SXSW - Plan of attack

Long before I started writing music reviews, South By Southwest (SXSW) was on my radar. As someone who loves live music, it wasn't just a music event, it signified a Mecca of entertainment. Just as Frank Zappa satirically summed up 1967 San Francisco as where "the bands all live together" ("Who Needs the Peace Corp?", We're Only In It For the Money), I have this idealistic vision of SXSW as a place where impromptu jams spring up all over the place. Sure, it's a naïve fantasy, but regardless of the reality, I'd be like a kid in a candy store.

If you're not familiar with SXSW, it started as a local music festival back in 1987, but quickly defined Austin as a magnet for musicians and the industry. Now it's grown to an outlandish size, with Interactive media, Film, and Music segments lasting a week and a half. Bands from all over the world come out to create some buzz, make connections, and maybe catapult their careers. Aside from all of the official shows, there are countless unofficial shows sponsored by record labels, media outlets, and others.

This year, I'm finally going to make it down to Austin for the festival. Writing for Spectrum Culture qualified me for press credentials and I'm eager to take full advantage of my time there. One thing I've quickly worked out though is that SXSW is a lot like the Great American Beer Festival (GABF). Just as GABF featured more the 2700 beers from almost 600 breweries last year, there's too much for one person to take in during SXSW. Dozens of bands can be playing at the same time at a host of scattered locations. So a plan of attack is vital.

At GABF, I honed my strategy over years of practice and found the best approach is to pick a small list of targets, aim for those, but let the fates intervene. So, I might plan on dropping by New Glarus Brewing, Lost Abbey, Dogfish Head, and my friends at Alaskan, but I'm ready to take advantage of a great beer tip along the way. I'm planning a similar approach with SXSW. I have a small number of bands I really want to catch, but I also expect to improvise my schedule a fair amount. So far, my shortlist includes Local Natives on Wednesday, Flaming Lips on Thursday, and Valleys on Saturday. Of course there are plenty of other shows I'd like to catch and a couple of interview opportunities I'm hoping to firm up, but I'm certain that no matter where I am, the music will be ringing in my ears.

Music news - Not quite his "Golden Years"

David Bowie makes his own rules. After reinventing himself countless times -- glam Monster, blue-eyed soul man, rave channeler, character actor -- he seemed to be on track for retirement. But turning the tables again, he chose to celebrate his birthday this year by offering his own gift: announcing his first new album in 10 years paired with a video of the first single. The new album, The Next Day, is due in March.

"Where Are We Now?" mixes elements of Bowie's pop-soul sound with Berlin-era synthesizer touches, in a lush arrangement . His casual, detached vocals give the track a blurry haze of nostalgic melancholy. The tentative, emotional feel shows another side of Bowie. Vulnerable, he seems to recognize that his relevance is not guaranteed.



Tony Oursler's odd little video positions the track to match that reflective mood. With silent film clips projected on a screen, the focus is an odd conjoined doll with Bowie's face mapped onto one head and his wife Iman on the other. Bowie's lyrics focus on his time in Berlin as well as the city's postwar history, providing a virtual tour of remembered places. The relaxed flow gives the song a movie soundtrack quality; just as Oursler matches it with vintage shots of Berlin, it could accent almost any wistful memory montage.

The uplifting finish is a promise, "as long as there's me, as long as there's you." It's a well-played, low-key card. As long as we're all here, Bowie will still find a voice to fit the times.

Commentary - Respect and blessings

A couple of Bob Marley news items popped up recently.

The first is that Aston "Family Man" Barrett received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Bass Player magazine. This recognition acknowledges the great contributions that Family Man made to reggae music as a member of the Wailers. Six years ago, he lost his third court case over royalties owed by the Marley estate. Barrett made his claim based on a verbal contract with Marley and the role that he and his brother, Carleton Barrett, played in developing the unique sound that would define reggae music. Family Man's bass lines and Carleton Barrett's one drop beat are now instantly recognizable. Regardless of the lawsuit about the royalties, the Bass Player award draws attention to the role that Family Man has played in creating and promoting the sound of Jamaica, with the Wailers and as a producer. Respect.

The other interesting nugget is that Bob Marley beat out Michael Jackson and Madonna. Not in record sales or celebrity, but as the best artist to learn English from. A poll by Kaplan International Colleges showed that people identified Marley's music and lyrics as most helpful for picking up English. This certainly speaks to the universal nature of reggae music and Marley's economical writing style. His classic songs told stories and offered up positive messages that connect well with a global audience. It doesn't really matter how scientific this poll was, it's a wonderful gesture to a great man's legacy. I can attest, though, that music is a great way to augment learning a language. I owe a chunk of my German skills to bands like Die Ärzte, but don't tell my German tutor.

