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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
New SXSW day parties and side events
Our SXSW day party and side party list grows ever longer. Notable events include Urban Outfitters Backlot day parties, Creme de la Creme’s Friday night SXSW bash with Raekwon and the inaugural East Meets Fest event at Uchi. There’s also the annual S X San Jose event and Bird’s Barbershop’s Eastside Space Camp, showcases from Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork and many more.
Other new listings include:
Save Austin Music parties
Blue Velvet day party
Nail Distribution (official) day party
Bemba Entertainment
Press Here garden party at the French Legation
Pitchfork/Windish day party
Stimulus Package
True North Records unofficial showcase
Captiva Media Group unofficial showcase
Baby Acapulco and Planeta en Ritmo Present The TXMX Recession Relief Music Showcase
Fat Possum
Brooklyn Vegan
Ioda
Pop Culture Press
Big Texas Jump Start
Cannibal Cheerleader
Pigeon Publicity
Giant Steps
Lucy the Poodle
Wide Eyed Booking
Bird’s Barbershop Space Camp
SX San Jose
Rhapsody Rocks
Side One Track One and La Snacks
Represent Austin
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SXSW: Hilton, Playboy parties to rock old Safeway
Two of the hottest afterhours parties during SXSW will take place at the former Safeway location next to CVS on the I-35 frontage road and East 12th Street. The Thursday night bash will be hosted by Playboy magazine and C3 Presents. Then, on Saturday at around midnight, gossip-monger Perez Hilton takes over. Lady Sovereign is the only confirmed act we could find for that one.
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DJ Bobby Bones’ home burglarized
The home of 96.7 KISS FM morning host Bobby Bones was burglarized earlier today, according to posts made on his Twitter account.
Bones’s first Tweet:
was robbed. or burglarized. whatever the correct wording is. stole a bunch of crap. busted a bunch of crap. its like CSI at my house!
Followed by:
the dog is fine. luckily. thanks for asking. stole a bunch of electronic stuff. busted some stuff. cleaning now. it def wasn’t random.
In a video posted on YouTube, the DJ ticks off a list of stolen items, including a digital camera, iPods and video games, and shows the broken window apparently used to gain entry to his home.
Click here for the latest Twitter updates from Bones (and his dog).
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Janelle Monáe
With her New Wave hair, black and white dinner jacket and Mary Janes, Janelle Monáe looks like an extra from the 1982 science-fiction cult classic “Liquid Sky,” an escapee from one of Prince’s fever dreams or from a planet about 10 light years from here. It’s also made her one of the buzziest acts playing SXSW this year. “Many Moons,” a song from her 2007 debut EP “Metropolis Suite I of IV: The Chase,” was nominated for a Grammy for best urban performance. Her amazing look has generated fashion spreads.
Born in Kansas City and based out of Atlanta, the 24-year-old Monáe’s voice is a complete deadpan when she replies “Wonderland” after being asked where she is calling from.
In fairness, her vanity label/collective/arts movement is called Wondaland Arts Society. Here are a few notes from the Society’s Web site: “We have created our own state, our own republic. There is grass here. Grass sprouts from toilet seats, bookshelves, ceilings and floors. Grass makes us feel good. In this state, there are no laws, there is only music. Funk rules the spirit. And punk rules the courtrooms and marketplace. Period.” Sounds pretty good to me.
Actually, it’s not where she’s from, it’s when. Monáe’s “Metropolis Suite I of IV: The Chase,” (reissued by Bad Boy last year) is the first volley in a proposed string of releases chronicling the inner life of an android who falls in love with a human. Mixing the Afro-futurist vibes of writers Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany or sound artist DJ Spooky and clear references to Fritz Lang’s game-changing 1927 science fiction film “Metropolis” bubbles with spry funk, hip-hop and glammy rock.
There isn’t much music she doesn’t seem interested in or that her voice is able to handle.
“I don’t think I have any boundaries,” she says, “I like throwing all my paint on the canvas.”
Or the planks of a stage. In fact, there’s a theatrical vibe to Monáe’s music that’s hard to ignore.
“I didn’t really listen to a lot of music other than musical theater when I was a kid,” Monáe said. “I lived my life as though it was a musical, did a lot of literally bursting out into songs that I made up. I was raised with wolves, youngest of the cubs and that makes you very fearless.” (Note: wolf-child origin story unverified at press time, but “March of the Wolfmasters” is a song on “Metropolis.”)
After attending the American Musical Academy in New York City, Monáe switched gears from Broadway to rock, split for Atlanta, and hooked up with her musical collaborators Nate “Rocket” Wonder and Chuck Lightning. The three came up with both the “Metropolis” concept and the Wondaland art-movement umbrella.
“Even growing up I would occasionally dream images of a grayish city, all this smog and people that looked like humans with electricity coming out of their eyes but with robotic characteristics,” she said. A steady diet of Hitchcock, “Blade Runner” and the aforementioned Butler and Lang didn’t hurt.
The forthcoming “Metropolis” album on BadBoy/ Atlantic will combine the suites II and III, to be followed by a prequel, “Suite Zero.” “I’m very picky about about the time that things are released,” Monáe says. “I want to keep it until I get word from my maker which I’m sure will be very soon.”
This will be Monáe’s first time at South By Southwest and she doesn’t sound quite sure what to expect. But she certainly sounds sure of her live show, which has gained a reputation for its energy and vigor.
“I could spit fire on stage,” she says, “I could actually come out and fly across the stage and into the audience, I never really know.”
Note to Monáe: You are now on the hook for the fire and flying. Prepare your robotic form accordingly.
