Ever since relocating to Austin last summer, I'd kept one eye on the live-music/film-premiere/interactive behemoth South By Southwest. This year was to be my first, and as a veteran of CMJ Music Marathon and a pioneer at Brooklyn's first-ever Northside Festival, I was beyond stoked. But between work trips to NYC and Tokyo, culminating in a three-week sojourn to the Big Apple this past month, time slipped by. On my late-night flight back to Austin last Wednesday, surrounded by skinny blokes with guitar cases and European accents, I realized—Oh snap, South By Southwest!
I had to attack this beast badgeless and wristbandless, with a major NYC hangover and little schedule in mind besides what I'd culled fromBrooklynVegan and various Facebook invites. Luckily, Japanese art-punksPeelander-Z were hosting a free day-show of caffeinated awesomeness called “Peelander-Fest.” It featured a solid mix of Japanese acts (like the Motörhead-ish Electric Eel Shock) and yanks, topped by a sweaty Peelander-Z set, in 20-minute bites.
Free show? Cheap booze? Japanese bands? Sign me up!
I bussed to the Grackle, an East Austin dive bar and gravel lot that echoed Jelly NYC's Saturdays @ Rock Yard, except the latter had a slip-n-slide and Williamsburg hipster girls and the Grackle better beer and tattoos.
Lagitagida, self-described as “a super-powered attack instrumental rock band,” played as fast as Brooklyn black-metalheads Liturgy but with way less austerity. At least Lagitagida were having a shit-ton of fun. Next up was bicoastal (i.e. Tokyo/Brooklyn) duo Ken South Rock, who I re-dub KEN the Brotherhood, for beyond Kenichi and Adam's stripped-down sound, these “long-lost brothers” carried that charisma of their country-fried Nashville kin,JEFF the Brotherhood.
I refueled on lengua tacos when local noise-punks Black Cock went on (anybody remember Whale's “Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe”? They're a bit like that), and met the Japanese. Despite the boozy, sun-baked environs, I did that whole two-handed name-card exchange with Lagitagida guitarist Kohhan and bassist Take. New drink buddies for my May trip back to ol' Nippon.
Sendagaya duo Gagakirise are succinctly summed up by their 2009 CD title:Black Long Hair Nice Wah Pedal.
Sets went precisely as scheduled, thanks to Kengo “Peelander-Yellow” Hioki's programming. This is something I noted in Tokyo: bands on and off almost exactly on time, even the ultra-DIY stuff, so I knew how much time I had before elbowing up front for Electric Eel Shock. These cock-rockers brought the house down. Frontman Akihiro may have playfully dissed punk at one point—“We're metal!!!!”—but, considering his flying riffs, bassist Kazuto's mastery of shout-and-response, and drummer Gian's instant denuding (except for a strategic sock), it was all love.
Sunburnt and smashed, thus concluded my first SXSW.
Image: Gagakirise, courtesy the author.
It’s been my lifelong dream to perform inside a six-story Doritos vending machine, but today, at the opening of the SXSW music festival, this is not my fate. Instead, I’m in Long Island City going through scraps from two years ago, when I served as “backline tech” to a British band signed to Atlantic, making their much-hyped US debut.
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My band is not going to SXSW this year; no beer-glazed Torche matinees for me, no super-secret sets by this young up-and-comer. So I'm going through the diaries I kept the two years I have participated in the shitshow. The first one goes back six years, when a rock band I was in trekked endlessly from our motel to 6th Street, debated whether to see Goldfrapp or Blowfly,...
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A most troubling announcement from Syracuse chamber-pop band Ra Ra Riot passed through my Facebook feed. It read, in all lowercase, "sad to say, allie is leaving the band…" There, beneath an oversaturated Polaroid, was cellist/backing vocalist Alexandra Lawn's amicable message: "not a 'goodbye.'"
Bands change members all the time; I get this. As a critic and music lover, I wonder about the shifting sound and dynamics, the old songs versus the new, unwritten ones. Particularly when that sound has intrinsic melody, like Lawn's cello, stitched into it.
Take NYC math-rockers Battles. Their instrumental avant-jams didn't really combust the hipster populace's trainers until Warp Records LP Mirrored—and specifically the single "Atlas," with Tyondai Braxton's helium-treated croon. Yet when Braxton left the band in summer of 2010, Battles' machinelike precision and groove-inducing stage presence only grew.
