texas livestock: mincetapes does austin

sxsw roundup roundup
pt. 1 (tuesday-wednesday)
pt. 2 (thursday)
pt. 3 (friday)
pt. 4 (saturday-sunday)

and just for posteriority, these are the bands i (mostly) saw (best ones bolded):

A-Trak, Billy Bragg, The Blow, Bon Iver, The Clipse, DeVotchKa, Diplo, El Guincho, Explorer's Club, Freezepop, Hanne Hukkelberg, Holy Fuck, Innerpartysystem, Jeff Hanson, Jeffrey Lewis and the Jitters, Jens Lekman, Kaki King, Kelley Stoltz, Kimya Dawson, Lindstrøm, Lykke Li, The Mae Shi, Men (djing), MGMT, Okkervil River, Peter Moren, Robyn, The Ruby Suns, Shout Out Louds, She & Him, Spoon, Sway, Tally Hall, The Tough Alliance, Throw Me The Statue, Van Morrison, Was (Not Was), White Shoes and the Couples Company, Why?

sxsw roundup pt. 4: south by (not west) a.k.a. last plane from jakarta

saturday

the first three days of southby were pretty great, no doubt, but saturday practically blew them out of the water. maybe because of a stacked lineup for the final day of the conference - though it hadn't seemed especially more promising - more likely because we'd finally gotten the pacing and rhythm of sxsw down, as tends to happen on the last day. also, we got our earliest start yet, so as to pack in that much more.

started at probably the best day party of the week, the seattle-themed function at the lovely palm door (which, fittingly, had a vague sort of seaside b&b feel to it, with its painted wood and exposed rafters), featuring very tasty free "northwest-style" food, free drinx, excellent schwag including emp rock trivia card decks, and, best, a noon-o-clock set from throw me the statue, who gave easily one of the best performances i saw all the week, especially in the rock-band category. totally sweet, fun, bouncy, hooky, energetic pop-squawk-rawk. and hey, that goofily kinetic bell-player is my buddy (and former bandmate) aaron - so great to see him and to see him making good on the rock'n'roll dream. good lookin' out! by the way, though they were plenty loud, this was the only set of the week for which i didn't put in my ear plugs.

we decided to skip the block-long line for the rachael ray party (and the hour-long wait for black moth super-digitalism at stubb's) and went back to the current radio broadcast corner to make some t-shirts (and some more buttons - elvis c., crossword, cabbage, warholized hillary, sister rosetta tharpe.) nava's says no topless frying, which is rule #3 of her apartment. you'll probably see what mine says soon enough. befriended some michiganders in line (hyperkinetic stereokids) who made a flint happens shirt. then to the fort in search of free ice cream (sandwiches!), free drinks (green yuck!), and a wristband for nava, and also a david banner
set that never materialized. (not sure what happened there.) we waited around anyway though, and soon lykke li came on, looking much fresher and more confident than when we'd seen her earlier, and played a substantially more enjoyable (though not all that many songs longer) set that considerably improved my opinion of her, so i'm glad we caught it.

after that though we skedaddled to lambert's to finally watch the explorer's club, whom i'd narrowly missed seeing twice so far. it was well worth the wait and effort, as they're so sunny and good-natured and goofy on stage that it's pretty impossible not to have a good time watching them (with free corn mini-muffins to boot!) their (mid-to-late period) beach boys fixation is so over-the-top it's almost preposterous, but they've got what it takes to pull it off - upwards of three fully competent vocalists, a general genially scruffy appearance including at least one dude with shaggy blond shoulder-length locks, a trove of secret-weapon instruments from lap-steel to sleighbells, and, crucially, some pretty darned effective melodies. not sure if anything quite tops "forever" (which is itself an undeniable pastiche), but several of 'em came close, and if nothing else their set-closing "johnny b. goode" cover (which had me and n off our stools and dancin') cut to the good-vibes essence of rock'n'roll.

next stop the fire hall (or something), where a small circle was huddled in rapt attention around local-ish (dallas?) hip-hop posse ddc, one of whose members (though not the one in the oversized wonderbread t-shirt) declared himself the greatest rapper ever, past or future. well all right. they were pretty sweet, and i'm looking forward to checking out their mixtape, but we were there to see sway, the british-born/ghanaian-raised/uk-reppin' rapper who's probably my favorite mc, and whom i never particularly expected to be five feet away from. his set was shortish but packed, including several highlights from this is my demo - "little derek," with the audience echoing the end of each chorus line, credit-card debt anthem "flo fashion," anti p2p diatribe "download," and of course "up your speed," for which all the place names were changed to austin ("up your speed") or texas ("change gear"), which sort of confuses the driving conceit - some stuff presumably from the upcoming signature, like the goofy but neat "say it twice" (on which he 'repeats everything he says'); a couple of a cappellas and a freestyle or two; lots of audience engagement (mostly getting us to say his name a lot of times); and much mileage taken from the fact that 'sway' rhymes with 'u.k.' and (for his freestyle on crowd-chosen topics) 'rachael ray.' being full of yourself is more or less allowed (/encouraged) in hip-hop, so i can't really hold that against him. anyway, he's just as charismatic and fun and technically impressive in person. hope he does manages to do okay here in the states... if any british rapper could make it he's probably the one.

speaking of rachael ray, we went to her party next - there was no food left by this time, so getting in wasn't too hard (though, i guess, that kind of defeated the purpose), but there were pre-mixed mojitos that, as nava said, tasted just like mojitos except that they weren't good. impressive culinary feat, that. there was also holy fuck, who sounded pretty cool and funky though i couldn't really see them that well through the crowd. (looked like they were mostly fiddling around with things on tables, but in a more energetic and interesting-to-watch way than that typically implies.) there was also dj efrin ramirez, aka pedro from napoleon dynamite, though i sure wouldn't have recognized him - but he held it down pretty well when we were there/leaving, including a good remix of beck's "guero" and an excellent mashup of "closer" and "in da club." and there was ms. ray herself, who took the stage to wish us goodbye and hope that our minds had been blown.

pretty good so far. then it got better. we biked east of downtown to the french legation museum, where one of the best lineups of the week was serenading the beautifully green and spacious grounds of the former seat of local government. we'd rsvp'd but there was enough space for anybody to just walk in, grab a $4 hamburger (skip the epic beer line though) and a free ice cream snack, and lay out on the grass - as we did for most of she & him's very pretty, if hardly riveting, decidedly classic-sounding set - or take a seat under the tent, as we did for okkervil river. actually, we sat (on the ground, forward of the many rows of seats) for about ten minutes before the set started, but by the time the band took the stage we were up on our feet, and pumped. oh man. i'd seen okkervil twice, and knew they put on an awesome show, but i'd forgotten just how tremendously, emotionally intense they are, in the best possible way, with will sheff seemingly pouring every ounce of his being into his singing and playing, and the rest of the band right there alongside him. this may have been particularly impassioned, being a hometown show, but i still don't know how he does it, especially since they had another gig (at stubb's) starting in a little under two hours after they finished this set. it wasn't a particularly long set - the whole party had been running late, for one thing - but it was action-packed, kicking off with "westfall," ripping through several from the last album ("plus ones," "unless it's kicks," and "our life is not a movie or maybe" - whose title, i hadn't realized, is apparently meant to preface the first line of the song), and the rockers "the latest toughs" and "for real." "movie" and "for real," in particular, are just such cleverly, powerfully constructed songs, in ways that translate so well to live setting, with the band wringing every drop of tension and energy out of them. damn, what a great band...

