April 8th, 2008
It was my third night in Austin. Devin had just blazed through an epic set that had been celebrated in the appropriate fashion , El-P was currently on-stage and I was wandering around the Def Jux party with four cups of Jack in my stomach, a head full of smoke and the strange desire to approach people and ask if they had also expected everything to be “1984″ themed and staffed entirely by surly robots. But I held my tongue, instead approaching a ornery, heavily tatted bartender at the Scoot Inn, noting the sign above his head that read: “Sorry We Do Not Have Redbull, Wine coolers or Smirnoff Ice, Please Don’t Even Go There P.S. No Shiner Either.” So I did the only sensible thing, I ordered a Jack on the Rocks with a Zima chaser. The barkeep didn’t find this funny and come to think of it, neither did I.
Luckily, I ran into my friend, Will, who was whispering weird gibberish about Del tha Funky Homosapien. As that’s not a name you want to say sotto voce, there was a slight misunderstanding but when things were finally straightened out, I learned that he had canceled his interview with Del moments earlier because of a bout of laryngitis. Naturally, I volunteered for the assignment.
“It won’t be a problem, I rambled. “No one needs prepared questions. Performing interviews without questions is like the freestyling of journalism. Chris Matthews, Larry King, Ellen DeGeneres, they all do it.”
“Maybe I can help you think of some questions?” he said. I could tell that he was a fan of common sense and this frightened me. After all, Finding Forever was terrible.
“Nonsense. I freestyle questions all time,” I scoffed. “It’s part of my plan to improvise everything, release my interviews as mixtapes and win the 2008 Pazz & Jop poll. It’s foolproof.”
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Posted in SXSW, Interviews | 6 Comments »
March 21st, 2008
Unlike Sasha Frere-Jones, my main gripe with indie rock don’t stem from it’s lack of blackness. More than anything, I have trouble dealing with the idea that Jenny Lewis is indiedom’s official pin-up girl. No joke, I think she won first in the 2006 Stereogum poll and came in second in 2007. The winner last year, of course, being Feist, therein proving the voters themselves have bad taste in both senses of the word. Nothing against J-Lew though, she’s certainly attractive and the fact that she was the star of The Wizard gives her enough street cred to play Super Mario Bros. 3 at my house anytime she wants. But let’s all be honest with ourselves, Jenny Lewis looks like the kind of girl who fakes it every time. Granted, my only evidence is that last godawful Rilo Kiley album that had her singing the world’s least believable sex songs. But really, you could almost hear her yawning.
VV from The Kills, doesn’t need to write tacky and tawdry pop songs about porn stars because everything she does is indistinguishable from the notion of sex. She could recite the phone book and you’d be turned on. To say nothing of the back of the LA Weekly. On-stage, this notion is inescapable. She’s got a a damaged, Suicide Girl beauty, raven hair, cream-colored skin. That prettiest girl in art-school look, immaculately put-together. silverly jangly bracelets, skin-tight black jeans, leather jacket, and a robin hood hat slung low over a searing stare.
From the moment The Kills took the stage at Antone’s, you half expected VV to rip off her jacket and strip, instead she grabbed off her hat and flung it behind her, all id, grabbing the microphone violently, spitting on-stage, lost in her velocity of her own mind. Wavering from a luring purr to a plaintive howl, her voice full of life and death and a whiskey-washed, nicotine-scorched blues. Another guy plays on-stage. I think he goes by Hotel but his real name is Jamie. Apparently, he used to date Kate Moss or something. You won’t notice. Of course, the songs themselves are great, inverted blues riffs, staccato drum machines, grimy, stabbing guitars, urgent, sounding tunes that ring with a smoky air of desperation. Midnight Boom, the Kills’ third jaunt, is a great record, one of the best released this year and with Sleater-Kinney gone, VV is probably the best female front-woman in rock. Plus, I imagine she’s incredible at Super Mario Bros. 3. So to speak.
