FBO: 'Seeks Fun at No Fun'

CAN YOU BREAK MUSIC?

The New York Times ventured to Brooklyn's noise-music No Fun Festival this weekend and peppered Monday readers with apt descriptions of the four days of electronic-induced feedback as 'resembling the roar of pummeling surf from an underwater perspective' and 'relentless hissing sludge.' FBO Admin, invited by FBO #2 Fan Tom C-- of Connecticut, attended the opening on Thursday and continues the report to Failed Bands of Oklahoma fans.

Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, playing with the Boredoms' drummer Yoshimi, had by far the most conventional set -- three improvised songs, with odd chords and moaned vocals lines, even touching on MoJo R-- with 'this is the end my friend' at the end. The rest of it -- including the 40-minute screeching end of monotonous feedback by 'Pain Jerk', a guy who looked like the lead guitarist of Cinderella circa 1987 and who had a guy pointing to him onstage, occasionally flipping off the crowd with both hands -- was a little noiser.

What caught FBO's eye is the pumping middle fingers and 'devil signs' -- a la Ronnie James Dio -- that saluted the three-piece Hair Police, a band of questionable haircuts and displaced rage, with a Jack Black-bodied bass player furiously yelling repeated words with fist pumps at odds with the screeching, nearly formless music. What drives us to acknowledge the devil, or our heavy metal hearts, with something distorted or unexplainable happens? Anyway, it wasn't bad.

Earlier, Hive Mind + Damion Romero played a low, 20-minute buzz, their faces barely visible between long locks of black hair and two large devices that looked, afar, like a 1950s operators' switchboard. On occasion, the guy with the longer hair and a beard rocked his head backward and took long, well-deserved sips from a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon that set atop the device. That was good. Something to look at.

Outside, in a common area in the back, a seated woman -- a local in the gritty waterfront neighborhood with limited public transport --- asked 20-somethings (mostly) to get off the exit ramp ('stay off the ramp, honey'), and flirters and 'noise nerds' (to quote Kim Gordon) ate sausages, drank beer and flirted between sets by the basement CD/tape/record displays below. The ID checker up front noted Tom C-- and I were both part of the '68 club' (born in 1968), as he was. After the show, they ushered people to the van to get to the 'train.'

--> www.nofunfest.com



Reporting from Red Hook, our civic duty fulfilled.

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY