Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2009 > April > 22
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Live chat with Mike Martinez today at 4 p.m.
Are you confused about the sound ordinance? Are there any other music-related issues you’d like a city leader to address? Get the straight skinny right from 2nd Street, as City Council member Mike Martinez cuts through all the misinformation swirling around. Martinez has blocked out an hour for this chat at www.austin360.com/musicsource.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment
Pachanga line-up released
The Pachanga Latino Music Festival, Austin’s Latin-themed music, cultural arts and food festival, announced today the lineup, location and dates for the second annual event. The one-day festival, which will be held this year at Fiesta Gardens on May 30, will once again close out Austin’s Latino Music Month.
Michael Salgado (San Antonio, TX)
Plastilina Mosh (Monterrey, MX)
Mexican Institute of Sound (Mexico City, MX)
Brownout
Ocote Soul Sounds
Pachanga All-Stars (featuring Alex, AJ, Omar Vallejo with Willie Alvarado, Hayden Vitera, Andres Delgado)
Mariachi Las Alteñas (San Antonio, TX)
Cordero (New York, NY)
Gaby Moreno (Los Angeles, CA)
AJ Castillo
David Garza
Charanga Cakewalk
Maneja Beto
Los Bad Apples
El Tule
Dignan (McAllen, TX)
Escondido Project
Kalua
Tickets go on sale Friday at all Front Gate Tickets and frontgatetickets.com. The first 500 tickets sold online will also receive a copy of “Soy Sauce” by Mexican Institute of Sound. Tickets are $20 in advance, and children under 12 are free when accompanied by a ticketed adult.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment Categories: Pachanga Fest
Wallace Hammond 1947- 2009
Sad to hear that trombone player Wilfred Wallace Hammond, who played for Tribal Nation and, before that, Killer Bees, passed away last week. He was 62. The cause of death was not mentioned in the family’s announcement.
Hammond, who also owned a construction company, is survived by wife Beth, six children and two grandchildren.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Post your comment
New concert series kicks off with Ely, Robison
The Solar Powered Concerts series takes over Republic Park (at 4th and Guadalupe Streets) April 29 with a maiden concert featuring Joe Ely and Charlie Robison. Cover is $7; show starts at 6:30 p.m.
Other shows Marsha Milam and Greg Henry have booked for Republic Park are Los Lonely Boys acoustic May 6 and Ozomatli June 3.
The music amplification will be powered by the Sustainable Waves solar power company.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment
ACL confirms Thievery Corporation
The latest cartoon clue:
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: ACL Festival 2009
Blues on the Green moves to Waterloo Park
Apparently, KGSR didn’t want to change the name of its popular free live music series to Blues on the Brown, so they’ve moved it, just for this year, to Waterloo Park as the work leveling and resodding Zilker Park continues.
The 19th year kicks off with Ruthie Foster on June 3. Cyril Neville plays songs from his new blues album June 17, followed by Jimmie Vaughan July 1, Marcia Ball July 15 and Carolyn Wonderland July 29.
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment
Live review: Spoon at the Scoot Inn
Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN
- Photos: Spoon at the Scoot Inn
Although Tuesday night’s Spoon show at the Scoot Inn was one of the toughest tickets (all 650 were sold out in 15 minutes) in town, the 90-minute show had a somewhat relaxed feel, with the band woodshedding new numbers like show-opening “Writing To You In Reverse,” then bringing it home with such old faves as “Everything Hits At Once,” “Small Stakes” and a horn-free “The Underdog.”
Britt Daniel’s array of guitars (which all sounded exactly the same) kept falling out of tune and during the start of “My Mathematical Mind” he turned the tuning pegs while singing the intro.
In part because of the minimalist p.a., it felt like seeing Austin’s third greatest band of all time (behind Willie Nelson and Family and the 13th Floor Elevators) at a backyard barbecue, although the bulging veins in Daniel’s neck when he sang “They Never Got You” and “Don’t Make Me a Target” showed the band took this gig seriously. “I Summon You” was a highlight, with Daniel and his three co-horts adding smokiness to the sturdy strum of the recorded version.
“Can you hear us way in the back?” Daniel asked after humbly thanking the crowd for enduring so much new material. “Hell, no!” one fan shouted back. Up front at the open air venue in East Austin it was plenty loud, but with a sound system that resembled a pair of hanging suitcases, this warmup show for Spoon’s Jazzfest bow Friday had the neighbors in mind.