Commentary - Pussy power

For more or less the last dozen years, Vladimir Putin has been the leader of modern Russia. While his hold on power may remind many people of an older era of Soviet dictators, Putin seems to be looking West to the U.S. for his most recent political inspiration. Dedicated anti-Communist Richard Nixon seems to be his latest role model. Just as Nixon portrayed himself as a stable contrast to the hippie counterculture in his 1968 campaign, Putin consolidates his power based on improving Russia's economic stability.

And of course, both have responded to political protests with personal paranoia. Nixon used COINTELPRO against the Viet Nam protest movement and the hippies. And now, Putin is using the Russian Orthodox Church to strike out at the Russian feminist punk band, Pussy Riot. The rockers are as much about political theater as they are about music and they have a history of protest.

In February 2012, five members of the anonymous collective hi-jacked a church service to sing an anti-Putin prayer. They chose the church because of close ties between the Russian Orthodox Church and Vladimir Putin.

This is what Putin seems scared of

To be fair, the stunt was offensive. The group commandeered the altar and parodied a liturgical song, referring to the Patriarch as a "bitch" and singing "shit, shit, shit of Lord God" while calling to Mother Mary to chase Putin out.

It's reasonable that Patriarch Kirill and the Russian Orthodox Church are offended. But in what looks like a collaboration between the secular legal system and the Church's anger, three women who have been identified as part of the group have been charged with "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred and hostility", which is good for seven years in jail if they're convicted. This is a fairly heavy price for a relatively low-impact prank.

By all accounts, Pussy Riot has become a symbol, way out of proportion to the impact of their act. Even though the three women have apologized for offending sensibilities, they are becoming scape goats for the whole collection of political protesters that Putin hates.

I understand the frustration any leader has with political mockery and dissent. Even Nixon, who had the benefit of a fine Constitution that protects free speech, found it hard not to lash out at his tormenters. Putin can look to a long history of heavy State response and draw on it. But in this case, all he's doing is acknowledging the power of a bunch of smart-ass girls. It's not nearly as macho as taking down a tiger.

And in other news...
Courtney Love makes another desperate plea for attention, reminding Lana Del Rey that Nirvana''s Heart Shaped Box is all about her vagina. Even if that doesn't stop Del Rey from continuing to cover the song, it kind of kills it for the rest of us.

Commentary - Excuse me while I play this guy

Photo credit: Getty Images

We want so much from our heroes. They catch our eyes and ears in the media spotlight and we want more. These days, the stars oblige with Twitter feeds and photo op outings for the paparazzi. But go back a few years and we could fall in love with someone and never get enough. Especially if an untimely death got in the way. Jimi, Janis, and Jim all left us hungry for more.

Celebrity bio-pics feed this hunger even as they consume it. Whether done for crass profit, historical revision, or true love, these films tap into a primal part of our psyche. It's a messy swirl of ego sublimation, idolatry, gossip hunger, and the need for neatly wrapped answers. We're not sure whether we want to see our idols as human or bigger than life.

I'm forced to confront all of this because André 3000 is set to play Jimi Hendrix in the upcoming biopic All Is By My Side. Hendrix has a mystique that hasn't been tarnished by any of the biographies or salvaged demo recordings. I'm torn between wanting to have that illusion of an omniscient sense of his life and being afraid that a poorly executed movie is going to pollute my ideal of Jimi Hendrix.

Look no further than Oliver Stone's The Doors to see how damaging a bad portrayal can be. Val Kilmer captured Jim Morrison's look and sound, but the story was a sloppy, simplistic mess. On the other hand a pre-meltdown Gary Busey did a serviceable job in The Buddy Holly story.

I like André 3000 as a performer and I'm sure he's taking on the role out of love and respect. I'm just not sure that's enough. Despite my doubts, though, I'm sure I'll go see it. Whether I'll bask or cringe, right now it makes me want to listen to Axis: Bold as Love yet again.

Commentary - Old and in the way

Photo credit: Gene Kirkland, via SlashOnline

Slash recently outed himself as the crotchety old guy of the neighborhood in an interview with Absolute Radio. Actually, he complained that, in a world of digital downloads, "music has lost its magic". With physical CDs falling in popularity, he misses the packaging, which used to contribute to the whole experience of a new purchase.

To some extent, Slash is right. Aside from the cover art, CDs can offer booklets full of lyrics or liner notes. Occasionally, the packaging itself is interesting, like the cool NES cartidge presentation for Beck's 8 Bit Variations.

Back in the day, record albums provided a larger canvas for much more intricate artwork. Anthony Phillips' Wise After the Event featured Peter Cross' amusing illustrations and people have spent hours identifying everyone on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band cover.