let's see... then we met a norwegian guy in the line for the men's room (don't know if i'd ever seen gendered port-a-potties before - they were even color-coded, pink and blue), who turned out to live a block or two away from where bobby had lived in san francisco. by the time kimya dawson went on the tent had cleared out a fair amount, and we took some chairs towards the back for probably the gentlest and sweetest (and funniest) set of the week. kimya may somewhat resemble a big baby - as she almost overheard somebody saying about her a little too loudly over the hushed crowd - but i'd like to see her actual baby, whose name is panda. probably the best part of her set were several songs from her forthcoming childrens album, including "alpha-butt" (an alphabet song of farts and butts) and song about us being animals too. also her closer, where an interstitial cover of "on the road again," which at first seemed to be an appropriate appropriated chorus turned out to be the beginning of an extended 'impression' of changing stations on the road-trip radio.

and then it was saturnight. quick bite at progress with matt, then off to see hanne hukkelberg at emo's iv. actually she was at emo's jr. (my mistake), which meant it took a while to get in, not because of people lining up to see her, but for the raveonettes/donnas/x lineup happening later on at the connected emo's (main). so we missed the beginning of her set ("berlin" and "cheater's armoury," i gathered from paper-plate setlist), and the room was noisy with street-noise and slowly-filtering-in bar talkers - in all a markedly poor venue choice - but it's okay because everything about the set itself was simply stunning. for such a seasoned player, hanne's not much of a performer, but her shyness draws you in, and introversion suits her music anyway. every member of her band (jazzy drummer, sick fake-hollow-body guitarist, bassist and a very impressive harmony vocalist/multi-instrumentalist) was technically great, and they played really well together, fleshing out the odd and intimate sound-world of the album (most of the set was from rykestraße 68, plus "ease" and maybe one other from little things.) dramatic conclusion of the pixies cover and "ticking bomb," which packs so much into its short running time it's kind of overwhelming. she's truly something special, and it was a treat to get to see her even in suboptimal conditions. go norway.

things did get a bit derailed at that point. nava and i went to check out volume, where flosstradamus, cool kids, a-trak, etc. were scheduled to appear in a half hour or so, and got in so easily (to a funky but only half-full club) that i decided to leave and come back in a bit, so as to check out innerpartysystem, the suburban phillyites i'd at one point been scheduled to play a gig with. as per katehawk[atwork?]'s insistence that everybody should see them. i am glad i saw them - they play a kind of u2-intense, darkly shiny, melodramatic electronic dance rock with a swanky, flashy stage-light show and a big-league professionalism rare at sxsw back-patio tent gigs, and i was duly impressioned, though it's probably not something i could stand to listen to for more than twenty minutes at a stretch - but it turned out to be a mistake as when i returned to volume not a half-hour later there was suddenly a mega-line, mass confusion, and seemingly dwindling likelihood of getting into the apparently now-at-capacity club.

i found myself without a great contingency plan for that slot (i made it through the whole festival without actually carrying a schedule, or anything more than a long-sleeved waist-tied shirt, to weigh myself down), but figured i'd go check out tally hall, a fave band of mark's who i figured might be entertaining at the least. actually it was by far my least favorite set of the day, which isn't necessarily saying much, and is also partially due to the staggeringly overheated buffalo billiards upstairs room where they were playing, but... yeah, they were just kind of bland and musically uninteresting and utterly un-groovy, and not even funny (not that i could really understand the words, which is a problem for this kind of group), cute outfits and nifty introductory video notwithstanding. oh well, can't win 'em all.

was totally made up for by the next band, white shoes and the couples company, an incomprehensibly anachronistic indie pop outfit from indonesia, jakarta (as they say it.) "indonesia has many islands!" a giddily slippery bobby shouted out after one of their songs. not only are these guys from halfway around the world, they seem like they're from about four decades in the past - on the other hand the cultural reference points are so up for grabs that it's hard to say just how much winking calculation (some, surely?) is involved in their pitch-perfect evocation of a particular late-sixties internationalist lounge-chic aesthetic, in everything from their faded press photos and period-appropriate semi-formal wardrobe (white suits; the adorably boyish drummer sported a bowtie and a floppy bowl-cut) to their unabashed exotica-flavored lite-disco and easy-listening grooves. lead singer/dancer/finger-snapper aprilia apsari's hundred-watt beam (puts even rachael ray to shame) certainly wasn't letting slip any inkling of convoluted post-colonial semiotic self-awareness. nevermind that though - she and the band as a whole (grinning and funky-dancing pint-sized bassist, sweetly demure pianist/violinist, endearingly dopey acoustic guitarist - unfortunately the lead guitarist was missing due to late visa clearance) put on a pitch-perfect, flawlessly good-natured performance, complete with an extended, jokey swing-style drum solo. and we were eating it up - it's hard to say whether the band or the audience was having a better time, but it was certainly a pretty magical moment.

and then there was time for just one more set. i'd been hoping for a finale that might approach the out-of-the-blue awesomeness of last year's junior senior gig, and after a bit of deliberation i stuck with my inclination and found it, for sure, in the form of was (not was) out-of-retirement appearance at la zona rosa, which was not merely (as i expected) entertaining and unpredictable but (as i probably should have expected) pretty much mindblowingly great on just about every level. as the grinning, dredded, shade-wearing and be-hatted don was informed us, this was the band's first gig in texas in twenty years and their first time playing with all three of their original vocalists since 1992 - they're (back) together now having recorded what will be their first album in eighteen years. but they hardly sounded dusty.

who is this band again? was (not was) are a project spearheaded by the fictional (white) brothers don and david was, featuring some seriously soulful (black) r&b vocalists (notably sweet pea atkinson and sir harry bowens, who for this gig were seriously decked out in natty three-piece suits and fedoras) and assorted other mostly detroit-based musicians (as don made sure to point out), who in this case included a completely sick (black) electric guitarist (randy jacobs), a no-slouch-either (white) saxist, and, freaking, james gadson, a drum legend (shame on you wikipedia!) whose credits include ray charles, bill withers, marvin gaye, diana ross, etc. etc. i first heard them via my dad's cassette copy of are you okay?, their 1990 swansong (until now), which i mostly dug for the oddball lyrics and weirdo sing-speaking of songs like "i feel better than james brown." also g. love e. (as he was known then) rapped on their cover of "papa was a rolling stone." they turned up again in the early 2000s as an inclusion on the first disco (not disco) compilation (hmm, title?), first shot fired in the hipster reclamation of forgotten '80s semi-disco semi-punk weirdness, and they've also recently shown up in the dj mixes of hipsterdance figureheads tim sweeney and james murphy. so where were the hipsters? watching x or black moth super rainbow or dr. dog or the tough alliance (ha, joke's on them), i guess.

they certainly weren't at this show (at least not the young hipstery ones), where the crowd (not huge, but respectable) was decidedly older and boomerier than your typical sxsw audience, which is only part of what set this set decidedly apart from the rest of the week. i was trying to come up with the right comparison - there was definitely something of the stop making sense-era expanded talking heads about it (say no more!), if david byrne (who in this case would correlate to flutist/vocalist david was, the author of those weirdball lyrics and by far the schlumpiest dresser on stage, though it fit his mildly manic, off-kilter persona) was mostly relegated to the background; an equally semi-valid reference point might be the steely dan of the showboating, talent-studded early '90s reunion tours. actually, w(nw) are in many ways kind of like the dan of the '80s - a point driven home by the fact that don's real last name is fagenson - though ultimately, i think, much more good-natured, and certainly more consistently dance-oriented, if also even weirder and spazzier. whatever - you could also compare was (not was) live to a less outlandish, reined-in george clinton/p-funk gig, or to the most righteously grooving wedding funk band ever.