Download:
From Midnight Boom
MP3: The Kills-”Cheap and Cheerful”
From No Wow
MP3: The Kills-”Love is a Deserter”
From Keep On Your Mean Side
MP3: The Kills-”Kissy Kissy”
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March 20th, 2008
Bloggers are every journalist’s favorite whipping boy. If a shitty band gets too popular, blame the bloggers. If the standards of professional journalism have eroded too much, blame the bloggers. If by 2010, Vampire Weekend has inspired legions of college freshmen to dress as ironic yachters, blame the bloggers. Ultimately, it’s as easy to scapegoat the blogosphere as it is to blog and at worst, blogs are benign (at least music ones), at best you discover a lot of good music for free. The horror.
Most importantly, the blogosphere knows how to party, which I discovered at the blogger-promoted Hot Freaks party on Saturday afternoon, a place where Al-Queda could’ve wiped out 82 percent of the game had it gotten enraged by one post too many about the peace-promoting qualities of the Arcade Fire (Osama hates Neon Bible). I’m not exaggerating either, the place was a veritable Elbo.ws chat room (for those keeping score, that may have been my nerdiest joke ever). While watching Islands, Lykke Li, and Japanese cartoon psychos Peelander-Z, I stumbled across My Old Kentucky Blog, Gorilla Vs. Bear, Aquarium Drunkard and Rock Insider. Other bloggers in attendance who I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting included Chromewaves, Largehearted Boy and You Ain’t No Picasso, who was presumably searching for Picasso.
As I am half-blogger, half-journalist, a rare combination that also allows me to breath both underwater and on land, the Hot Freaks collective handed me a VIP badge that allowed me to carve a wanton path of destruction through the festival and/or gorge myself on the free and very delicious tacos and open bar with kegs of Fat Tire, whichever came first. The weather was warm, the food was good, and on the main-stage, the bizarre candy-colored Japanese three-piece, Peelander-Z lived up to the freak component of the party nomenclature. Indeed, Frank Z. himself would’ve gotten a kick out of these half-awesome, half-retarded nutjobs who played like the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers crossed with the Boredoms, crossed with cover-boys for the Japanese version of Fruity Pebbles. I’m not sure how much I’d enjoy one of their LPs, but they were entertaining as hell live, with a bat-shit crazy lead singer running around the party, hooting and hollering all sorts of strange Japanese gibberish.
Sadly, Chef Ra’s Presidential Campaign was De-Railed Amidst Allegations That His Minister Performed Several Anti-Weed Sermons
After watching Lykke Li solidify her bid for the 2008 Annie Award for Swedish “Chanteuse” Most Likely to Win the Hearts of Indie Kids, I scuttled out of onto the street, the voodoo strains of the Islands’ “Where There’s a Will There’s a Whalebone,” following me out onto Red River. With more food and drink on my mind, I suddenly remembered that the High Times party was going on right next door. It was crowded, surprising, considering that I’d assumed that everyone would’ve been too stoned to remember to come. But as it turned out, they’d remedied the problem by doing their burning in a back patio while 60s stoner-metal pioneers Blue Cheer ripped off some psychedelic guitar licks. Within five minutes, someone handed me the joint and told me they worked for NORML.
Weeding my way further into the festivities, I discovered a corner with a small semi-circle of people toking up (hippies only “toke”). In the middle stood a man in his early 60s, white hair, High Times badge and long gray ponytail. He looked just like Willie Nelson. Passing me a pipe, someone whispered, “that’s the editor of High Times.” Glancing up, someone handed Willie a nug of weed which he held up to his eye and scrutinized like a gemologist. I half-expected him to pull out a monocle and a microscope. Before I could petition him for the job of official West Coast Bureau Chief, Blue Cheer ended, and the editor vanished into a cloud of smoke.
