FYF Fest is just a regular thing for us now. It's a convenient festival for us to get to and plan for and most of our friends are into it. It becomes more of a weekend to hang out with everyone, but the constantly phenomenal line-up never hurts. We got tickets and were excited about it but at the last minute we had to cancel going Saturday on account of a funeral. We gave our tickets for the day to Tana and they had a good time. We've gotten used to the reality of having to miss shows sometime. It happens. We missed the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, TV on the Radio, Flag (most of Black Flag but most notably without Rollins), the Locust (reuniting), Deerhunter, the Breeders (performing Last Splash), and Metz (who we didn't know but everyone was going crazy over).
It's unfortunate that so many bands at FYF are fairly obscure and not local, often good but not big enough names that they'll likely ever be heard of again. That's just the nature of a music festival, but especially for one that prides itself on its (mostly) non-mainstream fare. FYF is about the music and how it is right now, not about how big the bands are or might be, after all. But they have a pretty good track record of picking some bands that become something. So there's always plenty to see and hear and that a future favorite band is early in their career out there. As it is, though, often there are just bands filling the time and space before or between other bands or playing in the background or just providing a respite while having a beer. Fear of Men were most of those for us, at best a warm-up as we got in and had our first drink of the day in the neighboring beer garden. If I saw them around again, I'd check them out, though. I think I even looked them up on Spotify at some point. But at the time on that day, they were just a filler festival band for us; much the same about the Orwells, who I don't remember anything about; Chelsea Wolfe, though, was a stand-out. Her name was getting around L.A. and she was just starting to break out, as far as she went. She was a (relatively) big deal at the time, though she went on during the day, which kinda went counter to her aesthetic. Not just how hot the band must have been under all the dark clothing and how the fog machine didn't work as well in the sunlight but also how her slightly-gothy, chamber-pop (a la Florence + the Machine) just couldn't bear playing during the day, and in L.A. to boot. There were better environs for her but she did what she could with what she had and I'd like to think that she made an impression since she deserved it; I think the other kids were excited about Poolside but I think we just passed by them/him/it; I'd heard about Kurt Vile for a while but we didn't make a concerted effort to focus on him. When we wandered by there was some scrappy, scratchy pop-punk that I never followed up on, but I left it to chance that he would find me eventually; also heard about How to Dress Well, and seemed like it added another edge to FYF's ever-burgeoning range, but we also must have been drinking at the time; I dig No Age, especially live, but it's too easy to take them for granted. It seems like they play every festival in L.A., as they should if they have the opportunity, and they could probably function as FYF's artists-in-residence. So, as much as we like them, we mostly skipped them, or watched them so minimally that I don't remember any of their performance. But we'll likely get to see them again; I don't even remember Glasser but I had it in my notes that we saw them at least for a bit. How much did we have to drink out there?; I've had Yo La Tengo recommended to me numerous times over the years but I just haven't been drawn to them. The farthest I go is enjoying tracks they have on Matador compilations. This day we might have walked by them to get from one beer garden to another and I might have plucked out a few tunes they did but nothing I remember and nothing that will make me any more likely to seek them out (though that's nothing against them); Washed Out were an expected highlight for me, one of the bands I really wanted to see. I'm not always a fan of so-called chillwave but that's only because I don't want to try to take on yet another sub-(sub-?)genre. But I quite enjoy easy, relaxing music that can wash over me while I'm doing something that's only marginally more involving (like work). Washed Out, one of those hip bands that everyone seemed to latch on to for a while (maybe thanks to making the Portlandia theme), were one I got into as well. I couldn't be sure how they would translate live, since those relaxing washes could lose every nuance in a field as well as being drowned-out by any nearby band with a guitar, but they did just fine: they keep the skeleton of the songs and the tones, they just reproduced it all with some volume. It all hung together well and they were as good as any other band out there no matter the volume, maybe marginally better just because they offered more than just three-chord punches. They also had a prime spot in the line-up, a bit after sundown, where they didn't have to compete with sweat and sun-produced lethargy and with the air a good deal cooler, to better match their sound; the only reason I might have been interested in Les Savy Fav was to catch their cover of "Debaser" which was my only point in interest in seeing them at Coachella years ago. They didn't bring it this time either. (And please be careful if you do a Google search for one of those performances.); I would say we missed MGMT if we might have had any intention of seeing them, which we did not. It's amazing that they're placed high on a festival line-up among so many other better bands; Beach House were there? Another time they didn't register to me. They just seem to get buried in my attention when on a festival bill. I think we were having a beer during their set. Maybe there were a lot of people who showed up for them, perhaps more for their place on their inexplicably high position on the bill rather than their popularity; My Bloody Valentine were the biggest shock of the line-up, and a big draw for us, though by the time they came on, late Sunday, we were just about done for the weekend. We both had to get up for work the next morning and it didn't seem worth it to make it to the end then have to fight through the crowd in addition to our battle with exhaustion. Being there for the full set, up against the punishment of their immense volume, is not always advisable. We were smart enough to bring our own ear-plugs, and took the ones offered at the show as back-ups, and we saw plenty of kids there who didn't bother -- too bad, since they probably didn't get to hear '14's FYF Fest. I'd already seen them twice, and Carla had somehow survived the El Rey show, and they weren't playing new stuff, so there wasn't much reason to stick around (especially so we could duck out of the last song, which usually goes for 20 minutes, give or take 10). It was great that they were there. That was a huge coupe that probably gave FYF the cred to book other big bands in later years. But for us we could take our enjoyment in just knowing they were there and we happily saw enough of them.
My Bloody Valentine's set-list:
"I Only Said"
"When You Sleep"
"New You"
"You Never Should"
"Only Tomorrow"
"Come in Alone"
"Only Shallow"
"Who Sees You"
"Wonder 2"
"Soon"
"Feed Me With Your Kiss" (false start)
"You Made Me Realise"
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