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Life On Soundwave by Fucked Up

Drummer Jonah Falco tells us how it was for the band at this year's Soundwave Festival.

Life at Soundwave. What is life like at Soundwave? What is lifelike at Soundwave? What is life....like....at Soundwave?

What is life at all, really. Without great trouble one could say that life is the act of living. A more serious thinker might demand more specifics but really, all there is to life is what it does best, *living.* Living is the thing that you do when 'life' isn't in the way, and thanks to SW, for 10 days life wasn’t an issue.

FU get asked to play a number of festivals. Sometimes we are a feather in the cap of a festival’s organizers, and other times we're just a drop in the cultural ocean. Soundwave felt a bit like we had been swept away to some pampered world of permanent backstage, privilege, and prestige by accident and no one noticed that we were just 'us.' Feather firmly planted in our own cap, we soaked up everything we could.

The southern hemisphere in February, especially for a festival comprised of mainly North American and European bands, was the first and most prevalent treat. Many days were spent at the beach, burning away precious minutes of our skin's lifespan and salting our systems in an impressive TWO oceans in one week. Other days were spent leisurely sleeping off the shock of being worlds apart from our end of the earth, and wandering the Antipodes eating up what we could – including Kangaroo, Crocodile, “Mouth Burning Hot” Sichuan food, and the occasional hotel buffet. Once the meat pies and sunburns had been exhausted, I suppose it was time to get to the festival.

Our performances were challenging. We played right after the Melvins and the Bronx every night, which meant watching both of their sets with agonizing attention and awe, and then humbly taking the stage in their wake. Dale, Buzz, Jared, and Cody completely atomize their audience every single night, followed only by the effortlessness of The Bronx’s total captivation was quite the lead up to our funny tunes. Knowing as well that every night we were competing for Australia’s attention against the immutable Iron Maiden (we shared a time slot HA) was equally as daunting. We smashed em out with the best of them, though, and hopefully found our place among all of our storied peers.

Backstage, behind the curtain of the legions of charred, shoeless, rabid hordes was a collection of generation upon generation of our own subculture. When else are you hanging out with members of Nirvana, Danzig, Guns and Roses, Buried Alive, Amebix, Exodus, Shrapnel, and Scream – and those are bands that didn’t play. It’s staggering that we’re even a part of that continuum let alone part of the travelling circus that keeps the cycle moving every night. Yet backstage was as calm and inclusive as it could have been. I pet a wombat with Steve Irwin’s parents, lined up for salad with Slash, watched Josh Homme lose at Fussball to the Melvins and the Bronx, and shared a cold beer with friends in 19th century prison cell. The list goes on.



It’s hard to peg exactly what life is like on a touring festival, especially without sounding like a spoiled brat -- FU for hardest working band in 2011! –- but if it needed to be boiled down to two essential truths and maxims they would be:

1) Dave Lombardo’s drumming was the most common topic of conversation for EVERYONE and 2) it was excellent.

Thank you Soundwave for treating us so well.