“We’ve decided to still put on some kind of performance in tribute to Alex,” Ken Stringfellow, bassist for Big Star since 1993, told Uncut. “There’s already a lot of people stepping forward, interested in augmenting the band and singing some of Alex’s songs.

“We drew up a shortlist of people we knew were playing at SXSW who might be interested, but I’m not sure exactly who can actually do it yet.

“Jon [Auer, guitarist for Big Star and the Posies] has already spoken to M Ward, John Doe and Chuck Prophet. There’s also Cheap Trick, who are known for doing a Big Star song on a television show in the States ["In the Street", the theme to That 70’s Show], so they might be possible.

“And I’m pretty sure that [REM bassist] Mike Mills is coming to join us. I’m sure there are a lot more people too, who we don’t realise want to get involved yet.”

It looks like a fitting tribute to a wonderful musician, who we lost too soon. Anybody who is in Austin this weekend ought to be fighting for a way into this performance.

Though details are still sketchy, Big Star was scheduled to perform on Saturday night at Antoine’s, and early reports state that the event is likely to take place that same night.

Watch this space.

Big Star Members Plan Star-Studded Alex Chilton Tribute Gig At SXSW is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Advice as sage now as it was twenty-five years ago. Check out the volcanic hair explosion atop Michael Weikath’s noggin. Woof!

How To Break Into Heavy Metal Without Getting Screwed is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

After sitting in on soundcheck with an assortment of other people, the biggest group to observe a session so far this week, Band of Horses decide that recording under such a spectacle of eyes and expectations will not be conducive to the capture. So we are kindly asked, all of us, to leave the studio while they finish up. So since I can’t report from inside the control room this time, I’ve posted a video above so you can listen to one of my fave Band of Horses tracks. Enjoy!

SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Band of Horses is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Let’s set the scene. We are driven to the 23rd-century watering hole by a solemn character with an amorphous face. Once inside, he engages in a life-or-death match of what appears to be holographic mahjong. Led by vocalist Anand Wilder (who’s dressed like he’s applying for a space-age season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race), the Brooklyn psych-weirdos provide the sunny soundtrack for the intense board game taking place. Special kudos goes to the back-up dancers, who look like a Living Colour tribute band.

So does our hero emerge triumphant? Or does his opponent, who wouldn’t be a scoatch out of place on LATFH.com, achieve victory? Actually, his adversary raises a real, truly horrifying question. Will there really be hipsters in the future? Good God, I hope we will have evolved by then. I don’t want my great-great grandkids to live a world where they’ll have to endure smug, thinly-veiled verbal jabs about the fuel-efficiency of their hovercrafts. Oh the humanity! AHHHHHHHH!

Ooof. Sorry about that, the thought of hipsters in the future just made me black out. Watch the video after the jump.

Check the video out on YouTube.

Yeasayer Unleashes New Video, Viewers Wonder Who Slipped Acid In Their Coffee is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Liars at Daytrotter
SXSW, 2010

Three days of sitting in on sessions, and I’m getting way too comfortable on this couch, while the world outside is actively running around trying to fit it all in. It’s a dichotomy, the chaos out there verses SXSW from this tranquil, insider’s perspective, but it’s all geared around the same common goal: Getting as much out of this experience as possible.

But what’s happening right in the studio right now is what I need to really wake up. The Liars sound merciless. “How can they be safe!” yells singer Angus Andrew. The engineers are talking about an AC 15 mic that needs to be checked. I don’t really know what that means, but eventually both band and engineer decide the tape is ready to roll.

This stuff sounds animalistic to me right now. Raw and rowdy. I saw too many light pop bands yesterday, and I realize this is exactly what I’m in the mood for. “We surfed at Malibu” Andrew yowls, with a full onslaught of racket behind him. His pitch going up and up as he screams “hey hey HEY HEY!”

“I found her… with my scissors, this heart fill… to the ground…” he drones on the next track. “I’m supposed to save you now… but my hands are filled…” Minimalist drums keep time behind the vocals, before a keyboard plays a haunting line to deliver it, within seconds, to a dark, raunchy mess of noise. It sounds like a perfect take to me, but they are going to do it again, this song they call “Scissor.”

