Live review: Antipop 5: The Ettes, Basements of Florida, Hot Hands, Death Mites and more.

The Ettes.

Anti-Pop Festival 5.
Orlando & Winter Park, Florida. Thursday - Sunday October 12-15, 2009.
Review, video and pictures by Jeffrey Howard.

The Anti-Pop Music Festival is in it's fifth year and I haven't been to a single one. The idea is a good one: a four night devoted to small and big "indie" bands that takes place in multiple venues but it never really garnered by interest. In it's favor, the people behind it are more sound than the scum bags behind the Florida Music Festival. I have to ask: what is the difference between Anti-Pop and a regular weeks worth of shows?

I like to think of myself as a well rounded music lover but when I read the lineups all I could ask was "Who are all these bands?" and "Are these the best headliners they could get in these rich music times?" I don't know if I'm just not into "indie" bands anymore or if there is such little identity put into this festival. The genre is too big now and it seems the more drab boring bands have taken over. Other than the obvious local talent it seemed like they built the festival with the pay-to-be-considered web site Sonic bids instead of searching out and handpicking bands and artists that you are interested in bringing to Orlando. Headliners Pete Yorn, Marky Ramone and Yacht do not a Festival make.

Anti-Pop boasts that they get 10,000 attendees a year. Where the hell do those numbers come from? I go to shows all year long and never see 10,000 people a week watching bands. Sounds like fuzzy math. Passes for all four nights were $25, which wasn't too bad a price (last years I think was closer to $50). Travel between venues (downtown and Mills area) makes it darn near impossible to catch more than one event. Too spread out! There were a couple of things that happened during Anti-Pop that were totally awesome. Some of the smaller local-heavy shows were farmed out to the "smaller" more in touch promoters (Post Records, Tooth) which were pretty cool.

Onto the bands that I did see: The only band I saw the first night was Death Mites, playing one of three free shows during the festival. It was an early show at Bar BQ Bar at 7:45pm. Since they were the only interesting band I went home afterwards. No interest in seeing the second or third (?) drummer for the Ramones play his dead band mates songs. Do you think they're rolling in their graves? It's not even in the same league as say...... Paul McCartney singing his own Beatles songs. Not interested.

At the time I was only planning on attending the free shows because there was no way I would pay $50 (for Kristin and I) to see all these bands we see on a regular monthly basis, you know? But it turns out we got wristbands for participating in the festival. Our band was asked to play the closing show as part of the Post Records showcase. This meant we could go see The Ettes the next night at Back Booth.

The Ettes, of course, ruled. They are one of my favorite current garage rock bands and this set was just perfect rock and roll. Their new record just came out on Take Root Records and it's a winner. The singer Coco grew up in Winter Park (same as me). The band was based in LA for a few years but now they live in Nashville so I hope they come to Orlando more often. Their last album came out in 2008 and they had their record release party at local CD store Park Ave CDs if you can believe that. That was a great show. They've added a fourth member for this tour, a lead guitarist, to help play all those extra guitar parts that are on the new record. The Ettes would be the only band we would see on Saturday - anything else would have been a let down. Scroll down for two videos from The Ettes.

The last day of Anti-Pop was held at Stardust and organized by Chris Cucci of Post Records and it would turn out to be the best and most creative lineup of the festival. There was barely a mention of this closing show on the Anti-Pop web page but a lot of people would turn out to see the best of the "old guard" mixed with the new rising stars. And Chris was smart enough to throw in some out of town bands that don't have much (if any) Orlando following.

The first band I saw out of the all day event that started out in Stardust's parking lot was Slaves, whom I've covered a couple of times already here on Kick Bright. They're new and are getting better with each show. Meteoreyes, from Sarasota, play a slick indie dance that would fit well with a fancy smoke and light show. To make good use of the space the other bands that would play would set up in three different places the room has to offer: the parking lot, the smaller room where most shows are held, and in the middle of the big room.

In the big room new band Sheet Fort had created just that in the middle of the room: a sheet fort. Hung all around the band (as well as the ceiling) were bed sheets to simulate a sheet fort. This band was one guy who wore a cowboy hat and strummed an acoustic guitar, avoiding direct contact with the microphone while loops of a human voice mimicked mooing cows or something in the background. It was weird but nice. He was later joined by a drummer on a tiny drum kit as the singer switched on an old electric organ. I swear the one song was over ten minutes long. In the smaller room North Carolina's Ventricles would drown the room in waves of shoegaze goodness.

Back outside, Kevin from Technobox was playing his little technobox to not much of a crowd. I think I have a new appreciation to this project as he let me fiddle with his box and turn his knobs. 1991 would play soon afterwards and, surprisingly, did not invoke noise complaints from Stardust's quick-to-call-the-police neighbors.

Inside the big room the setup for the finale performance of Anti-Pop was beginning to take hold. Basements of Florida were teaming up with Hot Hands to play a dueling set. Both bands would be stretching out three drum kits, three bass rigs and one guitar rig across the entire room right down the middle. If it were an arena show they'd call it "in the round". The bands would each play two songs each by themselves, balancing quick and noisy guitar/drums pop songs (Hot Hands) to contrast with the heavy low-end sounds of three bassists and two drummers (Basements of Florida). By the end of the set both bands would be playing together. Can you imagine the sounds coming out of all those instruments?

Pictures:

Death Mites.