XL SXSW Blog
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XL's John Ratliff wades into the thick of the SXSW music festival and surfaces just long enough to tell us all about it. Watch for his daily updates at around 4:30 p.m. and 12:30 a.m. (that's after midnight!). -- e-mail me |
UPDATED: Sat. 3/20/04
Why Austin Beats Athens
3/20/04 1:20 p.m.Green Mesquite
Barbecue for breakfast may not sound so great to you, but I haven't eaten since 3:30 this morning, when I came home and finished the remainder of a jar of Whole Kids crunchy peanut butter with a fork, and free food is free food. The people in line for gratis grub at the "Athens in Austin" party at Green Mesquite would appear to be in similar circumstances; the three people in line in front of me all keep holding out their plates for more brisket after the initial serving is piled on.
On the one hand, this party is a reminder of the greatness that was Athens — the one in Georgia — and how that greatness has come and gone. There was a time when Austin wanted to be Athens, though we wouldn't admit it, because their bands — most notably the B-52's and R.E.M. — were doing a lot better than ours. They weren't better bands, as we'd tell anyone that would listen, and of course music isn't a contest . . . but they were winning.
That the tables have turned was obvious just listening to the afternoon's entertainment, a y'all-ternative ensemble called The Weight, who were tuneful, sincere and badly dated. It's not that this music is so much worse than it was when it first became popular, but at what point do we finally admit that it's a dead end, like rockabilly or tie-dye?
On the other hand, the low-key, Deadbeat Club vibe on the Green Mesquite's brick patio is much truer to the original let's-put-on-a-show atmosphere of SXSW. Maybe they brought it with them, and if so, maybe Athens gets the last laugh after all, just by staying a puny college town while Austin gets too big and full of itself for this kind of thing.
Either way, it's too late to do anything about it now.
3/20/04 2:20 p.m.Sno Beach Sno-Cones
I conceive a sudden desire for a snow cone, which my running buddy graciously accedes to, and while waiting in line for it, I'm reminded that there may be hope for Austin as an actual community, as opposed to a marketing demographic. The guy in front of us sees our badges and engages us in conversation, asking where we're from. Here, we tell him, assuming he'll be disappointed, but no, he wants to talk about SXSW and who we've seen, and we continue the discussion as he makes sure that everyone in his family has a snow cone. A good dad to have on a hot day.
I get to the window, and before I can even order, the young lady behind the counter is asking me "Have you seen any good bands?" She doesn't even have a wristband, but she went to go see Pretty Girls Make Graves and is going to try to see American Analog Set at free shows. More importantly, she's pretty psyched about it.
OK, I still like it here.
3/20/04 2:40 p.m.Yard Dog
In the tent in the parking lot behind Yard Dog, former Austin resident Amy Farris is leading her band through songs off her new record. I used to see her around town sitting in on fiddle with various musicians, demure and apple-cheeked in her vintage dresses as she sawed away. Now she lives in L.A., fronts her own band and has taken to wearing makeup and revealing strapless tops. Amy, what have they done to you? Austin, I'm sorry I ever doubted you! Don't send me away!
3/20/04 3:40 p.m.Congress & Riverside
As we wait for the light to change, a pickup passes through the intersection in front of us. Its load is a giant golden calf. Well, actually, it's a bull. Close enough.
3/20/04 12 a.m.Sixth Street
The hour of reckoning is at hand. At around 1 a.m. tonight, about 20 or so bands I would enjoy seeing will start playing, and the laws of physics dictate that I'm going to be missing at least 19 of them. Hard choices must be made.
The weather isn't helping; it's as indecisive as I am. Something that's not rain and not mist is swirling around in gusts of air that are neither cool nor warm. The barometer needle is pinned; people who've been drinking all night without feeling it suddenly reel crazily in the street; and the damp in the air combines with the bubbles coming off of Spiros so that the air itself is hard to see through. And yet hard choices must still be made.
One of the bands I really want to see is the reformed American Music Club. They're playing at a club just down the street, and as it emerges from the mist it becomes obvious that there's no line to get in. Big Star and the Mekons have apparently drawn enough of my fellow aging hipsters that one can just walk in and see one of the Great Lost Bands of the last twenty years without even being jostled. My decision is made for me. I flee the passive-aggressive weather and commit to Bigsbys.
