Category Archives: Music

SXSW Diary, Final Entry

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It’s over. The hipsters will return to their respective coasts, and the music scene will recede to its usual level of cultural dominance. Many Austin businesses have more money in their coffers, and many Austinites probably have raging hangovers right about now. Starting tomorrow, if you want to see ironic handlebar mustaches, you’re going to have to look harder.

This has been a great opportunity for me, not only in that I got to meet amazing people and learn quite a bit, but forcing myself to write about it every day has helped jump start my creativity again.

That said, I’m tired of writing about music. I will simply recap my last day of South by Southwest 2012 by telling you who I wanted to see buy didn’t, and who I saw.

We wanted to see Nada Surf at Waterloo Records, but didn’t quite make it. “High/Low” was a recurring soundtrack to my senior year of college in 1996-97, and I’ve never seen them live. It was a time in my life when lyrics like this seemed quite deep:

Take a look at what’s been done
The killing wound is the thousandth cut
A dead turtle on the beach puts my happiness out of reach

Everyone probably remembers “Popular,” but the entire album is solid. You should check it out.

I had hoped to see Shiny Toy Guns at Auditorium Shores, but again, fatigue and an overwhelming sense of just wanting to chill out kept us home. I had learned that all of their songs I know were sung by their previous lead singer, Sisely Treasure, who left the band last year. I bet it was still a great show, I just would not have been as familiar with the material. (I tried to find a good concert video of “When Did This Storm Begin,” but the sound was terrible on everything I could find on YouTube.

We did make it to the Cult at 8:00 at Auditorium Shores. As you may know, they were big in the late ’80s, particularly with their song “She Sells Sanctuary.” That song has always stood out to me as being one of the most iconic rock songs to almost completely lack any specific hooks (unless you count Ian Astbury wailing “Hey yeah heh heh-eh-eh” over and over again.)

I won’t belabor the point that I suck as a music writer, so I’ll just say it was a great show. As my imaginary Shakespearean friend might say: Off with our socks did they fucking rock.

I even took a cell phone video of “She Sells Sanctuary” that turned out pretty well (see attached).

I thus conclude this chronicle of SXSW 2012. See many of you next year.

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SXSW Diary, Day Eight

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My assessments of the music at South by Southwest this year have been unremittingly critical, and I figured out why. For various reasons, we have been looking for specific events with bands we know well. This is great, but the spirit of SXSW has always been discovery: wandering around downtown, or any number of other parts of Austin, to just see who’s playing. I have on occasion made some great discoveries. This year, though, we are keeping it relatively simple. I hereby commit, in front of whomever might be reading this, that next year I will take in some unknown bands and then say at least a few nice things about them.

Back to tonight: After an attempt to hear the Cult play the Waterloo Records parking lot (you really can’t hear them from across Lamar while a band is playing on the Whole Foods patio, although it creates a fascinatingly jarring stereo effect), we made our way back to Auditorium Shores for Counting Crows.

Let me first say that “August & Everything After” was my theme music for part of the mid-90’s, and Adam Duritz is one of my heroes among singers. I had high hopes for the show, and those hopes were fully realized when they played “Rain King.” Unfortunately, that was the last pre-encore song of a roughly 90-minute set. There are two terms I’m trying to remember, but Google isn’t helping:

  1. When singers who have been performing for a long time start to forget their own lyrics during concerts; and
  2. When bands with long careers end up having to mostly play songs from two or more decades ago at their concerts.

I saw R.E.M. play a show in Houston in 1995, and while they put on a phenomenal show, they clearly could not remember the lyrics to several of their most famous songs. No one really knows all the words to “It’s the End of the World as We Know It,” except hopefully the people who wrote it. When Billy Joel played in Houston around the same time, it was clear no one cared what he had released recently. We just wanted “Piano Man.”