i'll admit that the new songs (single "crazy water," the funkier "your luck won't last") didn't quite overwhelm me, though i'll give em some time. but they came through with the old jams, including the hits "walk the dinosaur" and "wheel me out," and "i blew up the united states," which medleyed into both "sunshine superman" and "superfly." and pretty much everything got extended with much funky soloing etc. etc. i didn't even mind too much that we'd missed "papa was a rolling stone" and (all but the final few moments of) "i feel better than james brown" - apparently this was one set that actually started on time, and lasted until the very end of the allotted hour; the band seemed like they'd have been happy to keep on blowing. just means i'll have to catch them when they come around on tour. sweet!

oh, it wasn't quite all over...we tried for a minute to get into this one party, and then this other party, where matthew was already inside, and which turned out to be perez hilton's party, for what that's worth - funnily, it was back at the palm door, where we'd started out the day, and nobody seemed to know what was going on. it later turned out that robyn had played there (i think earlier than when we arrived) and n.e.r.d. and dragonette (among many others) played later, but for some reason there seemed to be just a dj spinning prince and daft punk while we were outside, trying half-heartedly to get in. i'm not sure but i think we could have made it - i mean, they let taylor hanson in (and a-trak, such a nice jewish boy) - but by that point there'd been enough confusion, and matt came out (with a bag of liquid "schwag" including the new not-yet-available izze flavor, peach, omg, which he was pretty excited about) and we went home. well, first we went to magnolia, where our wristbands weren't good enough to beat the wait but it was well less than an hour anyway, and we went home happy and full of quesos and fish tacos, and glorious ringing in our ears (well, figuratively in my case, thanx muso. plugs.)

sunday

sxsw was over, but we stuck around town for another day rather than rushing for the crowded and pricejacked airport. and we slept in until nearly 1pm, but we still packed in an excellent full day of classic (more or less) austin activities: brunchish at the hallowed salt lick barbeque a bit of a ways out in the hill country, jumping on the trampoline in bobby's borrowed backyard (whilst strumming billy bragg and paul simon songs), strolling down south congress to thrift western shirts and pause in a candy store for gummy fruit, and later on taking in a movie (in bruges) and a final round of nachos and fish tacos at the awesome alamo draft house, before a final round of political conversation with some of the obama folks back at bob's. man, another nearly perfect day... i think it's about time for me to get back to texas.

sxsw roundup pt. 3: i'm not that into music

friday

started off (musically) where thursday had ended - with billy bragg, this time doing a quick three-song set for live broadcast on "free yr radio," though i'm still not sure what that is despite the considerable amount of time i spent in contact with their promotional machinery. this time nava was even awake. there was a delicious soundcheck tease of "to have and have not," and maybe something else, but the set was mostly a repeat of two new songs he'd done last night - the not-quite-xtc-ish "farmboy" and the allegedly title-less clash one - and some of the same stories to boot, but he did treat us with an awesome "waiting for the great leap forward," which he introduced as a sing-along despite then changing nearly every line from the recorded version, including some special "sxsw exclusive" versions. good man good man. oh yeah, we also heard/saw she & him (m. ward and zooey deschanel) play there, though we were mostly too busy making buttons to notice. (i made robyn and jens buttons.)

and then we saw jens! (lekman). well, first peter moren, of björn & john sxsw ubiquity fame. was cute - he did one pb+j song, "paris 2004" - but also just kind of odd as a solo performer. he just walked off stage towards the end of his last song. was hoping for a full-band lekman set, but he just had one female accompanist (on bongos) instead of five. that turned out to be just fine though, making it a little more intimate and off-the-cuff feeling. he's just as charismatic and endearing a performer as bragg is, maybe even more so, and his banter feels less stagy and scripted - he tells the same stories over and over too of course, but he at least acknowledges it, in the unmistakably jonathan richman-esque self-dialogue intro to "postcard to nina" ("tell that story just one more time, jens." besides "nina," he did most of the highlights from kortedala (though not my faves, "shirin" and, what i was really hoping for, "your arms around me,") as well as "black cab" and the so-so "hammer hill." best part, maybe, was the sparse, kalimba-accompanied arthur russell cover ("a little lost"), though bobby didn't like it. but the set list is really beside the point, since just watching him smile to himself is as subtly thrilling as about anything you could hope hear.

had promised nava we'd take it easy on the music, or at least the rushing-around, for the afternoon, so after finishing up our semi-free beers and failing to win shoes playing washers (?) there at club de ville we headed to a parking garage cross-town to see about getting some ice cream and swimming pool action. of course. well turned out the ice cream cost and the pool line was daunting, so we stayed in the shade and played some shuffleboard - five games of it in fact, of three rounds each, which was enough to convince them we deserved free shoes even though we couldn't quite squeak out three wins in a row (even playing against bobby who was attempting to throw his games.) the vaunted santogold was also playing in the parking lot (as well as szwerogold), but we didn't really pay any attention to her, so i can't comment on that.

it was a pretty low-key evening musically as well, though i did bop around a bit at the beginning - catching five or six songs from jeff hanson (including my hands-down favorite, "this time it will"), whose impossibly high, frail, angelic voice (sadly, no match for the bar conversation and street noise wafting into emo's iv) makes for a pretty unsettling disconnect with his fairly pedestrian, quite burly, decidedly non-female physical presence; a couple extended jams from kelley stoltz, who may have some decent pop writing chops (i wouldn't know, as they weren't on display in the last ten-fifteen minutes of his set) but isn't quite good enough to justify so much aimless rocking out, harmonica-slide or no; and a perplexing tune or two from the ruby suns, who dressed like frolicking hippy schoolchildren (basically, like my twelve-year-old self - complete with flowing tie-dye shirts and a plastic bone necklace - n.b. the photo above is actually from a different show), acted like they hadn't quite grasped the concept of performing for an audience, and played as though they could have used a few more band members, multitasking instruments and sometimes switching mid-song for no apparent reason. well, i'll withhold judgment until i hear the record, i guess.

i'm ready to pass judgment, however, on the ballyhooed MGMT, whose 10pm set at stubb's was probably the most disappointing of the acts i was somewhat actively anticipating. actually i guess my expectations weren't too high, since the album had so far failed to excite me much. in fairness, i think the sound was pretty poorly mixed, as you could barely hear the keyboard parts (which are definitely the group's strongest point), but they seemed pretty content being a parody of a big-hair arena rock band (this must have been one of the biggest crowds they'd ever played to.) they seemed so young up there, like a bunch of play-acting kids - which is all well and good, but the songs just didn't seem to be there. "time to pretend" and "electric feel," pretty much the only songs i recognized, sounded good enough, but the wankery:melody ratio everywhere else was way off-balance. and they pointedly, it seemed to me, didn't play their best song, "kids," which would have gone a long way to appeasing me (since i was more or less counting on it as pay off for a hard hour or standing on my feet.) on the other hand, the beer-swigging dudes in front of me said the band was awesome, so what do i know?

from there we hedged our bets and lost out both at getting into dr. dog/tapes and tapes (way-long line) and a-trak/cool kids (could maybe have made it, but not in time to be worth it), though i did run into aaron of inflight rock band/throw me the statue. anyway, we made sure to be at pangaea early enough to avoid the rush for robyn that, as far as i could tell, never quite materialized. like amy phillips, we rolled into the (creepily glitzy) club just as the vines were hammering out a clueless cover of "ms. jackson" that after a minute came of less as painful than just plain hilarious. then they yammered something about just wanting to make a lot of money and get all the girls, played one final song (whether it was one of their hits i really couldn't tell ya), during which at one point the lead singer sort of fell over or threw himself into the drum set or something. and you know, i've gotta say i like their style of rocking out a lot more than i like mgmt's - at least it's got some pop, some pep, some rhythmic propulsion, and the songs are short.