That night would probably need a few thousand words more to describe and as this is a blog and not a short story, I’ll spare the details. In brief, they involve Roky Erickson, Okkervil River, a french Parisian noise band called Cheveu, Wooden Shjips, a dozen Shiners, the rest of the Devin the Dude supply and enough fungus to top half of a small Domino’s pizza. It was the last night in Austin and everyone was out, tired but propped up on I’ll Sleep On the Plane-adrenaline, the music tourists mixing in with Austin frat kids and the weird flotsam and jetsam out on a Saturday.
The 2000s Are Almost Over, Right?
Somehow, I found myself completely wrecked but surprisingly coherent at 1:15 a.m. using my finest negotiation tactics to try to get into see White Denim, who judging from what I could hear, are a much better band than they are a textile. Repeatedly explaining to the bouncer who I was (Pacey’s youngest brother on Season 5 of Dawson’s Creek), she seemed unimpressed and I wound up in the worst situation possible: drunk with nowhere to go. Luckily, thanks to several text messages and my infinite network of spies, I discovered that there was a Perez Hilton after-party going down where N.E.R.D. was supposedly playing. Though still-recognizing the inherent evil of Perez Hilton, somehow the liquor swayed me to the theory that attractive girls would undoubtedly be at his party. After all, girls that read that shit, right? Wrong.
The place was 85 percent dudes and when N.E.R.D. and their phony rap-rock machismo came on-stage, the level of homo-eroticism spiked somewhere between the writing staff of Desperate Housewives and a Lil Wayne and Birdman Photo Shoot. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but I figured that it was my cue to step outside. Several drinks later, I discovered myself outside, delivering an extemporaneous tangent about the merits of Ghostbusters. Suddenly, the person I was talking to pointed.
“Look, there’s Perez Hilton.”
“You mean Zuul”
“No, Perez Hilton.”
“Same idea.”
“You know he just got a label deal,” the girl told me and smiled.
“I also hear he has celebrity juice not made from concentrate,” I dead-panned.
She bobbed her head. Suddenly, I felt very sober and realized where the hell I was and understood that it was time to go home.
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March 15th, 2008
A Pitchfork party without Sparks? That’s like Eliot Spitzer without whores: fatigued, thirsty and miserable. And rest assured, Sparks flowed like the River Ganges, even going as far to sponsor the bash, which wasn’t really as bad as it was boring. A bunch of people sitting in bleachers trying to look affected and disaffected all at the same time. Granted, I arrived late and didn’t stay long, but this had to do mainly with Yeasayer and my aversion towards their Spin Doctors brand of hippindie rock (caused by a collision of the hipster and hippie comets sometime around the year 2006). Inside, Times New Viking delivered a set of ear-drum fracturing noise, but as I’d seen the Matador-signed trio absolutely kill it the night before at the Siltbreeze show, I had no need to stay.
That’s the thing about festivals like this, you’ve got to approach them with the mentality of a baseball player, where hitting safely three out of ten times makes you a Hall of Famer. But there’s something about being surrounded by all this great music that leaves you impatient and fidgety. It’s the same iPod phenomenon of having thousands of songs at your disposal, none of which you want to listen to longer than 90 seconds. Accordingly, Day 4 was dominated by a supreme case of Musical ADD. Or I as saw it, I was taking the buffet approach, not a very difficult prism to assess things through, considering all my childhood Sundays spent at The Soup Plantation.
With no amount of Sparks capable of carrying me through the Yeasayer set, I bounced in favor of Oakland, Ca-based Anticon act, Why?, whose new album Alopecia, has pretty much not left my car stereo since I got it a few weeks ago. It’s a weird, often off-putting break-up record sung by a nasally Jewish guy named Yoni, so I can see how it might not be for everyone, but it’s probably my favorite record released this year. I’d seen the band at the Natural History Museum shortly before skipping town but this set was far better, with the acoustics perfect and the band’s folk-skewing indie hip-hop sounding much more brilliant than folk-skewing indie hip-hop should be capable of sounding.
