and here we go with day two coverage of austin’s fourth annual fun fun fun fest. sunday was marred by every outdoor festival’s enemy: rain. and even worse: inches upon cakey inches of mud. did the bands play on despite the weather? could austin’s hippie-centric crowd keep from indulgling in the mud-fest? hit the jump, kind readers of wwm, and slake your curiosity.
– sunbear
the gloomiest of clouds haunted our arrival to the fest putting a damper in everyone’s concert-going day. with ponchos and umbrellas abound, the whole of austin seemed ready to weather the storm to catch their favorite acts. oakland, ca’s cerebral indie rappers why? had taken the orange stage undeterred as if the weather was straight sunny california and cranked out their off-filter rhythms and literate rhymes. literate in an oddball sense: why?’s nebbish lead singer yoni wolf seems the last guy to spit verses about pleasuring yourself in the shower or wearing his ex-girlfriend’s dead-ex-boyfriend’s boxers, but therein lies their appeal. why? has never been an easy band to pin down in terms of genre, their later albums alopecia and eskmo snow exploring more experimental indie landscapes, but rest assured that their influences are a pleasing gel that goes down easy.
download:
austin’s own lofi garage punk trio harlem were being their usual snotty, crude selves over on the yellow stage. playing the majoity of their album free drugs;-), the boys of harlem sped through their set at a junkie’s pace, joking about the drugs they had taken, deflecting eachother’s suggestions for songs, and just generally only half caring about playing their songs with any kind of seriousness. strangely enough, this nonchalance added a strange kind of primitive energy to their set filled with surf tunes, and grungy garage punk. dare i say they were a bunch of charming assholes?
download:
memphis, tennessee’s answer to the replacements, lucero turned out to be one of the biggest suprises of the festival. coming fresh from their ted hutt produced album 1372 overton park, lucero had added a three piece horn section to their already e-street resembling lineup. opening with perennial fan favorite “that much further west”, the horns kicked in like a drunken punch to the face, filling a musical gap that i didn’t even know existed in lucero’s sound. why have they not had horns from day one? their set played out like a greatest hits album, ben nichols and band reaching far back into their eight album discography and even treating us to their famous jawbreaker cover of “kiss the bottle”. lucero’s raucously rustic rock was certainly a curveball to the orange stage’s indie-centric sound, but sound proof that the tried and true-blue americana of lucero is a perfect mate for drunken festival antics.
download:
lucero – that much further west (with horns!)
there are bands you see that ‘really get into it’, sometimes seemingly in a trance, so spellbinded by making music, they forget where they are and lose themselves to a complete aural attack. health transcends this, as when they play, they lose themselves into realms of pure, unadultared catharsis. it’s as if bodies are possesed by those wishing nothing else than to pound the listeners eardrums to a bloody pulp. listening to health’s get color is a pale comparison to experiencing get color. seeing the epileptic lights bounce off the band, strobe screwing with your senses makes for a disorienting experience. watching bassist john famiglietti sway recklessly around, his hair absolutely hynotizing. i know it’s weird, but just look. and then there’s the music, if you can call it that. more an assault on that extrasensory perception live music rouses. health’s percussive bombasts and furious guitars made for the most intense forty five minutes of the festival. it was over before we knew what had hit us and we were to dazed and confused to beg for more. i liken it to having your brain bludgeoned by an acid laced hammer of the gods. yeah, it’s like that.
download:
…and then there was the genius. arguably the wu tang clan’s most acclaimed emcee and best faring solo artist. lately, gza’s been looking to his lauded 1995 release for his festival appearances, catering to the ‘white people like black music that black people don’t listen to anymore‘ idealism that though crudely stated, bears truth, as the bros came in droves. swaggering out to the shogun assassin sampling intro that prefaced the great liquid swords album, the gza ran through the first half of record firing on all cylinders, if not a bit on cruise control. juding the crowd’s overly enthusiastic respose to the first non swords cut, wu tang clan’s “clan in da front”, the genius then elected to go from routine to greatest wu hits, knocking out classics “c.r.e.a.m.”, “triumph” and even ol’ dirty bastard’s “shimmy shimmy ya”. newly invigorated, the gza opened up, 180’ing from his set-starting cry of “what up? the rain is making you quiet, you white motherfuckers?” to playfully hamming to the cameras and closing out his set with the strangest plug for a healthy diet i’ve ever heard: “whole foods, mouthafucka!”
download:
from hip hop’s dankest motherfucker to hip hop’s bubbliest party-rapper, kid sister took to the stage the only way she knows how: mad glamorous. taking the sanigold/sasha fierce route of being flanked by robotic yet strangely sexy backup dancers, chicago’s femcee (like that?) advanced like a overzealous teeny-bopper, wearing a bedazzled aaliyah t-shirt, disco-ball leggings and an infectious smile. immediately kicking into a choreographed dance to the inroductory “right hand hi”, the glittery spectacle never let up. blitzing her way through new tracks from her effervescently sugary album ultraviolet kid sis had the energy of an over-caffinated duracell bunny. whether bouncing to the club-thumping “beeper” or calling the girls to the stage for “pro nails”, it was made abundantly clear why kid sister is everyone’s favorite party rapper: there isn’t anyone as funloving and cute at hyping hipsters into a “ladies-first” sugar high.
—————————————————————
WEWOREMASKS IS DEAD. 
One thought on “festival recap: fun fun fun fest [day two] (2009)”