Thankfully, the show wasn’t as jampacked as feared, with promoters selling 200 tix fewer than capacity, knowing the guestlist for these hometown heroes would be several pages long. About 100 fans listened from outside the back fence.
This was a show with nothing to promote. Spoon is currently working on a new album, but there’s no deadline in place and the LP may not come out for another nine or ten months. One thing the new songs seemed to have in common is the way they ended, with jazzy guitar workouts that dissolved into silence.
We’ve watched Spoon evolve from lazy (though accurate) comparisons to the Pixies into an angular guitar band and then saw them ascend to the indie rock throne after they discovered electric piano, disco basslines and falsetto vocals. But they seem at a bit of a standstill right now. A couple of new songs were really good, but nothing stood out like the first time hearing “Sister Jack.”
Expect a long wait for the followup to “Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.”
Follow Austin Music Source on Facebook and Twitter.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment
Review: My Bloody Valentine at Austin Music Hall
Jay Janner AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Never have so many been so thrilled by four people standing so still playing so loudly.
The Irish band My Bloody Valentine (MBV) launched themselves into the realm of legend not just because they all-but-invented the massive, smeary rock known as “shoegazer.”
Not just because guitarist/leader/mad scientist Kevin Shields and his crew (singer/guitarist Bilinda Butcher, bassist Debbie Googe and drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig) seemed to reinvent guitar-based music on a handful of stellar EPs and two classic albums, “Isn’t Anything” (1988) and the canonized “Loveless” (1991), smearing the sounds into hypnotic shimmers of noise and feedback and sampled hooks and breakbeats and whammy-bar abuse and near-ambient vocals and a very hazy vibe.
Not just because the played live at ear-splitting, bowel-churning, vomit-inducing, filling-loosening volume, often peaking with the epic “You Made Me Realise,” which contained a passage known to fans as “the holocaust,” usually between 10 and 20 minutes of abstract sound-churn around the decibel range of your average 747.
Nope, they’re legends because they did all this, then pretty much vanished from 1992 on. Over the years, rumors swirled of dozens upon dozens of unfinished songs. The band had a profound impact on generations of rockers; their legend expanded exponentially.
Then, last year, they began playing shows again. Tuesday night at Austin Music Hall was one of five U.S. dates this year. And yes, earplugs were handed out at the door.
Josh Pearson opened the show with a bassist and drummer; this was nearly as surprising as the MBV gig itself. In 2001, Pearson’s old Denton band, Lift to Experience, released one of the all-time great post-MVB albums, “The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads,” a double CD blend of hard-shell Christian images and guitar noise, then pulled a similar disappearing act.
It had been years since Pearson, now looking somewhat Christ-like, had played in Austin with an electric trio. Here, he dreged up loud, clamoring guitar ghosts with newer material, brash songs with titles such as “Angels vs, Devils” and “the Clash.” A new studio album would be wonderful.
Poor Kurt Heasley was up next. His act, the Lilys, was one of the most flagrantly MBVish of the late 80/early 90s American indie pop explosion. Here, he was solo, playing 1960ish pop on a 12-string guitar and was largely drowned out by excited crowd chatter.
My Bloody Valentine looked weirdly perfect. Their music always removed a certian amount of masculine energy from rock forms and, save for Belinda Butcher, her hair bun and earrings, the band looked appropriately androgynous - ambigious haircuts, shapless jeans and t-shirts and plenty of fog. Barely a word spoken on stage, only the scream of a crwod who had waited half their lives to see this show.
And off they were, strobe lights snapping agressively as the “Wheeep-whooop” riff of “I Only Said” crashed to life, incredibly loud and (for Austin Music Hall) surprisingly clear. Culty blast followed culty blast - the “do-do’s” of “When You Sleep,” rolling hard rock on ‘You Never Should,” the soundtracky “To Here Knows When” augmented by disorienting lights and student-film graphics and almost completely inaudible vocals.
The semi-hit “Only Shallow” and the indie classic “Soon” were greeted with the most ecstatic responses. The show seemed to get louder as it wore on, the woozy “Slow” and “Feed Me With Your Kiss” were mere appetizers for “You Made Me Realise.” Butcher and Sheilds stepped back and let fly, waves and waves AND WAVES of brutally loud fuzz and thunder and Googe’s stomach-churning bass. It was ecstatic, intimidating, painful, thrilling, boring and magnificent, sometimes all at the same time. I’m ready for another round.
