shows I decided to see for myself.
Well, I think they're pretty good live. They don't
belong in the middle of the day at a festival, but
nonetheless they do still translate well from record to
stage. It would just work better in a dark and moody
venue at one in the morning.
Ever since I moved out to Austin I haven't been able to get
people to shut up about White Denim, especially since one of
the members use to live in my hometown of Nacogdoches.
I honestly just don't see what people love so much about
them. But, with that being said I thoroughly enjoyed
their set and had a hard time leaving to go catch some of
Prince Klassen. Who knows? Maybe I'm starting to
come around on the bizarro-pop outfit that everyone is so
deeply in love with.
As for Prince Klassen, that guy is a badass. He had
heads bobbing and brains thinking. Get to Austin and
see him if you want to dance and/or hear creative mixes.
Final Fantasy was an interesting experience. I mean,
it sounded as beautiful as I expected it would, but Owen
Pallett was much more charming and hilarious than I could
have imagined. He was cracking jokes and rambling
about the most random of things. He even had the nerve
to end with a cover of Mariah Carey's Fantasy.
On the other hand, he did name his album He Poos Clouds,
so maybe I should have seen it coming.
Since I'm a
sucker for indie hip hop I skipped out on Okkervil River, Of
Montreal and New Pornographers so that I could catch Grand
Buffet, Cadence Weapon and Busdriver (with special guest Daedelus). As I expected, it was an absolute blast.
Just in listening to Grand Buffet on disc you don't really
get it. In fact, you could study their material for
years and still never actually fully understand it until you
see them bounce around on stage right in front of you.
Why? Well an equal part to the Grand Buffet question
aside from the music is the duo's stage personalities.
The two of them are incredibly confident and more than a
little hilarious. I mean, who says Pitchfork can "lick
my pussy!" and then declare that artists need to "start
critiquing each other." My guess is no one except
Grand Buffet. See them any time that you can,
especially if the world is ending because no one would be
better to go out with.
I was hoping like hell that Final Fantasy was going to join
Cadence Weapon on stage and then proceed to blow my mind,
but he didn't. The set was still fantastic though, and
I would definitely recommend seeing him if you never have.
He really knows how to get the crowd involved, so I promise
a great time.
Daedelus came out for about 15 minutes as a sort of intro into Busdriver's set.
He didn't talk or anything, but he did get the house moving
with his fancy little electronic setup, which included a Mac
(of course) and some kind of box that had a zillion
unlabeled buttons. I'll probably never know how he
knew what button did what, so I'll just stick to my theory
that they did nothing. He was mixing with his mind.
It's hard to say much about a Busdriver performance since
it goes as fast as he does, which is somewhere around light
speed. But what I can say for sure though is that when
a crowd can't sing-a-long it apparently results in everyone
just breaking it down and throwing their hands up in a fit
of dance fever. It was kind of crazy, and I loved
every moment. Also, I need to check out the guy's
older stuff because the little that he did sounded rather
good.
- Explosions In The Sky -
As if you didn't already know,
these guys are good. So good in fact that I almost had a hard time
taking pictures because I wanted to just stare at them and watch them play
during the epic hour that they were on stage. My only complaint was
that they didn't play two hours.
-
John Laird -
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
