Thursday

Thursday was what SXSW is all about. GREATNESS!

80 degrees without a cloud in the sky, and we were basking on a mezzanine deck outside, looking down on fantastic bands at a fine day party that featured:

• The Broken West. Perfect way to start the day. Melodic power pop.
  
• Loney Dear. A bit to quiet for this kind of patio show, very fragile sounding poppy stuff. Pleasant... (and, yeah, I checked the spelling...its not Lonely)
  
• Oxford Collapse. This is more like it! Angry, bass dominated, catchy power pop.
  
• Oakley Hall. Hmm. We keep going back and forth here. More pleasant, but weak pop.
  
• Robin Hitchcock and Peter Buck. Nearly 20 years ago, I went to see Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians open for REM at the Checker Dome in St. Louis. I bought an REM "Green" shirt. And, a T with a hand-drawn "Madonna of the Wasp" design from Mr. Hitchcock. On that evening, if you had told me that I would be less than 30 feet from Hitchcock singing Madonna of the Wasp with Peter Buck playing guitar, I'd probably have laughed. Yet there we were. Looking at these two aging rockers, in very colorful outfits that only aging rockers could leave home wearing with a straight face, and I was happy. RH still has an incredible otherworldly voice. I used to think that they did some sort of studio tricks with his melodies to make them sound so strong and crystal clear, but somehow also affected. Nothing doing---he does it live and in person. Plus, there's no better banter in between songs than the weird stuff that comes out of his mouth...
  
• Peter Bjorn and John. I was bummed that the Swedish supergroup's April show in Chicago sold out so darn quick. But its easy to see why. Their songs should be too twee for my taste. But they are so darn catchy! Writer's Block was already in the running for my favorite album of the year, but their show takes on a rougher edge making the songs even better. Considering that we were seeing their third show of the day, I was really impressed by their energy on stage. These guys are going to break big...I guess, they are actually breaking big.

As I mentioned previously, there's a lot of marketing going on at the festival now. We saw all of those bands at a single day party put on by Rhapsody and Hyundai---and let me tell you I am happy to be marketed to: free beer, great free food (a taco bar), and trivia contests with really great prizes. When I realized that one of the things they would be giving away was a Slim Devices Squeezebox I rushed down to win. After a couple tries (and attempts to buy off the winners) I finally won ("Name this New York group with a penchant for martial arts flix that..." Wu Tang Clan. It pays to know your hip hop!) one of the other prizes and convinced someone to trade me the Squeezebox (a home media server to connect my computer and the Web wirelessly with my stereo to play my MP3 library, in case you wondered). The MCs who handled the contest were textbook examples of how NOT to make your brand look cool. They had no idea about the music their questions were about and didn't know what the prizes actually did or how the giveaways related to their product (online music subscriptions). Its only good to activate your brand if you can do so without looking like a dork...(that is if dorks are not your target.)

The good feelings continued into the night. We took a break from barbecue and Mexican to hit a seafood boil place at the end of Sixth Street where they dumped a mound of crawfish, shrimp, blue crabs, potatoes, and corn on the table and we went to work. I tried to make a Michelatta (beer, worcester, hot sauce, and limes on ice), but it was...not good. Anyway, after brushing crustacean exoskeletons off our shirts we split into groups to check the music. I encountered the following:

• The Hylozoists. These Canadians might as well have been Chicagoans with a turn-of-the-century instrumental post-rock sound that practically aped The Cocktails and Gamera-era Tortoise with an expansive sound that featured lots of vibraphone. Good stuff.
  
• Lambchop and Tosca. I was intrigued, under the impression that this was the electronica group Tosca (featuring either Kreuder or Dorfmeister...can't remember which). What a crazy mix! Well, it tuned out that Tosca is an Austin classical string quartet that was playing with everyone and their mom during the festival. Boring...Kurt has seen better days...we lasted only two songs.
  
• Under Byen and New Violators. The real Emo's is actually two venues, the main room and smaller Emo's Jr. In the main room there was a Danish experimental group that did nothing for us, so we floated into Jr. Wow. The New Violators are a Norwegian group with an 80s fetish. The lead singer looked like the love child of David Bowie and Steve Nichols. Incredible magnetism as he belted out songs that bounced between cheesy 80s synth pop and bouncy new wave numbers. The crowd, which had a lot of hardcore punkers in it, was cast under the Scandinavians' spell. Me too. Fun stuff.
  
• Dengue Fever. Caught a couple minutes of this LA/world band which features the biggest rocker I had ever seen to this point! 6 foot 6 bass player with a four-foot beard!
  
• NOMO. What do you do if you are a marching band geek in Ann Arbor during the off-season? Why, start a great Afropop band, of course. Fela Kuti would be proud of these pasty players. The incredibly diverse crowd was going crazy to the jagged rhythms. One guy who looked like the evil spawn of Paulie Shore and Bono, dancing like a crack-addled snake as he shook every joint in his body (probably some others before the show) to the delight of everyone else in the room who couldn't help but giggle at his lack of rhythm. Great show.
• Fujiya & Miyagi. It took a while, but Jeff and I got to what seemed like the other end of town for this English funky electronic band's last set. Think Neu!, Talking Heads, and KC and the Sunshine band on thorazine... A solid groove in a colorful, smoky nightclub setting.
  
• Sunshine Underground. After F&M the schedule said "Special Guests" so we stuck around to see who would show up. It paid off as the next band was a current NME darling---the next big thing to come out of the UK. They were great. Britpop with a punky edge---very early Blur.
  
• The Gossip. We got back to Emo's to sneak into the jam-packed crowd who were witnessing The Gossip...a groove-heavy punk band whose singer has a great soulful singing voice...and happens to weigh over 300 pounds.We got there just in time to see her shed the moo moo to strut up and down the stage in her undies. The crowd LOVED it...
  
• Voxtrot. Another Austin group set to get big. Strong songwriting. In the end, they lack any grit---too sugary, but it is a pop sound that could crossover and sell a lot of records.

Well, that was more like it! Peter Bjorn and John, Nomo, Fujiya & Miyagi, and Sunshine Underground are were all great shows that I'll not soon forget. Unfortunately, The Gossip are probably burned into my brain for life...the visuals anyway...