The Soup Plantation: Useful For More Than Just Soup and Salad
At night, this dilettantish streak continued, with the ADD seemingly worse than before. Out of some weird sort of journalistic responsibility, I felt vaguely obligated to see Vampire Weekend’s headlining performance at Antone’s. Then I realized mid-way there that I’ve already written about Vampire Weekend twice now and the last thing the world needs is another absurd declaration of their genius nor another mean-spirited screed about them being rich kids that invoked the phrase “prep rock.” The end.
Moving on, I popped my head into a set from a lamely named group called The Parisians from you guessed it, Paris, France. If they had been from Paris, Texas, their nomenclature would’ve been outstanding, but the show was about as original as their name. They played some competent meat and potatoes guitar rock that was nice but no different than any one of the 24,321 bands playing here this weekend. After two songs and a cursory scan of the room for any sultry French women, I rambled on, ducking into a dingy but very cool bar, hoping to catch the end of Mika Miko.
Unfortunately, they were done and instead, I caught the first 15 minutes of San Francisco-psychedelic outfit, Clipd Beaks. Like many of the Smell bands they’re associated with, they seemed to operate under the principle that louder=better, a decent theory when conducted properly and despite their youth, the group seemed to understand what they were doing, even if they didn’t really understand what they were doing. Moving, I next stuck my head in at Eagle Seagull, a group from the music metropolis of Lincoln, Nebraska, who have recorded a few songs that I really like. Unfortunately, their lead singer sounds just like Win Butler and since I immediately wanted to put on a dark black suit and expatriate. As that didn’t seem like much fun, I decided to leave.
The Parisians Wondering How You Say Hipster In French
Booking it to the Sub Pop showcase, I caught 45 minutes of Pissed Jeans, a band who I will never be able to appreciate because of the fact that I strictly can’t be down with a group named Pissed Jeans. Sorry. However, the mushroom angus burger with cheddar cheese, tomatoes, lettuce and grilled onions that I devoured while they were playing was delicious. My compliments to the chef. Sub Pop: Putting Out Zach Braff approved indie As Well As Hamburgers Since 1986. By now, everything was starting to blur and I really wanted something off the beaten path. Off a tip from editor Randall Roberts, via Voice boss-man John Lomax, I stomped back down 6th towards The Elephant Bar, buried in a small cellar on Congress.
The reason for the jaunt and the night’s sole revelation was New Orleans brass band neo-revivalist, Glen David Andrews and the Lazy Six. I’m too short on time to really dig into the logistics (and hey, their full bio is right here), but essentially the band, featuring a bellowing Sousaphone player, faithfully channels Louis Armstrong, with a little bit of Cab Calloway scatting, and modern lyrics about needing Sony Playstation’s and Jack Daniels to survive. Glen David Andrews is a master showman, moving the seemingly staid crowd to its feet, heading down the aisles to serenade women, his voice at 27, a booming tuba blast, a rich foghorn wail t that sounds more than a little like the ghost of Louis Armstrong. If Amy Winehouse can win a Grammy dusting off the Girl Groups of the 60’s and mentioning Nas and weed-smoking in her lyrics, these guys deserve at the very least some notoriety. So check them out if they come through your city, you won’t be disappointed. In the meantime, I’ve got one more day of this madness. Tallyho.
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March 14th, 2008
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”-Hunter S. Thompson
“What you gonna do when the people go home/ and you wanna smoke weed but the reefer’s all gone/ And somebody had the nerve to take the herb up out the doobie ashtray/Why they do me that way?”-Devin the Dude
If the going hasn’t gotten weird by the third day of SXSW, you clearly haven’t been trying hard enough. By now, it’s make or break time, you’ve finally surveyed the lay of the land and begun to accept certain inalterable realities: the crooked spine that feels like it needs to be re-aligned vertebrae by vertebrae, calves that feel like someone has slit cement in the back of, and not nearly enough time to properly convey the bizarre phenomena of this admittedly wonderful excuse to do for nothing but go to shows, drink, and eat burritos (often all three at the same time). You’ll have to forgive me–if these posts feel rushed and ill-thought out it’s because they are.
