South by Southwest Source > South by Southwest Source > Archives > 2007 > March > 15
Thursday, March 15, 2007
A good reason for being late
On Thursday afternoon, Minneapolis public radio station 89.3 The Current took over the upstairs rooms in Buffalo Billiards to provide their worldwide streaming listeners with live broadcasts of some of the best of the SXSW musicians.
Running behind schedule, hip-hop rhyme-slayer Brother Ali (Ali Newman) ran into Buffalo Billiards, jumped on stage and grabbed the mike without breaking a sweat while his DJ, BK One, completed one of the fastest turntable set-ups ever.
“My 6-year-old son Faheem thought that my six-week long tour was starting today. He was convinced … and he did not want me to leave. He wasn’t havin’ it,” said Ali after his provocative, super-dope set. Ali spent so much time consoling his son that he ended up missing his Austin-bound plane out of Minneapolis.
Every other flight to Austin was booked, Ali said, so he caught a late flight to Houston and rented a car. “We drove straight to Austin, got out of the car and on to the stage.”
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Some Sugar with that coffee?
“My, how South by Southwest has grown,” former Austinite and indie rock legend Bob Mould told the crowd at Buffalo Billiards on Thursday, before remarking on the traffic. “Is this what the rest of the weekend will be like? At least I got to go to Flightpath and have a civilized cup of coffee.”
After his civilized cup of coffee, Mould gave a characteristically intense solo acoustic set with an uncharacteristic six-string (rather than 12-string) guitar, treating fans to Husker Du and Sugar tunes as well as one new song on a record he promised would be out in August and would be — characteristically — “kinda dark.”
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Buttercup, Buttercup, wherefore art thou?
When Buttercup kicked off their day party set at East Austin’s Hot Mama’s Espresso Bar at the Pedernales Lofts, the quartet was missing a member — lead singer Erik Sanden. Where was Erik?, everyone wondered after the first song sans Sanden. Members of the San Antonio band, playing in the Pedernales courtyard, seemed irritated. Could he be in one of the lofts over the coffee shop, taking a nap? The band urged the audience to shout “Erik! Erik!” Suddenly, the disheveled blond singer appeared from a loft’s third-floor balcony, dressed head to toe in pajamas.
Then he pulled out a microphone and sang along with his bandmates from the balcony, at one point facing Sixth Street and seranading curious drivers. 
After one song, he joined the band back on level ground.
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Because the English are known for their cuisine
In an interview with mtv.com, Lily Allen called Stubb’s barbecue “too gristly.” Truth be told, there’s no great barbecue in Austin: you need to drive to Lockhart, Llano, Luling or Taylor.
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Walking the walk
If only they could do this every day …
You can walk down South Congress Avenue for long stretches before hitting a crosswalk, which means people are always scurrying across the wide street to get to and from places such as the Continental Club and Yard Dog. For a popular pedestrian area, this makes no sense.
Luckily, for partiers and drivers alike, the Austin Police Department set up two temporary crosswalks Thursday night on South Congress: One near Guero’s Taco Bar, where the Mike Galaxy Presents: 8th Annual Day Party wrapped up with the Lovemakers and The Heights; and the other in front of the madhouse that was Hotel San Jose/Jo’s Hot Coffee’s South by San Jose fest, where the last acts of the day, Austin’s Sound Team and David Garza, played to a packed parking lot.
Flashing lights from parked police cars drew drivers’ attention to the orange cones that formed makeshift crosswalks for the hundreds of pedestrians crowding SoCo for the two free shows and many other parties.
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Do you have the fever?
I just got hit by the South By Southwest disease: making too big a deal about something that would be nothing the other 361 days. Someone asked me if I knew anything about Motorhead possibly playing a surprise show Friday at Red 7 and I got all excited about being in on the secret (unconfirmed). I started fantasizing about how cool it would be to hear “Ace Of Spades” live while all the other critics were at the Spin party. Then I realized that Motorhead comes to Austin all the time and I’ve never been. I like them, just not enough to go out and see them. But during SXSW there’s pressure to be an insider, to find the smartest party in the room, and you forget it’s just a band playing somewhere that needs the publicity.