3/20/04 12:25 a.m.Bigsby's
It is a conference commonplace that you wind up seeing a lot of bands because they're on right before the band you want to see. I've seen a lot of bad bands while waiting for good ones. Jesse Harris and the Ferdinandos are not one of these bands. They're great, in fact. Jesse Harris is skinny and sexy in a young-Dylan (not "new-Dylan") kind of way, with his horn-rim glasses and his version of the official SXSW 2004 Men's Haircut, the Untamed Curly Mop. He fingerpicks an acoustic guitar that he manages to make sound like a National steel, and his lead guitar player plays a lot of slide, adding heft and texture to what sound like a lot of well-written songs. Maybe I made the right choice after all.
UPDATED: Sat. 3/19/04
More Music All Day
3/19/04 12:55 p.m.Tambaleo
Tambaleo used to be a club called the Electric Lounge, but there's little trace of the former tenant now. The Lounge was, shall we say, gritty and streetwise, and Tambaleo is more upscale. The bathrooms are cleaner now and the drinks are more expensive.
The Jazz Pharaohs are setting up in front of a purple curtains under blood-red spotlights, but the nite-spot vibe is undone by the gray daylight glowing in the gaps between the curtains. Objects glitter and catch the light: the horns, the keys on the guitars, the trumpeter's spangly fez, the white-bearded guitarist's shiny reading glasses.
Arrayed offhandedly around the room are a number of couches, which look all too inviting, given my 5 a.m. bedtime this morning. "It looks like a Pottery Barn exploded in here," says my companion.
A guy with a voice so soft as to be inaudible introduces the band, and they're off. But with all due respect to the Jazz Pharaohs, who are an excellent Dixieland-style band, we're here for the free Chinese buffet. It turns out to be chicken wings and egg rolls. Adding insult to injury is a paper cup full of plastic forks, for which there is no discernible use.
Like an idiot, I slather my eggrolls with hot mustard and in short order have to go to the bar to get something to drink. People are already lined up waiting for service, and the two comely bartenders are kept busy. Standing directly between them is an owner-manager-type guy, who smiles benevolently at the goings-on but makes no attempt to serve anyone a drink. It never occurs to owner-manager-type guys in this position that all we see from this side of the bar is a guy standing there not serving us drinks. There's got to be some way to bring this to his attention. Maybe that's what the forks are for.
Brian Beattie is a person that I would have expected to see in the Electric Lounge but not in Tambaleo. Beattie was a founding member of the legendary art-rock band Glass Eye, for whom he played menacing, sinuous bass lines and wrote songs like "I Don't Need Drugs (to Be (Expletive) Up)." But there he is, watching the antique music onstage with rapt attention.
As we're leaving, a deliveryman comes through the door. The soft-spoken guy on the mic has ordered a pizza.
3/19/04 1:55 p.m.33 Degrees
The keyboard player for Frog Eyes wears his unmodishly cut lank hair parted in the middle. He also wears a handlebar mustache, unfashionable glasses, a pinstriped tux shirt with a white placket, and ill-fitting slacks. When he crosses his legs, his SXSW wristband is visible around his argyle sock, just above his black Reeboks.
The bass player in the red-and-blue striped sleeveless T looks like the result of an on-location romance between John Lurie and Richard Edson during the filming of "Stranger than Paradise." The drummer is a blonde in a disheveled pixie-cut and vintage dress. The guitar player is a squat, bearded Canadian who speaks in a soft, disconcerting voice. It's disconcerting because you don't know if he's pulling your leg or just deranged.
As Frog Eyes starts their set after an extended period of setting up, he thanks the audience: "Thanks for your patience . . . for your goodness, your purity of heart, your strength of character." Then he makes a strangulated cartoon voice that sounds like Popeye's evil twin.
They launch into their songs. The bass player marches in place, occasionally adjusting his gimme cap. The guitar player strums his guitar so fervently that it looks like he's just pretending to play it.
"This song's about lies and deceit and honey of tongue, and about tricking your woman into marrying you. Not really."
The sound is frenetic, bright and brittle, pop songs for the hard of hearing and the quick to cry.
"We're playing a few songs from the first record. Return to the golden years. When I had an open heart and really appreciated the sun and the sky . . . was less callous." Pause. "No, I'm a good guy."
He scrubs furiously at his guitar, executing a dervish spin, around and around, knocking over the mic stand into the enraptured listeners sitting on the record-store carpet in front of him.
