SXSW: Day Two

Tweak Bird: photo courtesy of Tweak Bird's MySpace page

SXSW: Day Two
March 19th, Austin, Texas

Today, I embraced the fact that I have a bike with a lock at my disposal. I showered up early and sped off to the Convention Center for a panel called “Bloggers are in Charge.” Unlike probably 75 percent of the SXSW community these days, I actually like these things. You never know when you might run in to Michael Azzerad. Did I learn anything? Not really. But I got to sit next to a Scottish guy in a kilt who was furiously bouncing back and forth from his Twitter feed to his various news and music sources on his laptop. That’s the kind of people you want to experience at these panels. You may not know people like this, but they exist and are dope. So yeah, bloggers are the voice of the modern music generation. They write about what they like. They consider themselves to be the modern-day record store clerk. Yada yada. Unfortunately, there’s no panel in sight about how actual music magazines are finding their way in an online world, a much more confounding topic that could lend itself to some really interesting discourse. Baffling, but whatevers…

After that fun segment, it was time to head over to the Bay Area Takeover party at the Beauty Bar to support hometown friends in their SXSW endeavors. The coffee that was promised was gone by the time I got there, so I “had” to grab some keg beers with the VIP pass that was bestowed upon me. Shame on me for never seeing Thee Oh Sees before, because those dudes totally rip! They set up on the ground out back in the outside portion of the venue instead of the stage and played an intense set to an enthusiastic crowd. I caught what I could, but I was peering through a vast sea of sweaty heads. Up front in the main room, Two Sheds, a folky experimental outfit started off slow and easy, but grew increasingly psychedelic. While I spent more time during their set fighting with my iPhone, I feel that we’ll all be hearing more about Two Sheds in the coming months. They sounded pretty amazing, something that might be better suited for headphones. Next were recent signees to Touch and Go, Sholi, and while they had a few irritating sound issues that stopped the set completely at one point, when they were able to let go and play, they were nothing short of compelling. There’s some elegant, complicated stuff going on in their music, a band defined by exacting taste even in its most experimental moments. Lastly, there was Vetiver playing on the outside stage, and who doesn’t love them? They are smooth, easygoing, and most of all… tight. A perfect band to see on a sunny Thursday afternoon while easing into a day that will undoubtedly be increasingly demanding as we all follow the day’s trajectory.

Speaking of, I hopped on the bike forthwith to once again to hit up the Fader Fort, since I waited in line the previous day to get the wristband and they serve up free booze. Mind you, I will not be waiting in anymore lines for retardedly packed day parties ever again. There’s too much good shit going on to be standing around in this heat to be somewhere a magazine tells you you’re supposed to be, especially when you work for another magazine. However, Fader provided one hell of an unknown to these ears. Janelle Monáe, whoa. On a base level, she’s like an R&B soul singer meets Blondie, wacky little dance moves that charmed the hell out of everyone there, but with pipes that threw everyone for a loop that watched her. It was almost as if everything that we’d seen that had come before this was total blasphemy (although, chill, I’m just sayin’). That’s how creative and talented her and her band were, how off-guard it caught me. I have no idea how they translate in the studio, but if you ever see them come to your town, it would behoove you to go check them out. After that was Amazing Baby, a glam-ish rock band from Brooklyn featuring members of bands like Heavy Hands and Diamond Nights. I stayed for two songs and took off. They were pretty weak, comparatively. No time to waste, I (as you already know) have a bike.

The amazing thing about having a bike and staying just outside of the mayhem of Sixth Street is that one will find a bunch of cool shit happening there, too. And that’s exactly what I did, finding the Gigotron and Videothing.com party at Club 1080 in East Austin, a part of town most cab drivers have told me is the “bad part of town,” questioning what I’m doing hanging out in these parts. Three-dollar Lone Stars and the most amazing lamb wrap (the meat had been cooking for 10 hours) I’ve ever had, along with sets from Mi Ami, Tweak Bird (sadly, everything “bird” these days reminds me of Twitter, the mere end of the English language), the Soft Pack, Real Estate, Golden Triangle, and AIDS Wolf put me in a blissed-out state, knowing I’m seeing all of this amazingly noisy, raucous, unhinged music just a few mere blocks from where I was staying. I even ran in to a couple I sat next to at the church thing just the previous night. And that’s the thing… even in a place running rampant with a million motherfuckers on the make, I’m still seeing many of the same random strangers everywhere I go. Pretty cool. – Jocelyn Hoppa

