Fin Fang Foom Have Played Every Fest

During the last weekend of October, hordes of bands ride down to Gainesville, Fla. to play the always-eclectic, always-loud festival simply called The Fest. This year was the eighth time the festival has happened, and like the previous seven years, North Carolina's Fin Fang Foom played.

The brazen and atmospheric band is the only act to have the distinction of playing all eight years. "One year there was a trivia question asking who has played every Fest," guitarist Michael Triplett told Noisecreep. "Matt Sweeting [of No Idea Records] was the only guy to get it right."

The Fest stands out among the bevy of other festivals that cater towards the heavier sides of things by simply avoiding corporate sponsorships. No band takes the stage with a backdrop behind their gear, pumping up a car company or a soda conglomerate. Though some corporations do support The Fest, organizer Tony Weinbender has been very adamant over years that no money has been exchanged, just trades, such as gear for bands that came by plane. "He's always done a great job keeping that DIY kind of ethic," Triplett said, praising Weinbender's passion each year. "It's a well-organized festival for having pretty much no corporate sponsors. It's such a huge event in Florida for all the kids, which is really great.

"I think Gainesville still has a really great DIY spirit to it, and every year the festival has changed a lot. Every year you have so many more acts, and it does feel like it's getting more and more punk rock, which I think we fit into that more in the ideology standpoint than sound-wise."

Every year that Fin Fang Foom plays, it feels like something of a homecoming, since the band started in Florida -- eventually moving to Chapel Hill, N.C. in 1998. "We always loved the bands that came out of here," bassist Eddie Sanchez said in regard to Chapel Hill. "We came through here a few times, so we started to have friends in other bands here."

"In general I think the infrastructure is set up a lot better here." Triplett said as a separating difference of the two cities. "There's a college radio station, there are weeklies that cover your music a little bit better, and on the map it's more centrally located so there are a lot of touring bands coming through here as well."

Being on that low protruding corner of the country like most cities in Florida, it's harder to route tours through them. This can make getting shows with bigger bands and getting connections hard for a local band. "It's another country in the US or something," Triplett laughed. "I love some things about Florida. I'm not trying to single something out about it, but there are some hard things about it."