“Scarecrows on a Killer Slant” is next, and it’s hard and messy. I check my show schedule to see when Liars play again this week. Tonight at 1am. In a dark club, late on a Friday night, this will be an ideal soundtrack. “Proud Evolution” is their last track, and it starts off brooding and builds with a funky bass beat, the vocals repetitive, ending with “You should be careful, you should be careful.” And then it’s over.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

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SXSW From the Frontlines of Daytrotter: Liars is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Holy Fuck, Pattern is Movement, and the xx
Mohawk in Austin, SXSW

It’s Friday morning and everyone is hungover. The sun has yet to break through the clouds and it’s still chilly so the coffee is currently warming us up instead of the Austin heat. The Depreciation Guild just finished a session (yep, they start early around these parts) and Liars are up next, and while we wait, people are swapping stories about what they did last night. For myself, after having left the studio, I made it over to Mohawk, one of the best venues in the city, with great booking and consistent sound, and caught the end of a set by new Secretly Canadian signee, jj. Holy Fuck, who are set to put out a new album this May, was the big draw and they nailed a ferocious set. They play live electronica that sits on the cusp of electro-punk, pioneering new ways of mixing genres; techo beats will suddenly part for guitar power chords to break open the middle of a song, and then a swirling wall of shoegaze sets in at one layer. But it’s always underscored by hard driving rhythms. At any given moment, your ears can unveil new parts and fixations in their music. Literally one of the best sets I’ve seen in months.

The GZA performed next on that stage, and he did a lot of Wu-Tang stuff, which is fun and all, but hip-hop doesn’t work so well live because you can’t make out the vocals. So I went over to the other room to see Pattern is Movement, and boy, am I glad I made the move. I’d never seen them live before. The duo pushes the boundaries of contemporary jazz but also execute math rock in a way that is rarely so compelling. Talented folks, these two.

I stuck around for a few songs by the xx, and as I suspected, they are simply not a live band. The bass overpowered everything else, and in this capacity, it was almost grating to listen to what I normally associate as clean and slick, due to the sophisticated polish of their self-titled record. Deciding to cut my losses, I headed home to get some sleep, and now hear I am, sitting in the Daytrotter control room, listening to Liars get everything just so for the session they are about to record.

Listen: Holy Fuck, Various Tracks [at myspace.om]

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SXSW Thursday Night: Holy Fuck, Pattern is Movement, and the xx is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

The latest issue of Playboy features an interview with Sarah Silverman in which the sexy shock comic hints that former Journey singer Steve Perry dropped an n-bomb when he came to heap praise upon her after a stand-up gig. Referring to “the onetime lead singer of a very popular band from the 1980s,” Silverman claims this individual came backstage after one of her performances and said, “You’re my favorite comedian. You have the best [you-know-what] jokes.”

Of the incident, Silverman said, “After that, I stopped believin’.”

Perry has already issued a response defending himself, stating that he’s “really shocked” and doesn’t “understand why she would go there…I don’t use that word, are you kidding? That’s so derogatory.” Perry, an admittedly huge fan of the Jesus Is Magic comic, claims what he actually told Silverman was, “I can’t believe that somehow you seem to be getting away with all these slurs and the n-word, I just can’t believe how you’re doing this.” Perry also noted that he was by no means condemning Silverman and appreciated her ability to make people of “all colors and all ethnic backgrounds laugh.”

Before the strong anti-Steve Perry lobby steps up and crucifies the man who gave us “Any Way You Want It”, let us remember that Sarah Silverman often makes up blatant lies about celebrities just for chuckles. Case in point: the time she claimed beloved New York City talk show host Joe Franklin raped her in The Aristocrats. Let’s not give this tale too much cred, unless someone uncovers Steve Perry’s klan robes or sexy photos of him in nothing more than a Nazi arm band.

In other news, “Any Way You Want It” is still a pretty kick-ass tune. It’s Friday; go ahead and crank this sucker in your office and get the hell down.

Did Steve Perry From Journey Drop An N-Bomb? is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Dinero Severo is being properly released by nascent UK label 3 Syllables this summer (”May-June” according to the 3 Syllables website), although you can hear the entire thing on Last.fm right now, and pre-orders for vinyl and the extended CD (with three extra songs) are currently being taken. After the jump, a rather strange video for new-album song “Turkish Wine,” including an appearance by Joe Haege of 31 Knots.

“Turkish Wine” – Norfolk & Western from Northern Flicker Films on Vimeo.

New Norfolk & Western Album Coming This Summer: Dinero Severo is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Video: Port O’Brien, “I Woke Up Today” is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.

Of course, the majority of releases affected will be standard major label garbage, so there’s not necessarily a whole lot to get legitimately excited over in terms of real bargains in the short run. UMG includes Interscope, Geffen, DGC and A&M, and somewhere in the midst of those, ya got yer Beck, yer Sonic Youth, Sigur Ros, Teenage Fanclub, and others. 4AD is a subsidiary of Interscope, so you might end up with cheaper TV On the Radio, Blonde Redhead, The National, The Mountain Goats; we’re just not sure how many of these or any other worthwhile band under UMG’s bat-like corporate wings will have a release during the experimental low-price period, or if it will be made permanent, or how it will affect the back-catalogs. Still, anything that makes music more affordable (while no less equitable for artists) is a good thing!

Universal Music Group to Cut CD Prices is a post from Crawdaddy! - The Magazine of Rock.