The South by Southwest Music Festival announced a bunch of bands for this years lineup earlier this week, which made me nostalgic for my own SXSW experience from 3 years ago (my god, I can't believe it has been that long). Here is a piece I wrote about that experience, originally published in Emmie magazine, the UW-Madison student run music magazine:
The South by Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas is many things: a conference for the music industry, a showcase for labels and promoters, a job fair for unsigned bands, a homecoming for established bands, and a place for people to drink copious amounts of Lone Star beer. My self-imposed task for the week was to discover what the festival was really all about. The following is every interesting/moderately amusing thing that happened to me in Austin:
We arrive in Austin Tuesday afternoon after a 20-hour drive through the night that took us through the mostly-not-so-scenic states of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. My shift at the wheel was from 1 to 6 AM, much of which was spent on an almost empty, creepily straight and flat toll-way in Kansas.
But now, we are in Austin. The first difference I notice is the birds. Listening to the birds chirp, you would think you were in a tropical rainforest (or perhaps more accurate to my personal experience, the tropical bird aviary in the Henry Vilas zoo), but all the birds just look like crows. I have a feeling this is going to freak me out all week.
…
I’m now standing in line with my cohorts Patrick and Peter for a pre-SXSW concert at a place called the Beauty Bar. We had gotten wind of a house party down by the U-Texas campus featuring the punk band Vivian Girls, but seeing as they do not go on until 1 a.m., we decided to stop here first. The information we received said that this event would have free Southern Comfort and Three Olives vodka, something that turns out to be about half true: there is a five dollar cover unless you RSVP before hand, which we did not, and there is not SoCo, only Three Olives. We decide to go in anyway.
The Beauty Bar takes its 1950s glamour/hair salon theme very seriously; the walls are all painted with sparkles and decorated with silhouettes of women with bee-hive hair-dos. The bar is filled with men in shirts that would cost me a month’s pay and women in body hugging dresses. I always thought SXSW would be a predominantly male event, but there was no shortage of gorgeous women in this bar. The lure of free vodka, I suppose. I drink three Three Olives and sodas as we watch The Pomegrantes, an art-pop band from Cincinnati that sounds to me like a poor man’s Vampire Weekend with extra reverb. We move inside to hear the Wild Yaks, a punk band whose most unique qualities are their name and a baritone sax player whose mic needs to be turned up.
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It’s a little after 1 a.m., and we are in a co-op near the University of Texas waiting for the Vivian Girls to take the stage, if you can call the corner of a living room in a shitty house a stage. This venue is decorated with homemade paper stars, the kind you made with scissors in elementary school, hanging from the ceiling. The light show is limited to a string of multi-colored Christmas lights hanging behind where the band is going to play. Some local punk band just finished an aggravatingly loud set, and the already full room is growing more crowded in anticipation of the semi-famous girl rockers.
The show starts and everyone goes crazy. I am glad I am toward the back, as the previously sedate tight-jeans and ski-cap wearing crowd has turned into a full on mosh-pit. A kid in a black vest climbs up on top of the fireplace to the left of the band, and hesitates for a full minute before deciding to dive off into the uplifted hands of the people below him. I cannot really tell you what the Vivian Girls sound like; from my vantage point it is a loud unintelligible mass of distorted guitars and distorted vocals. But the kids sure seem to like it.
…
They say everything is bigger in Texas, but they are completely wrong. Sure, some things are bigger. The average size of a bull’s horns, for example, likely dwarfs that of Wisconsin. But as I take my first Texas shower (not a euphemism), I am shocked to find that the shower head is far too low, and I have to constantly arch my back to get my head under the stream of water. And I’m only 5’8”.
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It is noon on Wednesday, the first official day of the festival. The official SXSW concerts do not start until the evening; during the day there are unofficial day shows as well as panel discussions and a trade show. I decide to check out the full spectrum of what the festival has to offer and go to the most interesting sounding panel, “Annoying Things That Bands Do.” The panels are clearly geared toward educating the musicians that attend the festival, and this one is billed as venue owners telling bands things they shouldn’t do because they piss off the venue. But mostly it is a love fest, with one of the panelists saying he had a hard time coming up with things bands do that make him angry.
