Austin, Texas is so overflowing with live music now that the city throws together an eighty-band festival in its sleep. So it was for the Fun Fun Fun Festival, whose biggest handicap might be its goofy name.
The lineup wasn’t holding it back: four stages with all brands of music and chicanery (Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show, opening with the song “Diarrhea”, falls into the latter category), plenty of it good, some of it amazing. Although indie rock, alt-country, hip hop, and DJ music were all well represented, at the end of the day, this was, to my mind, a punk festival.
If you’re a hardcore/punk fan living anywhere in Texas and you missed the Fun Fun Fun Fest, you’ll be sitting slump-shouldering and crying in your Dropkick Murphys t-shirt for a long time. Sad.
Audience dress code for the four stages broke down like this:
Stage One: Sneakers that aren’t really running shoes but aren’t really dress shoes either + ironic and/or vintage t-shirts
Stage Two: Prize-winning beards and aviator sunglasses
Stage Three: Black t-shirts, black pants, chains, and dangerous hair
Stage Four: Anything goes
All of us were covered in a fine layer of dust – it’s been a dry year in Austin, and by about 4pm on both days Waterloo Park turned into a punk rock Dorothea Lange picture. Bandanas over the face were popular; during the boring sets, we all made plans to rob a stagecoach.
Last things first: Sunday night Bad Brains closed out the festival (simultaneously with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or, as I like to call them, Clap Your Hands I’m Definitely Going to See Bad Brains Instead, No Disrespect Meant). Dr. Know and Darryl Jenifer were positively murderous, but would a 2008 crowd put up with HR’s dainty, spaced out delivery if they didn’t already know he was, well, HR? I wonder.
At any rate, we do know, we were there to see Bad Brains, the crowd wasn’t derailed by any of the reggae jams, and when HR whispered, “this next song is called Pay…” no one heard the rest because the place exploded.
In fact stage three was in frenzy all weekend; the only time I saw that crowd relatively still was during Scared of Chaka’s set. No one was Scared of Chaka, maybe because Leftover Crack had just worn out the crowd. During Leftover Crack’s set I had this conversation with a cop working the festival:
Me: What do you think about that song title?
Cop: I try not to listen. What’s it called?
Me: “One dead cop”
Cop: Very nice.
The first time I wandered over to stage three was to check out local boys the Krum Bums; lead singer Dave Tejas punted a beer into the crowd, climbed the scaffolding, hung upside down and screamed the rest of his song from there. This was 2:30 in the afternoon. Krum Bums killed. It was hard not to feel a little wimpy standing at stage one and hearing the bleed from DOA or Killdozer while nodding along thoughtfully with Centromatic.
The dudes (and dudette) of Bishop Allen probably steered clear of stage three; they’re absolutely adorable, they played a terrific set, and I half expected them to be swarmed by desperate A&R folks before they could clear the stage. Their sound was razor-sharp, with more punch than what I’ve heard online. Everything sounded like a hit. They’ll be all over the CW, and they matched the mood of the moment: bright and sunny. I may be embarrassed to admit it later, but I loved them.
The hardcore supergroup Rival Schools was slated to play the indie rock stage; they had already played a fiery set when they lit into a vicious cover of the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” Rival Schools: stay together! Tour more! And without question continue to perform “How Soon Is Now?” because you need that song, and that song needs you. Funk masters Brownout are now the local band I’ll take visitors to see for a guaranteed good time.
Best-kept secret of the festival was the Revival Tour – Chuck Ragan of Hot Water Music, Tim Barry of Avail and Ben Nicols of Lucero, a bunch of tattooed country-punkers having a blast.
They were squirreled away on stage two, which – partly by virtue of its location – had the smallest crowds all weekend. A small, happy crowd during Revival.
But the absolute most fun (fun fun!) to be had was bobbing up and down with Atmosphere on Saturday. Slug seemed genuinely moved by the love he was getting from Austin and, the man is a pro. Dead Milkmen and Bad Brains had the nostalgia/legend factor going for them, but there wasn’t a better show than Atmosphere.
That being said: the Dead Milkmen! Admit it: you forgot what a perfect song “Punk Rock Girl” is. You forgot how many other hilarious songs they have. You forgot about “If I Had a Gun,” and “Stuart (What the Queers are Doing to the Soil)” and “Right Wing Pigeon From Outer Space.”
You forgot what a stone cold maniac Rodney Linderman is. At one point the music stopped and the crowd surfing didn’t: “the deaf kids are crowd surfing,” he said. Later he launched into an anti-Palin, pro-activist, totally coherent and convincing tirade. You love the Dead Milkmen, you just forgot; and if you were at Fun Fun Fun, now you remember.
– Tom Vale
Fun Fun Fun Fest: www.funfunfunfest.com