Results tagged “funfunfunfest2009”

Yes, someone dumped a friend's ashes on the stage after Danzig performed.

It’s a fantastic thing to see the band at what might be their second peak - each onstage member of Mission of Burma seemed utterly devoted to the performance, and we can only assume the same for tape manipulator Bob Weston, apparently hidden away in the sound booth.

This year's Fun Fest was a huge success. We were just as happy to spend Sunday in the mud as we were to indulge in Saturday's spring-like sunshine. Between 90 bands, four stages and thousands of music lovers, Fun Fest proved itself to be one of the most important Austin events of the year. Each year's festival has enjoyed sizable growth without losing the intimate feel its become known for; and the good-natured volunteers, bartenders, security folks and box office staff all make that possible -- even remarkable. Oh yeah - there were nearly 100 bands, comedians and DJs to watch this year, and they all seemed to feed off the audience's palpable devotion, offering 100% one each stage all weekend long, regardless of weather. We can't wait for next year, when we'll undoubtedly see Transmission Entertainment and everyone involved in the fest proving themselves worthy of one more ladder step. Thanks to all of you who worked with us in the media lounge and box office over the weekend - we look forward to seeing you again next year!

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Charged with the bittersweet task of christening the orange stage at Fun Fun Fun Fest, The Laughing - whom many still remember as a band with a fetish/fondness for plush toys and neon - did their best to disabuse audiences of that recollection, playing up beat-based compositions lacking in either face paint or saxophone. The band is sharper this metamorphosis around, with a heavy emphasis on drums.

Despite its confoundingly inquisitive band name and general unclassifiability, the Bay Area/Cincinnati hip hop/indie act Why? has built quite the niche for themselves, satisfying those with a love for rhyme and meticulous, tightly-wound musicianship. Toss in a lyric sheet of ear-catching revelations regarding the human psyche's underbelly so disarmingly honest they'd make even your most offensive friends blush, and what you have is a cocktail for one of today's most intriguing and singular outfits. Still riding high off the breakthrough that was last year's Alopecia, Why? is now supporting its latest release, the well-received Eskimo Snow. Out of respect for this, and for the band's performance at Fun Fun Fun Fest this afternoon, we hooked up for a phone call with Why? frontman and wordsmith Yoni Wolf to talk about persona, mowing lawns, and the Bible's breeziest book.

I talked with Fun Fun Fun Fest organizer Graham Williams on Friday afternoon at his homey office on Neches Street. We discussed the effect of outdoor stages on comedians, festival dos and don'ts, and the mechanical bulls of Tijuana, although I edited that part out.

It might not be a total surprise that one of the underground debut records of the year is a volatile stew of insistent, young and charged vocals, driving guitar and churning, turn-on-a-dime rhythms. It's the stuff that garage, punk and hard-rock legends are made of. But it might be unprecedented that it's a recently-uncovered and nearly 35-year-old recording made by a band that disappeared from the radar screen almost as soon as it popped up.

The fourth edition of Fun Fun Fun Fest officially kicks off at noon tomorrow and naturally, one can be forgiven for looking ahead to day one already. The likes of The Jesus Lizard, Les Savy Fav, Chelsea Peretti, The Sword, Pharcyde, Neon Indian, and Shearwater are all on Saturday’s schedule but let’s hold our horses for we still need to indulge in a full night of revelry before we set up camp at Waterloo Park for the weekend. This evening, Austinist proudly presents the After The Jump blogger’s panel at 5:30 at The Mohawk, followed by the latest installment of our Local Music Is Sexy series, spread across the 'hawk and Club de Ville this year.

Marc Savlov interviews Danzig. "I do a record when I have something to say, and I want it to be better or bigger or stronger each time. Because otherwise, why do it? There's no money in music anymore, so I'm not doing it for the money."

An update to our earlier post about Fun Fest early pick-up at Club Deville: if you're buying tickets there, you'll be set at will call on Saturday, no physical tickets will be mailed

To reduce your time spent waiting in lines this weekend, the good folks at Fun Fun Fun Fest are giving you plenty of opportunities to pick up your tickets early.

