The Serbian Exit Festival is located in a medieval fortress on the bank of the Donau in the city of Novi Sad. It started out ten years ago as a three-month protest against then-president Milosovic and the war into which he plunged the country. Since its first run in 2000, the festival was eventually cut back to four days and bigger names. That’s a great idea in theory, but it doesn't quite work out that great when those bigger names are The Prodigy, Korn, and Moby. The good people of the festival thought it’d be a good idea if the good people of our office in the Netherlands were flown in at their expense to report on their goings-on. We could see the merit in their plan and complied with their request. And we had a great time, despite the presence of tens of thousand of Brits and, of course, The Prodigy, and losing our camera in the shittest of shitholes.
Todd Pendu has really long, perfectly straight hair that looks really, really soft—like, it would be nice to run your fingers through it, but not even in a sexual way. It just looks nice like that. He also looks like he’s about 20 years old, which is totally unfair because he’s actually 34 years old. Looks aside, Pendu is incredibly nice, undeniably chatty, and obviously has a lot of energy to burn. He’s the human responsible for booking, organizing, scheduling, and overseeing the NY Eye & Ear Festival—a four-day, three-venue, two-borough weirdathon that starts tonight and offers what many view as the only legit glimpse into the bubbling cauldron of NYC’s true underground music scene. The festival also includes a huge record fair and Women of NYCinema film screening. In addition to curating lots of freaky happenings and wonderful music, Pendu also runs the Pendu Organization—an entity that cultivates collaboration in all of the arts as well as “Dynamic Ecstatic Transcendentalism.” Dude is ambitious.
If you believe fashion mags, metal kids are weirdly on-trend at the moment–even if their favorite bands still all suck. Anyway, they probably don't know it, but a metal festival in 2009 is like Paris Fashion Week. While at Download festival a little bit ago, we interviewed some of these debauched beauties.
The most expensive part of going to Glastonbury is going there and buying a ticket. This can be easily eliminated by not going to Glastonbury and not buying a ticket. Once these piffling inconsequences are out of the way, you too can experience all the unity, all the magical uniqueness of the greatest festival on earth from the comfort of your own home. How so? Simply do like we say and recreate all its pleasures from stuff you can easily find around the house. Your mind is Glastonbury. Glastonbury is only ever in your mind. Never forget that.
For some reason, a lot of bands like to tour Israel. The Black Lips went over there last year, Nick Cave used to like playing there and hell, I’ve even been there with my punk band three times. But what’s it like being an Israeli artist touring the world? I spoke to Guy Gerber, an Israeli DJ who’s coming to town for We Love Sounds 09.
A little while back we told you about this nice British lad we met at the small art and noise music festival Borealis in Bergen, Norway. We were sent there on an all-expenses paid "vacation," which we learned actually means "attendance slave." There was no exploring the town or anything one likes to do on a trip of free will--it was 100 percent experimental performance, bleak modern composition, and silly attempts to reenact the Fluxus Manifesto. until it was time to go home. The shock of total immersion took a while to wear off; we're finally ready to revisit our footage.
Papa bear boss guy Shane Smith was recently in Tehran shooting a hunk of the Vice Guide to Film, a six-part series airing on IFC Canada this fall, where he embedded himself with the people from the Academy Awards to sneak into the Iranian International Urban Film Festival. Blah blah blah, a bunch of ridiculous awards were, um, awarded, and then they gave Guy Maddin some kind of foreign thing, only he wasn’t there. So Shane, being a rare person from another country at this prestigious event, got up and accepted it on Guy Maddin’s behalf, delivering a speech so touching and powerful (and in Persian) that it moved the mayor of Tehran to smooch him on the cheek. The whole story in Shane's very own words is living here over at Esquire right now. Esquire!
The plan was to leave for Austin from Kansas City at noon after stopping at a Chili’s for some Tex-Mex takeout the other day, but Megan (who's photographing this journey) had loaded her mini-van down with so many road snacks (homemade gooey butter bars, Skittles, Krispy Kreme donuts, Doritos and a ten-pound bag of trail mix) that one of the tires blew out before we even got on the highway. We went to Costco and got the thing repaired and waited in the parking lot for three hours. We had one of our best LP (Lesbian Processing) sessions ever and were left with absolutely NOTHING to talk about on our 12 hour drive to Austin. I popped two Tylenol PM and spent the entire trip asleep, dreaming about meeting Lady GaGa and sucking her dick. (Speaking of which, if doing so would get her arrested because you are not old enough to be doing such things, you need to go away now.)
Tumbler of ice water in the face, hungover fuckers in Austin. Time to wake your asses up and do two things: one, RSVP here for the party we’re throwing tomorrow with Waaves, Obits, Annihilation Time, and Titus Andronicus; and two, read this interview with Neil Hamburger from our Guide to Festivals.
It's time again for a talking-to from a festival pro, ripped from our Guide to Festivals, which you can find if you're in Austin right now (and if you are you're not reading this so actually this is for everyone else). It's an interview with Spoon's Britt Daniel. Take it away, Andrew Earles...
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