Another Fun Fun Fun Fest comes to an end. But things were definitely a little different this year.
The venue — Auditorium shores is obviously bigger, and it takes forever to get from the yellow to black stages. The yellow stage was in a tent, which struck me as dumb, hard to attend, and possibly dangerous. The dust was pretty much the same, maybe even worse with the wind this weekend. A few drops of rain on Sunday improved things.
The iPhone app — yeah, don’t even bother. Instead of storing any data locally, it tried to call the server for every view of the schedule, which failed pretty much every time.
Reggie Watts — other than being on the yellow stage, wow. The guy is impressive, abstract, funny, and talented.
Danzig Legacy — I don’t think Danzig will be coming back. Apparently it was rockstar behavior and not technical difficulties that kept the Legacy show from making it more than 2 songs into the Misfits portion before being shut down by the 10pm deadline. He sounded pretty terrible.
Public Enemy — Flav introduced the DJ as Terminator X, even though DJ Lord’s been with them for 15 years (Apparently Terminator X is an ostrich farmer in Arizona?). Flav’s godson did some freestyle which was even more embarrassing. But PE brought the noise, and they brought a live band. They were totally pro and I regret leaving their stage for the few minutes it took me to be disappointed with Danzig.
Donald Glover — Great standup, really unfocused and kinda amateur sounding as a rapper, despite bringing a bigger live band than PE.
Tune-Yards — Very fun, danceable, ingenious, and who doesn’t love a woman who’s succeeding on her own terms in rock music.
Girls — J K, guys!
Negative Approach — We will always go see the toughest, scariest voice in hardcore, whether it’s his current band (Easy Action) or the reconstituted NA. “Ready To Fight” was pretty much a sing-along, really cool.
Turquoise Jeep — if you’re worried about how these guys translate without their cheapo video effects and controlled YouTube environment, don’t. They were awesome. The synchronized dance moves alone were worth it, and they played all the “hits.”
Lykke Li — Stevie Nicks?
The Damned — Spoon who? Hands down the best retro-punk reunion-esque show I’ve ever seen. They have Captain Sensible, and the blasted through the first album and a few other old school hits, no goth junk. Totally pro, high-energy, not at all what you should be seeing from a band on their 35th anniversary tour.
Asobi Seksu — Missed most of them, shame because they put on a lush (and I guess… sexy?) show but they ended with some spectacular noise.
Ceremony — They sound like Flipper now?
MNDR — More one-woman stuff, interesting almost-electro beats and super hazy reverbed out vocals. She had a very odd dancer.
Mates of State — Totally brought it. You can tell they have fun playing those super-catchy songs and it translates offstage. Note-perfect enough without being so polished all the fun was sucked out. Ryan Gosling was watching them, I should have yelled “hey Ryan Reynolds!” between songs.
Zero Boys — Another reunited hardcore band to go with the Adolescents, Bad Brains, and everyone else who’s done FFF in the past years. Not incredibly inspiring, but respectable and they played all the good tunes. Probably would have been cool to see them at the Mohawk later.
Eyehategod — The most offensive name of the year and probably the longest combined criminal record. I guess they’ve kicked the Horse and they play tight enough for a sober band so maybe I believe it. Really heavy, there’s another semi-legendary name I can cross off.
Ted Leo/Pharmacists — Too bad about poor Ted Leo. Great songwriter, inspiring punk figure, fun guy to follow on Twitter, but he lost his voice and it was tough to make out his outstanding melodies. I felt bad for him.
Del The Funky Homosapien — Another one I’ve never seen before, somehow. He seems like the perfect FFF act, because yeah he does a lot of impressive verbal acrobatics and has a vocabulary that shames Webster, but he’s also fun.
Boris — Missed most of it because of Henry, but they closed with “Farewell” and it was heavy and soupy. I hear they’ve been busting out this new dance-beat stuff, but I don’t know.
Henry Rollins — Captivating speaker. Funny, able to turn on a dime to thoughtful or polemic, but always a good storyteller.
Odd Future — Rather than a bunch of punk kids who don’t know what they’re doing, they seemed like pros who know exactly what makes a good hip-hop show and what they can do to be better than the rest. The yelling and aggression is very punk rock, but they also seemed to be having fun. When I could hear them.
Slayer — So loud we finished with them because you could watch OFWGKTA but it was like watching mimes with microphones lip-sycning to Slayer. Here’s a band that, like a lot of other veteran metal acts, bring it hard and play perfectly, and I kinda think, what’s the point of doing this more than a couple times in your life. Almost too note-perfect, it’s hard to feel the aggression anymore, but at least they abandoned all their nuevo-metal late 90s /early 2000s crap and are back at playing exactly the kind of music they need to be. They played all the classics. The dynamic of the crowd had really changed by Sunday night. You don’t see a lot of football jerseys and that sort of thing at Fun Fun Fun normally, it’s all indie hipsters, metalheads and aging punk rockers with a few real hip hop heads thrown in. The Real World definitely invaded to see Slayer.
I hope it’s not a sign of things to come, but we speculated that even though the fest was too big for Waterloo, it was probably tough to step up to Auditorium Shores without bringing some bigger acts like Spoon and Slayer. If that allows for Public Enemy, awesome, but we don’t need another ACL Festival and I hope FFF keeps its mission in mind.
