Austin360 blogs > Michael Corcoran's SXSW Journal > Archives > 2008 > March > 12
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
When bad names happen to good acts
Restaurant is perhaps the worst band moniker since Goo Goo Dolls, but my how the duo of Troy Murrah on guitar and Jonathan Case on percussion (and Korg) can stomp out the blues. If you saw Murrah offstage you’d think he was in a hardcore band, but at Wednesday’s Little Radio party at Red Eyed Fly he whipped out some atomic bottleneck playing they must’ve heard way back in the Delta. Unfortunately, the guys from Victoria, Tex. followed their most blazing number with something that sounded like “Louie Louie” and momentum was lost. But for about 10 minutes there, Restaurant served up steaming bowls of… I’m sorry, but Restaurant is such a lousy name. Were Deli and Diner already taken?
(Restaurant at the Red Eyed Fly. Photo by Michael Corcoran)
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Dead Confederate good as advertised
The “Athens In Austin” party at Bourbon Rocks Wednesday afternoon was a laid back affair featuring Georgia bands that were anything but laid back. It was cool to see the bands on the bill in the audience for each other’s set. And I actually overheard something that made me laugh, a Southby first. You know those people who go around reading badge names before they look at the face. After one guy did it, the badgewearer said, with a feminine voice and a motion to the face: “I’m up here.”
The most buzzed-about band on the bill, Dead Confederate, was both haunting and frantic, with eerie keyboards keeping the savage guitars at bay. They played only four songs, but in that short time rolled out different styles and textures, sounding at one point like a Mersey Beat band’s hard rock side project.
They’re playing before R.E.M. at Stubb’s tonight, where they’re playing for a full house, albeit one that came to see someone else.
(Photo of Dead Confederate by Michael Corcoran)
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SXSW highlight: Can’t beat Paul Collins
My SXSW peaked a tad early when I happened upon an act that I didn’t know was playing; in fact I didn’t even know the front man was alive. When I saw the name “Paul Collins and the Beat” in marker outside Beerland, which is not an official venue for the first time, I gasped audibly. You see, about 30 years ago I was mainly into two things musically: Bruce Springsteen and power pop, and Collins was the most Springsteenian of the skinny tie gang. His show at the Hullabaloo in Rensselaer, N.Y., in 1980 was as tight, powerful and melodic as any club show I’d seen.
Well, 28 years later and Collins hasn’t lost a thing, besides his hair. Currently living in Madrid, his backing Beat are a trio of Spanish kids that can really play with feeling. And Collins’ vocals were strong as ever. I couldn’t believe my luck as the band churned out some of my old faves like “Work-a-Day World,” “Take Me Back” and “Don’t Wait Up For Me.”
When they ended with “Rock N’ Roll Girl,” a song I’d play 10 times a day in 1980, and “Hangin’ On the Telephone,” from his pre-Beat band the Nerves, I was in heaven. I’m pretty certain I will not have a better SXSW moment this year and it was not even five o’clock on Wednesday.
If the line to get in to see White Denim at Red Eyed Fly wasn’t so long, I might’ve not stopped in at Beerland, which has got a cool scene going during SXSW. It’s free during the day and $5 at night for most shows.
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Perezite party update #2
Cewebrity gossip Perez Hilton has been boasting that the lineup for his party Saturday at the Palm Door is the hottest at SXSW. He must be withholding some big names. His latest confirmed acts are Canadians Kate Perry and Dragonette.
Previously announced were N.E.R.D., Robyn, Eric Hutchinson and Riskay. The Levi’s/ Fader Fort has stronger lineups every day of the week. And no one can touch the talent at the Spin party. But Hilton has five more acts to announce. Step it up, big boy.
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SXSW: It happened last night
SXSW used to officially start on Thursday, then Wednesday. In recent years, however, it kicks off, in earnest, on Tuesday. It’s a lot less crazy, but with lines around the block for the IFC party at the Parish featuring My Morning Jacket and Yo La Tengo, and packed houses at Beauty Bar, Emo’s and Stubb’s, it sure felt like SXSW.
I have to tell you what South By Southwest does to me. It makes me stressed out, turning all the knobs as far up as they can go. It makes me miserable and euphoric. I’ve done some of my best writing during SXSW and certainly some of my worst. I love Wednesday, hate Thursday, love Friday and then I don’t like Saturday much, but then at midnight it hits me: this is it. SXSW is almost over and I want it to go on another day. It all came back to me on Tuesday night. It’s on!
That was especially true of the lobby of the Four Seasons, where Billy Gibbons got up and played a solo on “Come Together” with the house duo, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. huddled with Kurt Cobain biographer Michael Azerrad and the super-amiable Billy Bob Thornton stopped by a few tables to say “hi” and posed for photos. It being Tuesday, you could actually hear the person sitting next to you. Try that the next four nights.
I thank the insight of my ol’ Southby running buddy Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer, who plucked me out of that horrid film fest closing party at Stubb’s and suggested a hang at the 4S. Moby was deejaying at Stubb’s and the bass was so loud Pimp C called from H-town heaven and asked them to turn it down, yo. Stubb’s was about as musical as Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.
Earlier, I had better luck at the Beauty Bar, where the mustached men of Austin’s Black & White Years, soon to step into the studio with Jery Harrison of the Talking Heads played their hummable rockage with the energy of ska. The Hands, from Seattle, were the next band that made me happy SX has arrived, playing a mash-up of “Wade In the Water” and “Dazed and Confused” to the tune of “Hotel California” at Emo’s. Although not booked to a sanctioned showcase, the Hands are playing the Mount Fuji showcase at the Longbranch on Thursday.
“This is the last night to have fun before the heavy petting zoo that is South By Southwest,” the guitarist of Detroit trio Hard Lessons said Tuesday night at Emo’s. The first “bleedat” of SX.
(The Black and White Years rocked the Beauty Bar on Tuesday night, the unofficial start of SXSW. Photo by Michael Corcoran.)
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