"Sorry. It's like Michael J. Fox at the end of 'Back to the Future.' "
He plugs in an electric keyboard to play along with the keyboard player. A loud hum ensues. Attempts are made to eliminate or reduce it.
"Once we start playing, the hum will be lost in the maelstrom."
He's right. Through the sonic storm can be heard the repeated phrase:
"I don't do drugs." One can hardly imagine what that would be like.
When they back singer/songwriter Dan Bejar (who is also a member of pop cult faves The New Pornographers), Frog Eyes goes by the name of Destroyer. Bejar is set to sing a few songs with them today. There is some discussion among the band members about whether to bring him up yet. The guitarist asks the time. It's quarter to 3. The bass player points out that "this" — presumably meaning his bass rig — "has to be back downtown."
"When?"
"Three."
Bejar is brought up. With his mop of curly dark hair, his full-face beard, his striped long-sleeved polo shirt, and his distracted, almost otherworldly air, he looks more like a physics grad student than a cult-hero songwriter. In any other band, he might look a little eccentric. In this one, he's a beacon of normality.
Bejar's songs run a wider emotional gamut than those of Frog Eyes, and they're catchier. Loosed on them, the band is even better, whipsawing the listener through wordy pop narratives shot through with circus organ and garage guitar. My companion tells me they were 10 times better the night before. My response is brief and unprintable.
The guitar player explains the new configuration:
"This is a side gig. We do it for money. Not friendship."
He's kidding. Probably.
3/19/04 4 p.m.Cheapo Records
Under black velvet paintings of Kenny Rogers and Jimi Hendrix, a crowd has collected in a rear corner of Cheapo Records. They must really want to be here. Lamar has been reduced to two single-file parking lots, and it's Friday afternoon: Traffic is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
What has drawn them here is Petty Booka, a pair of Japanese women (Petty and Booka) who sing covers of a wide variety of American pop music while accompanying themselves on ukuleles. They are consistently a huge hit at the conference, filling the venues they play to capacity, so the size of the crowd — a hundred or so people — isn't surprising.
What's surprising is that Petty Booka are actually as good as everyone says they are. When they take the stage in overdone cowgirl mufti — Petty in hot pink western shirt and purple cowboy boots, Booka in lime green and yellow — and Petty says "Howdy!" into the mic, it's definitely cute, but it doesn't inspire much confidence that anything more than a novelty act is about to transpire. (Nor would their usual outfit of leis and grass skirts; they're wearing the boots because they bought them the last time they were in Texas.)
Backed by their guitar player, an uncostumed, sleepy-looking hipster in a green sweater adorned with Mardi Gras beads, Petty Booka assay their first number, sketching out a rhythm that could probably be described as "funky" if ukuleles were not involved. It takes a while to realize that it's "Rainy Night in Georgia."
PB harmonize prettily on the chorus as the guitar player adds tastefully bluesy licks. But cuteness is still the prevailing value. Petty is one of the few performers who can sing the line "find me a place in a boxcar" even less convincingly than the terminally urbane Brook Benton, who had the original hit. But it's fun nonetheless, as is the follow-up, a Luau Lite number whose chorus runs "If you like Ukulele Lady, Ukulele Lady like you."
Snappy patter: "We experienced America's famous 'overbooking' last night. But we are happy to be here." Cute!
On the third song, something happens. To me, anyway. Maybe it's lack of sleep, maybe it's gratitude at not having to listen to loud guitars for 30 minutes or so, but Petty Booka's rendition of "Do You Wanna Dance" evokes something more cosmic than mere cuteness could.
For one thing, they can really sing, and Booka gives "Do You Wanna Dance" a transparently sincere reading that's almost heartbreaking. When Petty joins her for the harmony on "Do ya do ya do ya do ya wanna dance" — some major-seventh thing they've cooked up that's not on the original — the cowgirl outfits and the ukuleles are beside the point.
It may not be rock 'n' roll, but it's sweet, and sexy, and soulful, and it makes me happy to be standing here between the CD bins in the back of a used record store on a Friday afternoon.
3/19/04 7:25 p.m.Casa de Luz
A friend invites me to dinner with Harvey Sid Fisher, who is playing a showcase tonight. Though I've never seen Fisher before, I've heard a lot about him. He's a regular at the conference, and is most commonly referred to as "that guy who does the astrology songs." Fisher has a song for every sign in the zodiac, which if you think about it is pretty astute from a marketing point of view. He also has a record of duets that instead of being about people in love are about people fighting.
