The Fest V: Day One Recap

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The Fest V: Day One RecapThe Fest V: Day One Recap

The Fest was planned beautifully this year to coordinate with the annual weekend where most of the city takes off to Jacksonville for the UF vs UGA football game. This left downtown mostly abandoned by the usual sprawl of clubbers and greeks and paved way for the influx of grungy, drunk and ready-to-rock kids (and kids at heart) for this years festivities. Past attendees will notice that with more bands than ever, even more venues had been recruited to participate leaving badge holders with eight venues and practically no downtime over the three day weekend.

I started my night off at a club called Bar One, which used to be called The Library where girls dressed as sexy librarians would dance on tables. It's got plenty of room to socialize and a rectangular off-shoot with an upstairs, and just enough room for most of the lesser known bands playing here. The size of the room limits the sound and it became overbearing more than a few times over the weekend, often finding a decent amount of people enjoying the show out by the bar. Tubers, a band on St Augustine's Bakery Outlet Records, started their loud post-hardcore show just after 10pm. I assume their singer wasn't just flapping his mouth, but I couldn't make out much over the tinged guitars and heart-pounding drum set.

Conveniently located caddy corner from Bar One (or bah-roh-ney as some took to calling it) is every indie kid's favorite Thursday night hangout, The Atlantic. Russian Circles, a band from Chicago--a city that knows it's instrumental rock, showed how creative compositions teamed with a delicate balance of agressive post-rock is the perfect mix for musicians and punk fans alike. Drawing comparisons among bands like Pelican and Explosions In The Sky, Russian Circles could've blown the roof right off The Atlantic if they had longer than their 20 minute set to play. Easily the most impressive show of the night.

After realizing that the ringing, that would persist the entire ear-blowing weekend, wasn't my phone but my ears, we moved on to Club Red just in time to be caught in the first down-pour in over a month. Mother nature has great timing, but maybe she was tired, even by the first day of three, of smelling the sweaty fumes pour out of clubs around town (true signs that good times were being had). Club Red was taken over by the Electronic Sub South Showcase (which we previewed earlier) and caught Chiisai-Oto. Our own Podbop Editor Cory Monteiro is one half of this glitch-hop duo. We were excited to hear much improvement and complexity in their songs since we last saw them over a year ago. Mixing R&B, ambient noise, and bleeps made for an enjoyable, though short, set.

After the rain subsided we wandered over to the largest venue of the bunch, Abbey Road, a little early for the main headliner. Forunately for us, P.O.S. was playing, a wonderful accidental discovery. P.O.S. is a two man rap group (one MC & a DJ) from Minneapolis. With great charisma, and a smile that you could see from the back of the room, frontman Stefon Alexander got the whole crowd involved. With humorous, honest quips like, "Even if you found yourself accidently at a rap show, you can feel this, throw your hands up in the air" worked wonders on the mostly indie-rock/hipster crowd who had gathered for Minus The Bear. I enjoyed it so much, his album became the first hip-hop album I bought since the cassette single of Crossroads (if that even counts). Check out his wikipedia entry for more info.

Minus The Bear ended the evening with a crazy long (by The Fest standards) 45 minute set. Mostly playing off their album "Menos El Oso" they also threw in a new song that will be on their follow-up next year. Headlining the most expensive single show during The Fest at $17 (without a wristband) they filled the house almost to capacity. Smart indie-rock was enjoyed by all and everyone went home exhausted (but looking forward to two more days!).