The Fest 7: On The Road With Sorry No Ferrari

Gainesville, FL. November 1st-2nd, 2008

The weekend before last, I rode along with Atlanta instrumental rockers Sorry No Ferrari for their performance at The Fest, a punk music festival in Gainesville, Florida. I woke up very early Saturday morning after a long Halloween night to ride along with the three fourths of the band I didn’t really know, but between naps I had plenty of conversation with them about things including music, the history of the band, and barbecue. This was actually the first show with their new drummer, Jonathan Balsamo, so there was lots of getting to know each other between the band as well. We were trying to get to The Fest in time to catch fellow ATLiens Benard, but we got there a few moments too late. So we went to the biggest venue of the fest, which was a bit smaller than Variety Playhouse, to catch Atom & His Package. It was a one-man-punk-band who seems to be a pretty big deal in the punk universe, but very much not my thing.

After that we headed to a tiny venue called 1982 to catch the local Gainesville band whose house we were staying at, Giuseppe. The venue had lots of very old gaming systems hooked up to the TVs on the bar, so I played some Dr. Mario and drink PBRs with the SNF folks for a bit. Giuseppe took the small stage and rocked the house:

After that I jumped around to different venues to see some shows, but didn’t see anything too special. So I joined SNF for some food and drinks and drunken music discussions/debates. The band I was most excited about catching down here was Pegasuses XL, an Athens outfit with ties to We Versus The Shark, and they did not disappoint. I’ve really been enjoying their album, The Antiphon, and I will have more on that in a future post, but here is some eye candy from their epic live set:

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The Final Fests of 2008: CMJ, Voodoo, The Fest, Troika, Fun Fun Fun, Nophest

The 2008 festival season is coming to a close, so before the best-of-2008-list season begins, there are still a few fests worth looking into:

CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival (Oct 21-26) (New York, NY)

CMJ is New York’s version of SXSW, but instead of hipsters descending into a small town for a week, It’s mostly bands and music biz folks descending upon the hipster capital. I have yet to go to this but I have heard great things about it. The quantity of quality bands you can see across New York City on an average night is mind-boggling alone, so to increase that exponentially is something that shouldn’t be missed. If you want to keep up with all of that, my two favourite New York music blogs, Brooklyn Vegan and Earfarm have you covered.

Earfarm’s Guide to CMJ

Brooklyn Vegan’s Guide to Hip-Hop at CMJ

KEXP @ CMJ live shows

CMJ Website

The Voodoo Experience (Oct 24-26) (New Orleans, LA)

Check out our coverage from last year’s Voodoo.

This year, I will be making it back for my third ever Voodoo appearance, but I will just be going on Saturday to catch The Mars Volta, Nine Inch Nails, and Lil Wayne. You can take a look at the Schedule here, but other notable artists include: Stone Temple Pilots, TV On The Radio, DevotchKa, Man Man, Wyclef Jean, Josepth Arthur, Ghostland Observatory, Thievery Corporation, Fishbone, Dead Confederate, Good Guys, R.E.M., NERD, Butthole Surfers, Ozomatli w/ Chali 2na, Tokyo Police Club, and Quintron & Miss Pussycat. Here are some photos Clint Miller took from last year:


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