but whatever. we were there for robyn, robyn robyn robyn. mmhm. they futzed around with her equipment for a long time, and then she started playing. not sure if the tech issues had truly been fixed - it sounded okay mostly though her vox were too quiet (in her monitor too, after several requests), and one on song ("handle me"?) the bass was suddenly chest-shakingly intense, but she still seemed kinda distracted and annoyed about it, or about something. yeah, robyn's a total pro, and she still put on a great show and got everybody riled up and smiled up, and i'm sure if there were any doubters there they were converted, so in that sense she did what she came there for, but it still seemed like a shamefully badly organized affair. this was her only showcase (though she also played at an invite-only day party in cedar street where apparently she had to do much of the set without the electronics, and at the perez hilton party - i wonder how well the tech worked there), and they couldn't even get her to soundcheck properly or figure out in advance how to make her (seemingly quite involved) setup work?

eh, i know i'm just spoiled for having gotten to see her at her first u.s. gig in new york, but there was strikingly little of the mutual warmth and magic that marked that show here - she barely talked to us, for one thing. no major changes to the set list either, though the mid-set covers medley was pretty nice, including not just "push it" and "sexual eruption" but a few more too that i can't think of now, though the latter was definitely the highlight, as she reworded it: "i'm gonna take my time...i'm gonna get mine before he gets his." i did notice that "dream on" was on the set list, but they cut it due to time constraints (presumably.) too bad... i know, i shouldn't complain, right?

the night was not quite over: we bundled up our energy and headed a little ways away to the blender magazine party, a decidedly hip affair that was going down in a warehouse in an unassuming residential area. the free drinks (pineapple vanilla vodka) and assorted schwag were nice enough, but what we really went for was the dance party, and although the notoriously reserved sxsw crowd did take a little warming up, they did eventually get into it. as well they better damn well should have, considering who was rocking the decks: diplo (philly's own!) and a-trak (maybe my fave dj, both live and on the stellar dirty south dance mixtape), trying out a one-time-only (?) experiment of switching back and forth after one track apiece. i quickly lost track of who was playing what, and it really didn't matter, as it all flowed gorgeously, with plenty of my own favorites getting aired (notably lrd's "jacques your body," stone roses' "fools' gold," de la soul's "saturdays," missy's "pass the dutch") along with lots more i didn't recognize. sadly, this party too had to be cut short, ending at 4am, maybe an hour and fifteen after d and a had taken the stage (and by which point they'd been joined by, in addition to the pottymouthed emcee blaqqstar, kid sister and a host of others whose relevance it was difficult to gauge.) damn. good to shake it with those guys.

sxsw roundup pt. 2: bragging rights

thursday

got our bikes in gear and cruised down south first to bouldin's cafe, where we had a late-ish tacos breakfast and spotted jeff lewis and some of the jitters. n and i tried to infiltrate the austin convention center to catch billy bragg's 3pm showcase set, but after four escalator flights we found out it was off-limits to mere wristband-holders. so we joined bobby at emo's instead for the shout out louds, a perfectly competent and affable pop-rock band from sweden who nevertheless fail to excite me even as passable peterbjörn+john substitutes. i did enjoy their interpolation of a verse from "train in vain" though, and how long it took me to realize that the second guitarist's hair wasn't actually a hat.

we wandered across to the annex for lykke li, surely one of sxsw's busiest performers (she had no fewer than 9 scheduled performances in three days, which is a little insane), who showed up with her band late and harried (no surprise as she'd had been a busride away for a set scheduled to start an hour and fifteen minutes earlier - but no problem as it meant we had some time to dance to the dj stylings of men aka 2/3 of le tigre, including a sweet "with every heartbeat" remix and some kind of bmore-club-esque track based on "orinoco flow" which i heard again later in the week.) her set was short (five songs) and somewhat stilted - though reading her bio and remembering that she's only 21, her stiff stage manner starts to make some more sense - but the music was enjoyable enough for what it was. (she ain't no robyn, though, that's for sure - but give her some time.)

then on to mohawk, where the clipse closed off an excellent lineup at the rhapsody party, all of which we'd missed except for a catchy final song or two by sons and daughters through the fence as we waited in line. took them a minute to get on too, but when they did they treated us to a lengthy, body-rocking, hit-packed set with most of hell hath no fury (though not "trill"), a couple throwbacks to lord willin' (though not "when the last time") and even "what happened to that boy," and a bunch of other material that i assume is from their latest mixtape. now, i like the clipse as much as i like any straight-up, traditionalist, street-minded hip-hop (save maybe sway, more on whom later), but that's nothing compared to some of the heads in this crowd, singing along with nearly every line. and pusha and malice seemed genuinely touched and even surprised by the level of crowd enthusiasm, basking and revelling in our presence and energy as much as we were in theirs. they put on a professional, spirited performance, and seemed fully at ease in the slightly incongruous all-white-hipster crowd and sunny outdoor setting, but what surprised me was how warm, affable and humorous they were considering their tough, deadly-serious, hardcore lyrical personae. they're obviously very self-aware and incredibly savvy, not just as artists but as businessmen ("it's all in the spirit of competition...we just think we're the best"), and it's clear they recognize this crowd as a core constituency of their fanbase. basically it was a big love-in.

after a somewhat extravagant dinner at miguel's, we headed south of the river to catch the world's greatest active rock band, austin homeboy's spoon, alongside a few thousand of their fellow citizens in a sprawling riverside festival-stage area. i didn't bother getting in a place to really even see the stage (at least until the set-closing "underdog"), was perfectly content to sit back in the grass and smile along. i've now seen them outdoors twice as many times (four) as indoors.

got a little stressy after that, as i scrambled to figure out the location and time of a sway performance i'd just gotten wind of that morning, the delay causing me to wind up at the end of a long static line for the secretly canadian showcase and miss the two low-pro bands i'd been there to see. once i did finally get inside to see the tail end of explorer's club, there was some miscommunication and some exhaustion and some ambiguity of priorities that led to me and nava going back outside and sitting on the lawn opposite the venue as bon iver played his/their set. it sounded great, certainly loud and clear, and it was sorta nice to just sit and listen and not have to worry about the crowd or trying to watch it, though i do wish we'd managed to see something in this prime-time slot, if not bon or sway then, as i now remember and realize we actually should have done, the retribution gospel choir at st. david's church.

got it together and biked over to the cedar st. courtyard an hour early for billy bragg, on the way passing by the english beat on stage at the bizarre, fake 'smokin' music' venue that i'd forgotten they were playing. wish we'd stopped and gone inside there too (the crowd looked pretty sparse), but i'm happy with the bits i did catch: the opening fill and groove of "twist and crawl" and the final verse/chorus of "stand down margaret," which they rather disconcertingly changed to "stand down hillary." hmmmmm. it was no trouble getting into cedar street, though as lovely a space as it is, it's long, narrow, cluttered with furniture and just generally poorly chosen as a sxsw venue. probably would have enjoyed devotchka's late, lovely set even more if i'd been able to see a bit better, but it was good enough catching occasional glimpses of the suave, expressively-eyebrowed lead crooner, goofy sousaphonist and toy-looking squeezebox player.

