Friday in the Park
The future prospects for Austin’s newest outdoor music festival, Fun Fun Fun Fest, seem as clear and bright as the weather for its inaugural run last Friday. Between 3,000 and 4,000 people – many of whom, as the Octopus Project pointed out, were skipping work and/or school – attended the daylong event at Waterloo Park, which nonetheless felt far from full. “The bar’s doing great, though,” mused organizer/Emo’s booker Graham Williams as indie-stage headliners Spoon shuffled through the new “Don’t Make Me a Target.” The stages’ proximity meant it took mere seconds to stroll from the Black Angels‘ warm blanket of creeping doom to the Riverboat Gamblers‘ amped-up antics, but sound bleed-over was minimal: The maelstrom of bottles and bodies whipped up by punk-stage closers Circle Jerks was clearly visible, but not audible, from down front at Spoon. A family vibe dominated, as Mohawk-sporting children streaked through the crowd playing tag, teenagers canoodled on park benches and picnic tables, and Spoon frontman Britt Daniel and the Applicators singer Sabrina each acknowledged their moms from the stage. Standouts included the fierce Iron Maiden-style metal of Austin’s Iron Age, fist-pumping punk from locals Krum Bums and Lower Class Brats, the steamy Southern rawk of Memphis’ Lucero, and Quintron & Miss Pussycat‘s Pixy Stix-powered dance party. During Negative Approach‘s growling set, Williams even found time to stage-dive, a luxury he earned several times over. “I was up at 5:30am for a KXAN interview,” he said earlier. “It’s killing me.”
This article appears in December 8 • 2006.