Update! If you've been planning your Fun Fun Fun Fest according to the map on their site, we've got a couple notes for you. The main difference is those little green boxes, which designate exclusive areas accessible by those who have purchased PIP passes. The poster show has also moved from the north side of the park to the middle, near the orange stage.

An Austin band by way of Brooklyn, Neon Indian is the elusive new project of Alan Palamo (also behind the one-man electro project Vega). The name Neon Indian itself gives due justice to the type of music Palamo produces—mystical synth noise, kooky hooks, and sensual vocals. The project started as a bunch of lo-fi recordings before the No Way Down EP was made in 2008. Full of reverb and distortion, song titles like "Should Have Taken Acid With You," add to the mystique of the project.

The local boys in Harlem have been helping Austinites relearn how to dance to rock and roll with their catchy garage pop since their arrival on the scene not too long before their first record, Free Drugs, dropped last year. So, it wasn’t a big surprise when Matador Records made things official with the band in a marriage that means a multi-record, worldwide deal. We grabbed Harlem bassist, Jose Boyer, before their Fun Fun Fun Fest performance this weekend to get a quick word on their next album, playing house parties, girls and drugs.

Local heroes and In The Red-signees The Strange Boys will bring their 60s pastiche and summer fun party vibe to Fun Fun Fun Fest’s yellow stage on Sunday afternoon. While The Strange Boys do seem to fit into the lately omnipresent, and as some may argue, moribund lo-fi garage pop genre, they also manage to transcend many of their contemporaries.

So you’ve put away the Halloween costumes for another year and adjusted your clocks. The beautiful weather outside makes those hours spent in your cubicle tick away oh so slowly. And the promise of turkey ‘n’ fixins is still a few weeks away. It all adds up to thing -- Fun Fun Fun Fest is here! Two days of amazing music, comedy, and entertainment at Waterloo Park beckon and we’re going to alleviate your case of the Mondays by offering up two weekend passes to the fourth edition of the festival. Enter your information in the form below for a chance to win.

Few bands do a better job tossing catchy melodies and choruses into such a mucky stew of noise and deliberately crappy recording techniques than Columbus, Ohio's Times New Viking. The trio, critically-lauded yet still dodging most of the mainstream love they probably deserve, is riding high on perhaps their crispest and most complete LP yet, Born Again Revisited, a batch of concoctions that sticks in the mind even though about 80% of its words are unintelligible. In preparation for their performance (which, if their other concerts are any indication, will be a nonstop onslaught of energy) at Fun Fun Fun Fest this Saturday, we shot some questions across the internet at Times New Viking, and guitarist Jared Phillips shot back some answers, including this little nugget: "fuck art." Enjoy.

With Fun Fun Fun Fest fast approaching, be reminded that the festival also includes a number of comedians. Chelsea Peretti is among the standup acts on this year's bill. The New Yorker does a full circuit of stage shows and gets booked on college campuses, but she's also a regular on Tru TV's "The Smoking Gun Presents," one of the masterminds of BlackPeopleLoveUs.com, and a writer whose work has been featured in publications including Details, Playgirl, and the Village Voice.

Fun Fun Fun Fest is just a couple of weeks away and we sure are licking our chops in anticipation of what promises to be the biggest installment of the emerging annual festival. The organizers have been keeping busy, doling out tickets weekly via their Tuesday Trivia on Twitter contest, and last Saturday, over 40 teams participated in a Scavenger Hunt to win a whole host of prizes. Check out all the pictures -- you won’t regret it!

Just like ACL, the early performers at Fun Fun Fun Fest often get overlooked or brushed aside. We highly recommend checking out one of these early bands, because many are just on the brink of popularity. And once that happens, they won't be cool anymore. Astronautalis, aka Andy Bothwell, admits his fear of popularity, but isn't holding back in the meantime. A lone rapper from Jacksonville, Flordia, Astronautalis first started turning heads in Seattle.