in any case i'm glad we got there early because it made it easy to get almost up to the front before mr. love and justice, aka billy bragg, the iconic (more like a st. bernard than the eiffel tower, he says) commie troubadour i've been wanting to see for at least a decade now. and he did not disappoint, churning out the jams for as long as they'd let him (it still feels a little funny that the venues have to cut off every show at two on the mark, as they did with every 1am-slot show i saw all week except for the tough alliance.) some material from the new album (!) - "farmboy," "i'll keep faith," "oh freedom" - which is being touted as a return to worker's playtime form (nice to hear that recognized as perhaps his best work), though those songs at least seemed a little mawkishly propagandistic to me - and an excellent sorta-silly "johnny clash" song which i assume is on the album but i'm not sure. but mostly he stuck to golden oldies - "accident waiting to happen," "power in a union," "levi stubbs' tears" (!), "little time bomb" (!!), and of course penultimate sing-along "new england." [also "way over yonder in the minor key" and "world turned upside down."] he also talked a lot - he's very funny, even if he occasionally takes his jokes farther than even i might - and he just generally seemed to be enjoying himself, which was great to see. he offered us a choice between the carpenters and dylan for a 'busking-style' acoustic cover, but after the carps (of course) squeaked a win nobody sang along with the chorus [of "superstar"], so he cut himself off, bemoaned it a 'travesty of democracy' and launched into "don't think twice" instead - okay, but a little whatever. (i heard he did a shangri-la's tune - "give him a great big kiss" - in duet with kate nash saturday afternoon - how effing cool!) anyway, so so good to finally see the man in person, and easily a highlight of the week.

sxsw roundup pt. 1: the cough alliance (is an anagram of the el guincho canal)

just got back from awesome austin, tx, where i rocked my second annual (so far) south by southwest, this time taking in upwards of forty artists (catching about 36 full or nearly-full sets) over four very full days. most of it spent with three superlative companions: my ever-endearing once-and-future roomie, consummate host and itunes playlist compositor par excellence matthew "dominic" stangoni; my irrepressible, hilary-hatin' cousin bobby "billy bob" gravity, on a long-deserved (and semi-stealthy) furlough after a year of barackin' around the clock; and my tolerant super-trooper of a nap-happy music-appreciation gal navacado rockswild sxswergold. i'd say it was a blur - four days of biking helter-skelter around downtown, eating tacos, imbibing giveaway drinkproduct, spraying on sunscreen, waiting in lines (tho not nearly so much as last year, since thanks to the almighty, er mostly-mighty wristbands), receiving hand-stamps from bouncers, to no evident purpose, coughing up an impressive reserve of phlegm left over from the sickness i'd mercifully all-but-overcome by the start of the festival, and eventually, after many sole-sacrificing hours of standing and dancing and watching and standing and dancing, driving back home, two-to-a-seatbelt, and crashing out on matthew's futon to recuperate from between, roughly, 4am or so until around noon. yeah...it'll be a blur soon enough.

but for the moment it's still plenty vivid; i've still got the logic-puzzle information overload of venue names, cross-streets, set times, rsvp statuses, and reshuffling priorities buzzing around my mental circuitry, i've still got the sense-memory of colors, tastes and sounds, the as-yet-unanecdotified remembrance of recountable occurences, the post-party debrief detail-recall of setlists and banter. so i better jot something down here before it all goes fuzzy. i'll do what i can to mediate between narrative chronicling and merciful brevity:

tuesday
got into town. fine texas welcome in the form of bobby's leftover brisket and ribs from smitty's. wi-fi-netted our lists of show picks at the green muse for as long as my itchy eyes could take, then took semi-respite in the form of a yoga class (led by nicolette of sxsw 07 fame yay!) at their multi-purpose non-church friendlychristian meeting space, mosaic - which was good except i had to give up towards the end. matt and i picked up our wristbands and some goodflow 'n kombucha, but that's about all i was good for that day, so we retreated to his apartment for green chile tamales and an early bedtime. just as oh well since we hadn't been able to secure tix to the free yo la/my morning show that night. (matt did sneak out to see a certain bald four-letter celebrity dj.)

wednesday

got to red-eyed fly a bit late for the explorer's club, definitely too late for the free bloody marys (which were probably gone by 11:03 am), but enjoyed the sunshine, promo neon-pink MGMT shoelaces, and a couple numbers from a tweedy/petty-alike, tom freund, who sang first w/ just stand-up bass and an older drummer who kept dropping his sticks, then with gtr+bass and a different drummer who seemed to possibly not have had any sticks in the first place. took a bit of a reconnaisance jaunt around town, picking up "vip" "laminates" at the pure volume ranch (right next door to where aberfeldy were not gonna be playing that night after all boo hoo boo hoo) and wristbands for the fort, listening from without as the whip whipped it good within. then to emo's where we heard the final song from the raveonettes (purty sweet) and then finally got our first proper set of sxsw08: the mae shi.

actually i almost forgot about them and said it was why? which isn't to say the shi were forgettable - they were fun and young and punky and shambly and had cute stage antics (canvas parachute - no apes and androids tho) and were a decent substitute for not managing to catch no age again later on in the week. but why? were just top-notch. it was great to hear some almost-favorites from elephant eyelash (tracks 1-3, if i'm not mistaken), but maybe even greater getting to take a first-stab at parsing yoni's new beat-leet floetry live, before i get around to grokking their new record i didn't even know existed (which would turn out to be a recurring theme of the week.) vibes as part of the drumset = clutch.

the blow seemed a bit flustered and bewildered; she whined about her short set time and kvetched about the posturing of sxsw attendees in a way that was meant as a performance schtick - complete with play-along "bingo card" - but came off as uncomfortably honest in a not-quite-intentional way. so khaela wasn't quite on top of her game (she dropped quite a few lines too) but she's still plenty charming and too refreshingly down-to-earth to want to acknowledge as 'quirky.' and her songs are great.

we hung around at emo's for the free popsicles (they were out of pistachio and coconut so i settled for watermelon) and caught el guincho, a mildly manic, muppety-looking spaniard who hammered away at a single drum that awesomely matched his bright red pants. (not to mention the scarlet macaw on his album cover.) there were more sounds emanating from the couple of boxes and gadgets on his slapdash table, and he would occasionally sing along with his looped vocal samples, but the combined effect was pretty unidentifiable - discernably spanish with vaguely cha-cha-style grooves and looped flamenco-like exhortations, but far from traditional in any sense, not even as electronic dance music (which, ultimately, is how you'd have to classify it, if you'd have to.) really fun, reminiscent of animal collective in ways that didn't actually annoy me (which is impressive) and basically great semi-abstract background music for a summery technicolor rave.

that was the end of wednesday: day, and instead of taking the conventional breather before wednesday: night, bobby and i strode across town to try our luck at getting into the van morrison gig. we got in probably two or three songs into the set, though to tell you the truth it was pretty tough to distinguish one song from another. i could only understand at most a quarter of what van was singing, though just about every song seemed to have something to do with trains. anyway, there's no denying it was him - that voice was unmistakable from the moment we walked through the room, even if standing (still) there on the stage he could have passed for any number of the portly be-hatted older denizens of the crowd that were preventing us from really getting a good look at him. eh, it was nice enough to listen to. i've never been a big van fan, but it's still kind of cool to have seen him, even if we did wait in vain for "and it stoned me" or indeed anything recognizable from the three or so albums of his i've ended up with regardless.

seeing freezepop was a bit of a time-filler but i'm glad we did, as they were very enjoyably goofy and amateurish, and there was even a sizable crowd that was fairly amped up about them (and prague is a pretty nice club.) they looked pretty ridiculous/cool, with their two (2) keytars and liz enthusiasm's hot pink dress, but they didn't seem to be especially technically proficient. (one of the guys joked that they couldn't play "less talk more rock" - their guitar hero 'hit' - live because it was too fast, and judging from their performance of it i don't think he was actually joking.) was nice to hear some older stuff too - "boys on film" cover and "stakeout" (from the album of theirs i first heard via a random unlabelled cd-r found somewhere.) oh yeah, they closed with a cover of "the final countdown," which i didn't even know.