As I walk out I see Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke, wearing a light-blue jean jacket the exact same color as has light-blue jeans, waiting in line to get his festival badge. We are all equal here.
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It is later in the afternoon and I am at Red 7, a communist themed club with indoor and outdoor stages. During the day at SXSW tons of free, unofficial day parties are hosted by various organizations, and this is one of them. At the outdoor stage an artist I was looking forward to seeing is up: Yoni Wolf, frontman of the indie-hip hop band Why?. I’m not sure why he is performing by himself or what exactly to expect from his performance, but as he gets up on stage he apologizes for being alone and explains that his band mates are elsewhere, saying “one guy moved to Germany, and the other joined the Taliban.” I am not totally sure if he is joking. The set is a bit disappointing, with Wolf playing five songs on a Wurlitzer piano for a total of thirteen minutes. It is interesting to hear a couple songs from last year’s great album Alopecia with a new arrangement, but the songs didn’t translate that well to the solo treatment, missing a lot without the percussion.
After Wolf is one of the more buzzed about bands of the week, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, who play an enjoyable set of pop ditties. I think this band might be around for a while.
…
When I was at the co-op at U-Texas last night, I was talking to a local about the festival, and he referred to me as “one of those douche-bags with a badge.” At the time I had no idea what that meant; I assumed that everyone attending the festival had the same all-access badge that I had, but this is not the case. These are apparently reserved for media, music industry types, and people with a lot of money. Normal folk either get a 160 dollar wrist band that gives them entrance to any show, or simply pay a cover charge at the door, usually 10 to 20 bucks. The advantage of the badge is that no matter when you show up, you skip the line and get right into the venue (with the rare exception of a show that is so packed there is a line of people with badges waiting to get in, and non-badges are told there is no hope).
This comes in handy at the Central Presbyterian Church, where I am about to go to my first official showcase of the week, featuring M. Ward and Department of Eagles. I show up about 30 minutes before the show to a very long line of wrist banders and cash payers who have clearly been waiting a long time to get in, and once the door opens, all the badges get in and go right to the front of the church. Now I understand why I am a douche.
The showcase starts with singer/violist Anni Rossi, who sings and percussively slaps her viola while playing. The instrumentation is interesting, but her vocal style and lyrics are a little annoying. Next up is M. Ward, who commands the stage with his impressive fingerstyle guitar playing and strong songs. After a set by Department of Eagles, I zip over to Stubb’s to try and catch the Decemberists performing their new album Hazards of Love.
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It is three o’clock Thursday afternoon and I am sitting down in my hotel room shower with the water running. I am sitting because in this position it feels slightly less like I am going to vomit than it does when I am standing up.
Let’s see if we can figure out how I got here. Last night while watching the Avett Brothers play an opening set, I bumped into a couple old friends I had not seen since high school. As we caught up and watched the Decemberists perform their high concept rock opera, one of said friends kept offering to buy rounds of drinks, encouraging me to have what he was drinking: Texas Tea, a variation on a Long Island Iced Tea which involves bourbon and grenadine. This combined with a general lack of sleep, food and water has made it difficult for me to enjoy today’s afternoon festivities.
I am able to make it up and out of my room by about 4 p.m., and I split a cab with an A-&-R rep from Warner Brothers and a guy who owns a company that reissues old albums on vinyl. I cannot enjoy the conversation very much, as my stomach is still aching fairly intensely. After bumming around the Austin convention center for a while, I head over to the Central Presbyterian Church once again to wait for tonight’s show, an Emusic showcase featuring two bands I have never heard of and a headlining set by Grizzly Bear.