There’s a thin line that separates artists, the media, and the fans here. After a few days, it’s little surprise to see Jim James walking down 6th in a purple suit on his way to presumably blow the minds of people at the Austin Music Hall. Or watching El-P successfully run game on a very attractive female inside of a make-shift roped-off, VIP section at the Def Jux party, surrounded by Del tha Funkeehomosapien and half of Hiero, smoking beadies. Which was where I ended up last night, after watching Islands open up the Anti Party with an absolutely mind-blowing set that I can’t even begin to talk about, lest I go off on another 1,000 word ramble.
Leaving, I took a long slow stroll down 4th. It was one of those perfect Austin nights, 80 degrees, clean air, and everyone darting in each direction as the far as the eye could see. Thousands of people staggering down the streets, one drunken flood of humanity, sprawling from show to show past me as I walked alone in the opposite direction, sipping an Iced Coffee and inhaling all this frazzled energy. Suddenly, a slightly loony but wildly likeable homeless dude sidled up to me and apropos to nothing started telling me joke after joke. I assumed he was just trying to hit me up for money, which was fine by me, considering I’m an easy mark for homeless people. Give me one sorrowful stare and I’m half-ready to dump the contents of my wallet into their cup. Plus, he was good company, so the two of us kept walking down 4th, one crazy person to another, trading life stories, he waxing slurred philosophy on the beauty of Austin. Me agreeing, nodding, laughing, slowly making our across the other side of I-35, a place that I had already been warned not to cross by friends who obviously knew better than I. But to quote a little movie I like to call, Risky Business, sometimes in life, you’ve just gotta’ say what the fuck.
DeMornay Be Thy Name
Suddenly, my new friend stops in his tracks, whips a joint out of his pocket and gives me a nod. I pull a lighter out and right in this weird window, on a still fairly crowded block, he proceeds to light up.
“Are you sure, this is a good idea, what about the cops?” I say, with visions in my head of headlines of “Local Alternative Weekly Writer Arrested for Consumption of Drugs with Vagrants.”
“Relax, ain’t no cops around.”
So we smoke. After all, I’m going to see Devin the Dude show and if you show up sober to a Devin show clearly you haven’t been paying enough attention. When I mention this fact to him, he puts out the J and hands it to me, with the sacred weed-smoker bond and tells me to keep it. I hand him $5, thank him profusely and then inquire if he knows where and how I can get more. After all, there are two days more of this thing and unlike the rest of the functioning universe, SXSW operates in a sort of arrested development, where there appears to be no consequences for anybody’s actions. Sort of like college, or the Bush Administration.
Christmas At at the Copeland House.
My new friend, Robert, snaps his figures twice. Immediately, a menacing-looking guy on a bike pops out of the shadows and darts over to us.
“How much you need.”
“All I have is 10.”
I’ll be back. He zooms off into the night, leaving me and Robert there, on the corner, looking like the two sketchiest dudes in the universe, me, long-haired and wild-eyed, he somewhat reminding me of Richard Pryor in Brewster’s Millions. I meet Robert’s girl, who waits behind him. While we wait, he starts telling me their life story, how they’ve known each other since high school, the ever-increasing high cost of living in Austin and how in spite of it all, he still thinks this is paradise. And I have a hard time arguing with that. It really is one of the greatest cities I’ve ever seen.
Finally, our man shows up and tells me his woman has sold his last two bags. He tells me to meet him back here in an hour.
“I can’t. I’ve got a show to go to?”
“Which one?”
“Devin the Dude.”
“Devin the Dude. That’s my n—a.”
“You wanna’ come?”
“No doubt. I’ll meet you there in an hour.”