Fun Fun Fun Fest is just around the corner (November 7th and 8th), so let's get to know a few more of the acts performing. Here we'll look at punkyish stuff from both new hotness No Age and the reunited glory of Face to Face.

Dan Bejar of Destroyer—who moonlights with the Spencer Krug and Carey Mercer supergroup Swan Lake, as well as the Neko Case and A.C. Newman supergroup The New Pornographers—is known as a writing virtuoso, one of those few and proud and usually-called-crazy in music who bring true artfulness to the words themselves, and not just the instrumentation. Inspired by his upcoming appearance at Fun Fun Fun Fest, we thought there’d be few better things than to give Dan an opportunity to jot a few things down, so we shipped off to him a handful of questions and said have at it. And he did, and delightfully so, citing Lorca and the Duino Elegies, his prejudice for Wallace Stevens over Robert Frost, how fucked most musicians would be if they had to truly worry about lyrics, and why maybe someday he’d write a book if only he weren’t “a complete stranger to real work.” Needless to say, when he takes the Yellow stage at 8:45 on Day One of Fun Fest, we’ll be in the audience, following every word.

Let’s turn our attention now to a pair of bands we’re excited to see on the first day of Fun Fest's aught nine edition, San Diego’s Night Marchers and Tokyo’s Melt-Banana. Both groups, despite playing two very different styles of music, are touring veterans with highly respectable punk pedigrees.

Crystal Castles are prepared to wake up Waterloo Park on what would be a humble Saturday evening albeit for Fun Fun Fun Fest 2009. Trance-like, thumping beats are a sure fire way to wrap up the evening after a long day of absorbing great music. The Canadian boy-girl duo brings a whole new meaning to the experimental electronic genre. Crystal Castles are currently supporting their self-titled debut album.

Since the early '90s, Justin Pearson has been a crucial crux in the heart of southern California's hardcore/punk scene. Beginning with his record label Three One G and hardcore band Struggle, Pearson has dedicated himself to the noisiest and most abrasive elements of punk. Though best known for his involvement with Locust, he's had his toes in dozens of dirgy pools over the years -- Swing Kids (who recently reunited and performed), Crimson Curse, Some Girls and Holy Molar are all Pearson projects -- and he continues to astound with his prolific tendencies toward angsty screamo and powerviolence.

The Dillo reports details on an upcoming visit (April 2010) from Anthony Bourdain at the Paramount Theatre.

Still haven’t bagged yourself a ticket to the fourth edition of Fun Fun Fun Fest? Transmission Entertainment presents the perfect opportunity to convince a handful of friends to pool together their hard earned dough for a tasty little discount -- this weekend, if you purchase three weekend passes via the Fun Fest website, the fourth one is free. Simple enough. Oh, and there’s that Scavenger Hunt starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday at Red 7 where you can win tickets, PIP upgrades, and a whole lot more. Check out our “This Week in Fun Fun Fun Fest” post for recent festival related updates and news.

What’s the Deal: As far as instrumental groups go, Austin has its fair share - Balmorhea, Explosions in the Sky, Calm Blue Sea. Why not add San Marcos’ This Will Destroy You to that score card? After all, it’s only about a 30 minute drive to the building and bursting of this foursome’s ambient to supernova sound. Their music is full of atmospheric guitar tangles and sparse but powerful rhythms. The band began gaining positive buzz the same year they formed, in 2005, with the release of their first EP, Young Mountain. Later came their self-titled full-length on Magic Bullet Records. And, this year, they released a split with another Magic Bullet band, Lymbyc System.

Austinist, Ultra 8201 and Austin Eavesdropper (along with a host of other sponsors and supporters - see the flyer) are proud to present one more way to gear up for Fun Fest the weekend of November 7. The Thursday preceding the festival (that's Nov. 5), Austin Bleet Up's "Austin, Meet Your Bloggers" event at the Mohawk.