Our Top Ten Picks For Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011

Photo By Marc Brubaker

Best Coast at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010

This weekend the Rocks Off team will cover their third Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, at the festival's new home Auditorium Shores. Each year this fest seems to get bigger and better, without losing it's grimy luster. Is it the Austin City Limits Music Festival for the tattooed set, or is ACL the FFFF for the white-bread set? Not sure, but we do know that this year we were just a tad more excited for the FFFF lineup than the ACL one.

FFFF started in 2006 humbly with Spoon, Circle Jerks, The Black Angels, Negative Approach, and Peaches on the bill. The first year we went in 2009, the big drawls were Danzig, The Jesus Lizard, Mission Of Burma, Ratatat, Crystal Castles, and Fucked Up.

By the next year in 2010 the festival was preparing to move to across town to Auditorium Shores and ended their reign at Waterloo Park in fine fashion with the Descendents, Mastodon, Bad Religion, Best Coast, and GWAR closing her down.

This year locals Fat Tony and B L A C K I E will be making the bill as Houston's sole emissaries, and this year the festival starts on Friday instead of Saturday around noon. In previous years they only had kick-off events Fridays and not full-scale lineups.

We picked out a few of the bands we are dying to see, and we included the complete lineup again for gandering.

Danzig Legacy

It's Danzig doing Misfits, Samhain, and solo sets with Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein from the original Misfits crew helping out with the band's signature horror punk. Videos on YouTube of these legacy shows don't disappoint, even if they are from a few yards out from the camera-shy Danzig.

Slayer

It's Slayer, what else is there to know? But seriously, we are skipping Odd Future completely since they actually suck and aren't worth the hype, and apparently hit photogs in the photo pit. Instead of hitting photogs, just don't allow them in the photo area. Simple as that. God bless Frank Ocean, but fuck Odd Future.

M83

Kinda bummed we aren't seeing M83 in a smaller space like Warehouse Live, but an M83 is an M83 show. The band's mastermind Anthony Gonzalez is coming to Texas behind the great new release Hurry Up We're Dreaming, which will no doubt be getting some end-of-year best-of list love around here.

Doomriders

Been a fan of this Converge side project since 2005's Black Thunder, which we listened to until the disc was warped. Once you hear it, you will go "Oh, well yeah of course you like this crap..."

Wugazi

Hoping this is as fun to hear live as it is to listen to at our desks.

Childish Gambino

We got a man-crush on Donald Glover and his rap persona Childish Gambino. Glover will also be on the comedy stage doing his thing, which killed here in Houston this summer. If he's the future of comedy, we are on board.

Tune-Yards

In which Rocks Off jumps on the indie-blog bandwagon for Merrill Garbus' lo-fi W H O K I L L, has been one of the most infectious surprises of the year.

Murder City Devils

The MCD seem to play Texas more than some Texas bands themselves. Their discography doesn't seem to age either.

Black Lips

Because we missed them back in the spring at Fitzgerald's since we were covering Ke$ha that night at Verizon and got too much glitter in our eyes and we were waiting outside her bus until midnight. At least we are being honest.

Heartless Bastards

Well, Chris Gray will get mad if we miss seeing one of his favorite bands for some metal or indie crap.

The following list separates the stages by color, and not by day actually. Gives you all a good idea of the diversity going on here. Tinariwen and Cannibal Corpse in the same weekend? Sure.