just after that set, nava arrived in town, earlier than anticipated, and we bummed around a little in search of the next activity. peeked into the k records showcase, but set times were changed around so mahjonng weren't on then and saturday looks good to me weren't either because i guess they cancelled, so it was this guy city center who said it was his second ever show (the first was at cmj) and it was kind of cool but too noisy for the navi so we walked up the street to see jeffrey lewis instead. and the jitters, as he apparently calls his drummer and bassist and the funny woman who played pennywhistle and a tiny little casio keyboard. happily we caught most of "will oldham williamsburg horror" or whatever that song is called, which was great, and the rest of his set was real fun too (we must have missed the first half of it though), including one of his crass covers and a "film" (with picture book accompaniment) called "creeping brain" that nava said was her favorite part of the festival and was definitely a highlight for me too. gotta remember to see jeff more often - he's definitely awesome live even if his records don't quite do it.

stuck around too for kaki king, whose set veered all over the place from bluesy/folky acoustic picking to straight-up indie rock to mathy/jazzy/proggy muscular post-rock/classical. undeniably impressive musicianship (especially the super sick acoustic guitar v. drums battle in the last song) and often lovely-sounding but a little too willfully eclectic (and the songs not quite interesting enough) to quite gel as a whole.

we were pretty tired by now - it was only day one after all, we hadn't got our stamina up yet - so we only stood for the first fifteen minutes or so of lindstrøm's set at the thirsty nickel (and only danced for a subset of that - hans-peter took his time with transitions, leaving us hanging in space for quite a while between beatdrops), then retreated to sit down in the back of the club, where i somewhat disengagedly watched the beginning of one of the jackass movies, muted, on the bar tv, while lindstrøm's hazy, swirly grooves washed over me - quite a surreal, disconnected experience.

soon enough it was time for a final slog across town and up a little hill to karma, the off-the-beaten-path venue for the first sxsw appearance about which i was truly excited: the tough alliance. they fulfilled expectations perhaps too fully, and turned out to be just as obstreperous, impertinent, and iconoclastic as you could anticipate, deliberately subverting concert conventions by showing up late (maybe not deliberate, but unconventional by sxsw standards) and "playing" a six-songs-short set that pretty much consisted of them mugging, 'dancing,' and generally goofing around on stage, only occasionally even bothering to lip-sync, in front of projected videos of dolphins, waves and carnival dancers, while their records played. it was actually pretty intense. the one dude mostly just kind of stands there with his mouth open and his arms in the air, shaking spasmodically. one of them took apart a mic stand and started banging the pieces together. at one point (when there were strings in the music) one of them mimed playing a violin with a mic stand and microphone as a bow. they didn't talk at all, though they did acknowledge the small but enthusiastic audience in their dancing, coming down into the crowd and pulling somebody on stage at one point. actually, one of the nicest things about it was the (pre-recorded) transitions between the songs, which flowed very smoothly. the whole set was taken from the new school, in album order (songs 1-4 plus "neo-violence") except for "silly crimes" added in the number three slot. was it a disappointment? perhaps, frankly, but only in the ways that i more or less expected. if it was another group, i wouldn't mind so much that they're more interested in inscrutable performance art that deconstructs the very underlying concepts of "performance" than they are in just putting on a good show, but their music is just so damn good that it kind of hurts to see it, in a sense, mocked and dismissed by its very creators. at least it was great to dance to... (and yeah, i'd go to another tta show in a second, just to hear the music.)

bubble pop electrik

or, if you're not down with the miami aesthetic steez (these were actually posted around somewheres, no thanks to me):


had a hot gig last night. great party - really good turnout (for a thursday?) thanks, apparently, to a gal from drexel with an extensive facebook friendlist. but also to my friends! a whole bunch of 'em! thanks for coming out guys!

and i was pretty pleased with my deejaying, although it has also spurred me into lots of ideas for ways to improve (modifications to my setup - working from just a laptop and a dinky audio interface is appealingly portable, but i realized that it would be advantageous to add my mixer to my mix; i'm enjoying figuring all this out for myself as i go along - and also things to work on and think about.)

i recorded my set (so easy to do with traktor!), or at least 2 1/2 hours of it (i missed the beginning.) if my reconstruction is correct, here's what i played before that:

dot allison - mo' pop
cornelius - another view point
kaada - thank you for giving me yr valuable time
evie sands - i can't let go
donny hathaway - the ghetto
dee dee warwick - rescue me
alex gopher - destokage massif
the tough alliance - a new chance
metro area - soft hoop
sambassadeur - kate
james brown - mother popcorn
the juan mclean - give me every little thing (b-dude complained about me cutting off maceo's solo)
temptations - cloud nine
afrika bambaata - looking for the perfect beat (12")
yaz - situation
luke vibert - cash'n'carry acid
phoenix - if i ever feel better...

and that's around when the dancing really got going. listen for yrself - this'll be up for download for the next 7 days or 100 d/ls (yeah right):

ross of love @ bubblehouse, 3/6/08 [part one] (a single m4a file, 1 hour 40 minutes)

there is a [part two] (just under an hour), but i think i'm gonna keep it to myself (unless you ask real nice) - it's a bit sloppier and borrows from existing mixes a fair bit, and the place had mostly cleared out by this point - but it went like this:

justin timberlake - what goes around...
prodigy - out of space
keith mansfield - young scene
lucky soul - add your light to mine
el-p - lazerfaces warning (rjd2 rmx)
isley brothers - it's your thing
snoop dogg - drop it like it's hot
jean knight - mr. big stuff
sway - products
amy diamond - what's in it for me
cassie - is it you?
isley brothers - love the one yr with
squarepusher - come now my selector (sweet - this played out over the next two tracks)
lauryn hill - lost ones
outkast - ms. jackson
beck - nicotine and gravy (ryan the booking dude rocking out)
strokes - is this it?
jamie lidell - what's the use?
blur - to the end (ryan loves this one too)
lucky soul - lips are unhappy (yay for rava)

nothing engraved yet, but it's looking like i may be playing bubblehouse every thursday night, at least starting in april, since the next three thursdays are busy with texas, purim, and texas. (currently debating what to do about the hot chip tickets i have for april 10th...and the ny and dc shows are souledout...doh!) if so (and if they ask me), i may decide to call it "bubble pop electrik" - not bad rite? but what's the call on naming yr night after a song that's not really very good, even if the genre's about right?

oh, p.s. - as you may have noted from the flyer, "bubblehouse" is now a genre of music. (not just an mmw jam - though i gotta remember to play that sometime.) it's the fusion of bubblegum and house. y'know. that exists, they just forgot to call it that. (it's like, "handbag house" or something. nava says handbag girls are annoying to dance with.) can a mix be far off?

lindy quick 'n dirty blues

so i been going swing dancing tuesday nights for some time now at LaB, as they call it; something i don't think of as having much to do with my musiclife, but of course it is related. come to think of it i'm surprised at how little attention i pay to most of the music (beyond the requisite attention for dancing to it, that is) because i'm not familiar with it (except that by now i more likely am) - i think it's often contemporary swing and blues musicians as opposed to older recordings, though there's definitely both. well anyway i'd been meaning for some time to offer them my services as a dj, and i've finally gotten the ball rolling. i was asked for a sample playlist (given my 'limited prior experience') and i was (a little defensively) mentally composing a showboaty e-mail discussing the various types of things i'd want to play, but then i realized that it would be nearly as quick, and much more productive and helpful, just to put together a CD.

so that's what i did, yesterday, in just about 20 minutes or so (gotta be a record), plus intermittently throughout the day pawing around in various corners of my collection. i was gonna set up a compilation constraint, something like: chronological order, 1920s-2000s, two songs per decade. and i think that would be an interesting challenge, and work out well (for recording quality consistency, if nothing else), but i scrapped it due to schedule crunch and came up with this instead:

title: {...could you eLaBorate?}
format: cd-r
date: 4 march 2008
package: meh. folded paper. olive sharpie.
made for: jesse and the LaBtechs.

