austin, tx 3.21.2009
left the fort around 1pm friday and got stuck in traffic above hillsboro due to a bad traffic accident -- had to wait for careflight to land and do their thing. hope the person made it. got into town around the time the nervebreakers were starting, and ant'ny wanted to go by the convention center and pick up our credentials. went to mimi's and met her friend scott, who said he'd had dinner at our house a couple of years ago. he lives in denton and was in town to play a house show. nice fella and didn't even object when i kept calling him eric. (duh.)
made it to spiro's (which mimi's roommate ben -- my granddaughter piper's most favoritest one -- describes as a sleazy bar where frat daddies can pick up underaged girls) for the wfmu/aquarius records showcase. watched wildildlife from seattle, who played good but generic stoner-rock, and slough feg from san fran played a nice heavy set. best band that night were the ovens, four bay area teens who played nice hard, aggressive punk songs, all under a minute. (see first clip below.) one of their gtrists broke a string, a harbinger of things to come. worst of the night were the major stars from cambridge, mass., who looked like your teachers from high school who thought they were really cool but weren't and proved jay hardesty's dictum: "lynyrd skynyrd: three gtrs. the who, pink floyd: one gtr. i rest my case." (see second clip below.) saw michael chamy from zanzibar snails and talked about getting together for dinner and fw weekly interviewage next week.
the gunslingers had kind of a rough night -- by the time their 1am set rolled around, most of the house had cleared out, and the sound mix was fer shit. greg had problems getting feedback from his borrowed marshall, there was a grounding problem with the vocal mic, and i remembered after the fact that the major stars' drummer had had the soundman take everything out of the drum monitor, which the soundman failed to correct for before the 'slingers hit, so antoine couldn't hear anything, throwing them even further off their game. greg wound up calling the set down early and he and mattheu looked pretty disheartened afterwards; antoine doesn't seem the type to let anything like that get him down. i bought a vinyl copy of no more invention and encouraged them to shake it off and have a good show in oklahoma the following night. (i find it interesting that greg keeps all his pedals in the original boxes. kinda meticulous for such an abandoned player.)
ate a coupla slices of street pizza, walked back to mimi's and tried sleeping on the porch, interrupted by sound (from a show after 3am?!?!? or somebody's stereo?) and some douchebag on his cellphone acting like a dick with some girl he was trying to hustle. finally got too cold and i slunk inside to crash on the floor.
next morning walked to whole foods with scott to get breakfast burritos, then headed down to casino's bar around noon. ran into ant'ny's friend jed and tahiti and pikahsso from AwkQuarius. walked into the bar and heard the damned playing "neat neat neat;" kind of like hearing "30 seconds over tokyo" at the chat room on wednesday night. brian forella, carl pack, and lee allen stopped by our table, too, and it felt like being home. borrowed ant'ny's cellphone to call mimi and tom finn, who agreed to meet us there. ant'ny sprung for casino burgers and my second goal for the weekend was met. and yes, it was everything i'd hoped for.
rode up to antone's records with finn. ran into dan lightner and justin robertson, who magically made beers appear. drank a toast to fraf with finn and justin, who also explained his often-eccentric attire: "if you're wearing a snap-button shirt and a big cowboy hat and you're an asshole, people figure, 'well, what else would you expect?'" also saw my friend jim yanaway, who wasn't reachable by phone but showed up and let me know about a couple of interesting projects he's been involved in. one's a documentary film about the comanche nation and the trials 'n' tribs of four comanches who want to build a sweat lodge (and continue the comanche tradition of taking hostages). yanaway said that the norwegian government wants to bring 20 of the comanches over on an oil tanker and have asked him to go along to coordinate logistics. jim is also involved in a norwegian film about american culture and the various threads (jfk, mlk, civil rights movement) that culminated in barack obama's election that may wind up touring a la john holbrook's death penalty photos. he said michael ochs of the archives is involved.
the band before the nervebreakers was the magic christians, with cyril jordan from the flamin' groovies on gtr and clem burke from blondie on drums. (maybe that's why i kept hearing "teenage head" playing wherever i went.) cyril, the iconic rockstar dude from the cover of the teenage head alb, has matured into an elfin-looking little guy, but he still has that perspex dan armstrong and his new band does a nice line in stones/pretty things-style garage rawk with beatlesque harmonies. clem was definitely the hardest workin' man on the set, with chops and showmanship on a keith moon/dino danelli level. the "encore" of "teenage head" followed by "shake some action" was the icing on the cake. a nice surprise. (see clip below.)
