Awash in Austin's endless wave of song
AUSTIN, Texas - The South by Southwest music conference and festival is an unwieldy beast, a multiheaded hydra that mirrors the Internet - and the culture at large - in the way its fractionalized format caters to nearly every imaginable niche, from Japanese psychedelic to Brazilian hip-hop to regular old American rock-and-roll.
AUSTIN, Texas - The South by Southwest music conference and festival is an unwieldy beast, a multiheaded hydra that mirrors the Internet - and the culture at large - in the way its fractionalized format caters to nearly every imaginable niche, from Japanese psychedelic to Brazilian hip-hop to regular old American rock-and-roll.
It's impossible to get a handle on the whole four-day thing, but you experience as much as you can, as you drift from club to club, pulled this way and that by a text-message recommendation, or the sound of a band on the street, like the Danish ensemble Asteroids Galaxy Tour, which lures you with one song of horn-happy funk before saying "Thank you, good night." Oh well. On to the next.
So here goes with excerpts from my "In the Mix" blog (www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inthemix). It's one man's account of dodging drunken revelers while riding my bike up and down Austin's swarming Sixth Street strip, fueled by caffeine and Beelzebun's hot dogs, in search of a transformative musical experience, and then another one after that.
At this point, I'd have to rank Janelle Monae, the Waco Brothers, Micachu & the Shapes, the Coathangers, and Lady Dottie & the Diamonds as my Top 5, but it may well be that I saw something else equally great and I'm just too fried right now to remember what it was.
Two Tennesseans
Thursday, March 19
Caught a pair of them at the trade show day stage at the convention center. First, one from Nashville - Justin Townes Earle - and then a Memphian, the upright bass-playing hellcat Amy LaVere. Earle, the son of Steve, started off one tender number called "Mama's Eyes" singing, "I'm my father's son, I don't know when to shut up," and generally charmed his way through old-time country and Woody Guthrie-flavored dusty tunes that are sprightly and stinging, with the help of Cory Yount. LaVere, who played Wanda Jackson in Walk the Line, did her excellent housewife's revenge tune "Washing Machine," from 2007's mighty fine Anchors & Anvils.
Back in Black
Saturday, March 21
Black Acid, the Black Box Revelation, the Black and White Years. Black Lips, Blacklisted, Blacklisted Individuals. Black Math Horsemen, Black Skies, Black Tusk. Black Cherry, Black Cobra, Black Diamond Heavies.
Keep 'em all. I'll take Black Joe Louis & the Honeybears.
I originally caught these guys last year under the tent in the backyard at Yard Dog. Since then, the old-school soul, blues and funk revue led by the titular Austin guitarist and singer has clearly been playing out with regularity, and growing by leaps and bounds. The songwriting is coming along nicely, but the main thing is that these guys - all eight pieces of them - are a tight and torrid party band, and Lewis is progressing as a soul shouter who's gotta-ta-gotta a little Otis Redding in him. The new album Tell 'Em What Your Name Is! is out on Lost Highway, and on Friday at midnight they tore it up at The Parish.
Taking Care of Business
Saturday, March 21
Everybody comes to SXSW to take care of business. It's just that with Metallica, that business is bigger than it is for everybody else. The monsters of rock came to Stubb's on Friday night and played a precise, pummeling and extremely loud set that turned the outdoor venue, which is large by SXSW standards but tiny by Metallica's, into an advertisement for the launch of their Guitar Hero Metallica video game. Kirk Hammett, the band's own guitar hero, is a peaceful, soft-spoken nice guy - who, unlike James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, was never a threat to kill one of his bandmates in the 2004 heavy-metal therapy doc Some Kind of Monster. I asked him to play a little air guitar hero, and he obliged. . . .
nolead begins
Who Rocks Harder: The Waco Brothers or Metallica?
Saturday, March 21
Do you even have to ask? The Waco Brothers, of course. The indefatigable Jon Langford and his merry band of Anglo American Clash-meets-Cash country-punks rocked the backyard at Yard Dog on Friday afternoon, bringing out Rosie Flores for Johnny Cash's "Big River" and Joan of Arkansas for George Jones' "White Lightning," and adding a cover of Neil Young's "Revolution Blues" to the mix of brawny (and brainy) rough-and-tumble working-class shout-alongs that are perfectly made for these times.
Monae Monae
Saturday, March 21
Upstairs at the RollingStone.com party at my favorite-named venue of the week, Peckerheads, Janelle Monae demonstrated that she not only has the best hair in the business, but she's also the hair apparent (sorry) to the fine art of Prince/Funkadelic over-the-top black-rock interstellar stagecraft.
"I'm an alien from outer space," were the first words out of her mouth in "Violet Stars Happy Hunting!" and then she was off in a manic burst of hyper-kinetic energy, before slowing it down for a calm and composed and lovely rendition of Charlie Chaplin's "Smile," and then going berserk again with "Sincerely, Jane." And then she crowd-surfed into the sunset. . . .
Metallica Cleanser
Sunday, March 22
"We will never die, no, no, we will never die, we will never die," sang Kip Berman of the Pains of Being Pure of Heart at Emo's Jr. on Friday, in a song that has the same name as his band. At SXSW, Pains of Being Pure (which plays the Barbary on May 6) were playing like there was no tomorrow. The New York fuzz-pop band whose sweet and sad and delightful first album is also called Pains of Being Pure of Heart played 10 shows in Austin. Ten! And after being stymied at the Pitchfork party because I had to go run and talk to Mr. Lif before I could get in to see POBPOH, I finally succeeded in making them my post-Metallica palate-cleanser cleanser. And the ringing melancholy of tunes like "The Tenure Itch" and "This Love Is F- Right!" had just the right anti-macho attack to purge James Hetfield from my system. I felt like I was back at SXSW again.
Diamond Dottie
Monday, March 23
Lady Dottie, she likes to party. Sure, Kanye West and PJ Harvey played at SXSW Saturday night, but unlike those other irresponsible Austin revelers, I was actually working at the time, making sentences in a Holiday Inn hotel room. . . . But I was among the fortunate 50 or so who saw Lady Dottie & the Diamonds perform at Wave, and for that I will be forever grateful.
Lady Dottie is Dorothy Mae Whitsett, an Alabama-born, big-voiced belter from San Diego, and the Diamonds are her generation-younger Brit-blues-loving backup band.
At Wave, a frat-boy Sixth Street bar with a life-size plastic shark hanging from the ceiling, Dottie waved her dove-shaped tambourine and sang Little Milton's "The Blues Is Alright" and Huey "Piano" Smith's "Don't You Just Know It," with grit and gusto. And the blues were indeed all right, as were the Stones-y, sweaty, soul and R&B grooves sorted out by the Diamonds. The retro R&B wave that everybody from Amy Winehouse to Eli "Paperboy" Reed has been riding for the last few years may be destined to crash, but it's still coming on hard and strong in the hands of Dottie and the Diamonds.