What? I Can’t Hear You:

[04-05-06]

(Part One) (Part Two)

So, I survived No Fun Fest. In fact, I had a great time at No Fun Fest. Or, rather, I had a lot of fun at No Fun Fest — same thing, right? By now, I’m pretty tired of thinking of "fun" as a loaded word.

No Fun Fest surprised me in a lot of ways. I was surprised by how big it was, how many people came out, and how excited everyone was to be there. I was surprised by the incredible variety of noise acts, from giddy, dorky old men playing saxophones to serious looking guys crouched behind computers creating shrill metallic waves of sound. And I was surprised by how much fun I had. As a girl who doesn’t really listen to much noise music dragged to a three-day noise fest by her boyfriend, I had expected to feel bored and somewhat alienated by the music and the atmosphere, but, for the most part, I didn’t. A few weird moments and mediocre sets notwithstanding, the weekend’s music was engaging and exciting and ultimately made me forget I was a No Fun Fest Girlfriend. The best moments of No Fun were the ones where the music made me stop analyzing my relationship with noise and step out of my role as a NFFGF and just listen. And maybe rock back and forth a little bit.

The first night of No Fun, I had the good fortune to run into a couple of other TMT writers, Matt Weir and S. Kobak, as well as my friend Steve. Over the course of the night, all three of these guys ended up saying the same two things to me: one, "Are you having fun?" and two, "You should check out this next band, a female noise act."

I’ll address each of these statements in turn. First, yes, I was having fun. I was also regretting the confident declaration I made in Part I that "noise is no fun." That simply isn’t true. Noise can definitely be fun, even if it rarely delivers the bouncy, head-bobbing brand of fun I enjoy in other music. But noise can also be no fun, either because it’s serious or because it’s sort of lame (it’s boring or repetitive or too antagonistic, or it sounds like bad metal). My idea that "noise is no fun" can probably be blamed on my focusing too much on just Merzbow, who is sort of a serious guy, and who I am not really into. Basically, noise music is like anything else: some of it is fun and some of it isn’t. If I’d only ever heard Elliott Smith albums, I’d probably conclude that "indie rock is no fun," and if I’d only ever seen Match Point, you couldn’t blame me for saying "Woody Allen movies are no fun." The variety of music at No Fun Fest made me realize that noise bands don’t all sound similar. John Weise is nothing like Can’t, and Can’t is nothing like Borbetomagus, and Borbetomagus is nothing like the Skaters, and the Skaters are nothing like No Neck Blues Band (and No Neck may not even be a noise band), and so on.

Secondly, the Friday night line-up was indeed frontloaded with female noise acts: Zaimph, then 16 Bitch Pile-Up, then Can’t. I wondered why the schedule was set up this way, and I couldn’t help but think that Carlos Giffoni (the No Fun Fest organizer) had gotten word of my article and set out to prove that noise music does not really alienate women.

Whether or not Carlos planned it this way, the three all-girl noise acts succeeded in making me question my conception of noise as something created primarily by men and for men. I especially liked Can’t. She started by singing a very pretty, simple a capella folk song, something about "cool, clear water," and then got down to business and began manipulating knobs that brought on onslaughts of static and feedback that she sang against and around, her singing mostly fighting, but sometimes harmonizing, with the noise. Her voice came out in gasps and stabs, and she moved backwards and forwards in an elegantly gawky dance with the synthesizer.

But even if there were women all over the stage Friday night, there were mostly men in the audience: I saw one girl for every four guys. I was (and still am) really curious about what those girls were thinking. I wanted to ask how they liked No Fun, but of course I couldn’t just run up to a bored-looking girl and say, "So, your boyfriend dragged you here, huh?" Not only would that have been awkward and rude (and sexist), but none of the girls I saw looked bored. They all looked engaged in the music and excited to be there. Then again, even I looked engaged in the music and excited to be there, and I had been dragged there by my boyfriend.

No Fun Fest was undeniably a pretty engaging and exciting event. It was planned well, with a good variety of bands organized in a sequence that didn’t get boring. It was held at a nice place, the Hook, which has a big main stage, a great (and very loud) sound system, a second stage in an unfinished basement with a low ceiling and a red lamp, a little courtyard area out back with a shack full of merch tables, and a quesadilla concession.

The appeal of No Fun Fest was increased by the fact that a lot of the musicians forged a positive and friendly rapport with the audience, an element that’s been absent at other noise shows I’ve been to. When 16 Bitch took the stage, one of the women grinned and said, "Welcome to Carlos Giffoni’s block party, guys!" The next night James Twig Harper, whose house burned down while he was in New York for No Fun, ended his performance by shouting this sweetly earnest, passionate speech that went something like: "Don’t ever give up! Don’t ever give up! Keep doing what you’re doing! Don’t you ever fucking give up!"

