It’s not often that I find myself wondering where so many hipsters came from. There was an ongoing joke we had at FYF Fest (more aptly named “Fuck Yeah Fest” before it had to be changed), that at a certain point in order to fill the L.A. Historic Park to the brim with cool mother fuckers, they started finding people on the street and throwing flannel shirts and moccasins at them and telling them to mill around. For better or worse, the turnout had to be near a thousand. With that said, the lackadaisical general demeanor of much of the crowd fit well the dynamic of this and most other festivals; the bands I saw looked out from the stage to hundreds of bodies shifting weight side-to-side and clapping tepidly after a song. This is, of course, the awkward burden that day bands at festivals need carry.
I got to the park at around 1pm, and with my comp ticket in will call (thanks,
Ali Jafari ) and the will call line ending somewhere in Long Beach, I was bracing for heat stroke. By the time I reached my spot in what seemed like the line to St. Peter’s gate, Blogmaster Jafari talked his way into getting the tickets without waiting. I got inside to see the latter half of the Growlers’ set, and after a dusty six or seven hours, caught a ride back to the Westside and ate until I wanted to die. I want to highlight a few bands I thought were worth highlighting, but first let it be known that the promises of “Vegan/Vegetarian food” went unconfirmed by anybody I talked to—surely, this is because the lines were disgusting and word was going around that they were out of food. Oh yeah, it was also 90 degrees.
The Growlers played a somewhat unenthusiastic set to a somewhat unenthusiastic crowd. To be fair to the band, their typical stage presence is an impression of a take-it-or-leave-it approach to the whole “music” thing, and to be fair to the crowd, it was 1:30pm and these guys were the first of around a dozen bands they’d see. They played the songs well, and their newish-but-entirely-new-to-me songs were even a little bit better than I expected. I wasn’t disappointed.
After that and to escape Vetiver, a few of us headed over to the far corner of the park to see Screaming Females from New Brunswick, New Jersey. We were welcomed by an ill-fitting metal song or two. Piercing screams and a shit-ton of shredding. I enjoyed it, but rest of the audience seemed unsure. After that, the vocals turned for the melodic and they shed the dime-a-dozen metal kick for an awesome blend of blast beats and interesting guitar lines. The frontwoman (I was unsure of the woman part at first from a distance) reminded me vocally of Chrissie Hynde to speak generally, and it was a refreshing departure from the soft and boring vocal stylings of many of the ladies to perform that day. All in all, they put on a great show and found their way into my car stereo.
Next was Davila 666, a pretty rad proto-punk outfit from Puerto Rico. The stage they played at was clear on the opposite side of the park in a dirt field. They interspersed songs more befitting of the festival with quicker-paced punk songs, ones more in the mode of late 70’s bands like the Buzzcocks than, say, Conflict. These songs bought them probably the most visible reaction/participation from the crowd that I saw that day in the form of a half-assed circle pit (I was a considerable distance from the stage during Thee Oh Sees, so the pit I heard about there was lost on me—ask Amir about that one). It was fun being able to pick out the most fragile looking hipsters running around and give them a good shove. I also was considerably less worried about taking a belt-stud or unhinged safety pin to the stomach than these situations might normally make me. The dust kicked up from the commotion and coated the lungs of us in close proximity to the action—I felt like Nick Carraway driving into the dust bowl in the Great Gatsby. 
It was good times.
The last band I caught before succumbing to Gandhi-like hunger and bowing out before seeing Man Man was Glenrock, New Jersey’s own Titus Andronicus. Famously one of my favorite bands, my friends are now sick of hearing about them. But you, my friends, are not sick of hearing about them—at least not from my mouth. They played 5 of the 10 songs on their album “The Monitor” (stay tuned for the long-winded nut-tickling I give this album in the near future on this very blog), and even seeing them for the first time at a festival didn’t disappoint. Yes, as big a fan as I am, I had yet to successfully catch a show of theirs. Also FYF misfits, the band was able to inspire high-held fists and gang vocals from the crowd with pleasing ease. Songs that wouldn’t seem to translate well (like the 13 minute last track from the album) were well received and played to perfection—not nearly a technical perfection, but the sloppy, hard-hitting musical style was perfectly complimented by the energy of their performance. Even at a festival. If Patrick Stickles was holding back, nobody knew it. My opinion that Titus was the best band at that festival was, to my jilted surprise, not my opinion alone. It was a great set.
In retrospect, for a festival with only one band I really wanted to see and in the midst of a hunger strike against common sense and after giving myself a sunglass tan that looked like I stenciled myself with spray-tan, I had a surprisingly good time. I feel like most people were as physically uncomfortable as I was by the end of the day. It’s amazing how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs really brings people to the same tired, dusty level as any other human being. I thought about waxing philosophical here about a misfit sub-culture, but that would be self-indulgent. Instead I’ll leave you with mentioning that it was a hot day and there was no shortage of attractive girls at FYF—DEM STEMS.
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