SXSW03 Recap, or It's Not Too Loud But Perhaps I *am* Too Old, or Anti-Camera NaziWeasels Ripped My Flesh

My friend Jay and I have just returned from our third annual trip to the South By Southwest music festival where we register for all-access badges and pretend like we're music industry bigwigs.

Bad Omen - The smokehouse in La Grange, which is just a little beyond the midway point of the drive from Houston to Austin and which is the traditional source of SXSW beef jerky is now inexplicably closed. Out of business. Kaput. No warning, no explanation, it's just deserted. As a result, I am forced to buy a $4 bowl of beef jerky at the Gingerman in Austin, and while it's not bad, it does seem a little pricey for the quantity, and I'm none too happy about it, (see photo insert).

But at least the Gingerman is a rock of stability in uncertain times. They still have a wall full of beer taps, a really cool juke box, and the friendly barmaid Hillary who actually remembered us from last year, and the year before, and the year before, and... well, geesh, it *feels* like a home away from home. And okay, I guess the jerky was pretty tasty after all.

Wednesday 3/12 - Day one of the musical festivities started more with a whimper than a bang. The must-see list didn't really have anybody on it until 11 PM, but there were plenty of unknowns starting at 8, so we did some blind sampling. Power Squid was a band with a really cool name, so we started there. We were back on 6th street after two songs. We wandered into a bar called "Friends" and caught a couple of songs from a band called Jabarvy, and musically, I'd describe them as a sort of jazz-pop fusion of Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Paul Harvey. They were talented, I guess, but they didn't really impress me with my short attention span. I suppose I watched too much MTV growing up. All those quick edits and whatnot.

So, just when I was about to lose all hope, throw up my hands in disgust, tear up my badge and return home, a miracle happened:

A street musician who looked and sounded an awful lot like Bootsy Collins! He played a mean bass and spoke the universal language of funk! You probably can't make it out in the photo, but the glasses say "COOL", and he was, in a word, um, cool. Waycool, even.

So, the energies changed. Good things were starting to happen. Another siren song: wafting out onto the street from a club called the Chuggin' Monkey, I heard a familiar tune. What was it? That song... I know that song from long ago... Can it be? The band was called Freebleeder, and it was the last song of their set, and it was a spectacular, gut-wrenching cover of Paula Abdul's "Straight Up." Good things were indeed starting to happen now.

Wandering down the street, we ended up at the Iron Cactus club. The band was The Lovelies. And I was instantly smitten. They struck me as a more-accessible, pop-friendly version of The Breeders. Noisy guitars, sweet catchy melodies, and hey! They were babes! A winning combination if you ask me.

They were followed by The Rosenbergs, which was a nice segway because they were damn good power-pop band. True, they had no babes in the band, but musically they were mighty tasty. Power pop, when it's good, can be mighty good for the soul.

And speaking of segways, it was probably around this time that Jay or I first mentioned to the other that one of those Ginger/Segway devices would be a nice thing to have right about now. It's only Day 1 and already the dawgs are howling. Damn, I'm getting old.

After the Rosenbergs we headed for Emo's to catch our first must-see show: the Jungle Brothers:

... and they truly rocked the hizzouse. They were followed by ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, which I personally rank as the second greatest performance of the festival. No snapshot I could paste here would do them justice, and my crappy video clip was from such a poor vantage point that it's not worth the bandwidth. Thus begins my first official complaint about  my camera misfortune on this trip: whereas last year I was able to lug my camcorder around almost everywhere unimpeded, this year the anti-camera nazis were out in force, resulting in virtually NO decent video, and really crappy low-tech photos, either from a crappy disposable camera when it was allowed, or from a pair of binoculars with a really low-grade digital camera cleverly concealed inside.

Thursday 3/13 - The festival keynote speech was to be given by Daniel Lanois. I'm a big fan of his. He has produced many of the greatest albums of the last 20 years (think: the biggest albums by Peter Gabriel and U2, as well as gems by the Neville Brothers, Luscious Jackson, Robbie Robertson, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, and many more you would probably know), and he has a couple of solo albums of his own that received no commercial success but are still ranked among my stranded-on-a-desert-island favorites. But before he comes out to speak, there is a performance by Cedell Davis, who, truthfully, I had never heard of, and I didn't see why he warranted such a primo showcase spot. But that's him there in the picture, playing a fairly sloppy slide guitar with a butterknife, joined on fairly sloppy bass by REM's Peter Buck. Sure, he's an old bluesman, and that itself warrants a certain amount of respect, but really, the performance wasn't very good. I suppose I'll reserve total condemnation, since Peter Buck likes him, and obviously *somebody* believed he should effectively "open" the music fest with this performance, but I wasn't impressed.

Another panel later in the day: Liz Phair gave a short performance and an interview. Here's a picture from my attempted video capture which was ultimately shut down by festival security who publicly humiliated me but at least let me keep my camera and tape. She's got a new album coming out soon, after about a 5-year hiatus, and apparently she's pissing off a lot of her old fans who accuse her of "sellling out" with her new polished, commercial-radio-friendly sound. I don't know nuthin' bout no street cred, but the music sounded okay to me, and hey! She's a babe!