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Bunny, hop on over there
Some poor soul in a giant pink Energizer Bunny costume was being led around the Convention Center by a handler Thursday afternoon — but the bunny’s ideal demographic was elsewhere. Maybe some savvy advertiser will figure out that they could reach a huge contingent of future consumers in the parking lot behind Jo’s Coffee on South Congress, where the under-5’s were out in force at the SX San Jose day party in strollers and Snuglis, drawing on the asphalt with chalk, showing off fancy Day-Glo plastic ear protection that looked like headphones (purchased on e-Bay, their mothers said) and even boogeying down to the Bee Gees’ ‘Jive Talking’ blasting from the P.A. between sets by the likes of the Octopus Project and the Glass Family.
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No wristband? Hit these spots pronto
Additional SXSW Music Festival wristbands will go on sale at 7:30 tonight at 10 locations. Cost is $175 each, cash only. Get in line at:
Bourbon Rocks, 508 E. Sixth St.
Buffalo Billiards, 201 E. Sixth St.
Elysium, 705 Red River St.
Habana Calle 6 Annex, 709 E. Sixth St.
Jovita’s, 1617 S. First St.
Lamberts, 401 W. Second St.
Maggie Mae’s, 512 Trinity St.
Momo’s, 618 W. Sixth St., Suite 200
Opal Divine’s, 700 W. Sixth St.
The Parish II, 214 E. Sixth St.
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Welcome back, Cris
A capacity crowd at the Parish cheered on Meat Puppets bassist Cris Kirkwood, who has returned to form after a horrifying drug addiction, chronicled in a Phoenix New Times story several years ago.
This is Kirkwood’s first show since getting sober, and the audience at the Anodyne Records party was clearly elated to welcome him back.
Kirkwood, the brother of Puppets lead singer Curt Kirkwood, has also moved back to Austin.
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David Byrne panel report
Did David Byrne miss his calling? Or at any rate, one calling. The singer/songwriter/musician/producer/record-company-owner proved his potential as an archetypal absent-minded professor in his one-man panel titled “Record Companies: Who Needs Them?” He displayed two requisites for academic excellence: extensive knowledge and a wry sense of humor to fill those moments when his agile mind went wandering off on a new tangent, or strayed back to an old one, or was briefly discombobulated as his laptop brought the wrong chart up on the giant screen. The crowd that nearly filled the Convention Center ballroom listened indulgently, and in- between endearing bumblings, Byrne offered up plenty of food for thought on the future of the music industry.
Byrne said “Who Needs Them?” did not really signify a desire for record companies to go away, but rather that the role of the record company is changing as artists are able to reach their audiences in new ways. The labels’ function as “banks,” for instance, is disappearing as some costs go down. Digital downloads don’t have the manufacturing costs of CDs, and with outlets such as YouTube, “the bribery that used to go to MTV doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. Artists don’t necessarily need the labels’ financial clout for achieving airplay, since “radio as it stands won’t exist more than another couple years.” Byrne also showed a photo of a large professional recording studio, followed by a photo of a laptop, and said, “There’s my studio.”
Where record companies used to be essential and could offer take-it-or-leave-it contracts, Byrne said, nowadays there is a whole spectrum of options for using the resources of a record company. A Britney Spears might need the whole panoply of support offered by a traditional record contract, while another artist might want to cherry-pick from offerings such as marketing or distribution support. Byrne said the deal he is currently negotiating with Nonesuch won’t much resemble the type of deal he’d have signed 10 years ago, and he offered Aimee Mann as an example of someone who was dropped by her label “and rose from the ashes and did it all herself.”
Byrne concluded his talk by confessing, “I don’t have a good ending,” to a round of applause. “I hope I wasn’t too vague …” he apologized. The Q&A was prolonged, inevitably, by a few fans fawning for minutes before coming out with something only vaguely resembling a question, but one questioner led Byrne to offer some sharp insights on the decline of sound quality from CDs to digital downloads. “Sound quality probably peaked with vinyl,” Byrne said. “What we’ll have before too long will be about as good as the Edison cylinders. But when you think of it, that will be the best for live music!”