Tonight, it felt as though we waited politely through about an hour of new material for them to play “Mr. Jones.” The musicians were incredible, but Adam Duritz was not displaying the energy that always made them such a great band. He mentioned that he had been partying all week (and that’s partly what SXSW is for), so perhaps he was just dragging a bit. Still, I sensed that they are tired of playing their old stuff. Okay, enough negativity. Here’s the song that had me so excited:

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SXSW Diary, Day Seven

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[Cue the grumpy old man rant…]

Today was a less-than-satisfying attempt to venture into the music side of South by Southwest. The plan, hatched several days ago, was to catch the Shins’ free show at Auditorium Shores at 8:00, then head to the gutted remains of Spaghetti Warehouse at 10:00 to see Girl Talk.

A note on Girl Talk and the overall trend of making people jump through hoops in order to get to see shows. Maybe offering vague hints of a show’s location (or even very existence) is an effective way to generate buzz and get some people to wander downtown Austin and/or the internet doing whatever it takes to get to the show, but that ain’t me. Maybe I’m just grumpy and old, but I prefer to look up a show’s date and time, purchase a ticket if necessary, and go to an entrance of some sort in order to enter a venue and watch a show. That’s how most of the world works, but SXSW sometimes does it different.

But I’ll get back to that.

The worst view of the Shins has the best sound

This was the best picture I could get of the Shins from the spot where we could actually hear them, alas.

As for the Shins, they’re a pretty good band. I get them confused with the Strokes for two reasons: (1) their names are both “The ***” names beginning with “S” and (2) I am out of touch with music. The main observation I can make about the show is that the stage, set up against the backdrop of Lady Bird Lake and downtown Austin, reminded me of the Austin City Limits studio stage, except that this backdrop was real. We wandered the park in search of a good spot to both see and hear the show, eventually concluding that there was no available spot where we could do both. The best sound, in my opinion, was actually on the walkway of the 1st Street bridge, where we couldn’t see anything.

Anyway, the Girl Talk show was part of a Nike/VEVO event promoting a new doodad that Nike rolled out this week. Getting on the RSVP list involved tweeting something to VEVO and getting a password to a website. They never got back to me with the password, but then someone tweeted the password and it showed up on Facebook. The line to get into the former Spaghetti Warehouse was long–not as long as some lines I’ve seen, but pretty damn long. A volunteer told us that the venue only holds 500 people, that there were 100 VIP’s that would get in no matter what, and that over 7,000 people had RSVP’d. Another volunteer told us that if we did not receive an e-mail in response to our RSVP with the subject line “Awesomeness,” then we were not on the list.

Guess who didn’t get such an e-mail?

Where's Fulffy? by mr-tee on redbubbleSeriously, it would have been easier to get into a Where’s Fluffy? show, and they’re not even a real band.

At any rate, I didn’t really want to support Nike anyway, because of reasons.

That left us wandering downtown Austin with no wristbands and no particular idea of what else was going on, and then my phone battery died because I left the camera feature running for too long. Nothing seemed to be going on outdoors, so we went home.

I remember Thursday night of last year’s SXSW being much more active, in terms of people being out and music going on in accessible places. Last year, the Thursday of SXSW week was St. Patrick’s Day, which I’m sure had much to do with the activity. This year, it just seemed like nearly everything was behind one barrier to access or another, except for Auditorium Shores. Again, though, maybe I’m just getting older and grumpier.

Photo credit: Yeah, I took that first picture, but I don’t really want to admit it; Where’s Fulffy? by mr-tee on redbubble.

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Lots of fun at Makem’s wake

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I only just heard about the passing of Tommy Makem, the great Irish folk signer, via Jesus’ General, and I am enjoying the playlist he created in Mr. Makem’s honor. You may also enjoy my playlist, which is still something of a work-in-progress:


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How does it feel?

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Proving once again that my city can kick your city’s ass, the lineup for the Austin City Limits 2007 Festival has been announced, headlined by the coolest human being to have ever lived, Bob Dylan.

I haven’t gone to the festival for the past couple of years. My experience in 2004 led me to conclude that I could have about as much fun if I spent the day inside an oven with an iPod and a large bag of cat dander (I’m allergic). Sweat and sneezing do not go well together.

However, with Bob at the helm, this year is going to kick ass. Suck on it, rest of America!

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