But is all the magic gone? Björk's recent Biophilia offers a good counter argument. The album is a multimedia release with music and associated apps to accompany the songs. It may not spark a new mainstream trend, but it is a sign of a wide open universe of cool ideas that aren't tied to albums, per se.

More important than the packaging or sales model, the magic is really in the music itself. My first encounters with several bands have been hearing the music without the benefit of packaging, whether it was the first time I heard Elvis Costello on the radio or the Golden Awesome via a download.

Maybe Slash is bothered by more practical concerns. He probably doesn't like that consumers are no longer forced to buy full albums. Instead, they can select just the tracks they want. This makes recording an album's worth of songs more risky. At some level, I'm sympathetic to the old model because I am still an album oriented listener. But there are some advantages to "pick and choose" song selection.

The obvious benefit is that consumers get more power: they don't have to pay for filler songs. But it's more important that people are listening differently now. They create song lists like the old school mix tapes, but longer and easier to share. And shuffle play lets people discover interesting juxtapositions within their music collections.

Nothing stops artists from selling full albums, but they have to create the value to justify it: it might be a concept album that gains its power through the narrative flow of tracks or more fluid transitions that turn the whole album into a single musical piece where each track is a movement.

In any case, where Slash only sees what's lost, I see some interesting possibilities. Slash's pessimism hasn't forced him out of the business, though. His new solo album, Apocalyptic Love, is due out in May. In the meantime, stay off his lawn.

Music news - Desperately seeking a clue

I made my weekly trek through the music news, looking for something interesting enough to cover. Some weeks are easier than others and this week was a cake walk.

God hates fags and Radiohead,

The Westboro Baptist Church picketed Radiohead in Kansas City last weekend, decrying the band as "freak monkeys with mediocre tunes". I was shocked. Did they somehow mistake a Radiohead show for a military funeral or something? If they're going to get into music criticism, should I start ranting about my religious delusions ("God hates godly haters")? And why Radiohead? They could have waited for Friday to vent on Jane's Addiction.

But just as I was settling into a good anti-bigot rant, I had to put it on hold because we need to have a face off for most clueless of the week. I'm talking, of course, about Courtney Love and her assertion that the Muppets are raping Curt Cobain. Or at least his memory. That's right, including the song in The Muppets movie last year stepped over a line that Weird Al, Miley Cyrus, 2Cellos, and Paul Anka couldn't find.

Photo credit: Ross Hawkes

It's not nice to pick on the handicapped and Love's critical faculties put her into that category, albeit largely by her own doing. But I'm not sure I understand her rationale. Disney apparently negotiated in good faith with Primary Wave Music (Love sold them half her rights to Cobain's music, including full distribution rights). The other members of Nirvana apparently signed off as well.

Aside from the issue of rights, it's still not clear what's so egregious about the Muppets? I don't necessarily think Cobain would have been thrilled, but who knows? Maybe what Love's really trying to say is that she was effectively raped by the Muppets. Or more to the point, the Muppets hurt her feelings by not giving her enough attention. But there's never enough.

Which side wins the Clueless Olympics? I'll declare a draw.

Music news - Resurrection Blues

I understand the attraction of the reunion tour, where a classic old band gets back together again for the sake of the fans. Or for the sake of their kids' tuition or a cozier retirement. Regardless of the motivations, if a band still has die hard fans, the members can always bury their mutual hostility and make nice for another spin. If they didn't do that, I never would have seen Iron Butterfly back in the '80s. Despite that pleasure, these zombie tours are ultimately unsettling.

Photo credit: Sebastian Anthony

Most recently, I heard that the promised Buffalo Springfield reunion tour is on hiatus. Even though they played a few shows last year, Neil Young apparently lost interest when he started working with Crazy Horse again. Buffalo Springfield represents a golden era in folk rock music and had some classic songs, even if they only lasted two years. But a reunion tour like this only promises a rehash of the old classics, perhaps sprinkled with a couple of songs from the members' back catalogs.

Rolling Stone also upped the ante with their article handicapping the chances of other bands getting back together. From the Talking Heads to Oasis to Abba, they offer their odds. Best of luck to the fans (and I love several of these bands), but there's still an element of unresolved grief at the thought of these groups trying to grasp at the magic of their original energy.

By contrast, my favorite musical reunions are living examples of continued growth. The recent Béla Fleck and the Flecktones release, Rocket Science is a great example. For that matter, I'm willing to bet that's a big part of Neil Young's priorities: creating new music is richer than rehashing the old stuff.

