SXSW Roundup, Saturday (written last night).

10 am. A friend calls. I'm still asleep.

12 noon. Another friend calls. I'm still asleep.

3 pm. I arrive at the Club DeVille, which was supposed to be a brief stopover before hitting Red Eyed Fly AFTER the Tight Spot/Porchlight party. I never made it to the Tight Spot/Porchlight party, unfortunately, because it took me forever to leave today.

3:15. A buddy and I mosey to the Red Eyed Fly. The Mendoza Line is supposed to be playing, but Anders Parker (formerly of Varnaline) is running late. When we come in, he's playing a Rhodes-dominated Sensitive Song, a la Jackson Browne. After cleaning up my puke, we head back inside and find members of the Mendoza Line lounging on the couches indoors. We head back to the door to the outdoor stage, at which point friends from three distinct points in my life converge on me at once in a very odd bit of synchronicity.

4 pm The Mendoza Line at Red Eyed Fly. Oh, they hate each other. Best song was the last one, which is on one of the ML albums I have, but I can't identify right now, because I'm drunk, and they arranged it differently. Anyway, the goateed singer, who was obviously sick as a dog, had lost his voice, but still rasped out a song of pure malevolence at the female singer and completely lost the rhythm on his acoustic. The rest of the band kept the song aloft, even as it teetered on the edge of chaos, and the end result was as raw and beautiful as any live song I've ever seen.

4:45 Centro-Matic at Red Eyed Fly. Goddamn, are these guys talented. The songs are as achingly beautiful as they are well-executed. I loved it.

5:45 American Music Club at Red Eyed Fly. Vudi was decked out like one of Bob Wills' Playboys. Eitzel is sporting a full beard and a bit more weight than the last time I saw him and is, subsequently, the spitting image of Dave Attell. The songs were great, if mostly unfamiliar to me (I only have Mercury and California, and they mostly shied away from those two). I finally realized that I wasn't going to have time to run home and feed the dogs & make it back downtown for Jon Langford's Ship & Pilot if I didn't cut out. Mark Eitzel was announcing the last two songs when I left.

8 pm Ship & Pilot at Antone's. Composed of Jonboy Langford, Tony Maimone (formerly of Pere Ubu), Steve Goulding (the Mekons, Graham Parker & the Rumour), Bill Anderson (the Meat Purveyors), a slight and young Korean woman on fiddle, and the owner of the Yard Dog Art Gallery on mandolin, Ship & Pilot is basically an expanded version of Langford's solo show, Jon & Friends. They played some traditional tunes, a few new ones, and some Waco Bros songs (with Deano Schlabowske, who leapt onstage towards the end, adding a bit of fire to the show). I dunno - Ship & Pilot are kinda disappointing. Langford's best when he has a foil or four, and his friends in S&P let him indulge himself a bit too much. Case in point: when Deano took the stage, the show came alive.

9 pm Dirt Track Brawlers at Sake on 6th. Featuring former Trouble Down South drummer Scott Wiedeman, the DTBs play music that's a bit of an homage to the Sun sound and a bit of a parody. Sake on 6th should never have live music. The patio is just a pit of bad sound, and the management had put tents over everything, which effectively shut out any breeze that might have wormed its way in. The rhythm guitar was howlingly loud and the backing vocals were buried. The sound guy was indifferent. After 15 minutes of this, I finally walked up to the stage and told the rhythm guitar/lead singer guy to turn down and to tell the sound guy to turn up the backing vocals. "You tell him yourself," he said. Pretty rude, but I told the sound guy to work on equalizing the vocals, anyway. I helped Scott unload afterwards, and the lead singer dude gave me a complete brushoff without a word of thanks for the help with their terrible mix.

10 pm someone loud at Club DeVille. I sat in the back and drank beer and rested.