1. don byron - the dicty glide
2. benny goodman - feathers
3. paris combo - obliques
4. roy milton - the hucklebuck
5. sister rosetta tharpe - that's all
6. patsy cline - seven lonely days
7. louis jordan - knock me a kiss
8. ike & tina turner - you should'a treated me right
9. percy mayfield ft. joy hamilton - sugar mama - peachy papa
10. jazz passengers ft. e. costello and d. harry - doncha go 'way mad
11. oscar brown, jr. - humdrum blues
12. ramsay lewis - day tripper
13. dusty springfield - live it up
14. etta james - my mother in law
15. jackie wilson - baby workout
16. billy boy arnold - rockin'itis
17. hank ballard - sexy ways
18. james hunter - talkin' 'bout my love
19. los lobos - evangeline
20. art blakey - eleanor
21. ella fitzgerald - please don't talk about me when i'm gone
22. jimmy castor bunch - southern fried frijoles
23. stevie wonder - tuesday heartbreak
24. devon sproule - old virginia block

came out pretty good i think. a few things i might change around if i were gonna make a more "official" version, in the interest of flow, variety, and (primarily) adherence to rule #3. (actually, i confess, i did switch around the running order so that patsy comes after rosetta instead of before.) gets me pretty psyched to have an excuse to delve into this music, including many songs that i wouldn't usually be able to get away with playing for dancers. especially that great underplayed stuff from the fifties before soul and rock'n'roll and blues diverged and it was all r&b (or 'race records'), which i'm only just beginning to explore (h/t to specialty's cheap-o profiles series, which has hepped me to the oeuvres of percy mayfield, roy milton, and larry williams.)

this mix reminds me of what alyssa said about liquid crystal slivers, that it's not trying to prove itself - except this one does have something very specific to prove. (that i can be a competent a swingdanz selektor.) but maybe i can accomplish that handily enough that it can still come off as off-handed. anyway, i tried to steer clear of obvious, or even readily recognizable, picks and artists (louis jordan, oscar brown, & ella are probably the only ones that might get regular LaB play), in a bid to show i've got something different to offer - though that could theoretically backfire, a la baking a vegan sample cake for the "um...we use butter, eggs and sugar in our cakes..." bakery. well.

you may download it here. (as a zip file of tracks, not in sequence)

it's always fuzzy in genredelphia

last valentimes, i innaugurated [careful, noisylink] "genrephilia," a series of posts on genre based around a genrelovey podmix, in an interesting but not entirely successful (maybe?) bit of blog format experimentation. i only got partway through, stopping after ten posts with installment #3, about disco (working backwards from 12 out of a total of 14, including 0 and -1.) part of the idea was to establish a sort of point of reference for each genre, a pronouncement on the state of my relationship with that given musical arena, although i used it for various other purposes as well.

just for kicks, lets see if i can mount an actually brief, 1-2 sentence summary of the current states of those affairs, in the order of the original posts (and with links as appropriate):

12. valentine's - (oh, i forgot about that part. not actually a genre, is it - well anyway i just talked about that in my last post about my new mix; moving on then.)

11. country - unfortunately, haven't found anything to be nearly as excited about since that one keith urban album, though taylor swift may come close whenever i actually get her album; ditto miranda lambert (no, miley doesn't count.) i have become pleasingly, increasingly comfortable with the concept of country as a genre, though, listening to country radio on occasion and taking occasional steps to further my historical perspective. also very curious about this new dolly parton album (dolly's weird - an artist it has become hip for non-country-listeners to think is hip, but who doesn't seem to have much to do with contemporary country anymore, unless i'm wrong.)

10. dancepop - this post was kind of positing justin timberlake, or at least parts of futuresex/lovesounds, as formally innovative in terms of pop song and album structure...i can't say i've heard anything since to really take that and run with it; the timbaland album i was so amped about turned out to be pretty disappointing. on the other hand, blackout and its unlikely compeers (including x and jordin sparks) are at least investigating some other formal possibilities, on the more micro level.

9. electronica - proceeds apace... last year i said i gave up on it, and i can't say i've heard anything really earthshaking to bring me back around - gui and axel and pantha et al. were nice enough but nothing too new... the return of big beat is possibly still progressing, but i can't quite tell where it's at now (justice are, apparently, Popular - as i learned last weekend, even people who can't identify "d.a.n.c.e." offhand know that it's from 'the cross album' - though it hasn't gotten them into the kimmel center yet.) if i ever hear back from the folks at klang/playhouse or ~scape, maybe i'll have something to tell you. [eta: oh, yo. yo.]

8. local/diy - staying out of it. i have officially not been to any of yr standard west philly basement shows - i haven't actually heard of many happening anyway - save for the recently begun, consistently brilliant weekly revues at 4814 hazel, which have little in common with anything else of the sort, seem to belong to no scene other than their own, and are rarely all that focused on containing 'actually good' music - it's all about the show. so i can't really comment, but maybe just perhaps there's been a lull in w-phi diy-land? dunno.

7. reggae - nothing new to report. oh wait i got that mighty diamonds LP - that's pretty sweet. really really sweet actually. (someday, when he's old enough to understand, i will make a mixtape for my nephew that will feature "dem never love poor marcus.") also, if it counts, the soul-jazz rumble in the jungle cd compilation of mid-90s british ragga/jungle is one of the best things i heard in 2007, maybe the most vital music ever. (oh yeah, that's a new project: to realize/decide that dancehall/ragga/whathaveyou are actually subgenres of reggae, and maybe to get comfy with that historical progression)

6. contemporary art music - aka avant-jazz, post-classical, new music, world-fusion, interdisciplinary hoo-hah, non-profit org steez. or anything that gets programmed at the painted bride. not unrelated to some things i've been writing recently for amg - triosk, whom i pegged i think pretty aptly as "post-jazz" and adrian klumpes, their keyboardist, who's so far post that it's nothing to jazz, just straight-up avant. interesting too if that's functioning in an indie music context, not so much non-profit driven. actually, let me combine this with

5. jazz, about which i continue to wage internal struggles... still getting the hookup from matt - he took me to see the mingus big band at the kimmel center the other week, which was a blast - though, helpfully, i'm not getting the stream of new releases and info from him i was at one point; just an occasional something to sink my teeth in and get more out of - lately, genre transgressors adam rudolph and nels cline - but i'm not that much closer to feeling at home with contempo jazz, to really owning it.

[i was looking forward to writing something about the trio of concerts i was to have seen this weekend - the multi-ethnic jazz/world fusion of adam rudolph's moving pictures at the bride, the ball-busting gypsy/punk fusion of gogol bordello at the electric factory, and the cambodian pop/indie fusion of dengue fever (in arden, delaware) - but i only actually ended up seeing the first two, in the same evening, both of which were great and powerful in very different ways; it's hard to imagine two more disparate versions of globalized musical cross-pollination, though i'm betting dengue would have offered a third, if not something of a middle ground.]