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A tribute to Emmylou
It was a who’s who of Americana music when such acts as Paula Cole, Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison, Buddy Miller, Allison Moorer, Charlie Sexton, the Watson Twins and more paid tribute to Emmylou Harris with the songbird looking on they packed the Driskill Hotel ballroom Thursday afternoon.
How cool was it to see Charlie Louvin, whose Louvin Brothers duo was a huge influence on Harris, singing “When I Stop Dreaming” with Emmylou beaming. Another highlight was Elizabeth Crook’s rendition of “If I Could Only Win Your Love.” Every act did only one song, which kept things moving.
Taking it all in was singer Boz Skaggs, who came all the way to Austin just for the tribute.
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Vice/Scion party outstanding at Stubb’s
Ah, Vice magazine. Encouraging our base urges since 1996.
Now that it’s gone global and multimedia, we can enjoy the so-ironic-it-becomes-sincerity take in a variety of formats, including the amazingly spotty record label, for which mercifully few acts played this fairly outstanding afternoon show.
Having successfully banished the rain in favor of an 80-plus degree Thursday afternoon, Vice and their corporate co-sponsors Scion littered Stubb’s with their propaganda. Vice’s newest is “The Iraq issue,” and yes, it’s as gnarly and depressing as that sounds (from both ends of the irony spectrum, frankly).
Scion published some magazine that tried very hard not to look like a big ad for Scion.
But save Panthers, the startingly dull hard rock at that has ended up on Vice Records, the music was a perfect mix of heavy and heavier. Pelican — whose instrumental thud actually gives the term “post-metal” some vague strain of legitimacy — sounded appropriately triumphant in the Texas sun.
But if Pelcian’s sound was victorious, Boris’ roar spiked the ball and did a Japanese end-zone dance. The power trio — guitar, drums (including gong!), and one of the ugliests bass-guitar doublenecks ever made — turned the air to spraying mud. Part biker rock, part psychedelia, Boris played its first-ever Austin show with a mighty set of bowel-abusing bass, thunderous drums and amps that were a good foot taller than guitarist Wata.
Boris was named after a Melvins song, so it was appropriate that the West Coast thunder-gods closed the show. With a new bassist and a second drummer (who themselves perform galloping noise punk as Big Business), the Melvins have simply taken everything rumbling about themselves and turned it up to 11.
Guitarist King Buzzo, looking dashing in a gothy mumu and enormous, graying Afro, still wrings hideously misshapen solos out of his Les Paul while drummer Dale Crover had almost his every move mimicked by second skin-pounder Coady Willis and bassist Jared Warren amped Buzzo’s vocal whine with his own dynamic bellow. Two new members, two aging vets and one of the best bands of its generation feels like a whole new ballgame.
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Scoot Inn kicking despite license snafu
The Scoot Inn’s James Stockbauer was in a good mood Thursday afternoon, considering his alcohol sales were shut down by the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission the day before. Stockbauer said he had a deal with the Scoot Inn’s previous owner to use her liquor license for the first three months he was open, but she canceled the permit on Wednesday.
“The TABC guys were saying, ‘Man, you must’ve really (ticked) her off,” said Stockbauer, who said he doesn’t know why the license was canceled. “The good news is that it’s a beautiful day, we’re open and rockin’ and all the beer is free,” he said.
Record labels have paid to rent the Scoot Inn (which reopened at Fourth and Navasota streets in East Austin just two months ago), which Stockbauer said takes some of the misery out of his mood. It also doesn’t hurt that Stockbauer’s Longbranch Inn was jam-slammed all day Wednesday.
Update: 24 hours later he was able to land a licence, and he said it was just a technicality with the TABC.
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Emmylou Harris: Still classy after all these years
Rule No. 1 for interviewers: No matter how famous you think you are, or how humble you think you’re being in front of the big star you’re talking to, please introduce yourself.
Director Jonathan Demme, a longtime F.O.L. B. (Friend of Louis Black), didn’t bother to introduce himself Thursday as he took the stage with victim Emmylou Harris. It took a good five minutes for a nice chunk of the crowd to figure out who the heck he was.