The big highly-anticipated music showcase of the night was at the Austin music hall, and featured Jay Farrar, formerly of Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, Michael Penn, who had his big commercial moment a decade or so ago with the grammy-winning single "No Myth" but who has continued to put out excellent music under the radar ever since, and Daniel Lanois, of whom I have already sung my praises. I left my camcorder back at the hotel, having recalled that last year, the doorman at the the Music Hall was a camera nazi and would only allow crappy cheapass disposable cameras inside, and I didn't feel like attempting to sneak in the camcorder for any of these performances... I mean, I *liked* the artists, but camcorders are expensive donchaknow. Anyway, when we got there, Jay Farrar was already on stage, and what I saw was pretty lackluster. He finished his set, and the crowd in front of the stage parted to let me get close enough to snap crappy disposable camera pix of Michael Penn and Daniel Lanois:

...and I would direct your attention to that weird white thing that Lanois is holding. That's an OmniChord. I don't know if you're familiar with the instrument, but very few rock musicians have ever actually used it in recordings or performance. It's an electronic instrument, and someone so uncultured as myself might even go so far as to refer to it as a "toy", but it's got a very distinct sound to it, generated by "strumming" a sequence of metal touchpads in lieu of strings, and Lanois is the ONLY musician I've ever heard use it... AND make it sound like a real instrument. Incidentally, I rank his performance as my #1 favorite Best-O-the-Fest. And, to cap off his set, he was joined onstage by Richie Havens for a rousing "Freedom" jam. Oh, Michael Penn was pretty damn good too, and he certainly would have been the memorable performance of the night had he not been followed by Daniel Lanois.

We left the Music Hall and headed for La Zona Rosa, which was supposed to have a secret unannounced show by Blur, but when we got there there were too many people in line ahead of us who had also heard about the secret unannounced show.

Friday 3/14 - Had brunch at the Fox & Hound smokehouse/tavern/hellhole. Cold food I can forgive. I can even forgive the fifteen minute turnaround between the phrase "check please" and the reappearance of the waitress, since they were pretty busy. But explosive diarrhea is an unpardonable sin.

Kinda sorta got to see Kevin Mckinney of Soulhat and Darin Murphy of Darin Murphy at an in-store performance at Jupiter Records, but we were actually on a quest to find a Mailboxes Etc. store so Jay could mail some postcards to the Netherlands.

Later that evening we saw Nerf Herder at Emo's, which I guess you could call Classic Nerd Rock of the 90s (see photo left). Highly entertaining. They played their big hit, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer theme song, as well as their feelgood hits "NoseRing Girl" and "Van Halen". The lead vocalist introduced himself as Randy Quaid, although personally he reminds me more of Kevin from "Just Shoot Me". From Emo's we headed to Stubb's to catch Austin buzz-band Spoon, which I would rank somewhere in the blurry nether-regions of the 3rd-to-5th greatest performances of the festival. This ranking may be negatively weighted by the fact that were were located just on the perimeter of the sphere of influence.

Jay crapped out shortly after this performance, but I was determined to defy nature, to rage against the aging machine, and to crawl back to Emo's to catch a performance by a band I've been reading a lot about lately: Me First and the Gimme Gimmes. They are a cover band. That's the gimmick. They are apparently all members of various L.A. area punk bands or somesuch, and as a side project, they perform punk covers of cheesy songs from days of yore (mostly the 70s and 80s). Their set included such gems as Barry Manilow's "Mandy," R. Kelly's "I believe I can Fly," "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from Evita, Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard"... you get the drift. And, to cap it off, they were joined onstage by Satan's Cheerleaders (umm, the link is *potentially* not safe for work, if viewing scantily-clad beautiful women dripping with sin is frowned upon at your workplace). This show also is ranked squarely in my aforementioned blurry nether-regions.

Saturday 3/15 - Aiiieee! Too many decisions! So much to see, so little time! We start by attempting to see Camper Van Beethoven at an in-store performance at Waterloo Records, so that we don't have to stay up for their official club gig at 1 AM tonight. But we're too late to find a parking spot. So we head back downtown. There's a peace rally at the state capitol that started at 1 PM, and it's now about 2 PM, but we figure with the music fest in town there might be some interesting things to see at the rally, so we go check it out. Oh and we wanted to show our support for peace too, after all. WOOOOO Peace!

There's a picture of commie Jay protesting.

Our plan was to do a quick protest, check out the sights, and then kill the next few hours drinking beer at the Gingerman until the official shows kicked in at 5:30 PM. Plus, the aforementioned bartender Hillary was actually going to be performing sometime between the hours of 1 and 5, and we figured we'd show up and be supportive, and whichever one of us she fell in love with, the other would be fine with it and quietly return to Houston with no hard feelings.

So, we are walking off the Capitol grounds and onto Congress street, when suddenly we discover we're in a march. We're marching, surrounded and carried on the current of a sea of peaceful humanity. And look! Over there! I think we have a celebrity sighting. Aren't they the Elizabeth Smart kidnappers?