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I am inside the church watching The Rural Alberta Advantage, a band from rural Alberta that sings songs about living in rural Alberta. It is a three piece consisting of an acoustic guitarist/keyboardist front man, a drummer, and a “multi-instrumentalist” in the loosest sense of the term, a young woman who plays various auxiliary percussion instruments, occasionally bells or a small keyboard and sings backing vocals. From where I’m sitting there is a man with a large fedora right in front of me, blocking my view of the front man and drummer, so she has pretty much all of my attention. She’s certainly energetic, jumping up and down and dancing when she’s not doing anything else important, but I sort of feel like I am not watching a concert, just staring at a cute girl in the front row who knows all the words and happens to have a tambourine.
Nevertheless it is an impressive set of aggressive folk-rock, and at the end of the set the band walks out to the middle of the church and performs their last song unplugged, utilizing the acoustics of the church perfectly.
Before the Albertans was a band called Girls, which is actually made up of men with long hair. Now it is Grizzly Bear, playing a set full of songs from their upcoming Veckatimest, mixed in with a few older tracks as well. Their church rendition of “Knife” sounds even better than the album version.
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It is early afternoon on Friday and I am watching the Thermals play for a second time this week. Many bands here play multiple day shows and showcases throughout the course of the week, and the Thermals seem to often be playing right before other bands I want to see.
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It is later in the afternoon and I am at the Pitchfork Media showcase at Emo’s, where surf-punk band Wavves, one of the more buzzed about bands at SXSW, is taking the stage. Wavves seems like a strange case of what can happen in the hyper accelerated, blog-focused bubble that a lot of the independent music scene finds itself in.
Let me explain: Wavves is essentially a one man band, young San Diegan Nathan Williams. He has released two self-recorded albums since September ’08, and his most recent release, Wavvves, got very positive reviews from many indie tastemakers, including Pitchfork and the AV Club. But then there was a small but noticeable backlash. A subset of the music blogosphere began complaining about how Wavves was overrated, given too much credit for riding on a lo-fi bandwagon with other bands like Vivian Girls and No Age. The band Psychedelic Horseshit went so far as to show up to SXSW wearing homemade tee shirts with “Wavves Suxx” written on them.
The whole situation seems strange to me. A hardcore music fan getting upset when an untalented hack sells a million records is an impulse that makes sense, but so much anger about a band like Wavves seems misplaced. I mean, they have some buzz, but they haven’t really “made it” in any kind of meaningful way. Who cares if a writer from Pitchfork likes their record and you do not? Yet, in the sometimes insulated world of music fandom, these things do matter.
All this is on my mind as Wavves takes the stage. Their current incarnation is Williams on guitar accompanied by a drummer. As Williams checks his levels, he asks the sound man for “A bunch of reverb and echo in the house speakers. Make it swim, boss.”
All of the songs in Wavves’ relatively short set are pretty basic power-chord strummers, with all sorts of distortion and reverb muddling everything together. They’re like the White Stripes with less catchy melodies, less impressive guitar playing, and lots of reverb. Why did the AV Club give these guys an A?
…
I am at a venue called La Zona Rosa to see part of a Scottish music showcase. I decided to come and see the first band in the showcase based solely on the awesomeness of their name: We Were Promised Jetpacks. Other ridiculously-named bands I was unable to see: The Cute Lepers, Adolf Hipster, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, Beans on Toast, and Pocahuanted.
We Were Promised Jetpacks seems quite surprised and excited to be at SXSW, thanking the crowd for “showing up early and pointing your heads this way and clapping.” They turn out to be a rather enjoyable dance-rock group, sort of like the first Block Party album with a Scottish accent.
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Just past 1 a.m. Okkervil River takes the stage at a relatively small club called The Parish. Seeing such a high profile band in such a small space is really a thrill, and these guys are clearly putting all they have into this show for their hometown crowd.
“Hope you’re having a good time at the 2009 indie-rock job fair,” frontman Will Sheff says as the band goes into a raucous version of “The Latest Toughs” off of Black Sheep Boy (2005).