Rule No. 2 for interviewers: It’s an interview, not a conversation. Yet, Demme, in full “I love your work” mode, declared he was having “a conversation” and immediately started talking about the soundcheck that he saw with Harris’ musical partner, the brilliant Buddy Miller. This was potentially interesting to nobody.
Harris surfed it beautifully, noting the pointlessness of soundchecks “Sound changes once people are in the room. A sound check cancels itself out. It’s like a religious thing, your payment to the gods, a sacrament we go through.”
Demme, who shot Harris in the Neil Young film “Heart of Gold,” played the role of fan more than journalist, asking her how her voice worked, getting Harris to demonstrate vocal exercises (“KREEE-KREE!”)
Harris also played a few numbers, Gillian Welch’s “Orphan Girl” and “Love Hurts,” both of which featured lovely electric soloing from Miller.
The latter song inspired the following exchange:
Demme: “Do you mind if we talk about Gram Parsons?”
Harris: “I’ve been talking about Gram Parsons for 35 years.” Genius!
Her comments about “Love Hurts” were moving, noting that the line “I’m young” might not resonate coming out of the mouth of an older woman.
(She’s wrong; it becomes all the more powerful, but Demme said “ Maybe you could change it to, ‘I’m old.”)
“There’s something to age that deepens your experiece of love,” she said. “Your compassion deepens, and when you’re hurt, it’s deeper. Every major religion tells us that life is suffering, but that’s part of the gift of being alive.”
Amen.
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Final thoughts on the first day
The cold drizzle of Wednesday afternoon was upsetting to one band at the Canadian Blast BBQ at Brush Square Park, next to the Convention Center. “To have driven 30 hours from where the temperature is 30 degrees below zero,” said Young Galaxy singer Stephen Ramsay, “we’re quite disappointed that it’s too cold to wear our matching lime green thongs.”
Cameron McGill’s guitar is defective. It was written on his hollowbody electric: “This machine kills hipsters.” But every one walked away unscathed from Chicago’s Metro party at Emo’s on Wednesday.
“Rome is burning.” That’s what Pete Townshend said a record executive recently told him about the music biz. The Who guitarist talked about this during his keynote conversation Wednesday with Bill Flanagan. But Townshend said current technology bodes well for the future of rock ‘n’ roll. “We’ve got more information, more power, than we’ve ever had before. My generation was driving blind.”
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The SXSW endangered species: The nonsmoker
Is Marlboro the secret sponsor of this year’s SXSW? Are armies of promo people handing lit cigarettes to everyone who gets off a plane?
Signs everywhere warned out-of-towners not to smoke inside, but outdoors, nonsmokers seemed to be an endangered species — in lines, under tents, just trying to walk down the sidewalk without drawing in a lungful of tar and nictone. Forget those coal plants coming online, the more imminent danger to Austin’s air quality comes from those cigarette-waving hordes from Los Angeles or Chicago or wherever it is that people still like to go home at the end of the night smelling like ashtrays.
Sorry, I’m just irritable because my eyes sting.
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Welcome back, Ghostland
Only a few days ago, Austin’s DIY electronica sensations Ghostland Observatory were playing shows in Europe for the first time, making new fans in Camden and London. Wednesday afternoon found the dynamic duo — keyboardist Thomas Turner and vocalist/guitarist Aaron Behrens — dusting off the jet lag and performing to old and new fans at Seattle’s KEXP 90.3 live radio broadcast. The station is recording shows with SXSW musicians during the festival at KLRU’s studios, on the same stage where “Austin City Limits” is filmed.
Although almost all the studio’s seats were full, enthusiastic fans arriving minutes before Ghostland Observatory’s 3 p.m. start time were able to walk right in. The KEXP live broadcasts, which continue through Saturday, are free and open to the public, providing music fans who don’t possess wristbands or badges an opportunity to see several high-profile bands.
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Gilberto Gil as smooth as ever
A very gracious Gilberto Gil, world renowned musician and Brazil’s Minister of Culture, spoke eloquently during a panel Wednesday about his civic duties in Brazil as well as his 40-plus year career in the music business. He waxed philosophical about everything from the invention of the Tropicalia music movement to nano technology.