Everyone says their goodbyes and I continue walking literally down the other side of the tracks, fully expecting to never see those guys again, but at the very least enthused about the gift that inevitably will only help aid in my understanding and appreciation of the music of Devin the Dude.
Devin the Dude: Proof the War on Drugs Should Never Be Allowed to Be Won
But lo and behold, about an hour and a half later, with Devin and the Coughee Brothaz mid-way through an incredible set, which followed a similarly great Del performance, I turned around to see the go the dude on the bike waving his arms right out in front of the entrance. I followed him up out of the party on a hill overlooking everything and performed the transaction, both watching the show from afar.
He lit up another J right at the moment as Devin screamed to the crowd, “how many of y’all smoke weed, if y’all like smoking weed, throw your blunts in the air.” And I have few rules in life, but one of them is never argue with a man who goes by the nickname, “The Dude.” We nodded our heads at each other in solidarity and the guy just looked at me blankly and said “that man is the truth.” And I had little to add to to that, so we kept on watching and smoking until finally, “Doobie Ashtray,” ended the set and there was nothing to do but bob our head to the beat and consider what a strange and wonderful place this all is. Finally, after saying our goodbyes and he biked back up out into the dark night, I walked back into the party to watch El-P absolutely kill it, with herb once again in my doobie ashtray.
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March 13th, 2008
Hey, Aren’t You Juliette Lewis?
Walking down 6th street yesterday, you had to wonder if everyone in the world somehow heard that Art Brut song, “Formed a Band” and decided that if Eddie Argos could do it, how hard could it really be? I’ve seen telephone directories thinner than the official SXSW guide they give you to registration, with about 54,322 bands scattered out in tiny print over four days, with each one playing an average of 3.2 shows. Even at the Red Roof Inn right now 15 miles out of Austin, I’m watching two dudes with long scruffy hair, goatees, porkpie hats, and skinny jeans bemoaning how their van broke down on the way here and how their keyboardist got denied entrance. As far as I can tell, they weren’t demanding a Myspace Music page to enter the city limits of Austin this week, so the band must be Canadian. Or else very very stupid.
If you aren’t in bands, you work for a newspaper, or you write a blog, or work for a music-related tech company, or in promotions or for an agency–something. Which goes back to my trade show theory. To paraphrase Back to the Future: it’s like an alternate Austin 1998 Corvette Day. But things here actually look a little more ‘88. There are a lot of mustaches running wild, beards, blazers, lame head bands, ironic MTV sunglasses, the accursed neon (confession: I own one neon jacket that I purchased in the fabled year of our lord, 1998.). Even the Ice Cream Man showed up and gave me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ice cream bar, something I probably haven’t done since l learned to tie my shoes (translation: roughly four weeks ago).
This is why when the Cool Kids starting rapping “88,” yesterday at the set at the Gorilla Vs. Booze day party, things started to make more sense. This was the party hosted by infamous Dallas raconteur/blogger extraordinaire, Chris Cantalini, who I can safely report looks neither like a Gorilla nor a Bear, proving that unlike the Shitty Beatles, it’s just a clever name. As for the show itself, it kind of felt like I was watching House Party, the place was packed, the roof was low, everyone was going nuts. Unfortunately, Martin Lawrence wasn’t DJ’ing and less high-top fades. The Cool Kids have that golden age-era down pat, swapping vocals every two bars, gurgling analog beats and the look is perfect vintage. Mikey Rox was wearing a pair of classic Jordans that I haven’t seen since the 3rd Grade and needless to say I don’t compliment men on their shoes very often, but sometimes you just have to say, well played. The set was impressive, these guys have improved a lot since I saw them just a few months ago, honed during their first-ever trip to Europe and Asia. On-stage, they have a whole lot of charisma and most importantly, understand how to put on a fun live show, something 95 percent of rappers never figure out.