Listen: Tweak Bird, Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

Things are moving full speed ahead, barreling down and breaking me down (I woke up with like, no voice). This is what we live for! I came up with a system that works for me so I can get the most out of my SXSW experience… by day, I shall be on a mission. I shall go at it alone, running into friends when it works out, but leaving everyone in the dust so I can cover as much ground as one can possibly cover. I personally like navigating these sorts of huge festivals alone anyway; it’s really the only way to do it. I’ve been meeting so many cool people and I had a realization last night, standing under the star-flecked sky with a balmy breeze at my back, engaged in lengthy conversations with people I had just met and people I’d known for years: At SXSW, the talk is all about music. Any and all music, music talked about by people who know their shit and generally have strong opinions. It’s dizzying—sharing in endless conversation with individuals who live for the same reason, hour after hour, day after day… Anyways, Thursday morning I started my afternoon at this deli eating a sandwich, listening to these old pony-tailed Austin dudes play original country-blues at a very loud volume to the lunch crowd who was there to pick up a quick meal before heading back to the office (I was a bit out of the Sixth Street fray.) So this is Austin, live music set up on every corner, at every possible venue that will accommodate a guitar and a mic stand. No doubt this is a special town.

I left there to amble once again down Sixth Street to check out the madness—and madness it was. The Paste party, for example, had a line a few hundred deep, already, at this early hour. I for one don’t intend on wasting too much time in lines; there is simply too much else going on to justify that. I headed back to the Fader Fort, lured by the promise of free beer and the Handsome Furs, one of my faves, and was greeted by the sounds of Natalie Portman’s Sha
ved Head, a five-piece of synth-driven dance beats. They were insanely energetic, each banging away on their instruments while dancing HARD to their own music. I gotta say, I saw them in New York last fall, and I was less than impressed, but they have improved tremendously and seriously fucking rocked it for a crowd that was still half asleep but slowly waking up to dance along with them. Handsome Furs was next, and though riddled with some sound problems, they played choice selections off their fantastic new album, Face Control. Alexei Perry is a gymnast, high-kicking and flailing around her synthesizer, and at one point, her instrument almost fell off its stand, so she used her frickin’ foot to keep it in place until the song was finished. They Courtesy of NASA kissed every few minutes. So cute. Dan Boeckner made the insightful comment at one point that SXSW is about three things: “Doing that bump of coke you said you weren’t going to do all year, text messaging, and free fucking jeans.” I don’t know about the other two, but text messaging is definitely prevalent. (I’m as guilty as the rest of them.) I headed over to the fabulously successful Bay Area Takeover next and caught part of the Heavenly States’ set, mingled with friends for a while, and enjoyed the shuffling indie pop of Bay Area darlings the Morning Benders before peacing out to cross town to head to Filter, where Black Joe Lewis showcased a pretty fantastic set of Austin-bred soul. I left there to again cross downtown (I did a ton of walking) to check out my friends’ DJ Collective, Magnificent 7, who trade off record-spinning duties among the bunch of them, before the super-hyped duo N.A.S.A. took the outside stage, whose recent album was star-studded with appearances from the likes of David Byrne, Tom Waits, and Karen O. They wear orange space suits, play samples from their laptops, and have a green-painted, bikini-clad Martian girl dance on stage with them.

I ended up walking past Fader again, and went in to get free Southern Comfort this time and listen to Tricky for a while, who just sounds, uh, really dated. In time, I made it back to Mohawk, where Dead Oceans/Jagjaguwar were having their showcase. Phosphorescent was playing, again mostly Willie Nelson songs, but this time some of his own compositions too, and then South Africa’s BLK JKS, who played really good psychedelic dub-rock. Akron/Family I’d already seen a number of times, so I went downstairs to catch this band (”I see the future” as my one friend said) called These Are Powers, which was a three-piece that played breakbeats, overlayed with this chick that half raps, half, like, yowls, with this crazy math-rock element to the music. They were fucking awesome, my favorite discovery yet. Back on the main stage were the “secret guests,” who ended up being Dinosaur Jr! I, for one, had never seen them, so I was super excited and some nice lad gave me earplugs, totally essential since I started watching right up front by the amps. Stacked amps abounded… rumor on the street is that J Mascis is half deaf, so he can barely hear his own music unless it’s blasted right at him, and that certainly seemed to be a real possibility based on their set-up. They, of course, fucking rocked it, and the kids ate it up, a sorta mosh pit going off with one lone crowd surfer heading up the energy level. What a day, and what a night… and the whole weekend is yet to come. – Angela Zimmerman

Listen: These Are Powers [at myspace.com]

Tags: SXSW, Handsome Furs, Dinosaur Jr