We meet at Casa de Luz, the macrobiotic restaurant where Fisher has eaten every night since he's come to town. In the large central dining room, classical music plays as patrons load their cafeteria trays with bowls of miso soup and miscellaneous vegetables. The group at the next table includes a man wearing a feathered, neck-length haircut parted in the middle, a luxuriant moustache, a yellow aloha shirt and puka shells. I don't think he's trying to be ironic.
At the risk of dealing in stereotypes, "macrobiotic" is not the word that springs to mind when one looks at Harvey Sid Fisher. His impressive crest of white hair tops a lived-in face with watery blue eyes that are alternately facetious and watchful, and his tough-guy New York accent has survived his lengthy tenure on the West Coast. He's friendly, but from time to time he makes a joke ("Don't write that down") that doesn't sound completely like a joke, and his poetic figures of speech are sometimes a little alarming, as when he describes cleaning his house: "A moment of violence comes over you, and then you get rid of the old stuff."
He lives in L.A., where he has worked for many years as an actor. "I draw a pension from the Screen Actors Guild," he says. "I've done a lot of movies, a lot of TV." He appeared on "Barnaby Jones" several times, prompts our mutual friend: "You were a recurring character."
"No, I came back but I was a different guy each time. One season I would be the guy he paid five bucks to identify the car. The next season I would be the waiter he paid 10 bucks to identify somebody. The amount of money my characters were said went up each year."
Before he was an actor, he was a hairdresser in New York, working at a beauty parlor that was open 24 hours a day. I ask him if he can still cut hair. "I can cut hair with a broken beer bottle," he says. I tell him I believe him. I don't want to see him do it. He decided to try the theater when a shoeshine boy asked him, "Hey, Stuff, are you an actor?" He studied under Stella Adler before moving to L.A.
Of course, he writes screenplays, too. "I'm writing the world's funniest screenplay, and I'm finishing it the minute my sense of humor returns." He says that writing is "trying to solve a mathematical itch. You have to write until you scratch the equation."
But, he says, "I'm not cooperating with the Muses. I told them, 'Take that idea, and get it out of my head. The last one didn't make me any money." "
"I pay the price for not having money."
UPDATED: Fri. 3/19/04
Another Night
3/18/04 9:40 p.m.Sixth Street
As generally happens during festivals and the like, Sixth Street has been depopulated of moving cars, and pedestrians prowl the street with impunity. As does a guy on a motorcycle, which he presumably parked before the barriers went up. He sits gunning it as people pass nervously around him. Wraparound shades sit atop his brush-cut blond hair, and he's wearing fingerless leather gloves and a leather jacket that says BELLAGIO on the back. It's unclear what impression he's trying to produce. Eventually he gives up and rides away.
3/18/04 10:20 p.m.
Exodus
I have come here early to wait for the Thrills, currently popular new item from Ireland, and to file a review. For the conference, the paper has issued me a little text messaging unit — an overambitious pager, really — and the idea is that I will send in shorter reviews and blog entries via this device. It opens to reveal a tiny screen and a keyboard that at first glance does not appear to be made for fingers of human size. After a little experimenting, I've gotten to where I can actually write on it without accidentally deleting the message or sending it to John Ashcroft by accident, but I still look pretty funny doing it. Part of it is just the disparate scale of size: It's almost impossible to look at someone using this thing and think they're doing work. For that matter, it's almost impossible to use it to do work and take your job seriously.
I thumb in a review of the band I just saw. It takes me a while. The pre-Thrills band is playing in the next room. A friend from out of town comes up and asks me who they are. I tell him they're called Blanche. "Blanche?" he asks. "As in 'boiled until all the flavor has been removed'?" My friend is unimpressed by Blanche. It's probably mutual.
3/18/0410.40 pm
Exodus men's room
A lot of books and seminars offer aspiring writers the same (good) advice on their craft: Keep it simple. Omit needless words. If you write something you think is particularly clever, you probably need to get rid of it. And so on.
I have developed a new technique for forcing writers to confront these issues head-on. It's rigorous, and it's free.
First, write something on a pager. You may have to spend a lot of time on it; that's okay. Just thumb it onto your tiny screen, letter by letter.
