Saturday

Last day. Pressure is always on to make it count, but somehow things usually have already peeked. Really...how much barbecue can you eat? How many flautas and tacos? What is the threshold of bean consumption that is safe for a human being over four days? And is it OK to absorb all of your liquid intake from beer? Its no wonder that Saturdays at SXSW can feel a little rough.

But you gotta sack up and hit the shows. After burgers at Casino El Camino, a bar that looks a bit like a dark Mayan hell (but pretty cool) we hightailed it to the Hot Freaks! day party curated by a bunch of prominent MP3 blogs (Gorilla vs. Bear, My Old Kentucky Blog, and others...) that was so chock full of great bands, it was spread out amongst three stages in two venues (but we had to pay for beer). Here's a partial list of the bands I did not see at this event:The Rosebuds, Menomena, Viva Voce, Asobi Seksu, Malajube, RJD2, and The Rosebuds (those are just the ones that I had some inkling of who they were). I did see:

• Page France. I like these guys. Very earnest, fragile, quick strum pop with interesting instrumentation (lots of xylophone). Their song Chariot makes my hair stand on end every time I hear it.
  
• The Ponys. Chicago standouts aren't really standing out anymore. They lost a singer/guitarist and just sound muddy live now. Apparently they brought a sound guy with them from Empty Bottle---I guess they did not think anyone in Austin would have the acumen to make them sound like they were playing from an appropriate cesspool... Still, I love their sound on record and hope their new album will live up to their excellent debut. As I type this, their new single, Double Vision is playing and sounds great, so there's hope.
  
• The Young Knives. Left the Ponys early to be sure to catch this British trio. Last year, they were exactly the kind of surprise that makes SXSW so great---we wandered into this little bar where two guys who looked a lot like investment bankers were kicking out great power pop songs. It ended up being one of my favorite shows, since I had no idea what they were about. This year they played on a bigger stage and I had high expectations, which were fulfilled. They do not take themselves to seriously and seem to accept their anti-rock star looks with ties and a noticeable lack of artifice (I deal with it by wearing a tri-cornered hat). But the songs are strong and the show was fun.
  
• Thomas Lunch, Peter and the Pirates, Buildings Breeding. Pete, Tim, and I took a break from Hot Freaks! to walk across town so as to catch Pete and the Pirates in a swanky but small club, the Lucky Lounge. Before P&P was a DC indie rock band with electronic touches called Thomas Lunch. The name sets the appropriate expectations...they sucked. I mean, really, how can you make a song called Land of the Robots boring? They managed to do it, even with the manic lead singer dumping his pants...yikes. Pete and the Pirates were solid, albeit fairly typical indie rockers---very even keeled, uptempo guitar songs...The band that followed was boring, so we hightailed it back to see the "Special Guests from Dallas" who were headlining Hot Freaks! This was a horribly kept secret, as there are not many "big" bands in Dallas these days...plus it was all over the web that the special guests would be...
• Polyphonic Spree. Bands don't get much bigger than this (numerically anyway). Nineteen members on the stage, including a full brass section, choir, multi-instrumentalists, and a gaggle of percussionists. I was pleased the band has done away with the flowing white robes that made them look like a crazy doomsday cult. The new slightly martial-looking black uniforms with heart-shaped metals are a vast improvement; leaving you thinking less about what is behind the music, and more just about its great wide-open vapid beauty. Tons of fun!

After all that, you've gotta recharge the batteries (even though I had a bloody mary, which contained two green vegetables, a green fruit, and red juice, making it the most healthy thing I had consumed in Texas) so it was off for more barbecue. We ended up at Ben's, a place that Pete and I had stumbled into the year before when wandering back from the French Legation. Ben is an affable guy who can cook the crap out of fatty meat! This is the second year in a row that he has offered me the opportunity to open his first franchise. Anyone want to invest?

Taking our cue from Ben's we decided that the final evening would be off the beaten path too. This meant no indie rock. As it turned out this was a brilliant call!

• Budos Band. Brooklyn's big horn and organ collective supplied much of the haunting instrumental music than Bill Murray listens to in his car throughout the music Broken Flowers. Great Afropop and Latin jazz inflected brass jams.
  
• Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. It turns out that half the Budos Band are members of my beloved Dap Kings, a tight group of musicians much in demand in the studio lately (Radiohead, Amy Winehouse, Mark Ronson). The show is a soul music time capsule back to 1968 with all the showmanship that implies. Sharon Jones fronts the band with her incredibly confident and rich voice, but it is the Dap Kings' funky rhythms that propel this incredible show. I've tried to get people to see this group in Chicago twice in the last two years. No takers. Everyone who was at this show will certainly seek the Dap Kings out next time they are here.
• Octopus Project and Black Moth Super Rainbow. This is the other great combo performance that I was excited about when seeing it for the first time on the schedule. Octopus Project is a three person instrumental group from Austin who have a great sound. I've truly loved their albums and their quirky mix of real and electronic instruments. There's nothing real about Black Moth Super Rainbow's sound. Everything is computer or keyboard generated---even the vocals come through a vocoder---but their sound is oddly organic despite its completely artificial origins. Together, the two promised something completely weird. First off, just the look of the bands was crazy. Octopus Projects keyboardist is a woman with shocking red hair that is styled to look a bit like the band's namesake. BMSR's female keyboardist had some sort of furry animal on her head. And behind them were giant glowing anime-styled ghosts. The music suited the otherworldly environment, hard to describe, heavy on the theremin. Very, very entertaining.
• Girl Talk. After a bit of time sitting around outside and trying to wrangle some jet-fueled hijinks (and blindly running into my college friend Jeremy) we ended the whole thing with a dance party. Girl Talk is not a girl. It's a guy, who is really just a mashup artist. No show really. He plugs in his Macbook, projects some funny slides, and presses play. What follows is a great combination of current WGCI hip hop squashed together with 70s classic rock and 90s college music samples. Oddly, Clipse fits great with the Pixies! The club was crowded, so there was no room for me to break dance, but Ashley, Tim, Pete, and I worked up a sweat bouncing like we were seasoned ravers. Honestly, I never expected to be at a dance party with Pete and Tim...but it was pretty reminiscent of some great parties from the turn of the century. (The solstice is close!)

Oddly, I saw the Girl Talk dude in O'Hare Airport. He was trying to get cash out of an ATM that kept spitting "Insufficient Funds" at him. He cursed and walked to the Starbucks line. I was just about to offer to buy him some coffee out of appreciation for the fun time the night before when he pulled out a huge wad of cash. I am glad to see that plugging in your Macbook pays well!

And that's it. Another year. I ended the night watching the freak show on the street with Kyle until 3:00 a.m. Steve was up at 5:30 a.m. for his plane waking me up. Some drunkards coming in at 6:15 across the hall woke me up again. And the wakeup call came early too. So, by the time we landed in Chicago, I was ready to pass out.

Did I wake up yet? No? Just waiting for next March I guess.

Thanks for suffering through this.

J