(Photo courtesy of austin360.com)
The crowds were younger, more diverse and bigger on the second (and dustier) day of Fun Fun Fun Fest, while the music was the same satisfying potpourri of genres and styles created by some talented performers.
The day started slow however, perhaps partly due to the early football game over at the University of Texas, but by the late afternoon bands looked out upon an ocean of faces. Food lines got long around dinnertime as the vendors enjoyed what must be huge profits. A small personal pizza for seven dollars? Expected, but for us poor music lovers, festival food always feels like extortion.
A brief visit to the Yellow Stage revealed a very small venue for the comedy line up. Most acts on Saturday–aside from Donald Glover, who also performed as his hip-hop alter ego Childish Gambino–probably are not drawing the expected crowds. We expect Henry Rollins on Sunday is going to need a lot of room.
To further illustrate how intimate this festival feels, the mystical line between crowd and the workings backstage that normally keeps the musicians on a different plane of existence is much less apparent at FFFF. Band members (and Ryan Gosling) can sometimes be seen walking through the crowd before and after their sets. You endure the boring logistics of sound checks along with the band. And performers continue to mention how they look forward to watching other bands during the festival. It is as if the musicians are just audience members with the most privileged kind of wristband.
The weather was better and worse on Saturday. Thankfully, it got cloudy later in the day, cutting off the hard edge of the sun on a day that was warmer overall and kept away the shivers at nightfall. But that Texas drought combined with some blustery winds made it a dust bowl worse than Friday. Bandanas, scarves, sunglasses, hoods–anything to keep the dust and dirt out of your mouth and eyes was necessary. The end of the day surely featured thousands of showers turning on in Austin
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