Next, try to send whatever it is to your editor, using the pager.
Finally, come to the realization that in order to get the story in on time, you're going to have to read it out loud to your editor over the phone in a public men's room, as a series of complete strangers passes by.
The results are dramatic: Phrases that seemed quite snappy on the page — uh, screen — are suddenly revealed as pedantic, pandering or smug. Of course, so is their author, but hey, art is pain. Try it and see for yourself.
Outside the bathroom, I run into another friend, who is displeased with the musical selections between bands. "I guess that's the guy," he says, gesturing at the DJ booth. "He keeps playing all this disco and then saying stuff like 'Let's give it up for the Thrills!"' He pauses in thought. "Man," he says, "We don't 'give it up' anymore!"
Eventually, we are asked to give it up for the Thrills, after a long delay for a sound check. The sound is still wretched, but the band is not, and they tuck into a short set of pop-rock that recalls both early Rod Stewart and '70s California pop in its easy conversational lope.
The music sounds remarkably open and comfortable, as opposed to the room in which it's being played: People are packed in so closely that I have to hold my notebook vertically whenever someone walks by. And the band's popularity ensures that there are plenty of people who are here not to see the band but to be able to say they saw the band. It's not that they don't like the band; they do. They like it as background noise for the little chats they're having all around me. They make me want to ask them: Why are you here?
Of course, nobody can ever answer that one fully. I'm pretty sure I couldn't, if the question were turned on me.
Why are you here? I'm doing writing exercises in the bathroom. What's your excuse?
UPDATED: Thurs. 3/18/04
The Streets of This Town
3/17/04 9:40 p.m.
I'm late to the Rite Flyers show at Club DeVille, so my bike riding is less law-abidingly timid than usual. Despite my embarrassing (and painful) spill this afternoon in front of the Convention Center — in front of people; in front of women — I remain committed to the idea that biking the conference is the way to go. For instance: While it takes me longer to actually get to where I'm going, I never have to look for a parking space. I can see your eyes going all misty right now.
So I'm late, and therefore incautious, and take off the wrong way down one-ways and blow off red lights when nobody's coming and otherwise acquit myself in ways that are foolish for a bad bike rider on slick streets in St. Patrick's Day traffic. Whenever I have to stop suddenly, I'm reminded that the earlier wreck took out my front brake, and I cheerfully remind myself that if the back brake suddenly goes I'm a dead man. At least once I forget and do something else with my right hand, only to realize that as long as my hand is away from the handlebar, I have only one, extremely painful, method of stopping. This slows me down, but only a little. I have places to be.
Other men have their midlife crises in red Boxsters. I'm having mine on a battered black Trek Navigator with an Electronic Frontier Foundation sticker on it.
3/17/04 10:05 p.m.
Club DeVille
The Rite Flyers are nervous. Their drummer, Terri Lord, was playing the Austin Music Awards show as part of the "Class of '78" punk-rock reunion, and she still isn't here. "She was supposed to be whisked over here by alert South by Southwest personnel in a special van," says singer-guitarist Steve Collier, "but . . ." The stage manager, who favors Ellen DeGeneres somewhat, is also getting nervous, but she's doing a good job of not taking it out on the band.
Luckily, Terri shows up pretty soon after, still wearing her black "NO FUTURE" T-shirt, and quickly establishes herself behind the drumkit as the rest of the band, rounded out by bassist Josh Zarbo, strap on their guitars. And then they hit it.
I warned you when I started this thing that I was going to be writing about people I know, so it's once again time for the journalistic-ethics warning that is the unofficial slogan for this blog: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST MAY BE LARGER THAN THEY APPEAR. Terri, Steve and the other singer-guitarist, John Clayton, are veterans of about four million Austin pop and rock bands over the years, so of course I know them. We've been standing around the same expiring kegs at the same refusing-to-expire parties for years. It was at one of those parties that Steve and I realized that, completely independently of each other, we had both decided on the same tattoo if we ever got one, which we had also decided we wouldn't. (It was the comic-strip character Krazy Kat getting hit by the brick with the little heart shooting up, if you must know.)