4. soul - continues to get hotter (legit recog for sharon et daps? another sfj new yorker thinkpiece on winehouse? several of these picks def feel like a stretch, but still. apparently finnish funk is a thing? better get on that) but i can't say i'm really feeling the heat... dunno, just not in that groove at the moment, and i think it may have to do with my current suboptimal musical living situation. still, i've got plenty of material to sift through, and new leads to pick up on when i get the hankering, as i'm sure i will - for just one, spanky wilson, who mysteriously appeared somewhere on my harddrive in time to make it onto love is the answer.

3. disco - similar, maybe. that was a good post, wasn't it. (somebody read it and say something!) i'm feeling pretty great about disco, actually/still, though i'm not necessarily doing much about it. oh wait, i did make that mixtape.

the remaining four were, i guess, twee/indie pop (acid house kings), um, classic indie pop (the go-betweens), hip-hop (outkast) and then whatever jan jelinek counts as (i recycled that introbit for loveistheanswer, as you may have figured.) i guess i don't have much to say about those right now, though i have been listening to quite a bit of indie pop, and learning myself some more hist'ry (just bought a felt record...may get some field mice soon), based on the fact that the swedes i'm covering lately (the honeydrips and others on sincerely yours; all the labrador artists; billie the vision too most likely) definitely see themselves as part of a lineage.

but anyway, i'm not actually here to talk about genre. that's not what this blog is all 'bout. i'm here to talk about a mixtape. an actual cassette, and awesomely idiosyncratically cassettic too. dug it out recently to play in nava's car.

Title: GeNReCALiA
Format: cassette (90 minutes)
Date: July 2005
Packaging: front of insert as seen at the top of the post (though notso fuzzy.) back of insert like so (with apologies to sol lewitt):

also enclosed, in lieu of a tracklist, a type-written syllabus: not only is this a mixtape about genre, its contents in fact comprise the course materials for a (proposed?) course about, well, what else is there to talk about...?

Made for Alyssa. i don't even think she asked for it. she hailed it as the Mixtape to End All Mixtapes [caps hers - ed]. perhaps i should have taken the hint.

///

GeNReCALiA
"explorations and provocations in the ontology of musicodiversity, 1960-2005"

visiting lecturer, bowtie askew

objective:

to countenance, underwhelm, exasperate, dismantle, recidivise, inactivate, and otherwise unanswer the question of musical (and/as) genre, in the context.

<-- syllabus -->

0. Intro and Praxis: . "genrefuck"
1. Keynote: "peaches en regalia" prof. zappa, frank (1969)

UNIT ONE: roots and counter-culture: cross-pollinations, 1960-1975
2. flirtations, the. "nothing but a heartache" (1969)
3. king, carole. "smackwater jack" (1971)
4. brown jr. oscar. "work song" (1960)
5. beefheart, captain. "frownland" (1969)
6. otis, shuffie. "happy house" (1974)
7. animals, the. "the story of bo diddley" (1964)
8. cline, patsy. "heartaches" (1962)
9. mamas, the, and the papas. "i call your name" (1966)

special topic: hey, Aretha Franklin drinks Coke !
10. kaada. "all wrong" (2003)

UNIT TWO: the Nonesuch School: pomo art music (for BoBos), '90s-'00s
11. Byron, don. "bounce of the sugar plum fairy" (1996)
12. cachao. "al fin te VI" (1994)
13. reich, steve (trans. evan ziporyn). "new york counterpoint"
movement III, 'fast' comp. 1985/perf. 1996)
14. cain, uri, and ensemble. "the goldberg variations" (excerpt)
variation 3-/quodlibet/drinking party/logic's organ prelude (2000)
15. trio, tin hat. "scarp" (2000)
16. frisell, bill. "the tractor" (2001)
17. bailey, derek. "please don't talk about me when i'm gone" (2002)

Midterm Exam
18. AmiYumi, puffy. "thats the way it is/Kore ga Watashi no Ikirumichi" 1998)
19. Haden, Petra. sings "Heinz Baked Beans/more music" (excerpt) (2005)

SIDE BREAK

UNIT THREE: Intelligent? Dance? Music?: pomo beat excursions (for hipsters?), '04-'05
1. dj /rupture. "overture: watermelon city" (2004)
2. radioinactive and antimc. "movin' truck" (2004)
3. lidell, jamie. "you got me up" (2005)
4. busdriver (prod. dædelus) "yawning zeitgeist freestyle" (2005)
5. M.I.A. "one for the head - skit" (2005)
6. Optimo. "how to kill the dj, vol. 2" - excerpt: cissy strut/a minha menina; shack up; stand of the world (2005)
7. girls aloud. "love machine" (radio edit) (2004)

pop(?) quiz(!):
8. unicorns, the. "jellybones" (2003)

///

G UNIT (not on this tape)

Special Topic/Case Study: "folk" of the (naughty) aughties
9. akron/family. "suchness" (2005)
10. animal collective. "who could win a rabbit?" (2004)
11. frost, edith. "too happy" (1997)

Special Topic/Case Stubby: the tropicalian diaspora
12. gil, gilberto. "Só Quero Um Xodó"
13. veloso, moreno. +2. "das partes" (2001)
14. lindsay, arto. "prefeelings" (1998)

FINAL EXAM
15. the books - "an animated description of Mr. Maps" (2005)

BONUS ?
16. final fantasy. (?) (2005)

///

what is to be said? i don't think i ever intended to, like, explain what's going on here, any more than is already evident in the tape itself. or more likely i did, but it wasn't a very good idea. the tape is an intellectual endeavor, a multi-part hypothesis if you will, or maybe even a thesis (i typed multi-party by mistake), but it's also an art project; or, it's a conceptual/programmatic/didactic mixtape but it's also a dada/surrealist/situationist (ha!) one.

but perhaps... well, obviously, the tape is not very interested in existing conceptions of specific genres - i included a couple of "uncomplicatedly" "generic" selections - the flirtations' "nothing but a heartache" (an incredible, brilliant song, regardless of genre or lack thereof, which may be one of the few things it has in common with the rest of the tape), and, just maybe, edith frost's "too happy" (which i was too in love with at the time of mixmaking not to include, though it's also interestingly, though in no way unusually, utterly irrespective of genre. it got a wider airing later on october is eternal, but that kinda rulebreaking is the least of this tape's concerns) - to provide a starting point, or i guess to cover my bases. essentially, the kind of discussion of individual genres that i was perpetrating above has little if anything to do with this.

i was serious about "unanswering the question of [...] genre" - i was trying not to contemplate genre, but to actively destroy (or, i suppose subvert) it. if there's a systematic project here, it's to demonstrate that, even concurrently with the development of musical styles as we conceive of them, there has been plenty music being made that actively defied such categorization (even though the artists themselves may have succumbed to it.)

in other words, i strove to include music that doesn't neatly conform to (and hence actually undermines) any preconceived notions of genre, consciously limiting myself (for the most part) to particular historico-cultural domains (selected on the basis/bias of my own particular tastes and musical knowledge) which represent, perhaps, especial frontiers of genre experimentation and subversion - but with the working assumption that similar sets could be drawn from plenty of other such (vaguely defined) domains. key to all of this, of course, is that contemplation and understanding be based on the music itself, regardless of its contextual trappings and cultural associations.

lots of these songs have particular elements to add to that discussion, and it would be probably be fruitless to continue very much further without getting into specifics...

on another level though, i just wanted to make the most eclectic, omnivorous, kaleidoscopic, mix that i possibly could - while still having it make sense or at least work as an enjoyable listening experience, not just seeming completely random. that part of the project is just as significant as the headier 'conceptual' side, but, ideally at least, they shouldn't be so separate as to make the distinction relevant. which is probably why i should stop talking about it now.