Cali art-rock provocateurs Xiu Xiu were a rotating cast around tortured soul Jamie Stewart for years. But multi-instrumentalist Caralee McElroy's entry in 2004 was a balm to Stewart's harsh delivery (witness the sweet, McElroy-sung track "Hello From Eau Claire"). Her departure after five years left me bewildered, beginning with "who is going to play all her gear?!" Enter Angela Seo, plugging into the crackling synths of New Wave horrorfestDear God, I Hate Myself (replete with a notorious, vomitious video). I'm relieved to say that Xiu Xiu are heavy as ever, if pounding new track "Hi" is any indication.
East Coast synth-vampires Cold Cave may have originated as "just" a solo effort by dark god Wesley Eisold, but by debut Love Came Close he'd added noisician Dominick "Prurient" Fernow and McElroy—plus created a scorching live act. Though McElroy left before second LP, Cherish the Light Years (taking the sweeter pop sounds with her), the addition of Alex Garcia-Rivera (who drummed with Eisold in Boston hardcore group Give Up the Ghost) kept Cold Cave's live sound at a bracing, post-apocalyptic froth.
But what if the change doesn't groove well? Or, more complicatedly, it alters my feelings as a fan? I'll come clean: I credit my initial openness to Ra Ra Riot to Lawn. Usually she played honeyed counterpoint to Wes Miles' bright tenor. But she sang lead on the jazz-inflected torchsong "You And I Know," sounding like she just took a slug of scotch and a three-second cigarette drag. So as I await and listen for Ra Ra Riot this year, I'm crossing my fingers for a future Alexandra Lawn solo.
Image: Alexandra Lawn (and Ra Ra Riot) at Bowery Ballroom, September 22, 2010. Courtesy the author.
Perfume Genius's second record, Put Your Back N 2 It, was released last week after some controversy surrounding the video advertisement, excerpted from the video for "Hood." YouTube and Google claimed was not “family-safe,” explaining that the two shirtless men hugging (Mike Hadreas a.k.a. Perfume Genius & porn star Arpad Miklos) gave an “overall feeling…of a more adult nature.” More than what? Nature becomes more adult. We learn that existence is to differ. Love is dark. We have 2 put our bax n2 it.
“The hands of God were bigger than Grandpa’s eyes / But still you broke the elastic on your waist […] The love you feel is strong / The love you feel is stronger / I will take the dark part / of your heart into my heart / I will take the dark part / of your heart into my heart”
—Perfume Genius “Dark Parts,” from new record, Put Your Back N 2 It, released last Tuesday on Matador
“The magical (such as it can really be called without lexical muse) ascendancy of night and of the dark, the fear of darkness also probably derive from the threat they pose to the organism/environment…darkness is not the mere absence of light; it has some positive quality. Whereas bright space disappears, giving way to the material concreteness of objects, darkness is ‘thick’; it directly touches a person, enfolds, penetrates, and even passes through him.”
—Roger Caillois, “Mimicry and Legendary Psychaesthenia,” 1937 (collected in The Edge of Surrealism)
“To exist is to differ…identity is a minimum and, hence, a type of difference, a very rare type at that, in the same way as rest is a type of movement and the circle is a type of ellipse. To begin with some primordial identity implies at the origin a prodigiously unlikely singularity, or else the obscure mystery of one simple being then dividing for no special reason.”
—Gabriel Tarde, Monadology and Sociology, 1895
"Dark Parts" Studio Recording
Interview with Perfume Genius and "Dark Parts" live performance
Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."
Image (Silver Laced Polish Chicken): 4chan.
Note to David Foster Wallace fans: do not blast AC/DC if you don't want to offend your idol.
Though if you're a dude, you may want to trade in the AC/DC for something that won't stir any violent tendencies.
If you need to relax, make like Cormac McCarthy and go into science copy-editing.
You may even end up like Woody Allen and be nomimated for a Nebula Award, quite an honor in science fiction.
But nothing is as sci-fi as the thought of computer-generated stories replacing real-life writers.
Or is the thought of writers replacing fashion designers even more scarier?
Whatever you end up doing, don't be afraid to go bankrupt. It'll probably result in a good idea for a novel.
But if you're not that extreme, you could just use Kickstarter as a publisher instead.
Who knows? You may even have the honor of having your junior high diaries archived in the Ransom Center one day.
What if we could perfect the formula for tear-jerking, goosebump-inducing songs? That question has obsessed me ever since I read a Wall Street Journal article about Adele’s Grammy-minted ballad “Someone Like You.” Granted, it's a breakup song set to foreign-film piano, but it’s Adele’s “unexpected deviations” from the melody, effects known to music nerds as “...
