Austin Sound

In these days of bleak, wintery weather, it’s nice to remember better times. Like Fun Fun Fun Fest, which was, well, ok, the weather sucked then, too. But at least we were miserable together, right? The F3 folks are trying to let the memories linger, and have been uploading videos of live performances for the past few weeks. We picked a couple of our local favorites, including the Strange Boys debuting the title track from their upcoming sophomore album, Be Brave in the rain. The local lads provided one of the highlights of the fest, especially with the addition of new member and just-moments-before-disbanded Mika Miko fixture Jenna Thornhill, who wails away nicely on sax. It’s actually rather uncanny how similar Ryan Sambol and Thornhill sound when they’re moaning out their ragged R&B. We’ve also posted video below of the Sword unloading “Barael’s Blade,”, because even making fun of Neon Indian is getting boring, especially when the Sword is simply so much better. So if you want to see the videos of Neon Indian or some Jesus Lizard insanity, as well as a bunch of other great live vids from the Fest, check out the Fun Fun Fun Youtube channel. (Thanks to Ultra8201 for the catch).

This year’s 4th annual Fun Fun Fun Fest once again proved to be a testament to the eclectic pull of Austin’s music scene, dosing the base of indie rock with metal, punk, hip-hop, electronica, and even comedy. With a headlining reunion on Saturday of the Jesus Lizard and Sunday with Danzig, the hardcore Black Stage set the bar, but across the board, performances were impressive despite the rain that muddied the Fest’s close. Local acts proved impressive among the bigger national names, showcasing some emerging new artists like L.A.X. and The Roller to and those about to break like Harlem and the Strange Boys, as well as top tier Austin bands like Shearwater and the Sword. Our crew was liveblogging the Fest the entire weekend, with photos from the pit and live reviews. Click through to check out all of our coverage.

No moment of Fun Fun Fun Fest this past weekend was more emotionally fraught than the performance by Bankrupt and the Borrowers. Announced as their final show in the wake of last month’s tragic death of Jon Pettis, the show brought out a large local contingent to both pay their respects to Pettis, and celebrate the band. You can read our review of the show here, but Austin Sound writer Marc Perlman also shot some excellent live footage of the performance that we wanted to share. With the Bridge Farmers Tyler Hautala filling in for Pettis, Bankrupt and the Borrowers offered a touching send off with the song “Dumpster.” Watch the performance below, and the all star benefit show with a number of friends and fans is still currently scheduled for December 6 at the Hole in the Wall.

The first Fun Fun Fun Fest emerged almost by accident in December of 2006, the result of too many big names converging on Austin at once for then-Emo’s booker Graham Williams to place in various venues. A year later, Williams had founded Transmission Entertainment and reinvigorated the north end of Red River, with the Fun Fun Fun Fest serving as the capstone of the new company. Now in it’s fourth year, the Fest has become a uniquely Austin event - dedicated to a small but eclectic grassroots and indie music scene that has come to represent the aesthetic of Transmission Entertainment itself. We sat down with Williams at Transmission’s new headquarters in a house at the corner of 8th and Red River as they readied for the final run of Fun Fun Fun Fest preparations, and spoke at length about the evolution of the Fest, how big Transmission and FFFFest can get, and the good and bad of Austin’s contemporary competitive booking scene. Fun Fun Fun, of course, goes on this Saturday and Sunday in Waterloo Park, with afterparties spilling out all down Red River through the weekend.

The Fun Fun Fun Fest is quickly rolling upon us, to be held Saturday and Sunday, November 7-8 in Waterloo Park. We doubt Transmission has C3’s budget for re-sodding, so we’re hoping for good weather for their sake! But even if the weather continues to suck, it will be an awesome Fest, and they just announced their aftershows so you can catch plenty of music in the dry, warm confines of a club. The shows will be rolling all down Red River, taking up the Mohawk (obviously), Club DeVille, Red 7, Beerland, and the ever-misnomered Beauty Bar (seriously, beauty may be subjected, but that hipster runoff is far from anyone’s idea of good-looking!). The aftershows also include special screenings at the Alamo Ritz hosted Mission of Burma and Youth Brigade! Kickass! Below is the full lineup of aftershows, the whens and wheres and whats - the whys are left up to you.