The Cool Kids: The 1988 Los Angeles Gangbanger Look Is In This Spring
When the party ended, I headed back to the 6th St. cluster fuck, where a creeping layer of darkness was settling all across the mustaches of the upper lip of every band in Austin (aren’t you people aware that sporting a mustache makes you 42 percent more evil?) and decided to make a beeline for the Domino showcase at Antone’s to try not to get stuck in one of those endless lines that seem to snake around every corner in town. If you want to get into a cool party, you have to wait and maybe not get in at all if the place fills up too rapidly. As lines are one of the things I hate most in this world (along with opossums, Dick Cheney and Albanians), I decided the best thing to do was get there early and not take any chance on missing The Kills.
Unfortunately, that meant having to sit through the lackluster first three acts. Simian Mobile Disco, came first and for a Mobile Disco, I have to say that they were surprisingly stationary. In fact, I didn’t even know S.M.D. was playing until halfway through their set, because it was just two DJ’s playing crappy Euro-Dance and barely moving. Albeit, I probably was in a terrible position to judge their effectiveness as I am neither 19 years old, British, or a habitual user of ecstasy. The next great hope was These New Puritans, who instead of dressing like Puritans (Cotton Mather, holla!), tried to doo a genre fusion of late-to-the-game dance punk/ beat hip-hop, with a British front man wearing a suit of Roman Armor and a salad bowl hair cut. Clearly, I had no hope of taking them seriously, as all I could do was think about making jokes about Julius Caesar and wondering their thoughts on “the Gauls.”
Third up came Lightspeed Champion, the new sensitive Saddle Creek act from the guy that looks like Kele from Bloc Party that used to be the lead singer of Test Icicles. Wearing a fur hat that looked more Siberia in Winter than Austin in the spring, Ex-Icicles sang a bunch of acoustic ballads, augmented them with some sappy melodramatic strings and really only was worth talking about because he had a female drummer wearing a Wolverine mask which somehow manages to be both the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen and pretty fucking awesome. The last leading up to the Kills was Glasgow act, Sons and Daughters who delivered an absolutely blistering set of dancey guitar rock that suggested Franz Ferdinand with less histrionics and overt pop nods. I’d only vaguely heard of them before tonight, but will certainly pay more attention from now on. Their lead guitarist is flat-out great, their drummer is incredible, an Octopus like whirl of arms. And now I’m being apparently told that if I don’t take this next cab, there won’t another one for nearly two hours so this post will have to be continued later.
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March 12th, 2008
If you do a Google Image search for “Austin” this is one of the first things that pops up. Two girls at the 1998 Austin Corvette Day. Granted, this probably has nothing at all to do with SXSW–yet judging by my first impressions of this place, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if by the end of the week, I end up seeing two highly siliconed and bleached women purring atop a sleek sports car. It’s shaping up to be that kind of trip.
SXSW is essentially a trade show. Except instead of blonde spokesmodels insinuating that they will be yours provided you spend $60,000 for a car that will make you look douchier than Steve Sanders, SXSW (and the major corporate behemoths paying for it), attempt to ply you with nothing but free booze, free food and free music. As Dilated Peoples once aptly put it, “You Got to Work the Angles.”
Last night, Austin seemed swept up by a sort of wiry, nervous energy as though the place was about to burst. I half-expected someone to stop me on the street, hand me a Shiner and offer a toast with their best Jeff Spiccoli refrain of, “Hey bud, let’s party.”
That didn’t happen. Sadly. Instead, thanks to the machinations of LA Weekly editor Randall Roberts, I found myself surrounded by a gaggle of film geeks, standing at the head of a lengthy line to get into the Independent Film Channel’s “Crossroads Party.” Though I like the independent movies as much as the next man (oh, how that Juno has spunk) , hob-nobbing with the “indie cinema” crowd wasn’t why I was at the Parish bar. No, I was there for the party’s entertainment: Yo La Tengo and the best band in the world right now, My Morning Jacket.