No, seriously, we're actually in step with the members of the Polyphonic Spree! That's them in the white robes above, and again to the right lying dead in the intesection of Congress and 6th. Every few blocks someone would send out notice that we were going to be dying at the next cross street. Everyone was supposed to lie in the road until some chalk-bearers came by to outline them. I couldn't actually bring myself to die (I'm too *old* for that), but it was quite funny to watch.

We marched the length of Congress and then turned back to make our appointment at the G-Man. We got to see Hillary perform, and I thought she was indeed quite good. As you probably know by now I'm a sucker for interesting cover tunes, and she had Neil Diamond's "I Am, I Said" in her repertoir, so I highly recommend that if you are ever in Austin, go to the G-man and ask her to sing that for you. You won't be disappointed.

Later, we were off to Town Lake Shores for the 5:30 show by Alejandro Escovedo. I've actually seen him several times, and while this wasn't one of his better performances, he's still pretty cool. But the highlight of this showcase was the reunited original Joe Jackson band.

Again, I apologize for the crappy quality of the photos. This one is from the binocular-cam, which, when zoomed to the degree I had to zoom it, is highly succeptible to alcohol-and-fatigue shakes. But suffice it to say he is actually rocking again at, what, 50? If you're only familiar with his "Stepping Out" hit, you really don't have a proper impression of the kind of music he was doing when this band first arrived on the punk/new wave scene. Would it help if I mentioned that the band Anthrax covered one of his songs from this period? It would? Okay, good.

After the Joe show it was back to the Austin Music Hall to see the aforementioned Polyphonic Spree perform. If you read my recap of last year's festival, you may recall that I saw them then, and I raved about them as a highlight of the fest. You may even remember that I had a link to a video clip that I shot, back in the days when the security folks weren't all anti-camera nazis. This year I didn't attempt to take my camcorder to the Austin Music Hall, ever. Not once. For the Daniel Lanois night, I took the disposable camera, which was noted by security and allowed in, so I didn't expect any problems with it tonight. You wouldn't think there would be any problems, right?

Wrong. Tonight, the door guy doesn't want to let me in with even a crappy disposable camera. He suggests if I can't take it back across town to my hotel, I should look for a hiding place nearby, which of course, he cannot be responsible for if somebody steals it or inadvertently pees on it. I'm stunned. I try to reason with him. I *promise* I won't take any pictures with it. Nope, can't take it in. Finally I offer to burn the remaining shots on the roll  right there outside the venue. "Look, I'm using it all up, see?" Click... click... click... He's agreeable to the notion that if I run it down to zero I can keep the camera with me. And he suggests that I should use one of the shots to take a picture of him. So here's the anti-camera nazi at the Austin Music Hall:

(Seriously, no hard feelings... the guy was just doing his job... but still... grumble mumble...)

So the Spree put on another spectacular performance. They are even better and more polished than last year. If you haven'tread last year's writeup, I'll just tell you that they are a 20-some-odd-member band, featuring symphonic instruments along with guitars and drums and a theremin, and a 9-person choir, and they're all clad in white robes, and somewhere I've read them described as being like Up With People on acid. Think of a Pentacostal church service with much cooler music.

Age is creeping up again... gaah, what a long week. But we're NOT DONE YET! We're still trying to make it to the 1 AM Camper Van Beethoven Show, and it's only 9:30ish.

We go to La Zona Rosa. We don't care about the band that is on at 10. We've never heard of them. We care about the bands that will follow. But as luck would have it, the 10 PM band turned out to be yet another that I rank in the murky nether regions of the Best of the Fest. They're called Koester, and in addition to playing some really cool Elvis-Costello-Meets-Radiohead music, they have a GIMMICK, which I thought was quite clever. Here's a photo taken with my Binocu-Cam:

...Okay, it's a little dark, but the reason you can't see much is that they don't use any stage lights. They have fog machines to fog up the air, and then they are all wearing, like, miner head lights. The effect is really cool. They illuminate themselves and each other enough so that you know you're not just listening to a CD, but visually they seem more like spooky aliens or something.

Clem Snide followed at 11 PM. We saw 'em at the fest last year also, but it was an in-store performance so it was pretty well stripped down and shortened. This was the first time I'd seen them in all their alt-country quirky glory. I must say, I have to rank this performance in the murky nether regions of 3rd-to-5th place too. Highlight of the set was their cover of Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful".

...gaaah... legs... buckling... feet in agony... can't make it to Camper Van Beethoven...

...but on our way out, we did catch one last pleasant surprise: MC Honky. As Clem Snide's crew is tearing down their stage equipment and the next band is setting up, MC Honky comes out and berates the audience for the crappy music they listen to. "I am the messiah," he proclaims, and he will show us the light. He then plays the video clip for "Sonnet #3 (Like a Duck)", which, if you have a broadband connection or are blessed with extreme patience, I highly recommend you download from the linked site. Very cool video. When the clip ends he continues to berate the audience and extoll his own virtues, pissing a large and gullible portion of the crowd off, until security guards rush onstage and subdue him, leading him away to the jeers of the clueless.

Big fun trip. Okay I gotta go to sleep now.