11 pm Consonant at Club DeVille. Aw yeah. I was right up front next to Clint Conley. J. Mascis was standing right next to me (I gave him a High Hat sticker and he looked at me like I was an asshole to even speak to him, which is exactly what I expected). Thank the lord I had remembered to bring my earplugs. Consonant were really fuckin' loud. Chris Brokaw was amazing, and the band rocked like hell. First highlight of the night. When I was getting ready to leave, the guy who owns Tight Spot Records (who I knew by sight, but had never met) came over and hugged me and told me that he wished I'd been at his party. His girlfriend, who's a friend of a friend, came over and we talked about all the famous people we'd met over the last couple of days (she'd met Thalia Zedek and Robyn Hitchcock earlier). Clint Conley joined us briefly, and Chris Brokaw shook my hand when he went by. We made jokes about how esoteric our name-dropping was.

12:15 am The Pee Wee Fist at the Hideout. The Hideout is REALLY FUCKIN' SMALL. I didn't realize that when I came in, I was going to be basically right on stage. I was late, and Pete was in mid-song, without vocal amplification, on the edge of the stage. Yeesh, I felt 2 inches tall. Even though they only had Pete the singer/guitarist and Jon the keyboardist/thereminist, the PWF still did their typical mixture of folky acoustic songs and loud, abrasive experimental noise. Great stuff, and I'm not just saying that because they were using my amps and I know that Jon is going to read this.

1:10 am La Zona Rosa. Camper Van Beethoven was supposed to start at 12:50, so I was surprised that Cracker was still playing when I got there. I was more surprised at how jam-bandish/frat rock they'd gotten in the last 7 years since I'd seen them live. Cracker, which is basically CVB plus Johnny what's-his-face on guitar in this incarnation, continued playing -- and sucking -- until 1:45. The nadir was when they brought some caterwauling woman onstage for a super-obnoxious blues song. I couldn't believe that I was missing the Decemberists for this bullshit.

1:45 am Camper Van Beethoven at La Zona Rosa. It's amazing how different things got when Johnny RockGuitarDude turned his patchcord over to Greg Lisher. They didn't raise the lights or anything; one guy unplugged his guitar and the other guy plugged in, and all the sudden the band was a completely different beast. Sure, they're cashing in on the novelty value, but they rocked those songs like it was 1989 and, tired and drunk as I was, I felt like I was on acid, which, in fact, I was on when last I saw CVB in 1989.

The set, which had almost no breaks:
* O Death
* Eye of Fatima Pt 1
* Eye of Fatima Pt 2
* All Her Favorite Fruit
* Sweethearts
* Balalaika Gap
* White Riot
* Wasted
* Good Guys & Bad Guys
* Shut Us Down
* Tania
* An instrumental I didn't recognize (not in the catalog)
* A song I didn't recognize (also not in the catalog)
* Take the Skinheads Bowling
* Pictures of Matchstick Men

I got out of there at 2:40 and hired a pedicab to take me most of the way back to my car. Now it's 4 am, and I've been writing this up for the last hour. Gotta crash.

SXSW Friday Night Roundup:

2 pm Atombombpocketknife at B.D. Riley's - bad-fuckin-ass. Way too loud for that little place. I met Minmae and Ted Leo while there, too.

3:30 pm Western Keys at Caucus Club. Lazy and sweet.

4:30 Deathray Davies at Caucus Club. Quite rockin'.

5:30 The Wrens at Caucus Club. Disappointing. I think they're a little overwhelmed by their success.

10:30 Something Something Family Band at Cedar St. Courtyard. Booooo-ring country-rock.

11 pm Knife in the Water at Cedar St. Courtyard. Excellent show and very, very rockin' by KITW standards. The pedal steel player is playing lead guitar exclusively, which is odd. David Fricke was right behind me. I talked with him a bit. Quite a nice guy. I did not tell him that his magazine sucks.

12:10 pm The Bodines at Austin Music Hall. Embarrassing. Especially for the 40ish people shouting woo and doing the rich white folk boogie.

12:30 pm Big Star at Austin Music Hall. Fuckin' cool. I learned three things about Alex Chilton during this set: 1) he's too cool to practice; 2) he's too cool to tune; and 3) he's way too fuckin' cool to sweat, even though he was wearing a white oxford under a Stax t-shirt under a suit jacket. Chilton was playing nice with the audience, and the Big Star tunes were fun, despite the frequent mistakes and tuning problems. They tried to pull out some half-remembered tune at the end, so I left to go catch the end of the Mekons

1:40 am The Mekons at Antone's. The sound in there sucks, but I still dug the hell out of "Now We Have The Bomb," "Last Dance," a majorly rockin' "Hard To Be Human," and "Dan Dare." They seemed a bit chilled and tired. They were also calling themselves the MEEK-uns, which is how the Dutch guys standing next to me during KITW were pronouncing it, too. Odd.

