Big time festival season is in full bloom. Most weekends this time of year there's someplace in Dallas with a major festival. This month alone there's Psych Fest, Homegrown, and the Houston Free Press Summer Fest, and each on different weekends. But this weekend, arguably the most unlikely township in Texas hosts what will be, whether any city dweller wants to admit it or not, one of 2014's largest-scale, most star-studded affairs. Plano, well north of the hipster-safe Dallas interior loop, hosts the first ever Suburbia Music Festival.
Headlined by Ibeza- and Fergie-approved DJ, David Guetta and anyone-with-a-brain-approved Alabama Shakes, this coming weekend could be a rude awakening for the normally sleepy Oak Point Nature Preserve. But not every artist will be so approachable. So get ready, Plano: These five acts from Suburbia's pleasantly diverse roster will scare you. For real.
5. Ishi - The sex-funkified dance-rock that JT Mudd and crew bring to the stage is infectious. Filthy sex and infections are just too explicit for white-bread suburbia. The impulses that emanate from a suburbanite's nether regions involuntarily will scare other suburbanites around them, causing great discomfort for everyone.
4. Ume - The loud-as-hell Austin rock trio, led by the wonderfully feminine, viciously ferocious Lauren Larsen is as much of a polar opposite of a Stepford-style soccer mom as one can get, at least when she's thrashing on-stage. Loud women, even talented ones, aren't often appreciated in the 'burbs. Scary.
3. Slightly Stoopid - Illiteracy isn't something to joke about, especially in the well-heeled "Who has the best schools?" pissing contests of any self-respecting outer metro. Jokes like that are frightening for many north of LBJ. Forget the spelling of the name, there's nothing slightly stupid about this Cali band's trashcan punch mish-mash of music. It's just stupid, which isn't sick, but sickening.
2. Yelawolf - One can only imagine the pandemonium that will surely ensue should Alabama's Michael Wayne Atha decide to start belting out cuts from his breakthrough mixtape Trunk Muzik (illiteracy alert!). Lord help everyone if he decides to perform "Pop that Trunk." In suburbia, trunks are popped in order to insert youth sporting equipment and Nordstrom shopping bags, not to unload lethal weaponry. And, make no mistake, unlike Yela's mom, who's "in the slaughterhouse with a hatchet," the mothers living near Ikea prefer to let the men process the fine meats they enjoy only after they've been purchased at a local, reputable grocer. Ladies with hatchets and boys that sing about them are not kosher.
1. Third Eye Blind - Because, shouldn't we all be afraid? A fear of hearing "How's it Going to Be" played live is indeed enough to unite urbanites and suburbanites everywhere. Terror shall reign if Stephen Whatshisname scribbles that song onto the band's setlist. May Guetta help us all!