This earnestness was especially refreshing in the context of Saturday night’s line-up. If Friday was ladies’ night, Saturday was more of a macho-noise sausagefest. It wasn’t the music itself that annoyed me, but the ridiculous posturing and fist-pumping, especially when it came to Bloodyminded, Daniel Menche, and Sutcliffe Jugend. Bloodyminded yelled a lot and rambled introductions to each song that were longer than the songs themselves; if they were supposed to be ironic, I didn’t get the joke. Menche ran around and shook his fist at the audience from different parts of the stage, then climbed up on a large hanging speaker and shook his fist from up above the crowd. Sutcliffe Jugend, two British guys who wore all white and played guitars, seemed very serious, and yelled things like "You are Jesus God" over and over.

And then there was Macronympha. There was a lot going on during Macronympha’s set (quick summary: one of the guys slammed huge metal oil drums together, the crowd got riled up and violent, people started throwing around a table and eventually someone got hit in the head with the table, there were naked girls onstage), and now there’s a lot of online message board controversy over the sex and violence in their stage show. Someone started a thread called "Death to Jock Noise;" Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth wrote a summary of No Fun in which he described Macronympha as having a "jutted-jaw super-inebriated date-rape vibe," and I think he meant it as a compliment; the scandal escalated and the arguments ensued, and one of the guys from Macronympha ended up posting a letter defending his actions.

Personally, the violence bothered me more than the sex. I saw the poor guy who was hit with the table holding his bloody head and struggling to get out of the crowd, and then I saw the table hoisted right back into the air. Guys, if you’re throwing around a table, and someone gets hit in the head with it and starts bleeding a whole lot, that is when you put down the table. You don’t keep throwing the table. That is a terrible idea. I have to admit, though, that before I saw this guy get hurt, I was completely caught up in the excitement of seeing a table get thrown around in the air. I wasn’t thinking about it on any serious level; I was just impressed with the spectacle: Oh, wow, they’re throwing around a table, that’s crazy, yeah!

As for the naked women, I didn’t actually see them. I’m 5’2", so I’m pretty much used to not being able to see what’s going on onstage at shows, and No Fun (with an 80% male and a 95% taller-than-me audience) was no exception. So I’m not sure how I would’ve reacted if I had actually seen what happened onstage, and my only account of the events comes from my (5’10") boyfriend. According to him, Dom, one of the guys in Macronympha, was making out with a woman with electrical tape on her nipples while one of the other Macronympha guys sort of felt up Sarah Cathers from 16 Bitch, who was wearing a red bra and fishnets. Maybe it’s because I didn’t see it, but I’m not really shocked or surprised by this behavior. First of all, as disappointing as it is that women tend to be seen as muses and cheerleaders and flygirls for male artists instead of artists in their own right, it’s not like this phenomenon is new. And second, was it really clear that Sarah and the other woman were being exploited? According to S. Kobak, the woman with taped nipples is Dom’s girlfriend, and as far as I know, she and Sarah were acting of their own volition. If Sarah felt violated when someone touched her breasts, I think she would’ve done something about it – the woman is in a band called 16 Bitch Pile-Up; I think she can handle her shit. Look at her, she’s probably captain of her roller derby league. All I’m saying is that I’d hesitate before assuming titties on stage equals exploitation. It isn’t that clear-cut – like the word "cunt," the event of a naked woman on stage can be (and has been) reclaimed and used to empower instead of demean. And since I didn’t see it myself, it’s hard for me to say whether naked girls were a cool or creepy addition to Macronympha’s stage show.

But regardless of whether or not the women onstage were exploited, there was something weird about Macronympha’s set: I have no recollection of what it sounded like. I was too caught up in the spectacle – too busy watching the table wobbling through the crowd and the oil drums slamming together and the empty beer cans arcing towards the stage – to pay attention to the music.