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M.I.A.'s "Bad Girls" video, directed by Romain Gavras, is wildly, seductively, offensively, charmingly, incoherently citational. But what is it quoting? Last week M.I.A. answered some questions from Youtube commenters about shiny trousers, drag racing, and fabrication. How do you get a see-through car? You have it made in India. What do you say when they tell you it'll take five months to ship? "I could take a hundred Indians and make it from scratch."
Here are fifteen presumed sources for the video: some probable (Rick Ross), some possible (Sex and the City in Abu Dhabi), some unendurable (Gaddafi's virgin bodyguards).
"Bad Girls"
1. Saudi Arabia Crazy Motorway Drivers
2. Ghostride the Whip
3. Roll Yo Voges, Oakland Sideshows
4. Rebel Without a Cause
5. Indiana Jones Desert Race
6. Libya Oil Fields on Fire
7. Sex and the City Abu Dhabi
8. Rick Ross Live Fast Die Young
9. The Bangles Walk Like an Egyptian
10. Muammar Gaddafi Parade
11. Need for Madness Video Game
12. Busta Rhymes Arab Money
13. Jibbs Chain Hang Low
(14. Wham! Bad Boys [WISHFUL THINKING])
M.I.A. responds to Youtube commenters
Thanks to Michael Ralph and Yates McKee for recent conversations about Rick Ross, Busta Rhymes, and Libya.
Say what you will about Lana Del Rey, the pop singer whose recent Saturday Night Live debut Brian Williams called “one of the worst outings in SNL history”; at least she didn’t pull an Ashlee Simpson. So let’s take a break from the whole Del Rey shitstorm and look at a few brave artists who have refused to lip-sync in their music videos.
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December, 2011: Fresh off two flights totaling 14 hours, I hit the streets of Tokyo. The thrilling all-female band TsushiMaMire had scheduled a one-off ahead of their big 2012 tour, at a stupidly named but promisingly chic Shibuya venue called clubasia. I'd met these riot grrrls at Santos Party House, and I was aching to catch them again on their home turf. So I did what any ballsy foreigner would do: I emailed them, including a brief message how we'd met in New York and that I'd be in town. Mari, the ballistically cute, ferocious singer/guitarist, immediately wrote me back, all excited. I was in.
Tickets to Tokyo rock shows cost up to 30 American smackers, which is likeTerminal 5 prices for a dude used to dropping $7 for an absolutely bonkers night at Death By Audio. But remember: this is Tokyo, where a Starbucks double espresso goes for $7. Luckily, most tickets factor in a one-drink pass, and drinking at Tokyo live music venues is good, from the smoothest draft beer to the surprisingly ubiquitous Zima.
Photography at shows is generally discouraged, and while you won't be ram-jammed for having your iPhone out, you also won't see people paying more attention to their smartphones than the band. What you can do is smoke cigarettes, so sensitive types should consider donning the ubiquitous "surgical" face-mask.
Locals can reserve tickets online via Lawson Ticket or EPlus and pick them up at their neighborhood 7-Eleven, which is awesome. But for us live-music freaks without local permanent addresses, that's a no-go. Bummer: after all those plane-hours getting stoked about bands, I wanted some guarantee that I'd get in. Good thing I'd sent that email.
On my way to the show, I traversed the rolling avenues of Love Hotel Hill in Dogenzaka, Shibuya. Picture gaudy-ass façades, pink neon and sex advertseverywhere. As Mari had reserved my ticket, I queued up opposite the physical-tickets group, which I noticed was assembled in "waves": like 1 to 4, similar to boarding an aircraft. Outside clubasia's stage room, I noted coin-lockers lining the corridor, where one could stash gear for a 300-yen fee. The importance of these lockers became very clear to me moments later, when the show erupted.
The floor was two-thirds the size of Music Hall of Williamsburg, including elevated stage, and everyone in the first three rows was decked in TsushiMaMire merch: t-shirts, multicolored scarf-towels, buttons, that jazz. I got to know my neighbors, like this reed-thin young dude who was stoked to see TsushiMaMire for the first time, these two cute girls, and this young salaryman-type, still wearing his suit and tie. Then TsushiMaMire ripped into their set…and I found myself slam-dancing. Yes: the front-row types were the hardcore fans, throwing up heavy metal horns in unison, hollering on cue to Mari's riffs, and moshing up a frenzy.
OK, I thought, boosting up the reed-thin dude so he could crowd surf, that'swhy the coin-lockers.
Image: courtesy the author
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