mike haskins from the nervebreakers sez the new alb is mastered and being shopped around (fred krc's steady boy and greg kostelich's get hip are options). bought a 6-song sampler e.p. and a t-shirt from him. (the shirt was an xl -- which mike didn't think he had -- instead of a large, so in the fullness of time, it will be donated to mr. finn.) the 'breakers sounded great, although barry blew a fuse on his borrowed fender and his volume was too low after he switched to a music man that someone fortuitously had in their car to finish the set, but that's just part of the fun of playing live. thing i always loved about the nb's (who were a band as early as '73) way back when was that, contrary to the conventional wisdom o' the day, the could really play -- in fact, mike was prolly the best gtrist to come out of the whole texas punk development -- and they were funny as hell. 'twas great to hear those songs again, and i misted up when mike and barry introduced each other as "my brother" and "my best friend on earth." finn got the whole performance (as well as the previous day's) on video with his new camera and should have some clips posted on youtube in the fullness of time. might have to make it to dada for their show there if i can work out the time. (here's a coupla vids bob childress posted of their show at owl tree roasting on friday.)
spent the rest of the evening riding around with finn, stopping off for some nice spicy thai food to cleanse the system after all that beer, then back to mimi's before midnight to sleep. all in all, i had probably the best sxsw experience i've had since the time i saw RON. back when i used to do this more often, it was an escape from the isolation of my hermit-like existence in the weedgrown wilds of benbrook. it's nicer to feel more connected, and the best part of this trip was getting to catch up with some folks i hadn't seen in awhile. i didn't even feel bad that i'd missed the new york dolls, dinosaur jr., and flower travellin' band. thanks to ant'ny, mimi, ben, and finn for making it such a gas.
ADDENDUM FROM BACK IN THE FORT: barry from the nervebreakers hurt his hand banging on his gtr. he showed me the bone spur he got from whacking his wrist against it back in the day. it seemed totally appropriate to the occasion. mike also said the nb's are set to release a compilation of their old stuff. hooray!
made it to spiro's (which mimi's roommate ben -- my granddaughter piper's most favoritest one -- describes as a sleazy bar where frat daddies can pick up underaged girls) for the wfmu/aquarius records showcase. watched wildildlife from seattle, who played good but generic stoner-rock, and slough feg from san fran played a nice heavy set. best band that night were the ovens, four bay area teens who played nice hard, aggressive punk songs, all under a minute. (see first clip below.) one of their gtrists broke a string, a harbinger of things to come. worst of the night were the major stars from cambridge, mass., who looked like your teachers from high school who thought they were really cool but weren't and proved jay hardesty's dictum: "lynyrd skynyrd: three gtrs. the who, pink floyd: one gtr. i rest my case." (see second clip below.) saw michael chamy from zanzibar snails and talked about getting together for dinner and fw weekly interviewage next week.
the gunslingers had kind of a rough night -- by the time their 1am set rolled around, most of the house had cleared out, and the sound mix was fer shit. greg had problems getting feedback from his borrowed marshall, there was a grounding problem with the vocal mic, and i remembered after the fact that the major stars' drummer had had the soundman take everything out of the drum monitor, which the soundman failed to correct for before the 'slingers hit, so antoine couldn't hear anything, throwing them even further off their game. greg wound up calling the set down early and he and mattheu looked pretty disheartened afterwards; antoine doesn't seem the type to let anything like that get him down. i bought a vinyl copy of no more invention and encouraged them to shake it off and have a good show in oklahoma the following night. (i find it interesting that greg keeps all his pedals in the original boxes. kinda meticulous for such an abandoned player.)
ate a coupla slices of street pizza, walked back to mimi's and tried sleeping on the porch, interrupted by sound (from a show after 3am?!?!? or somebody's stereo?) and some douchebag on his cellphone acting like a dick with some girl he was trying to hustle. finally got too cold and i slunk inside to crash on the floor.
