The line-up for the 2011 FYF Fest blew us away. I might even venture to say that I liked it better than the Coachella line-up for the year. There were more bands that I hadn't seen before and I was impressed that they had thrown together so many different, but great, acts. Coachella usually does pretty well with getting some exciting, young bands, but those are usually on the undercard of the line-up and FYF seemed like it was all about exciting, young bands. I was also encouraged by knowing that this festival would be easier to get to and around, being local, even though my own plans stopped me from knowing 100% if I would be able to go until just before it happened. Even though I had gone -- or tried to go -- to the 2010 FYF Fest and it was a mess, I wanted to give the '11 a try. '10 was so much beyond a horrible experience, so I heard, that any improvement would be huge, and they would certainly do all they could to make up for the bad PR they got in '10. Even though I couldn't even get into the '10 fest (though, to be fair, I had only gone to see one band and only gave it a half-hour to get in and get out), I was willing to give the festival another try. Really, the line-up was so amazing, I was willing to potentially put up with a lot. And as it turned out, they really did clean up the thing and made up for the previous year. We took the subway in, which was easy enough, and walked right in to the festival, as easy as could be. It was a busy weekend for, with a show the night before then having to get up early the next day so I could run in the Disney Half-Marathon in Anaheim, but we were doing our best to get as much out of the festival as we could. Entering and getting our bearings, we heard The Head & the Heart but I couldn’t say anything about them more than they sounded pleasant enough. We met up with Andrew & Heather, who we hung out with off and on throughout the day, and Jen was there as well. The show was originally supposed to take place downtown, which made everyone excited since they thought that if they had it at the Historic Park like they did it last year it would be a disaster again, but what they did to fix what had happened worked and the location was just fine. And no matter how you slice it, a festival like that for only $45 a ticket is a deal that’s hard to beat. And no one could control it but the weather was wonderful, sunny and not too hot, and that always makes a difference. Early on I got separated from everyone for some reason and wandered over to see Ty Segall, which I couldn’t say much about, but I was interested enough to look up on Wikipedia if he was one person or a group. I also wandered over to check out Off!, who Andrew said were great at Coachella but I missed then. I’m not familiar with the admittedly impressive pedigree of that band, and I still don’t know much about the Circle Jerks, but I could appreciate them for the old-school L.A. hardcore sound that they came from. The Smith Westerns had had a lot of fuss made about them that year and they were good but they seemed caught between the expectation for a group of punks and in reality being good soundsmiths. Didn’t really help that they weren’t local, though that wasn’t a requirement, it did seem to help. Carla was surprised that I didn’t know Japandroids, and I dug them, and not for a lack of two-man bands out there that day (and in general). Cults was another band caught between two worlds. I wanted them to be wild and bratty but they really were just good, and a bit poppy, maybe more than anyone out there was interested in. I’d heard about The Weakerthans years ago and knew they’d be good for a festival, and they sounded great, but they were also that performance during nearly any festival that I lay down and take a nap during. For music or for dozing, they were fantastic. No Age are another two-man band but one that has done exceedingly well in L.A., if not elsewhere. I don’t know if it’s just local pride or if the rest of the world realized that they’re pretty great but it seems they’re a big deal when they do an L.A. show, the FYF Fest being no exception. We wandered around after that, as the sun was going down, and we heard some Four Tet, which was, to me, one of the strangest picks for the day, as I recalled that act as being kind of a DJ. But hey, if people dug it then it fit right in. No one seemed to throw a fit about any of the acts that were selected to be out there anyway, and I applaud the organizers for being adventurous about who they chose. It was a much better festival for being something more than local punk bands (though there was a selection of them too). Broken Social Scene was another odd choice but seeing them they seemed to work, though it was really only a warm-up for us and to be at the right stage for our main attraction: Guided By Voices. Of course it was GBV that jumped right off the line-up at me and the biggest reason I was going, though the rest of the festival probably would have been enough to get me to go. It also set the standard for a certain flavor of the event, that they had no problem having a veteran act there, though they were probably a big influence to a lot of the young bands out there that day. I had missed them twice before (and that was only counting after they got back together) and I really didn’t want to miss this time. Heck, it would have been worth it for me to spend the entire cost of the ticket just on them (and actually make it to the show). They certainly didn’t disappoint. I don’t know how active Pollard was on stage back in the day and I don’t know how the other stuff they’d play that wasn’t originally performed by that line-up sounded, but that they had less than an hour to play, they packed a set with enough great stuff that it was everything that I had waited and hoped for. The band didn’t have to work that hard to win over the crowd, as everyone there would either know them or not and probably not be so interested in wandering over if they didn’t already have some kind of background with them. Maybe they could have turned it up just a bit more, but what they did was hold the course and ran it as hard as it needed to go. Hopefully they satisfied their fans that made it out, maybe even increasing the median age of the entire festival crowd by a few years. They did their thing then left the stage and that was great. And as it turned out, we had to leave then too, since we had to get up just a few hours later. But as far as I was concerned it was a mission accomplished and though I’ve rarely left so early from a concert festival, I got what I wanted out of it, from GBV and from the other acts and from the festival and from the day.
We missed: Cold War Kids, Yacht, Glass Candy (another really interesting pick), the Descendents, Death from Above 1979, Dead Milkmen (the last two being most significant, headliners that we would have loved to see. Maybe it was better that way since it would have been tough to decide between the two (though it would have been the Dead Milkmen since I’d never seen them before and never thought I would again. But oh well.))
"Cause=Time"
"Late Nineties Bedroom Rock for the Missionaries"
"Shampoo Suicide"
"Texico Bitches"
"7/4 (Shoreline)"
"Water in Hell"
"The World At Large" (Modest Mouse cover)
"Meet Me in the Basement"
"It's All Gonna Break"
"Locked"
"Love Cry"
"Sing"
"Pyramid"
"Spirit Fingers"
"Abducted"
"The Curse"
"Never Heal Myself"
"Most Wanted"
"You Know What I Mean"
"Bumper"
"Never Saw the Point"
"Rave On"
"Go Outside"
"Oh My God"
new song
"Younger Us"
"The Boys Are Leaving Town"
new song
"Wet Hair"
"Rockers East Vancouver"
"Young Hearts Spark Fire"
"For the Love of Ivy" (The Gun Club cover)
"Imagine Pt. 3"
"Fallen in Love"
"Only One"
"End of the Night"
"All Die Young"
"Dreams"
"Still New"
"Gimme Some Time"
"Smile"
"Weekend"
"Dye the World"
"Black Thoughts"
"Darkness"
"I Don't Belong"
"Poison City"
"Now I'm Pissed"
"Jeffrey Lee Pierce"
"Killing Away"
"Full Of Shit"
"Sexy Capitalists"
"Fuck People"
"Compared To What"
"Blast"
"Broken"
"Crawl/Rat Trap"
"Peace In Hermosa"
"Panic Attack"
"Upside Down"
"Goodbye Bread"
"Standing at the Station"
"Imaginary Person"
"Finger"
"You Make the Sun Fry"
"Girlfriend"
"My Sunshine"
"The Floor"
"Cents"
"Skin"
"The Drag"
"Caesar"
"Lost in My Mind"
"Sounds Like Hallelujah"
new untitled song (Sally Walks Into a Bar)
"Down In The Valley"
"Ghosts"
"Rivers and Roads"
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