A bit more about Mission of Burma last night. They opened with "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate," followed by "Max Ernst." The set also included:
* Trem Two
* This Is Not A Photograph
* Fame and Fortune (which brought a tear to my eye when they changed Roger's middle part lines to "NEW beginning/Happy Endings")
* Train
* Mica
* several new tracks, only one of which rocked mightily
* one of the tracks on Forget, but I don't remember which
* That's When I Reach For My Revolver

First finale:
Penelope Houston (pay attention: of the Avengers) came out and sang "American In Me" and DOA's "Class War"

Second finale:
* The Ballad of Johnny Burma
* Academy Fight Song

SXSW Thursday Night Roundup:

All afternoon: Cherrywood block party

Bands of note:
* The Silos. OK, but I used to love 'em around the time of their self-titled release in 1990.
* The lead singer of Long Winters. Quite Mountain Goatish.
* Li'l Cap'n Travis. Pretty good set, but the sound system sucked.

Thursday evening, I camped out at La Zona Rosa all night because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get in for Mission of Burma otherwise. LZR has a terrible L shape (bands play in the crook), high ceilings, and the muddiest sound system in Austin. Yuck. The bands were:

9 pm Seachange. Overwrought crap. They sounded like the worst of British alternative rock circa 1986 brought to the lowest common denominator. Urgh.

10 Preston School of Industry. Disappointingly jam-bandish. There was a kernel of goodness in each song, but I really expect more out of an ex-co-leader of Pavement.

11 Pretty Girls Make Graves. Good lord, they rocked. It sounded like the Voidoids with the Gang of Four's rhythm section and Debbie Harry on vocals. But somehow current, too. Wow.

12 Mission of Burma. I felt like I died and went to heaven. Thanks to Jon, I met Clint Conley afterwards, too, and he was quite nice.

Oh yeah, quote of the evening.

Spiral Stairs: "All our songs are about d. boon. Well, me and d. boon."

Guy Behind Me, in all seriousness: "Daniel Boone? Is he kidding?"

His Buddy: "Who else?"

SXSW Wednesday Night Roundup:

8 pm Che Arthur. Che's an old friend, and his set was fantastic. He started a bit shaky, but once he settled into it, he was great.

9 The Narrators (I think). Pretty good, lots of feedback.

9:30 a bit of Subset. I love those guys.

10 Minmae. Like Pavement covering Neil Young. Great songs.

I was planning to relax at a Li'l Cap'n Travis show before hitting MF Doom at midnight and Atombombpocketknife at 1, but the club was packed out, and I was tired and near my car, so I just went home.

Dub Selector -- a way to waste an infinite amount of time.

Your tax dollars at work: Ask the White House.

The new High Hat is up!

Another CD-go-round mix challege with the same categories.

D’oh! I Repeated Myself: Feb 2004 CD-Go-Round Mix

1) If you were making a soundtrack for your life so far – this song would have to be on it.
Dexateens – “Bleeding Heart Disease”
Because I’m only willing to put up with thickheaded right-wing platitudes for so long, even from family, some people I know describe me as suffering from a bleeding heart. They’re missing the foundation of righteous anger that feeds my liberalism. The Dexateens plug right into that righteous anger and kick this mix off right.

As a side note, the guitarist and higher tenor for the Dexateens (you can hear him harmonizing and shouting his head off in the background of this song) is my old friend and former bandmate John Smith. If you like this tune, the whole album kicks major ass. Go buy one. They’re even selling them at Wal-Mart.

2) A song from one of the CDs currently in your 1) car stereo 2) portable CD player 3) stereo
Neutral Milk Hotel – “Song Against Sex”
I started this on the same day that I got a couple of NMH bootlegs, and was subsequently in the process of listening to the entirety of their output. This is the first song on the first NMH album On Avery Island, and I’m particularly fond of the way that it brings out many of the fun elements of NMH: surreal lyrics, hyper-but-simple drumming, distorted acoustic guitars, and silly-tasty horns.

