The National
In order to properly assess whether or not Fun Fun Fun Fest was a good thing, i must first break done the criteria i will be working with. Primarily the “goodness” of any concert event can be determined by a number of factors. The ones i will be using are: cost, quality/number of acts, quality/intimacy of venue, and how the event affects austin culture. Now, to counter my incredibly mathematical approach to grading whether or not the festival was good, i will use completely arbitrary adjectives to describe the results (hopefully, using ones you have never heard before). Anyhow on to the review.
1. Cost: Equitable.
St. Vincent
At $35 per day (assuming a two-day pass), the price was quite fair in my opinion considering the headliners. The National and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah will probably fetch at least $25 a ticket at most moderatly large venues in town. Throw in a couple of other bands, such as Islands, Trail of Dead, Dan Deacon, etc… and you would have to add at least $15 per. This easily undershoots seeing even a few of these bands on their own. Not even mentioning the Dead Milkmen reunion.
2. Quality/Number of acts: A-1/commodious
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
While the number of acts wasn’t spectacular, more often then not, much of the numbers overkill (see: SXSW, ACL, any major festival) severely damages the quality to number ratio. Here, the quality of the acts stood out in that, while there weren’t a thousand things going on, i knew what i wanted to see, and i really wanted to see it. None of the 10am headliners bands to get you in the door so you have to eat lunch AND dinner in the venue, then a ton of dead weight before evening (and yea, i’m talking about how Vampire Weekend went on around lunch during ACL for no perceivable good reason). This definitely helps those of us who have fair skin, and don’t want to be sitting all effing day in the sun to see 3 reasonably big headliners.
3. Quality/Intimacy of venue: middling/gratifying
Unaltered photo of Dan Deacon show
The quality of the venue was unnerving. While there were loads of mostly reasonably priced food-stuffs and the water fountains ACTUALLY worked (free water for all), the dust storm that existed between the stages was unbearable. After the first night i was coughing up mud, but the second day i wore protection, as did an extremely large portion of crowd. While i could not find any serious long term affects associated with breathing sand, the idea that nothing was done to prevent this (and that bandannas were $5) is quite unfortunate. Though already a hallmark of the urban festival, the problem of dust and sand inhalation must be resolved if a festival is going to get my vote of approval (i already have to wear earplugs, sunscreen, and sun-glasses [during the day], now i have to bring some breathing apparatus… ugh). However, the stages were never too crowded, and (especially with the smaller stages) you could get to the front if you really wanted to (with minimal planning). So, generally good marks for venue intimacy (which i found surprising), but mixed to nasty marks for quality.
4. How the event affects austin culture: irresolute
Islands
While it’s easy to defend Fun Fun Fun Fest, as being the most innocent of the festivals that occur in austin, i still stand by my criticisms of last year when i asked whether fests were good for austin. Now there are two arguments that i think can be made here. The first is that this is the only festival “for austin.” There aren’t a lot of non-travis county kids spending the weekend in austin for this one. Fun Fun Fun Fest seems like it’s actually for austin, while the other two are behemoths that couldn’t care less if you pick up your tickets from waterloo, or bought them on ticketmaster, or scalpers (obviously, wristbands aside, but even the accessibility of the cherished sxsw wristband has been whittled away by the powers that be).
That said, there is an argument against this fest that i think has merit: what is the purpose of this festival? To have a festival for the sake of one i think is detrimental to the local music scene. When touring bands swing by, they can come for a festival or on their own. While the clear desire of this pundit is that bands come for longer/intimate shows rather than giant, i don’t know who this band is but i’m going to stand in the way of this fan to watch them, shows. Another point is that due to the time issues and general chaos, festivals are more likely to cut short headliner’s time due to technicalities (as happened to The National during this festival). These are problems that the more economically minded person might not appreciate, but i would rather have my touring bands more spread out, than all on one day, and then none for a year.
Franki Chan holds the mic to the crowd
So there it is, a huge review. All in all i thought it was alright. There were pluses and minuses… nothing definitive (which is much better than i anticipated). Will i go next year? Maybe, depends… I hope you liked it, and maybe i can get a press pass or something for next year. If anybody knows a guy, hook me up.