So when I say that the Rite Flyers' first song, "The Hardest Part of Flying," is the first shot of unadulterated joy I've experienced at the conference, it's not a review, and it's not a critical assessment. It's just true. Maybe I'm still cruising on adrenaline after cheating death on a bicycle. Maybe I'm just enjoying the uplifting aesthetic experience of watching a talented and tasteful drummer whack the bejesus out of her kit. Maybe John Clayton really is a great songwriter, which would explain why Zarbo's other band, Spoon, who these days are pretty much the Greatest North American Rock Band Your Mother Has Never Heard Of, have covered several of his songs.
Zarbo, who could be Ben Stiller's sexier sibling, is the only person onstage who looks like a rock star. His impeccable sideburned Caesar haircut goes perfectly with his short-sleeved black shirt and skintight black jeans, which go perfectly with his inventive, melodic playing. Aesthetically speaking, nothing is wasted. Dark against a backlit stretch of white wall, he looks like a little computer icon of a bass player.
My friends, on the other hand, do not look like rock stars. They look like they used to be rock stars, which is true. They also look like they're having the time of their lives.
And maybe this is part of the reason it's working for me. SXSW is about music, but it's also about commerce. There's nothing wrong with that — ain't no show without the business — but some performers leave you wondering just how interested they'd be in the music if they knew for certain their number was never going to come up.
My friends in the Rite Flyers — may they forgive me for saying this — know that the chances of them ever making a living off this are infinitesimal. They have been on this ride, and they're not doing it to get rich. They're not doing it to get girls to go home with them. They're not doing it because they can't do anything else. They're doing it just because they want to, and they're good at it, and the world is a better place with great four-minute pop songs in it. So I can't be objective; so what? Since when does objectivity have anything to do with your favorite song?
I'm standing in the crowd with Terri's girlfriend Kris Patterson. They used to play in a band called Sincola, and when I tell Kris I have to review the Joan Jett show later tonight, her eyes light up. "We toured with Joan Jett," she says, clearly pleased at the recollection. I ask her what Joan Jett is like, and she offers up her recollections, including a story about creaming Joan at air hockey.
Kris saves the best for last. "Joan Jett," she announces, "drinks girl drinks."
3/17/04 11:15 p.m.
Stubb's
The (International) Noise Conspiracy are a Swedish band who have carefully studied their craft. They have listened to the Nuggets box sets and mastered them, and they have spent many hours in front of the mirror practicing scissor-kick leaping and microphone lasso-throwing, and they have noticed that many great '60s garage-type bands wore matching outfits, so they have all put on red-and-black-striped T-shirts and black pants and leather jackets. One by one, they remove the jackets, except for the bass player, who must enjoy basting in his own juices. Judging by all the sweat flying around, it's hot up there.
The songs are quite good, and well played, and the singer, guitarist and bass player are all handsome enough to register as potential rock stars. The drummer and the keyboard player, while not unattractive, have made unfortunate hair choices — the keyboard player sports the sans-moustache beard favored by the Amish, in movies at least — and they both look like they're due back at the Shire momentarily.
It's also true that the stage moves seem a little contrived, and they're deployed too freely. It almost seems as though they're doing them for the benefit of photographers rather than the audience, like politicians who trot out the same sound bite as the answer to every question because they know only one of them will be used. Still, as garage-revival bands go, TINC have got the goods.
They also have a gimmick you don't see often: They're Commies. I don't mean that they mentioned socialized medicine or condemned the war in Iraq. I mean that at one point, the singer explains that "music is by the people and for the people, and it really doesn't have anything to do with the music industry or the capitalist system." I mean that at the end of their set, they stand with their fists in the air, like Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the '68 Olympics. I mean that they have a song whose singalong chorus goes "We share our dreams / Under a Communist moon."
"I wasn't really expecting Texas to sing along with that one," admitted the singer.
Dude, you were misinformed. This is Austin.
UPDATED: Wed. 3/17/04
Rock +daylight = uneasy mix
2:07 p.m. 3/17/04
Convention Center
I had this great idea: Rather than use a car to get around during the convention, I'm using my bike. It's easier to park, and given the clusterboink over on Lamar, it's probably faster, too. I'm pretty pleased with myself for having had this idea, as I unlock my bike, strap my little man-purse full of essentials (notebook, pens, phone, pager, wallet and the three pages I actually needed from the telephone-directory-sized conference handbook: the schedules) onto my bike rack, hop on, shove off . . . and execute a perfect flip over the front handlebars, right in front of the Convention Center and musical guests from around the world. The fall shatters my front brake and leaves me with an ugly strawberry on my thigh. It also destroys whatever illusion of dignity I was managing to maintain up to that point. Humbled, I reattach the man-purse — this time with the long strap safely stowed away — and pedal gingerly up the street.