Austin: Where the Beer Flows Like Wine
Inside, the place was a zoo, a hot, humid pit of people decked out in most cool/un-cool black glasses and their most lustrous beards. Since I have neither of those things, I felt a little out of place. Luckily, there was an open Absolut-sponsored bar, which naturally helped to ease me into my surroundings. Waiting in line for a drink, I happened to make conversation with a spectacles-sporting girl. Somehow, the band Ghostland Observatory came up and she starting telling me how the entire city of Austin is none-too-happy with Pitchfork’s lacerating review last week where they labeled them as “Daft Punk for Frat Boys.” Sarcastically, I asked, “so what you’re trying to tell me is that I shouldn’t yell out ‘Spoon sucks’ just to piss off the people here.” She gave me a semi-smile and replied, “that might not be the best idea considering Britt’s right over there.”
Sure enough, I turned around and to the right of the stage, where watching Yo La Tengo erupt into a feedback-drenched white squall of noise, was Spoon’s front-man rocking out. It was weird. As for Ya La Tengo, the set started slow but picked up intensity rapidly. They don’t have much charisma on-stage, which makes sense considering they used to be music critics, and like most music critics they have a salient awkwardness to them, moving in stiff disjointed rhythms, more cerebral than visceral. I mean really, there’s only so wild you can get when your first name is Ira. Still, the band put on a good show. Score 1 for music critics.
But enough about that. There’s only so much time I have right now (I really should be at the Gorilla Vs. Booze party right now, rather than at the Red Roof Inn typing up this report. And yes, in case you were wondering, The Red Roof Inn is even classier than it sounds.) So let’s talk My Morning Jacket and how once again they completely re-wrote my previous definition of what great live music sounds like. With Jim James still rocking the Grizzly Adams beard, but looking noticeably thinner (Atkins diet?), the Louisville five-piece kicked off their marathon 2-hour set with “Evil Urges,” the title track from their much-awaited new record. The song itself is a weird and warped psychedelic jam, with some outer-space keyboards floating into tight guitar pyrotechnics and Jim James’ ethereal voice threatening to the blow the roof off the stage. Within seconds, the band had the crowd locked in.
Gideon: Not Actually About the Gideon Bible
But it’s not until the set’s fourth song, “Gideon” when the set really takes off, with MMJ launching into a devastating, crashing rain of flying V guitars, James’ seraphic voice floating high above the fray and everyone turning to each other and wondering if this is actually happening. The next cut, a new track called “Highly Suspicious” channels Prince crossed with Neil Young and somehow James pulls it off. By now, Britt Daniel is long gone, which is too bad because I would’ve been curious to have asked him who he thinks does better purple one impression, him or JJ?
“What a Wonderful Man” boomed through the tiny club like pure lightning and thunder type wrath, all yellow energy and blue air and sound and fury that leaves you struck with the thought that watching this band is the closest thing we have right now to understand what it must’ve been like to have seen a Zeppelin, A Dead, A Pink Floyd in their prime. Whatever rock critic foolishly claimed that there are no rock stars in the 21st Century has obviously never seen My Morning Jacket in concert. Jim James is a whirling dervish, jumping on top of the speakers, flailing with his flying V, even playing some weird electronic device that looked like the Power Glove on “Touch Me Part 2″ (which appeared to be the highlight of the new album.)
Watching these guys, a palpable joy slaps you across the face and all you can do is stare in awe with a big dumb grin. As for the new material, it sounded great, a bridge between the rural hay-seed vibe of the At Dawn era and the crunchy psych of Z. And by the end of the set, you can’t but have all those pretentious, ridiculous notions of the idea of music as something bigger, as something atavistic and primal that hits you at a gut level. Few bands bands making music right now can inspire such a feeling, the transcendent notion that whenever you’re at a My Morning Jacket show, everything else seems strangely meaningless, that in all the world at that second, there is no better place to be. Well, other than maybe the 1998 Austin Corvette Day.
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