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South by Southwest: Friday, March 19

Did I mention my digital camera got stolen last week out of a casino in Las Vegas after I had accidentally left it unattended for 5 minutes? Well, it did, so unfortunately I have just been taking decent-to-low-quality pictures and videos on my iPhone, which I will share along with the final post tomorrow. Chris Benton has an awesome-quality camera and has been snapping photos all weekend, so he’s been gracious enough to agree to share some with me for the sake of this blog series.

After being out on the town for 3 days, I’ve been better able to evaluate the SXSW scene. I can sum it up in one word: hipsters. That really sums up just about everyone at the festival. Never before have I seen so many guys in skinny/girls’ jeans, ridiculous glasses, flannel and denim shirts, and girls whose hair is often shorter than the guys they’re with so densely congregated in one place. I thought Athens was a hipster mecca, but the crowd SXSW turned out puts it all to shame. I can only imagine Brooklyn having more skinny jeans per capita. In brief: this place is paradise if you’re an indie kid, but if you’re not (a.k.a. me), it’s harder to find your niche.

We met up with our good friend Luke Bedillion, an Austin local who goes to UGA, today and got to know some of his friends. One of them complained of how little representation there is of other types of music scenes at SXSW (he was referring to the jam scene). I couldn’t have agreed more. It’s not like I want every band in town to be a jam band or anything, but I have noticed an extreme oversaturation of that whole neo-psychedelia/freak-folk/electro/etc. indie-rock amalgamations that, in all honesty, tend to blur together in my mind even more than jam bands.

I set out yesterday determined to find a band that actually rocked or had some groove, or at least a band whose members were adept enough on their instruments to really tear into it and bounce off one another. Our first stop of the day was this place called Carniville, which was in this big Mexican-American Cultural Center a little ways off from the main downtown area. There was a giant hut of nothing but cheap American Apparel wear from its factory. (Keeping in mind what I discussed in the last 2 paragraphs, you all should know what that means…) I was in the store for maybe 8 minutes and found a cool bleach-tie-dye shirt, but I waited for an hour for Benton to finish shopping. Caught some music in the main area where the Moonrats were playing, whose harmonies were silky and textural but whose music was sort of amorphous and indistinct. Nonetheless it was a good show to start the day.

After that there was a lull in the lineup for a few hours so we caught a cab over to the main area of town. I hit up the Filter showcase at the Cedar Street Courtyard in hopes of catching Black Rebel Motorcycle Club; unfortunately, I missed their set by about 10 minutes, showing up instead on time for indie band Local Natives‘ set, fresh off their debut album Gorilla Manor. Again the band didn’t really hit me in that spot although their vocal harmonies were undeniably lush and expertly layered. Later on I found myself back at the showcase catching the last bit of psychedelia-meets-classic-pop outfit Dr. Dog, whose set sounded much darker and heavier than the albums I’ve heard.

I headed around the block to Antone’s, one of Austin’s more famous music venues, in hopes of catching the end of a longer Minus the Bear set at the Relix Party, but I was just a little too late to see them as well (I was getting further and further behind schedule with each event I went to, something one has to get used to in the endless sea of venues and shows across Austin). Luckily, the final band of the showcase, Jonathan Tyler & the Northern Lights, a blues-rock band with a soulful Southern edge. Not to say country at all; the band was far from and stuck mainly to rock, traveling a vein similar to the Black Crowes. Whatever genre you wanna label them, I had FINALLY gotten my wish. Five musicians who could all absolutely destroy their instruments, tossing blistering yet tasteful solo passages back and forth and bouncing their musical chemistry off one another with that classic, irresistible blues sophistication. One of the most thoroughly engaging sets of music I’ve seen all weekend, no joke. I guess it depends on what you’re searching for in music, but this show reminded me of one crucial fact: blues is f***ing blood. What’s a music critic/journalist like me to do if he wakes up and discovers none of the current “trendy” or “fashionable” styles of amorphous, rootless, weird-for-weird’s-sake modern music matter to him? I’m not sure what the answer is, but all I can think these days is that being “innovative” doesn’t seem to be the most important factor of music nowadays.

After relocating to a new house to sleep at for the night, we headed back to Carniville in hopes of catching the popular dubstep electronic artist Rusko. Considering how embarrassingly easy it was to get in when we showed up 10 minutes after he was due to take stage, we should have known something was up. Sure enough, they’d announced his plane was cancelled and he wouldn’t be performing at all. Thankfully, this insane rapper called Yelawolf performed a short set with some DJs and kept our excursion from being a total waste of time. His flow was absolutely staggering as he snaked in and out of every complicated breakbeat the DJs churned out, matching each scratch down to the syllable.

For a Friday night, the lineup of bands wasn’t as strong as Thursday’s or Saturday’s. Which was just as well because I was really starting to reel from SXSW-induced exhaustion. Muse was playing at Stubb’s but I’d learned enough at this point to know I wasn’t going to be allowed entry. We saw some pretty bad screamo-sounding band and some OK-but-not-flooring Hawaiian bands before Luke convinced me to tag along with his local pals to this place out on the East Side of Austin, the Broken Neck, which was essentially a warehouse room covered ceiling to floor in graffiti. With a name like that I should have known what I was getting into: a hardcore punk show. I counted about 6 bona fide tall, spiky, dyed mohawks. Although for some reason I was expecting more screamo, I was pleasantly surprised. The hardcore punk bands that played — Slave Scene followed by Total Abuse — churned out raw, noisy, and most importantly REAL punk rock. It was a completely different slice of Austin than I had seen so far. And of course there was moshing galore, but the hardcore punk crowd at the venue was incredibly friendly and welcoming, especially to a non-punk non-local such as myself.

As usual I have rambled for far longer than I’d anticipated. Time to hit the town for our fourth and final day. I’ll be back tomorrow.