2:20 p.m. 3/17/04
Emo's
Inside Emo's, it's dark. The open door admits a shaft of sunlight and a suggestion of the breezes that are making the day outside so glorious, but once you move a few paces inside, the illumination is from red and green spotlights and the giant TV behind the bar, where Montel Williams is interviewing a woman who was held as a hostage in her own home. You can't hear him, because onstage a band from Milwaukee called Decibully is playing to a rapt audience of a couple of hundred people who are enjoying the voluptuous holiday pleasure of drinking inside in the afternoon while it's nice out. South by Southwest: Decadence You Can Afford.
Decibully is a large band, with a large sound: one minute's lumbering, rattling, bottom-heavy swing suddenly evaporates into stark, tuneful harmonies and then thunders back again. Their songs sound like a flower arrangement created by an infinitely skilled and sensitive crane operator. "We were just in Arkansas, so it's really great to be here," says the singer, to appreciative but muted applause. The crowd is strangely passive, to the point that when the singer stops a song in the middle to check his guitar sound, he does so in almost absolute silence. Maybe they're confused by that light coming through the door. They perk up as Decibully tears into their final song, which ends in a joyous, cacophonous singalong.
Outside, in Emo's open-air venue, a band called Zykos is revving up. Like Decibully, Zykos includes a keyboard player and a woman, who in this case are the same person, and are playing to an equally large and appreciative (though better-lit) crowd. Zykos' songs feature thrumming power chords overlaid with piano accents that range from delicate to pounding. I like them. The four guys in the band are pleasingly clad in four different solid-color shirts (black, red, green, white) that give the band uniformity without looking like a uniform. Or rather, they give 80 percent of the band uniformity. The woman playing keyboards is on the far righthand side of the stage, and she might as well be in another band. Her tanned, blond Californiate good looks are enough to set her apart from her bandmates, but the distinction is heightened by her white halter top and bellbottom jeans. She looks like she could be playing the Christine McVie parts in a Fleetwood Mac cover band.
Walking back through Emo's inner sanctum on my way out, I see yet another band with a keyboard, this time a thrashy acoustic pop ensemble underpinned by a Farfisa organ. As a former keyboard player, I'm pleased to see this unhippest of instruments being given its due, but part of me is bitter: Oh, now you decide keyboards are cool.
3:10 p.m. 3/17/04
The Caucus Club
The Austin band Experimental Aircraft is running through its set, a loud but languid haze of Percodan-inflected pop. Another one-woman band, they would have fit in sonically as well with the lineup at Emo's, a fact that's underscored by how out of place they seem here. The Caucus is a venerable old building — or one trying to look that way — that would be perfect for a jazz trio or an Irish folk ensemble but which seems terribly wrong for the postindustrial atmospherics of EA. Someone has made an attempt to create ambience with a single sadly strobing disco light projected on the wall behind them; it's not working.
Even more noticeable is the difference in the crowds. The crowd at Emo's looked like any Emo's crowd, with the exception that in daylight you can see how bad people's skin really is. The crowd at the Caucus Club doesn't really look like a rock crowd at all. It includes one family with small children, at least one matronly middle-aged woman, and several ballcap-and-Dockers types. If you saw a picture of the crowd and had to guess what musical act they were watching, you might guess Sting or Jimmy Buffett; you wouldn't guess Experimental Aircraft. One beefy redhead with earrings, wire-framed glasses and a goatee is grooving extravagantly to the band, flinging himself around in time to the music. This sets him apart from the rest of the crowd, but perhaps not in the way he thinks.
3:30 p.m. 3/17/04
Convention Center
Three skinny guys with carefully mussed hair and stylish sunglasses are having a conversation in front of the Convention Center. They are talking a little loudly and looking around as if checking to see if anyone has recognized them, or at least has noticed that they're speaking in British accents. (No and yes, respectively.)
