Part of Nov 2011 by

Fun Fun Fun Fest Wrap-Up

On Friday, I saw one set: Ocote Soul Sounds. What a set it was! The live incarnation of Martín Perna (Antibalas) and Adrian Quesada’s (Grupo Fantasma) OSS featured a tapestry of horns and percussion that grooved on an eccentric blend of hip hop, jazz, funk, Latin and Afro-Cuban music. I returned home to a Twitter feed full of Ryan Gosling sightings at Auditorium Shores. What?! What?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PcG6yT2kGY

By Saturday, Auditorium Shores was a post apocalyptic dust bowl and bandannas were a mandatory fashion accessory. T Bird and the Breaks were as “on” as I have ever seen them. Then… The Joy Formidable! I love TJF’s The Big Roar, but hearing them rip through those songs live totally blew me away. Onward through the dust to Tune Yards… I thought I knew nothing about Merrill Garbus’s project, but a few songs into her set, I realized that I actually own (and love) Whokill. Off to the blue stage for Dan Deacon… Entrenched in the audience, no one could see Deacon except for the lucky fans who were standing near him. Bored, I headed over to see Ra Ra Riot or M83, but neither held my interest. I was amped to see Girls… but I was pretty letdown by their performance. Fun Fun Fun Fest 6 quickly improved again as Lykke Li‘s mind-blowing set left me in a total state of awe. Wow! I then abandoned Spoon’s amazingly tight set to commence a long trek to The Mohawk for the FFF Nites portion of my evening…

After downing a few Brooklyn IPA’s to the beer friendly sounds of Old Man Markley, Gill Landry and ANR, I became appropriately juiced for the Felice Brothers’ set… They have come a very long way since their Dylan and The Band influenced eponymous LP and I enjoyed their novelly rambunctious forays into punkier and funkier realms. I ventured inside to check out the The Sour Notes, only to discover that Pat Jordache had just begun their set. When The Sour Notes took the stage, they were uncharacteristically dark and moody — a Velvet Underground side of them I have never seen before.

Covered from head to toe in dirt, I returned home and took a long hot shower (washing my hair three times). Rinse and repeat. It was 11am Sunday morning and time to dive right back into FFFFest…

Sunday turned out to be a really incredible day of music ruled by the ladies. I loved Asobi Seksu’s set — their cover of The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Never Understand really hit me. And, despite a few technical glitches, Grimes’ one-woman show proved to be quite brilliant. A strange twist of fate lured me away from Mates of State and back to the blue stage for my virginal experience of MNDR’s infectious dance tunes. My body could not stop dancing and my mind continued to be blown by the luscious arrangements of Austra. Grimes, MNDR and Austra — a magnificent one-two-three combination of dance music! My exhausted legs prohibited me from  remaining verticle for Ted Leo and the Pharmacists… After watching them morph into The Misfits for five pitch-perfect covers (making up for Danzigs disappointing performance on Friday night), it was time to bring my FFFFest 6 to an early end…