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It is 11 a.m. Saturday morning and I am in line for the not-so-concisely titled “Rose Mojito’s and Rachael Ray’s Feedback, the B-Side: A Smorgasbord of Hot Bands and Hot Foods,” at a bar called Maggie Mae’s. That’s right, Rachael Ray hosts a SXSW day party, and it is quite popular. I think we tend to see SXSW as a hipster paradise, but it is clearly more diverse than that; last night there were huge lines at Stubb’s to get into a “secret” performance by Metallica, and here I am an hour early for Rachael Ray. The line in front of me wraps around a whole city block, and the line behind me keeps growing and growing. You may be wondering why I am in line for such an event, and to that I say this: free food, free mojitos and The Hold Steady.
The event is surprisingly very poorly run. The folks at Maggie Mae’s initially make no attempt to create a line in front of the food tables, and the people coming in the door all squeeze around them like too many pigs at a small trough. Once I get to the front of the pile, they decide now is the best time to try to start a line, and they feebly attempt to get everyone to back off and file through nicely.
I get my plate of jalapeno popper mac n’ cheese and beer and beef chili sliders on bacon biscuits with tomatillo ketchup in time to get upstairs and see a band called The Cringe. It is an appropriate name, as they are so bad the only logical explanation for their playing so high profile an event is that Ray is either related to or having sex with one of the band members. Sure enough, as Ray walks in front of the stage with a body guard, the lead singer says “Hey, that’s my wife. She’s hot.”
Influential 1970’s pre-punk band The New York Dolls come out next. The original members (only two of them) look like they’re barely alive, but they can still put on a show. Rachael Ray is impressed. She spends the set off to the right of the stage behind the house speakers, doing a head-banging, air-drumming, leg-kicking dance that is a mix between a mosh-pit and that thumb dance Elaine did on Seinfeld. When she comes out to introduce The Hold Steady her voice is almost completely gone. Girl likes to rock.
…
That evening I take in a show on the 18th floor of the Hilton Garden Inn. I mostly just want to see the venue and the view of the city from up here, but the fact that I can sit in a chair during a show for the first time this week convinces me to stay for the first act.
The first act is a woman named Sylvie Lewis, who, according to the SXSW ’09 Pocket Guide, is from Rome. Yet has a distinctly British accent. She plays a set of quiet piano and acoustic guitar ballads that is so far from anything else I have heard all week that whether or not she’s actually any good, she sounds refreshing.
Between songs she talks about the state of the record industry. “Recordings are becoming worthless,” she says. “To stay alive, music is going to have to go back to an older model, of the troubadour traveling from town to town playing shows. I hope it will happen…I think it will.”
…
I am at a bar called Mohawk watching the Mae Shi, a band that cannot decide whether they are an electronic band or a punk band. They are a little bit ridiculous, especially their lyrics, which sound more like metal (“run, run, run to your grave”), but they know how to perform. Suddenly roadies come up and toss a white and orange parachute over the crowd, taking me back to elementary school gym class. After a minute the parachute is pulled back on stage, revealing rapper Kid Static rhyming along to their song. A rapper over a Mae Shi song is a weird combination, but for some reason it really works, and the crowd is going crazy.
It strikes me that if Sylvie Lewis is right, and if music is returning to a time where the live show means more than recorded music, then it is moments like this, spontaneous and improbable, that are going to keep music alive.
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It is midnight and I am walking past Stubb’s where the ‘90’s hit-makers Third Eye Blind are about to perform. For some reason there are quite a few ‘90’s bands here this week (Marcy Playground, Fastball, Jane’s Addiction) and it occurs to me that a good story would have been going around to all of those shows and writing about it. Oh well, too late for that.
A man wearing a tee shirt that says “3EB” on it comes up to me, looking desperate. He must be misconstruing my badge to mean that I have some kind of authority, and he says “Know where I can get another wristband, man?”
On the last day of the SXSW festival, hours after the convention center closed up, this man, who still owns a tee shirt advertising a band that has not had a hit song since 1999, 30 minutes before they are set to perform, just realized he lost the wrist band that gave him access to every show at the festival.
“Sorry, man” I tell him. “I have no idea.”
mattLANGE
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