If drinking $1.50 PBR until you are uncomfortable to the fastest and loudest soundtrack that a $55 festival admission can buy sounds like a good time (that's like a macchiato in Euros), you’ll be as excited as I am to learn that dates and lineups have been announced for Gainesville, Florida’s The Fest 7.
Occurring from October 31st through November 2 in romantic downtown Gainesville, Florida— Halloween, for those readers who aren't Wiccan— be on the lookout for a lot of “sexy punker girl” costumes.
“What? What’s that, Miss? You say you always dress this way? Why, you devil.”
Come to think of it, you should also be on the lookout for a lot of “that guy who had way too much PBR already today” costumes. You'll know him by his distinctive odor and his ability to continue to rock out in an area other humans have rapidly cleared.
Some of last year's highlights included the now-defunct Planes Mistaken for Stars, former members of which are scheduled to be in attendance this year as part of appropriately spookily named Ghost Buffalo, NJ's Gaslight Anthem, and MPLS, MN's Dillinger Four, who are repeating the offense again this year.
Applications are still being reviewed and the schedule and the list of bands finalized until 9/10 for this 3-day feat of indulgence, but the published list as it stands is already at over 250 acts. Who said punk was all austerity? That lineup is positively rococo.
Of the many notables and up-and-comers that will be playing the fest this year— NJ's Bouncing Souls on their 20-year anniversary tour, Atom and his Package, the original Dan Deacon, on his reminiscing on obscurity tour (you can use that, Atom); aforementioned punkest band in America Dillinger Four, Marvel Comics inspired Fin Fang Foom, or Gainesville's own Young Livers— the band I hope people will talk about for years to come is VaginaSore jr.
I don't even know what they sound like, but I have the feeling that this is one band I'm going to be confusing with every other band I've ever seen as I lie, wracked by tinnitus and shrouded in senility, expressing to my wide-eyed and frightened grandchildren that last important piece of wisdom before I give up the ghost.
“VaginaSore jr,” I hope I rasp to those wildly misapprehending youths, fruit fallen from my own tree and bruised in equal measures by having grown up with the internet and by visions of grand-pappy's foul-mouthed enfeeblement, “sang that song… at the post office.”
After a pause I will turn my milky and glassy orbs to the wall and remember that these kids don't know what a post office is. They grew up in the future. It is then I hope I tell them, “Don't get married before you're at least 35, kids. When you're 35, take a look around, pick out your best girl, and settle down.”