And while I’ll admit I found myself mesmerized by the flying table, I don’t think I could ever get as excited by violence as some of the other people in the crowd. I had no desire to toss the table myself, or punch someone in the face, or throw my beer can towards the stage. After the first night of No Fun, Carlos started a thread on my favorite noisedork message board called "No Fun Fest 2006 – Who’s still alive?" in which he wrote, "Make sure to say goodbye to your family members if you are coming tonight. There is no point of return." And even though this was obviously meant as a joke (or at least as hyperbole), I really can’t relate to this idea of violence and aggression and danger being cool, this idea that going to No Fun Fest somehow means skirting death, and I can’t relate to the masochism of the guy who responded to Carlos’s post by writing: "Barely alive, every part of me is hurting, throat feels like a smokestack, talking is difficult, many bruises … ears are still ringing a tad … tonight is going to be even crazier and I can’t fucking wait." I emerged from No Fun Fest relatively unscathed, and I had a great time – so why does violence and masochism factor in to the equation for so many people? Sure, I took out my earplugs for a bunch of the sets (okay, most of them, after the first day), but that’s because the music sounded better without earplugs, not because I wanted to feel pain or earn my tinnitus badge.

Sunday evening’s performances provided a welcome respite from such macho/ masochistic tendencies. Late Sunday night, I saw two of the least pretentious and most exuberant acts of the entire weekend. First, Borbetomagus played upstairs: two old, unhip men playing saxophones and another old, unhip man playing guitar, all making the most formless, joyful explosion of sound imaginable. It reminded me of blowing the shofar in synagogue on Rosh Hashonah. I’m not religious (at all), so it sort of freaks me out that I can only describe Borbetomagus by comparing them with High Holiday services and using words like "joyful." But yeah, they were good. And then we ran downstairs to see Burning Graveyards, who trumped Borbetomagus’s "formless" with "chaotic," and their "joyful" with "fucking manic." Once again, I was too short to see the band, but every once in a while, the sea of shoulders would part a little bit and every time it did, I’d catch a glimpse of a different guy crammed on the tiny basement stage, spazzing out gloriously on whatever instrument he was holding. This music was decidedly not "no fun" – it was psychotically ecstatic.

So I had fun at No Fun Fest, and if I ever felt alienated as a non-noise-fan outsider, it wasn’t during any of the performances, but at the merch tables. I didn’t know the bands and labels represented there, and I felt like a dork standing next to my boyfriend while he browsed and getting in the way of guys who had really specific questions to ask about limited edition cassette series. But even in the merch shack, No Fun friendliness ultimately prevailed, and one of the guys at one of the booths showed me a CD that came in a case that was "actually a fully-functional pinball machine." It had a tiny spring to launch the ball bearing and everything, and I really regret not buying it. Not that I knew what it sounded like, but still. I was really amazed at the gorgeous and innovative CD packaging, and once I got over being shy and intimidated, I enjoyed looking through the music for sale just to look at it. If anything is going to slow down the mp3 revolution and convince people to buy albums again, it’s not going to be the threat of the RIAA, but unique, pretty CDs that come in hand-painted cases, felt sleeves or miniature pinball machines.

In closing, I should thank No Fun Fest (and the boyfriend who dragged me there) for making me aware of two really nice things about noise music. First nice thing: seeing a live noise act has the potential to be a more overwhelming and in-the-moment experience than say, seeing a live indie rock band. At No Fun, there was never a moment where I caught myself unconsciously comparing the song I was hearing to the version of the song I knew from the album. Granted, this is largely due to the fact that I haven’t listened to many albums put out by the bands who played at No Fun, but I have a feeling that the rest of the audience – even the people who had all the albums, plus the obscure tour CD-Rs – were too caught up in the sound to think of anything but what they were hearing. The sheer volume of the music makes it overwhelming, and makes everything else irrelevant: there is only this; there is no that to compare this to. There’s no chorus to anticipate and no previous verse to reflect on; there’s just the sound that you’re hearing now, and, oh, now it’s changing slightly. This meditative quality is one of the things that allows noise to be so (surprisingly) soothing.

The second nice thing about No Fun is that it made me listen to a lot of noise music, and I’ve found that the more noise music I hear, the more apt I am to notice noises in general. This has not only made my music-listening more interesting (as I’m one of those people who tend to notice lyrics before music), but I’d venture to say it’s also made my life more interesting. It’s made me pay more attention to the calming and vaguely tidal sounds of the traffic outside my apartment, it’s made the tremendous, rumbling industrial copy machine at work a lot more fun, and it probably played some role in my decision to set off all the toaster oven timers and listen to the different bells during a recent visit to the Astor Place K-Mart.

Which brings me back to No Fun Fest: sitting on the F train at 3:00 AM on the way back from our third night at the Hook, my boyfriend and I listened to the whoosh and screech of the subway car.

"This sounds exactly like –"

My boyfriend nodded: "John Wiese."

Photos: Bill T Miller

(Part One) (Part Two)

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