Dave Mustaine Tries to Out-Nuge the Nuge

Posted on August 16, 2012 by wellsdc

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine seems to be crying out for at least as much attention as the country pays to Ted Nugent.

TMZ reports that Mustaine told the crowd at an August 7 concert, “Back in my country, my president … he’s trying to pass a gun ban, so he’s staging all of these murders, like the ‘Fast And Furious’ thing down at the border … Aurora, Colorado, all the people that were killed there … and now the beautiful people at the Sikh temple.”

(h/t) That might actually be more insane than anything Ted Nugent has ever said. It’s hard to say. I’ve always thought Mustaine came across as kind of a tool, but I do like his music marginally more than Nugent’s.

Stepping out of the hipster bubble: My evening at a Tom Petty concert

Posted on May 12, 2012 by wellsdc

I rarely pass up an opportunity to make fun of hipsters. The problem is, I think I might actually be one.

Last Saturday, I fulfilled a childhood dream by seeing Tom Petty live in concert. He played at the Frank Erwin Center, the only large venue available in the city of Austin (unless you count the football stadium, which you shouldn’t.) Tom Petty has had a long, successful career, amassing a wide array of classic, beloved songs. His appeal is broad and his music is oddly timeless. As a result, he serves as an effective hipster repellant.

Part of my issue with hipsters en masse is that they defy description–in fact, defying categorization is a defining characteristic of the hipster. A hipster is largely defined by what he or she isn’t. Rather than contribute new ideas, fashions, or innovations, they tend to recycle old ones (often ones better left discarded.) Outdated fashions become the latest “ironic” trend, which drives me mad because of its abuse of the very concept of “irony.” Continue reading →

Finland will rock your face off, then kick your ass

Posted on May 2, 2012 by wellsdc

About twenty years ago I spent roughly 24 hours in Finland. Thanks to jet lag, I spent around fourteen of those hours sleeping. What time I did manage to spend conscious, I remember it being quite enjoyable. I mostly remember blondes and a total lack of any sunset.

I also have a poser-ish affinity for European metal bands, many of which hail from the Scandinavian region. I was therefore thrilled to learn that, according to a probably less-than-scientifically rigorous study, Finland has the most metal bands per capita of any country in the world.

It might be worth taking a look at the country, tucked away as it is so tidily up there, kind of out of the way. As it turns out (and I sort of already knew this, but damn), the Finns are kind of, well, epic bad-asses.

History

First off, the Finns didn’t half-ass their prehistory. According to Wikipedia, “prehistoric Finland” persisted all the way up to 1150 CE. While the Normans were conquering England and the Western Roman Empire was celebrating its seventh century of no longer existing, Finland was doing its own thing in such a bad-ass way, no one even bothered to write it down (which is what I assume “prehistoric” means.) People have actually lived there for at least ten thousand years, but as for what was going on before 1150, I guess we just shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it.

From 1150 until 1809, Finland was ruled by the Swedes, who as we all know, can slay dragons with the sheer power of rock.

Yngwie Malmsteen's "Triology" album [Fair use]

I think the Swedish National Anthem was chosen from this album

Sweden and Russia fought a war, apparently over Finland, between 1808 and 1809, which Russia won. Finland became a “Grand Duchy” under the rule of the Tsar. That lasted about a century, until the Finns told Russia to piss off near the end of World War I, when Russia really had bigger things to worry about anyway. Finland fought a civil warbetween communists and not-communists, which the not-communists won. Here’s where it gets interesting. Continue reading →

In honor of the “coming” of spring

Posted on May 1, 2012 by wellsdc

The weather is nice enough most places…

(SPOILER ALERT: I should mention the NSFW lyrics…)

SXSW Diary, Final Entry

Posted on March 17, 2012 by wellsdc

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.

SXSW Diary, Day Eight

Posted on March 16, 2012 by wellsdc

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:

When singers who have been performing for a long time start to forget their own lyrics during concerts; and
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:

SXSW Diary, Day Seven

Posted on March 15, 2012 by wellsdc

[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?

Seriously, 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.

SXSW Diary, Day Four

Posted on March 12, 2012 by wellsdc

We are now more than halfway through the excitement! Part of me is sad to think it will be over soon. The entire rest of me is exhausted, and slightly annoyed at that other part for continuing to make it do stuff.

The day started out cold and foggy. It abruptly turned warm and sunny mid-morning, but this was not an inspiring way to start the day.

Not that my dietary habits are of any particular interest, but I had an awesome breakfast at Kerbey Lane, followed by some aimless wandering. I have been on vacation in my own town for the past few days, but today I must return to my actual house because of some real-world obligations, alas.

Copyright trolls

The first session I attended was “The Undoing of Copyright Trolls” (#UndoTrolls on Twitter), by Robert A. Spanner of the Trial & Technology Law Group. Since this was the only explicitly legal session I’ve been to so far, I’m going to put it on my law blog.

Game of Thrones geek-out

Perhaps the most anticipated (by me) event of the whole conference was the Game of Thrones meetup in Palm Park around 11:00 a.m. For those of you who do not know what Game of Thrones is, I have to ask, like I asked the people who’d never heard of “Firefly,” what are you doing here???

Moving on, Game of Thrones is the first book of the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. It is also a television series on HBO, starting its second season (roughly corresponding to the second book) on April 1.

