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SXSW Report: Lost in Austin
Sleepers, surprises and regenerated veterans bring the buzz for the 2009 festival
By Jonathan Zwickel
Special to MSN Music
The music industry has collapsed. Recorded music as we know it is dead. Music in general is no longer the cultural catalyst or force of social organization that it once was. And this year's South by Southwest was a life-affirming event.
Such is the state of the music union as reflected during South by Southwest, aka SXSW, Austin's annual festival of music and/or orgy of hype: Starting March 18, 1,900 bands played 88 venues, noon 'til 2 a.m., for four straight days.
In the right light, any gathering so massive, consumptive and productive is bound to offer a few poignant metaphors. To wit: Twitter was the buzz band of 2009. The two-year-old mass messaging service was on everyone's lips, iPhones and BlackBerrys. Both Twitter and SXSW are almost endless in their offerings of noninformation and white noise. Amidst that noninformation and white noise, both offer flashes of creativity, brilliant and true. The key is knowing who to trust, what to look for, when to commit and when to move on. The key is navigating through it with style. SXSW is life condensed.
"Frank Sinatra told me, 'Live everyday like it's your last and one day you'll be right,'" Quincy Jones told a rapt audience during his March 19 morning keynote address. At 76 years old, the man with the most impressive resume in the biz radiated warmth and cool, openness and confidence that defied the industry's current state of emergency. "Love sings louder than hate," he said. "You've given me so much more than I could ever give you, because you let me be myself."
From corporate-sponsored afternoon beer bashes to renegade late-night punk parties on the South Lamar footbridge, Q's spirit suffused the Austin air. A Kanye West performance, for example, can be occasion for cynicism, especially at an event like SXSW, ostensibly aimed at breaking bands. But when he headlined a "secret" set at the over-branded Fader Fort on March 21 -- officially unannounced until hours before yet somehow public knowledge all day -- it was pure love-in. With a full backing band, a pair of DJs and protégé Kid Cudi leading a techno-mad remix of "Night and Day," Kanye fostered a feeling of palpable momentousness. Then he brought out Common and Erykah Badu for a group rendition of "The Light," and the several thousand revelers under the tent tipped into a frenzy.
Jane's Addiction, playing another "secret" March 19 nighttime gig in the cavernous shell of a former supermarket outside of downtown, brought a similar reaction. Here's a hugely influential band from the '90s that in recent years has squandered much of its credibility, especially among the hipster elite that supposedly populate the SXSW ranks. Not long ago, lead singer Perry Farrell erred into Satellite Party, an unwitting self-mockery of a band, and guitarist Dave Navarro transitioned from smoldering enigma to Los Angeles-brand Sleazebag© pinup. Yet all inside that old Safeway -- reimagined by the sponsors at Playboy as some kind of warehouse sex club -- were losing their minds. The band was in overdrive, cranking out "Mountain Song," "Been Caught Stealing" and an encore version of "Stop!" as if no time had passed since Lollapalooza '91. Stop the presses: Jane's Addiction made a valid claim for rekindled relevance.
Every year, among a few untouchable favorites and countless working-class niche acts, SXSW carves out space for less-heralded innovators. The Sonics, for instance, made waves around Tacoma, Wash., in 1964 as one of the world's first garage-rock bands. The five-piece, sax-and-organ-led screamers are the origin point of a lineage that runs through the Stooges to Nirvana. For their March 20 set at Emo's, they received the royal welcome they deserved by a small but knowing crowd. They ran through would-be hits "Psycho," "The Witch" and "Strychnine," as well as garage-rock classics "Have Love, Will Travel" and "Louie Louie," updating the danger of unhinged youth with the danger of precipitous old age.
Later that night, Silver Apples played a 1 a.m. set at the tiny Continental Club, far from downtown in South Austin. Rock-crit clichés such as "seminal" and "legendary" were insufficient to describe what in 1967 was a two-man electronic music project from Manhattan. Reduced to just Simeon Coxe III after the 2005 death of drummer Danny Taylor, Silver Apples have played a mere handful of shows in the past 20 years. Wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a wide-brim leather hat and a Hendrix T-shirt, Coxe manipulated a homemade console of vacuum tubes, coiled cables, knobs, buttons and faders and a contraption called the Simeon as inscrutable and ageless as its inventor. The sound was trancelike proto-techno, all analog melodies and skuzzy beats. "You and I can touch each other/We don't have time for the little things," he sang quietly, mantralike.