4:10 p.m. 3/17/04
Convention Center
The panel titled "Music Industry Crash Course #5" deals with Writing About Music, a subject I grudgingly admit that I should probably learn more about. The panelists are Jaan Uhelszki and Sylvie Simmons, rock writers whose names I know, even if I can't reel off their greatest hits. Uhelszki and Simmons are both women of a certain age, and their denmotherly concern for the future prospects of the budding hacks gathered before them is charming. It also takes some of the edge off their more foreboding pronouncements. They attempt some jokes that seem to sail right over the heads of their reverent audience, as when Uhelszki recounts once convincing Bachman-Turner Overdrive to divulge their diet tips. (BTO were really fat, see? . . . never mind.) But mostly they lay out a litany of what it's like to try to break into a field in which aspiring practitioners are viewed by editors as "pesky marauders."
The number of young women asking questions is encouraging to the modern-minded person, but the advice being dispensed is not. Editors don't want to hear from you, there are too many writers out there already, and the pay stinks. Though I am in fact charmed by Uhelszki and Simmons, I'm also depressed. As it turns out, I know entirely too much about this. I leave the Convention Center with Jaan Uhelszki's words ringing in my ears, a warning that is always true to the music writer, but never more so than at South by Southwest: "Rock stars are not our friends."
UPDATED: Wed. 3/17/04
Joining the Swollen Circus
11 p.m. 3/16/04
The Hole in the Wall
Mike Hall's band, the Woodpeckers, has just finished a three-song set, and Walter Salas-Humara's band, the Silos, is setting up to start one. This is the Swollen Circus, an annual SXSW music conference warm-up that Hall and Salas-Humara have been doing for years. As if within five days we're not all going to be made physically ill by the sound of a guitar being tuned.
Still, the Hole is packed shoulder to shoulder. Moving down the bar, I count two conversations being conducted in accents from the British Isles; at the end of it Hall is talking to the president of his German record label. Hall and Salas-Humara are singer-songwriters in their 40s, and both the talent roster and the crowd composition reflect this. Some of the crowd wear the older rock-critic costume of leather jacket, ponytail and John Lennon glasses, and some of them wear the younger rock-critic costume of sideburns, button-up short-sleeved sport shirt and Janeane Garofalo glasses — but they are overwhelmingly not in their 20s..
I run into a guy who stayed at the house I was living in at the very first South by Southwest. There was a time when this would have made me feel old. Now it makes me feel grateful I can remember his name.
Up toward the stage, a tight, tuneful band called Gingersol has finished its set and is backing Boston songwriter Mary Lou Lord, who, though she has been doing this for many years, still looks like somebody decided to give his kid sister a break and let her on the bill. One hundred pairs of glasses bob in appreciation.
A guy — let's not call him drunk, let's call him urgent — shoulders his way through the crowd at the front of the stage and moves as though making his way toward the opposite wall, where 15 bands' guitars are stacked and the soundboard sits open and exposed. We never find out what he was trying to do; at the last minute he's stopped by the outstretched hand of Paul Minor, a fixture at the Hole in the Wall for so long that he should probably be covered in fake-wood paneling. Minor, the veteran of many a drunken — sorry, urgent — bum's rush, calmly shakes his head no, and the guy lurches back across the room in search of a new purpose in life.
Outside on the sidewalk, a writer for the local monopoly alternative weekly presses a small flier advertising a show into my hand. His joke band is playing at some point during the conference. "No," I say, surprised at my own snap. "Ken, I don't want this. " He's completely unfazed. "OK, then," he says, taking it back, "How about this instead?" He hands me a piece of paper the same size with nothing on it but a Xeroxed picture of Church of the SubGenius founder J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, whose face has been replaced by that of David Letterman. "This I want," I say, gratefully.
The Fighting Brothers McCarthy take the stage, presenting me with the same ethical problem as Mike Hall: I know them. Well. I've already recused myself from reviewing one band on the grounds that I wouldn't be able to write a negative review of them if they really stank, but this blog is supposed to be a record of what I'm doing for the next five days, and what I'm doing, among other things, is going to see my friends play in bands. So when I do so, I will note the fact, but take this also as a general warning, applicable to the whole blog: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST MAY BE LARGER THAN THEY APPEAR. (For the record, the FBMc sound like the "Hollywood Town Hall"-era Jayhawks. In my opinion.)
By the end of the evening I've heard references to at least half a dozen parties or nonconference showcases I knew nothing about, and a familiar pang flares in my chest.
Because of its Tuesday night slot, the Swollen Circus has little conference-based competition. But tonight is the last time for five days that I can be fairly sure that something a lot cooler isn't happening somewhere else.