next morning walked to whole foods with scott to get breakfast burritos, then headed down to casino's bar around noon. ran into ant'ny's friend jed and tahiti and pikahsso from AwkQuarius. walked into the bar and heard the damned playing "neat neat neat;" kind of like hearing "30 seconds over tokyo" at the chat room on wednesday night. brian forella, carl pack, and lee allen stopped by our table, too, and it felt like being home. borrowed ant'ny's cellphone to call mimi and tom finn, who agreed to meet us there. ant'ny sprung for casino burgers and my second goal for the weekend was met. and yes, it was everything i'd hoped for.
rode up to antone's records with finn. ran into dan lightner and justin robertson, who magically made beers appear. drank a toast to fraf with finn and justin, who also explained his often-eccentric attire: "if you're wearing a snap-button shirt and a big cowboy hat and you're an asshole, people figure, 'well, what else would you expect?'" also saw my friend jim yanaway, who wasn't reachable by phone but showed up and let me know about a couple of interesting projects he's been involved in. one's a documentary film about the comanche nation and the trials 'n' tribs of four comanches who want to build a sweat lodge (and continue the comanche tradition of taking hostages). yanaway said that the norwegian government wants to bring 20 of the comanches over on an oil tanker and have asked him to go along to coordinate logistics. jim is also involved in a norwegian film about american culture and the various threads (jfk, mlk, civil rights movement) that culminated in barack obama's election that may wind up touring a la john holbrook's death penalty photos. he said michael ochs of the archives is involved.
the band before the nervebreakers was the magic christians, with cyril jordan from the flamin' groovies on gtr and clem burke from blondie on drums. (maybe that's why i kept hearing "teenage head" playing wherever i went.) cyril, the iconic rockstar dude from the cover of the teenage head alb, has matured into an elfin-looking little guy, but he still has that perspex dan armstrong and his new band does a nice line in stones/pretty things-style garage rawk with beatlesque harmonies. clem was definitely the hardest workin' man on the set, with chops and showmanship on a keith moon/dino danelli level. the "encore" of "teenage head" followed by "shake some action" was the icing on the cake. a nice surprise. (see clip below.)
mike haskins from the nervebreakers sez the new alb is mastered and being shopped around (fred krc's steady boy and greg kostelich's get hip are options). bought a 6-song sampler e.p. and a t-shirt from him. (the shirt was an xl -- which mike didn't think he had -- instead of a large, so in the fullness of time, it will be donated to mr. finn.) the 'breakers sounded great, although barry blew a fuse on his borrowed fender and his volume was too low after he switched to a music man that someone fortuitously had in their car to finish the set, but that's just part of the fun of playing live. thing i always loved about the nb's (who were a band as early as '73) way back when was that, contrary to the conventional wisdom o' the day, the could really play -- in fact, mike was prolly the best gtrist to come out of the whole texas punk development -- and they were funny as hell. 'twas great to hear those songs again, and i misted up when mike and barry introduced each other as "my brother" and "my best friend on earth." finn got the whole performance (as well as the previous day's) on video with his new camera and should have some clips posted on youtube in the fullness of time. might have to make it to dada for their show there if i can work out the time. (here's a coupla vids bob childress posted of their show at owl tree roasting on friday.)
spent the rest of the evening riding around with finn, stopping off for some nice spicy thai food to cleanse the system after all that beer, then back to mimi's before midnight to sleep. all in all, i had probably the best sxsw experience i've had since the time i saw RON. back when i used to do this more often, it was an escape from the isolation of my hermit-like existence in the weedgrown wilds of benbrook. it's nicer to feel more connected, and the best part of this trip was getting to catch up with some folks i hadn't seen in awhile. i didn't even feel bad that i'd missed the new york dolls, dinosaur jr., and flower travellin' band. thanks to ant'ny, mimi, ben, and finn for making it such a gas.
ADDENDUM FROM BACK IN THE FORT: barry from the nervebreakers hurt his hand banging on his gtr. he showed me the bone spur he got from whacking his wrist against it back in the day. it seemed totally appropriate to the occasion. mike also said the nb's are set to release a compilation of their old stuff. hooray!
posted by stashdauber at 7:40 AM
2 Comments:
saw the Nervebreakers the day before. This too was greatness. Lot's of catching up to do w/ plenty of fine folks from the day. Glad you made the next day and reported on it. Had to run back up to Big D for art stuff. Take care and hope to see you at Dada,
Sounds like you had fun (the traffic would had been my favorite part). Hope the wallet didn't take too bad of a hit!
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