The meetup was just a chance for fans of the books/show to hang out, talk about the books or show, avoid spoilers, and so on. It was great, after several days of feeling intimidated by my lack of technical know-how and slightly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of my own aspirations as a writer, to meet some like-minded people in an area that is more geeky than nerdy. I speak geek far better than I speak nerd. I happen to have strong opinions on the fundamental difference between “geeks” and “nerds.” That’s for another post, though.

So anyway, I met some awesome folks, found inspiration, learned a few new Westeros conspiracy theories, and fun was had by all.

Chillin’

After hanging out with same Game of Thrones fan friends for an hour or so, I decided to wander again. I’m honestly a bit burned out on panels and sessions. I would rather hang out and meet interesting people. After grabbing a sandwich and charging my phone, I decided to head back to the Samsung Bloggers’ Lounge. I actually found a seat and once again met interesting writer types.

Since the whole raison d’être of this conference is to meet people, that seemed like the best use of my time. Another enticing feature of SXSW is chance celebrity sightings and surprise apearances. As I sat in the lounge writing and chatting, the person next to me excitedly noted that Robert Rodriguez was sitting on the stage. Turns out he was there for a live interview with “What’s Trending,” a web series or something. I have now achieved my obligation to see a famous person.

Actually, I’m pretty sure I saw Rob Riggle walking around Saturday, although his badge had someone else’s name on it. When I stood in line to get my badge on Friday, I stood next to someone I call not-Ben-Affleck. This is because I determined that he was not, in fact, Ben Affleck.

There was also a musician named Daria Musk who apparently built a following on Google+ and plays “hangout concerts.” She played on the stage for a little while and broadcast it (is that the word?) on Google+. I’m not entirely sold on the concept yet. It might have been the song title “+1 Me.”

On an unrelated note, I missed a panel the other day that sounded interesting, “Sex Nets: Pickup Artists vs. Feminists.” There were not as many fireworks as one might expect with those two groups thrown together, but I was more interested in hearing what people had to say. Panel participant Amanda Marcotte has a write-up of how the panel went. Worth a look.

Photo credit: ‘The day was foggy,’ ‘Robert Rodriguez at SXSW’ by wondermutt, on Flickr.

SXSW is nearly upon us! Some advice for the hipsters…

Posted on March 6, 2012 by wellsdc

For the first time in my 12 years, 6 months, and 15 days as an Austin resident (I wasn’t counting, I just remember the date I moved in), I have purchased a badge. It’s only for the Interactive festival, but dammit, I’m going to be one of those cool kidz strutting around downtown with that icon of cool, the SXSW badge.

Let me say up front, I have no idea what I’m doing. I’ve sashayed around the fringes of the ever-growing conference for over a decade, only now jumping partway in. My effort last year to watch the free Strokes show at Auditorium Shores without actually entering the park is a good representation of my level of commitment up to this point. I have mostly come to view SXSW as an invasion. A bunch of LA/NY types who espouse styles that have not yet reached Austin (and will never matter to me) descend on my city for two weeks and turn it into a sea of tight jeans, ironic sunglasses, and (largely) unearned self-importance.

This year, y’all are going to have to deal with me. And I will be saying “y’all” a lot, because it’s provincial, bitches.

I think the interactive festival is a bit different. There will still be a big hipster contingent, but we’re also all nerds (or geeks). There is a meetup session for Game of Thrones fans, for crying out loud!

I spent several hours yesterday creating a schedule on the SXSW website. Just doing that made me tired. I’m boarding my dog for a whole week (in luxury, fear not) and buying a bus pass so I can avoid parking and worrying about making it home at a certain time for feeding and peeing (the dog, not me). This will be an interesting week. When it is all said and done, there will still be five days of music. And I only slept four hours last night. I am in way over my head.

The bloggings of people I know and/or read and/or grudgingly respect have been invaluable. Here are two good primers:

Thomas Myer: SxSW Interactive Like a Boss
Aubrey Sabala: The Common Sense Guide to SXSW: It’s Really Not That Hard*

With no further ado, here is my unsolicited advice to those of you who will be gracing my fair city with your presence for the next few weeks. These are in no particular order.

1. Austin is not like the rest of Texas. All the stuff you read about in the news that’s so embarrassing for all Americans, nay, humans? Aside from shenanigans at the State Capitol, that all happens elsewhere in the state. The Capitol building is actually protected by a force field that keeps the crazy contained to a roughly three-block radius while the Legislature is in session.

2. Austin is not just like the West/East Coast. So stop trying to make it that way, please.

3. We get it. You’re cool. I’d really like to see you wear that wool hat, sweater, and skintight jeans ensemble here in August, though. One great thing about this town is that we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re going to extend that same courtesy to you.

4. Pedestrians may have the legal right of way, but cars are still bigger than you. When you enter a crosswalk in downtown Austin at 5:00 in the afternoon, please try to remember that thousands of people work there, have no connection to SXSW, and are just trying to get home to their families in peace and without developing the nickname “Hipster Slayer.” If they have the green light, don’t try to cross in front of them.

5. If you’ve never used “Texas” phrases before in your life, do not start now. It hurts our ears. This includes “y’all,” “fixin’ to,” “might could,” and “that dog won’t hunt.”

5. Welcome to Austin. This town is fucking awesome, so enjoy it.

6. Chill the fuck out. The six hours you’re spending waiting in line for the Perez Hilton party? You could have spent that time doing things you couldn’t also do in Los Angeles. The organizers of SXSW work very, very hard to put on a kick-ass conference. The people of Austin work year-round to create a kick-ass city.

Photo credit: All photos by author.

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