He co-owns and co-manages Chronic Town, 224 W. College Ave. He books and promotes Roustabout! He sings and plays guitar for The Bullet Parade. He's a graduate student pursuing his master's in fine arts in new media.

This weekend, he will wear all of his hats -- those of proprietor, promoter, performer and pupil -- at once for the first ever Roustabout! Sweet 69, a 69-hour-long performance starting tonight. The show will take place at VanFossan's Chronic Town; he booked all of the bands himself, many being regular Roustabout! performers; The Bullet Parade will be performing; and the show itself is a project as part of his graduate work.

"It's art in the present tense," VanFossan said. "We're doing art that's focusing on the moment. Most art is done by projection; this kind is creating by extension."

VanFossan said that, like all the art he is involved with, this show will focus on the communal and the collaborative.

"It's relation art, art of spectacle," he said. "It's mixing pop art with high art with commercial art."

The show will begin tonight, and the music will not stop until early Sunday evening.

In between planned-out sets by bands, there will be portions of time allotted for improvisation and collaboration between members of bands, as well as open mic sets for the general public.

The event derives its name from the Pink Mountaintops song "Sweet '69."

"I knew I wanted to do it for 69 hours, and that was kind of a good graphic representation," VanFossan said. "The only parameter is that the music has got to keep going."

The Bands

Sixty-nine hours. Two stages. One hookah lounge. Twenty-eight bands, plus the opportunity for improvisation and amateur showmanship. Can you feel the gravitas? Here's a look at six of the 28 bands playing this weekend.

Niagara Falls

Philadelphia-based Niagara Falls was once an improv band.

In fact, the band's first album was nothing more than the product of an impromptu jam session among the original members.

The current lineup, together for about a year now, is more interested in compositional music now, but many improvisational elements remain manifest in the band's music.

"Our live show is usually one long piece, from beginning to end," Niagara Falls vocalist, drummer and keys player Norman Fetter said. "There may be a break or two, but it flows."

Fetter described the music as "driving, tribal, trancy and meditative," and said it's not uncommon to see people lying down during his band's sets. But he doesn't view that as a bad thing.

"There's a certain side of us that wants to make you shut the rest of your life off for a while," he said.

Fetter said he wants his band to play a three-hour set and fill in some gaps between bands as well.

"I think it's an amazing opportunity to really stretch out our set," he said.

Aside from his work in Niagara Falls, Fetter plays solo sets as Enumclaw.

The other band members play as Tathagatta, and Sam Cusumano, who does synths, samples, percussion and vocals for the band, will also play solo during the marathon show.

The Tell Tale Signs

The Tell Tale Signs don't get a lot of opportunities like this one. The so-called "little rock and roll band" from Williamsport doesn't have much of a music scene to speak of in its hometown.

"Like, once a year something happens," singer and guitarist Andy Kohler said. "It's all blues bands and cover bands. We feel polarized from everyone else. We don't have a lot of chances to play with bands we're jazzed about."

Kohler described The Signs' music as having elements of '60s garage rock, and said the band didn't have any songs with more than three or four chords.

But while such a declaration could be insulting to some bands, Kohler said it's a conscious decision.

"Sometimes imposing a limitation on yourself leads to better music in the end," he said.

Olympus Mons

Each member of Pittsburgh's Olympus Mons is 24 years old, but they've known each other since elementary school. The band itself is only about 5 years old, but bassist Mike Bechtold said the years the musicians have known each other, well beyond since they've been playing together, play a big role in the band's tightness.

"You know where everyone is going to go, and you feed off each other well," Bechtold said. "It helps when it comes to writing as well. Everybody has their part."

Bechtold said the band's most significant collective influences were bands like The Cure and Joy Division, although Olympus Mons is more upbeat. He said although the band's uniqueness was an asset, no one sets out to be different for the sake of being different: "It's just kind of what comes out. It's not a conscious effort, but it pulls in people from all over."

The Evening Fires

Nathaniel Rasmussen, who plays keys, flutes and percussion for the Evening Fires, said his band's music sounds like "what Kraftwerk would have sounded like if they grew up in Appalachia."

"It's psychedelic folk with tribal elements," Rasmussen said.

In addition to playing with the Evening Fires, Rasmussen is also a part of Deep Water Acres, a record label that prints CD-Rs and books shows at the Schlow Library, where Rasmussen also works as a systems administrator. He said the bands his label books and records are rather varied.

"I guess the unifying thread is that they could all be described as 'psychedelic,' " he said, "but we have bands that play power chords to pure noise to acoustic folk stuff."

Deep Water Acres, which began as a print 'zine in the early '90s, also runs a Web site that runs reviews, interviews and profiles.

The Wilcox Hotel

Los Angeles is renowned for its music scene. Penn State graduate student and Wilcox Hotel lead singer Jason De Leon should know -- he did his undergraduate studies at UCLA.

In State College, though; the scene is a little different. De Leon intends to change that.

"Our goal is just to play as much as possible and try to revive the dying music scene in this town," he said. "There's too many cover bands. It's difficult to get emotional about someone else's songs."

The Wilcox Hotel plays all original material, and De Leon said the band tries to emulate the on-stage intensity of performers like Neil Young, Black Flag and Bruce Springsteen, to name a few. It's a varied list of influences to be sure, but the alt-country/punk band places more of an emphasis on stage presence than on settling on one particular style.

Aside from playing with The Wilcox Hotel, De Leon is slated to play a solo set.

The Bullet Parade

Though many of the bands on the Sweet 69's lineup have played Roustabouts before, there probably isn't one that's played as often as The Bullet Parade.

Obviously, the fact that all of the band members work at Chronic Town has a little bit to do with that. But as often as they play in State College, this performance may be a little bit different, given that the Paraders will also have a lot of work on their hands with the rest of the show.

"We'll probably be a little loopier than usual," Bullet Parade bassist and guitarist Eric Myers said. "We'll put a lot into it, but we'll be exhausted, so it's going to be a strange performance."

Myers said The Bullet Parade could probably be classified as "indie rock," but because it's such a broad term, it's not surprising that all its members have different niches within the genre.

"Obviously, we all listen to the essentials, like Neutral Milk Hotel and The Smiths, but we each have our own facet of the indie-rock world," Myers said, adding that his current favorite was Los Campesinos.