by jon bosworth jaxvillain@yahoo.com
It was an old-school showing at Jack Rabbits on Friday, thanks to The Fest in Gainesville. The Fest is an enormous live music festival that happens in Gainesville every year and features a wide variety of indie rock bands from every subgenre. Held at various bars and night clubs in Gainesville, it is a sort of down home CMJ. Like CMJ you will often see a band at The Fest just before they get under the blaze of stardom. For an indie rock band, that “blaze of stardom” is simply a good write up in Pitchfork Media.
The first band to take the stage on Friday was Science of Yabra. This screamo Portland band came into town with Portland’s Old Growth. Old Growth’s guitarist/singer (screamer) is John Magnifico, the Jacksonville native that fronted Twelve Hour Turn. He brought his magnificence to the opposite corner of the country a few years ago, but happily rocked back through the old town on his way to Gainesville, where he will no doubt see many more friends from those No Idea Records days. I would love to report on their performances, as I have heard that they were incredible live, but I arrived too late to see either of their sets.
When I arrived at Jack Rabbits Joe Parker and Sean Irwin were representing the usually four-piece Hand of the Host. The two of them held the line impressively, presenting Joe’s Echo-and-the-Bunnymen-esque vocals sang over blues guitar with Sean’s harder rock edge pushing the songs along. Although it is more difficult to get into Hand of the Host when just two of them are on stage, they were a good fit historically. Joe was in the old-school Jacksonville stalwart Common Thread and Sean was in the classic Dampading (with Christian Gordy of Brass Castle fame and the late Dave This) as well as BoJack (a Riverside insider rock band that occasionally emerges and then dives back into the underground).
Following Hand of the Host was the Chapel Hill band Fin Fang Foom. Although this trio is currently called a Chapel Hill band, every one of the members are from Jacksonville. Guitarist Mike Triplett graduated from Orange Park High School and bass player, keyboardist and vocalist Ed Sanchez graduated from Douglas Anderson. Their breed of indie jam rock has evolved much since their days in the River City. After their first drummer left the band and their second drummer (Peter Enriquez) passed away in a freak accident (a tree branch fell on the car he was in as he was driving through Riverside on a clear day) they enlisted Mike Glass, who had been the drummer for Deep Root. Then they moved to Chapel Hill.
Fin Fang Foom’s music started with an almost-typical mid-nineties indie rock vibe, with long instrumental interludes. Something you could get high and rock out to, as most of the Jax bands were at the time. But as they evolved, they incorporated more of a math rock initiative to their stoner rock set. For their first few albums they floundered there. You could hear potential in their live set, but it wasn’t fully realized. Until now. Their set on Friday was spectacular, even sans their newest addition, a cellist, they played an intense and dynamic post-rock/math-rock/stoner rock set. A post stoner math rock set, as it were, and they executed it brilliantly with just the three of them playing the four instruments on stage.
The desire to flee came suddenly for my drunk photographer, and I was his ride, so I missed the post-rock, mathy hardcore outfit Antarctic, even though they are currently my favorite local band. All in all Friday was a great night of homegrown music that has since, in most occasions, transcended our little scene. Friday’s lineup could have been three really solid nights of music, but as is par for the course in Jacksonville, it was all crammed into one night, only a brief window of which I was able to attend.
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