The night before it was the Bar-Kays, mid-'60s house band for Stax Records, backing Stax stalwarts such as Otis Redding and Isaac Hayes. Even with just a single original member left from the old days, they brought a freshness and joy only possible from veterans with nothing to prove. "Soul Finger," one of the funkiest songs ever recorded, blasted from the stage like an anthem.
These three bands, all of roughly the same vintage, reside deep within the DNA of popular music. Their influence was all over the younger bands in Austin this year, recognized or not.
For instance, without the Sonics there would be no Monotonix, a longhaired, mustachioed Israeli trio that's more performance art troupe than band. Their 3 a.m. show at the Red Bull Moon Tower on March 18, like every show before and since, erupted into a crowd-surfing, beer-throwing spectacle, most memorable for its brazen disregard for tunefulness or personal safety.
Without the Bar-Kays, there would be no Solange Knowles or Black Joe Lewis, the one-two March 21 set at Buffalo Billiards. Solange brought raw, old-school soul to her modern R&B; Austin native Black Joe Lewis and his band the Honeybears teetered between hilarious and scary on "Bitch, I Love You." Same goes for Garotas Suecas, a young Brazilian band that covered Otis Redding covering the Stones' "Satisfaction," proving that faith in your forebears -- and a spastic stage show -- can make the old sound new.
Other bands wrought original sounds from well-worn influences. Endless Boogie -- four underachieving 40-something veterans of the New York indie scene -- sounded like the Georgia Satellites working over the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." They lived up to their name, jamming on just two psychedelic talking blues numbers during their 40-minute set. The Dirty Projectors, also from New York, twisted West African trance guitar around Mariah Carey-like octave pop, a high-low blend that was one of the most unique achievements of the entire weekend. The Avett Brothers, one of the fastest rising bands in America, broke free of their traditional bluegrass instrumentation to enter into the realm of classic acoustic pop. They unveiled the gorgeous "I & Love & You" from their upcoming, Rick Rubin-produced release. The Felice Brothers -- another up-and-coming band of bros with bluegrass roots -- went the more rocking route. The homely upstate New York quintet added electric guitar and drums to fiddle and accordion, covering "Two Hands" by Townes Van Zandt, the patron saint of Austin. Their set ended with lead singer James Felice taking a flying leap into his brother's drum kit. Young New Yorkers Alberta Cross sounded a lot like My Morning Jacket sounded four years ago, which sounded a lot like Neil Young 35 years ago. Seattle's Manoohgi Hi added traditional Hindi scat-sung vocals to triumphant, Wolf Parade-style indie rock and Rusted Root-esque percussion, mashing up East and West, old and new into something incalculable and very surprising.
Along with the Dirty Projectors, the award for most original sound at SXSW goes to Baltimore's Ponytail. The art-school quartet rode into the festival on heavy buzz and, from every account from every set, surpassed the hype. During their March 21 set at Club de Ville's outdoor stage, they were no buildup, all climax. Dueling guitars, machine-gun drums and front woman Molly Siegel -- sporting a Ray Lewis jersey -- singing in tongues. No words, just base human language -- yayayayayya, yoohoohoohoo, guttural shrieks and barks. The music was free of meaning and therefore open to all meaning, and the rabid crowd -- perhaps motivated by last-night-of-the-festival syndrome -- heaved and turned in unison to one of the most exhilarating sets of the weekend.
Earlier in the week, during Quincy's keynote, he implored every executive, artist and journalist in the room to travel internationally. To be understood, to make a difference in the world, he explained, culture must be exchanged in person. He summed up his argument with a witticism that, like the rest, extended beyond its intended application to life, to Austin, to SXSW. He said, "You gotta go to know."
Jonathan Zwickel writes about music for the Seattle Times and is working on a biography of the Beastie Boys.