3) A song from the first album, cassette, or CD
Beatles – “Wait”
I went with Kiss on the last mix like this, but Rubber Soul was one of my first LPs, and this tune, with the supercool tambourine and George Harrison playing with his volume knob, has always had a special place in my heart.

4) A song without a word in its title.
Wilco – “ELT”
This one’s a pleasantly noisy 60’s-influenced, guitar pop pastiche resting on a keyboard & slide guitar lead off of Wilco’s third album, Summerteeth. It seemed the best candidate to follow the Fab Foursome.

5) A song from the year you were born (we’ll take written, recorded, or released)
Gene Clark – “With Tomorrow”
This one was not my first choice for this slot, but I screwed up the original song (Gene Clark’s “In a Misty Morning”) that went here and needed a song that both fit the criteria and was short enough that I didn’t have to change the other tracks. Luckily, Gene Clark released two albums in 1974. This was from the first of them, White Light, and “Misty Morning” (which is has a slow, dreamlike quality about it) was from the other, Roadmaster. “With Tomorrow” strikes the right chords of sadness and hope, though, and is fucking gorgeous, too, so here you have it.

6) A song with the name of someone in this music swap in it
Television – “Call Mr. Lee”
Shockingly, this ISN’T about our own Mr. Caulfield, but instead Ol’ Bill Burroughs. It’s one of the best songs from Television’s 1992 reunion album and features some lovely interplay between Verlaine and Lloyd.

7) A song in a language other than English.
Serge Gainsbourg – “Ballade de Melody Nelson”
Man, this is a dirty song. I don’t speak a word of French, but it’s pretty clear that Serge has nothing innocent on his mind. It’s the second track on Serge’s concept album Histoire de Melody Nelson, which, as far as I can tell, is about the seduction of a probably underaged girl by a suave French older guy just like Serge. Serge & Jane were still a few years away from “Je T’aime,” but had already done an album together, which, for Serge, meant they’d been knocking boots for a while. This track’s early enough in the sequence that the lyrics probably only introduce the two characters, but just listen to how conspiratorial Serge is when he sings to her. Go find a picture of young Jane Birkin to get into the right headspace.

8) A song with a city or state/province name.
Blue Mountain – “Bloody 98”
Highway 98 runs from Mobile, AL to Hattiesburg, MS along so many unmarked twists and turns that it is (notoriously) one of the most deadly stretches of roads in the US. Due to jurisdictional issues and lack of funding, both Alabama and Mississippi are unwilling and unable to do anything about it. I spent my pre-teen years on a little cul-de-sac in NW Mobile that was separated from Bloody 98 by only a small stretch of woods, but only saw a few of the spectacular accidents.

Blue Mountain were one of the best live shows I ever saw, one of those bands that were so on that no one wanted to tour with them. I understand that they’ve split up due to marital friction between the lead singer/guitarist guy & his bassist/backing singer wife.

9) Say you're planning a multi-day road trip, this song could go on every mix you make for the trip.
Wrens – “This Boy is Exhausted”
The Wrens’ The Meadowlands album is almost too richly layered for a car stereo, but this track has just the right mix of big hooks and subtle support for a road trip mix. I love the weariness of the lyrics, too, and how happy the singers sound to admit that life is exhausting.

10) A song by a local artist.
Knife in the Water – “Young Blood in the River”
KITW are Austin, TX’s pre-eminent creepy spaghetti western dream-poppers. This is an uncharacteristically upbeat tune driven by acoustic guitar and handclaps. It seems to be about a murdered transvestite, and, given their penchant for oblique references, is probably based on a short film from Eastern Europe.

11) A song with a color in the title (negative points for raspberry beret)
Mekons – “Blue Arse”
In keeping with the general tempo ramp-up of this stretch of the tape, here’s a skronky Mekons tune with an overdriven horn section. Yeah! It only takes a couple of listens before you start singing along (in falsetto), “But something must have happened to my antenna!”