“Silicon Valley is a byproduct of psychedelic culture. It’s not by chance that Silicon Valley is in California, near San Francisco,” Gil jested, inspiring laughs from the audience of more than 200 .
Gil spoke about the implications of Brazil’s international economy and exportation of culture.
“Hip-hop has an international currency in Brazil,” he said. “It’s a language now, recognized as a very important form of expression. It’s giving (young people) an opportunity to express their thoughts and their forms of resistance all over the world, and in Brazil also.”
“Culture is bio-power. It’s the power of life,” he continued. He spoke at length about Tropicalia (the musical form he helped to invent in the late 1960s), jamming with Jimmy Cliff, and his arrest by the dictatorial Brazilian government in the late ’60s, which led to his 2-1/2-year exile in London.
“I picked up the electric guitar for the first time” during the exile, Gil said. “I became a bandleader for the first time, and it was key for the future of music in Brazil. Electric (guitar) music really took off in Brazil. The exile was necessary for me to see Brazil in different ways, and to get (influenced by) the beat generation, the hippie generation and the revolution.”
The final question of the interview was the most compelling: How would Gil feel if all his songs were available online … for free?
“It’s an extreme. It’s a possibility. We can face a situation in 10 to 20 years where the possibility of an archive of my 500 songs or so could be free in a universal online archive. It just depends on the culture … but this is fair. It’s not just a matter of self-will. It’s a whole movement.”
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Street music
If you can’t get into that buzz-band showcase, or you bail on an act that turns out to be a bust and need to kill some time, try checking out the corner of Sixth and Brazos streets, where something always seems to be happening.
Around 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, a group of kids played old-timey music in front of the Driskill Hotel with an older mentor on stand-up bass. The kid on banjo was pretty decent, but not as amusing as the little girl in an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt absently strumming a mandolin while chewing her gum with fierce concentration.
An hour or so later, on the opposite corner, a bagpiper in his 20s — who knew twentysomethings played the pipes? — raked in the tips with his fleet, bold playing. Right next to him, a bus driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a wobbly posse of scantily clad young women crossing against the light, and the driver blared his horn in what turned out to be a perfect interval for a long, mournful bleat from the piper.
Just down from the corner is B.D. Riley’s, where the acts play in an open window — no waiting in line, no wristband necessary if you don’t mind watching someone’s back. Australian Andrew Winton drew an outdoor crowd that included a couple of locals just passing by on their way to the bus stop across the street, marveling at his driving, percussive lap steel guitar. Later, the rollicking Blackie and the Rodeo Kings from Toronto had their own indoor-outdoor assemblage.
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Smile!
The Paramount’s “Reign Over Me” premiere drew some of SXSW Film’s biggest celebrities of the week: stars Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle. Writer/director (and co-star) Mike Binder, whose “The Search for John Gissing” played the fest in 2002, joined them in introducing the film. Binder and Cheadle yanked cameras from their pockets to photograph all those in the crowd whose cell phone cameras were trained on the stage. Speaking about 10 syllables among them, the men seemed not to want to jinx the crowd’s response to a film whose delicate subject matter, a widower’s difficulty in coping with the 9/11 deaths of his wife and children, seems to have made its studio nervous about releasing it. They needn’t have worried: The moving, funny film is Sandler’s smartest move since “Punch-Drunk Love,” and the audience was with it wholeheartedly.
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Renaissance man, punk-style
Seattle, Wash.’s the Trashies were a no-show for their 10:30 p.m. slot at the Mortville/Super Secret Records showcase at Beerland on Wednesday evening. Al G (algae), guitarist for Austin 1978-style punk rock band the Ends, picked up an acoustic, rigged a mike together and played about 30 minutes of songs off the cuff. Turns out Mr. Al G is not just a crunchy punk rock power chord maestro; he’s also steeped in 1960s psych-pop; he got applause from those in the know when he played a Flamin’ Groovies cover with understated quietude … at a punk rock show!?!