So the FX3 Fest today announced their schedule, and we get this PR from reputable indie PR company announcing said schedule. This is the kind of email that everyone gets these days, because everyone’s a blogger. This schedule had already been posted earlier in the day on the Fun Fun Fun website, and yeah, it’s good, yadda, yadda, yadda. You heard this on twitter. But what we found so damn funny, is that for some reason the email sent out by the awesome folks at Forcefield PR (and this is true, they are awesome), sanitized the damn email by asterisk-ing out the bands Fuck Buttons and Fucked Up. What, are you afraid you’re mom is going to see this when she reads it on Facebook or something? This is the FFFFest for christsakes, they’re supposed to be the unruly kids drinkin’ their PBR and not giving a shit what The Man thinks! Their so much don’t care, that they gave their stages random color names with a half-assed Bonnaroo-like cleverness. No corporate sponsoring here, damnit! Or something. Luckily, FFFFest themselves seem to have no problem with said bands’ censorable monikers (but we are interested to see if they get a shout out on KUT’s coverage!). All this is really just a longwinded way of saying what you know by now anyway, which is that the Fun Fun Fun Fest posted it’s schedule. We copied and pasted it below, as presented to us by the PR email, because we don’t want to fucking offend anyone. And shit.

These Fun Fun Fun Fest leakages were getting as bad as an Olestra binge, so it is with great relief that we finally got the full lineup from FX3′ers today. As always, there be a great opportunity to catch some of our best local artists out at Waterloo Park on November 7 and 8, including Harlem, This Will Destroy You, The Black and White Years, and Shearwater. We can also pretty much guarantee insanity from the likes of Les Savy Fav, Of Montreal, and, of course, the Jesus Lizard will burn the place down. Early passes are onsale now for $67.50, and check out what that reasonable price gets you with the lineups for each of the four stages below:

*Sigh. This is getting tiresome. We guess the Fun Fun Fun folks couldn’t let ACL steal all the Festival news this week. So here are four more bands on their bill, with the full lineup hopefully coming soon so we can stop this “leaking” madness. Yeasayer, Kid Sister, DRI and Vega. There, now you have it. We report, you decide.

You have to admire the Fun Fun Fun Fest’s sense of humor. They recently “leaked” a few more bands that will be taking over Waterloo Park this November 7 & 8, the most notable of which is the long lost Detroit punk trio Death. And we thought Death was imminent due to all of last year’s dust! This is a pretty big score for the Transmission crew, but then Graham Williams seems to have a knack for coaxing classic hardcore bands into re-living their glory days and trying not to break their hips in the mosh pits. To balance the bill, Fun Fun Fun has also added Health to the lineup, which we assume is not coincidental. Among the other bands recently announced were Lucero, 7 Seconds, and locals Shearwater, still determined to trill in the bird-acolypse. Already among the known knowns, are Broadcast, the GZA, Atlas Sound, and, of course, the Jesus Lizard. You can start preparing for Death by checking out their Myspace page - this is Austin, though, so chances are good you’ve already been slowly slouching towards Death anyway. (And no, this will never get old!).

And so it begins. Earlier this week, the fine and filthy folks from Fun Fun Fun Fest freed to fans and followers a few featured acts. Whew! It’s only a couple of names, but it’s certainly enough to start getting us excited about the 4th annual FX3 Fest, going on November 7 & 8, presumably once more in Waterloo Park. The headlining Jesus Lizard was already announced, or slipped out, a while ago, but now we can add to the list Atlas Sound, Broadcast, King Khan & BBQ Show, and Red Sparowes. Other than that, still no word on when tix will go on sale, but we’ll keep you posted as more of these announcements continue to tease us towards the inevitable.