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Behind the SXSW Buzz: Jeffrey Steele
Steele, 47, is a Nashville songwriting phenom who has written nine #1 country singles and eight #2s in the past eight years. His hits include several for Rascal Flatts, including “What Hurts the Most,” plus “The Cowboy In Me” for Tim McGraw, “Big Deal” for LeAnn Rimes and “Brand New Girlfriend” by Steve Holy. Steele was named the BMI Songwriter of the Year in 2003 and 2007.
But that Jeffrey Steele won’t be taking the stage at the Ranch (708 W. Sixth St.) at 9 p.m. Saturday March 21. In concert, Steele is a soulful hard rocker, coming off more like Hank Williams Jr. than Sr. When he stomps out a number like “Swamp Thang,” with its Zeppelinesque riffage, it’s hard to believe that this guy has even heard of Rascal Flatts. As he showed at the ACL Fest a couple years ago, Steele is a southern version of vintage Bob Seger.
“Nothing pumps me up like playing live,” he says by phone from Nashville, where he’s currently producing the new band LoCash Cowboys. “It’s total joy.” Although a recent exclusive distribution deal with Best Buy gets Steele’s albums in those stores nationwide, and he’s built up a loyal following after his stint as a judge on “Nashville Star,” Steele doesn’t sell under his own name as well as the folks who record his songs. Still, he’s determined to make his mark as a performer and recording artist.
Songwriting success hasn’t changed the So Cal native, who started off in hard rock bands, fell in with the Lucinda Williams/ Jim Lauderdale crowd at the Palomino Club, then merged metal and country with his own songs. “I still have the curse of the working musician,” he says. “What songwriting does is afford me the luxury to go out on the road and play for people.”
His career is a bit like Willie Nelson’s in the ‘60s, writing hits for others, yet burning to make his own mark.
His pursuits have not been free of tragedy, as Steele lost his 13-year-old son Alex two years ago in an all terrain vehicle accident. Steele started a foundation under his son’s name, which pays for promising skateboarders, as Alex was, to receive more training and opportunities.
Steele came to Nashville in the early ‘80s as the singer and chief songwriter of Boy Howdy, which had a couple of hits during the Garth boom and then disbanded. “We did the same 10 songs every night, in the same order” he says. “I hated it.” Steele had issues with his voice and had to retrain it to sing again. In the meantime, he wrote songs and found a champion in producer Dann Huff (Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Faith Hill). Once the hits started coming, Steele didn’t have to pitch his songs, producers and artists came to him.
His biggest hit is probably “What Hurts the Most,” which was originally going to be cut by Aerosmith, then Faith Hill had it on hold for awhile.
“That song was on hold for eight years, then Rascal Flatts didn’t want to do it because they thought it was too depressing,” Steele says. “The producer had to talk them into it. If I had to sit around and think about stuff like that, or trying to write songs for certain people, I’d drive myself crazy. That’s why I write every song for myself first.”
And he’ll work in compositional mailbox money like “The Cowboy In Me” or “Hell, Yeah” (a hit for Montgomery Gentry) during his live set, but it doesn’t always go over so well.
“We just played in Chicago and someone came up after the set and said they liked all the rockin’ stuff,” Steele says. “And then they said, ‘but why did you play all those country covers.’”
(Photo of Jeffrey Steele from D. Baron Media)
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Review: Richard Thompson at Cactus Cafe
Rolling Stone ranked Richard Thompson No. 19 on its 2003 list of “The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time” — which is selling him seriously short, as anyone who managed to squeeze into the Cactus Cafe Sunday night would probably tell you.
Sunday’s two and a half hour set was the first of two sold-out solo acoustic shows at the Cactus, and while Thompson unleashed fewer mind-warpingly pyrotechnical solos than on electric guitar with his band at the Texas Union Ballroom last year, his playing was no less thrilling.
Thompson’s dazzling technique is really secondary to his instinct for color and narration. The crowd burst into applause at the ethereal opening arpeggios of “1952 Vincent Black Lightning,” as carefree and seductive as the flame-haired heroine of the tale, while the throbbing bassline rushed inexorably forward, like the doom awaiting the song’s swaggering protagonist.
On the rockabilly-fired “Valerie,” Thompson threw off a flurry of bent notes that underscored the narrator’s comical exasperation. “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me,” from Thompson’s last studio album, 2007’s “Sweet Warrior,” is about a confused young soldier in Iraq, and the guitar effortlessly combined the fluid and the percussive as keening, Middle Eastern-tinged lines soared with nervous, rock ‘n’ roll energy.
Thompson’s songs tend toward the dark. He opened with the cold menace of “I Feel So Good” and did not neglect the harrowing “Shoot Out the Lights,” defiant “Wall of Death,” embittered “God Loves a Drunk” or forlorn “Walking on a Wire.” His voice has a reassuring warmth, however, and there were humorous tunes, such as “Hots for the Smarts,” his music-hall ode to brainy women, and “Smiffy’s Glass Eye,” at the request of an audience member.
Thompson’s wry wit lightened the mood between songs. He introduced the hard-hitting unreleased tune “Time’s Gonna Break You” with a soliloquy about Lehman Brothers, Bernie Madoff and certain politicians and entertainment business figures, lamenting the tardiness of karma with the proclamation “They’re going to fry in hell” and the lamentation ” … but we won’t get to watch!”
Reaching all the way back to his days in pioneering folk-rock group Fairport Convention, Thompson covered Sandy Denny’s haunting “Who Knows Where the Time Goes,” and his second encore featured his take on the Who’s “Substitute” that brought out the creepiness and venom of the lyrics. Even when he’s performing someone else’s song, Thompson is a pure storyteller.
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