12) It’s 5am, your alarm is going off, this song would still make you smile.
Husker Du – “What’s Going On”
Guaranteed to put a smile on (and some wake-up juice in) even the groggiest face, this is one of my favorite tracks from Zen Arcade. I especially love the moment when the piano breaks through the sheer muscle of the guitars, almost as if by pure will. This is a great headphone listen, too – there’s a wealth of buried instruments under the army of guitars.

13) Either a cover you thought was an original or an original you thought was a cover
Mike Watt – “Big Train”
I assumed that Watt had written or co-written all the songs that weren’t “Tuff Gnarl” or “Maggot Brain” on his solo debut Ball-Hog or Tug-Boat?, but I was wrong. This song is by the Kinman brothers, formerly of the Dils and Rank & File and currently of straight-up country outfit Cowboy Nation, on whose album We Do As We Please (which was first released in 1997, two years after Watt’s album!) their version appears. I don’t even think that the Cowboy Nation version has drums. So this is the Flying Burritos-Stones “Wild Horses” situation – the artist who didn’t write the track recorded it BEFORE the artist who did, although the composing artist had been playing it for years in advance of the first released version. Ergo, it is a cover AND an original.

14) A song that is about a specific movie or book.
Young People – “The Night of the Hunter”
That’s right, this song is from the movie The Night of the Hunter. Pretty cool, yeah? The inestimably cool Jon B put it on his year-end mix, and I’ve since hunted down the Young People’s album, which is full of bad-ass pop culture references like this. I especially love the spoken dialogue from the movie and how it pushes back into the song. Other contenders for this slot were Scott Walker’s “The Seventh Seal” and Calexico’s “The Ballad of Cable Hogue,” but this one seemed to be the right song for the spot.

15) WILDCARD
The Notwist – “Pick Up the Phone”
With their blend of hip-hop rhythms and indie-rock sensibility, this band seems the fill the role of wildcard nicely. I’m still trying to figure out why it’s so compelling, but the whole Neon Golden album is full of near-perfect gourmet ear food.

16) A song that has reached number one on a Billboard chart.
Elvis Presley – “Suspicious Minds”
Number One on the US pop chart in 1969, and, friends, I’m completely unembarrassed to admit that I love this song with an unbridled passion.

17) Genre-buster: this song doesn’t fit any genre as far as you’re concerned.
Lowery 66 – “Artifacted”
This is another friend’s band, and I’m not quite sure if there’s a word to describe his blend of folk, chamber-pop, indie-rock, noise, and the calliope interlude that holds it all together. I especially love how it starts with barely a whisper and surges to a truly inspiring “do-do-do” finale worthy of the New Pornographers.

18) I hate the artist, but I love the song.
Mudhoney – “Touch Me I’m Sick”
Anyone listen to Mudhoney recently? Anyone? I didn’t think so. That’s because they were really, really boring. This song isn’t.

19) Wha? If anyone can tell me what this song is about, give me a call.
Fiery Furnaces – “Tropical Iceland”
Yeah, I spent a little while trying to figure out what their songs were about, but that’s really not the point. What’s important is how they blend so many different genres into an unmistakable sound. The whole album is a brain-teaser, and I mean that in the best possible way.

20) Guilty Pleasure.
1910 Fruitgum Company – “Indian Giver”
I try to be an enlightened guy. I do. People from elsewhere approach white Southerners like me with suspicion, anyway, as if they think that at any given minute I could throw on a pointy white hood and start firing up crosses. And this stereotype isn’t undeserved at all, so guys like me have to be as straightforward as we can on race. Which is why it embarrasses me so much to like a song as unenlightened as this, but goddammit does it have a great sound.

21) TV theme song
Nerf Herder – “Buffy Theme”
I was going to go with the more obscure Breeders version, but, y’know, they sound almost identical, and this one was a bit shorter…

22) An unrequited love song.
Li’l Cap’n Travis – “Alone in the Drugstore”
Another of Austin’s finest bands pours its sad hearts into this lovely beer-drinking song of pain.

23) A song you love just for the title.
Flaming Lips – “Evil Will Prevail”
At least it’s honest.

24) Stump the group! Obscuro music classics.
Richard Thompson – “Oops I Did It Again”
This is a cover of a seldom-heard pop tune from the US as performed by an obscure British artist who I suspect none of you has ever heard mentioned before. Game, set, and match, people.