Music news - OK Go for the money

After treadmills, extreme timelapse, and the Muppets, it must be getting hard for OK Go to come up with entertaining video ideas. Where most bands might have a song that needs a video, OK Go has almost reached the point of being a video in search of a song. Eventually, the pressure to deliver will almost certainly drive the band crazy (which will probably be the subject of their final video).



Their latest, for Needing/Getting, is a collaboration with General Motors and director Brian L. Perkins. GM got a Superbowl Chevy ad out of the deal and the band had their next wacky video concept. It's sort of a variation on the Rube Goldberg machine idea: set up a desert course with instruments and other sound generating stuff and run a Chevy Sonic through it to "play" the song.

It's a cute idea and the band delivers total commitment to the premise -- "we're pop, but we mean it, damnit!" Getting someone else to pay the video production cost was nice, but OK Go's real win was the Superbowl exposure.

Of course, there's been some backlash against the band for selling out, although a fair number of fans are supportive. The whole debate raises the larger question about money's role in the arts. Effectively, corporate sponsorship is just taking the same place that the Medici's did in supporting Leonardo da Vinci (among many others).

That perspective has always been uneasy for rock and roll, though, where people like their rebels. The idea of Jim Morrison, John Lennon, or Jimi Hendrix shilling for the Man would have torpedoed their social cred. But modern aesthetics have come a long way. The Who Sell Out's social commentary has yielded to some artists making their first music sale to a commercial before they even cut an album. Now, when we look back at Microsoft's use of the Stones' Start Me Up for Windows 95, that's merely "ironic".

So, has OK Go sold out? Hipsters will be purist hipsters, but I'm pretty sure that working with GM didn't compromise OK Go's musical integrity.

Music news - Don't take this...

...personally.

Image credit: Open Clip Art Library, care of Wikipedia

Actually, I did take it a little personally. Producer Richard X (M.I.A., Kelis, Sugababes) talked to BBC Newsbeat about music piracy and album leaks. He blamed the problem on rabid fans phishing for pre-release copies of music rather than a sinister pirate cabal.

He shared anecdotes about insidious fans posing as insiders and using social engineering to get early access to albums. But it's interesting to contrast this with another point in the article that mentions the long lead time the labels take to release music.

For my part, I occasionally sense some suspicion when I contact an artist to get a review copy of an upcoming album. I have the advantage of an active review blog to vouch for my identity. But the industry's piracy problem probably affects my odds of success.

The irony, though, is that for all of the music label fear-mongering about album leaks, there are plenty of artists like Jill Sobule, Jonathan Coulton, and Matt Stevens who have been building successful, sustained careers around sharing their music. They may not be operating at the crazy money level that the major labels play at, but they are proof that an artist can connect with fans, satisfy their cravings for fresh music, and still make a living.

Music news - Keep your hands off my banana

It's appropriate to talk about intellectual property on a day when much of the internet is protesting SOPA.

In a nutshell, the Velvet Underground is suing the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for trademark infringement to keep the iconic banana logo from being licensed.

The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvet Underground & Nico album wouldn't have existed without Andy Warhol's influence as an artistic director and patron. On the music side, his main contributions were bringing Nico into the band and staying out of the band's other musical decisions. But it was Warhol's art scene and shock aesthetic that nurtured the Velvet Underground.

Andy Warhol's cover art, featuring the banana as a sticker (with an underlying skinned banana in pink), was simultaneously minimalist and subversive. The image itself was not trademarked or copyrighted.

That leaves the Velvet Underground making the argument that the image is indelibly associated with the band, which they claim effectively makes the banana their trademark. They argue that consumers would assume that the band tacitly supported commercial products using the image.

The challenge here is that The Velvet Underground & Nico's stark design doesn't include any other details beyond Andy Warhol's signature. So, any use of the banana alone is effectively a direct reference to the album. On the other hand, the banana isn't the same as the Rolling Stones' lips and tongue (John Pasche, 1970) or the Grateful Dead's "Steal Your Face" logo (Bob Thomas & Owsley Stanley, 1969).

I have a hard time getting behind the Velvet Underground on this one. Sure, there's a lot of money involved (a licensing deal with Apple triggered the lawsuit) and the image is associated with the band, but they didn't own the banana in the first place. On top of that, the band owes a debt to Warhol for his early support. Money changes everything.

And I guess that I just don't know
Oh, and I guess that I just don't know

The image at the top of this page is by artist Karen Ramsay. I sat for the drawing and licensed its use, but she owns the art. I'll let you know if she makes a deal with Apple...

Music news - Radio Moscow meltdown

Hey, hey, my, my
Rock and roll will never die
Hang your hair down in your eye
You'll make a million dollars
-- Todd Snider Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues

It's hard for small bands to get any attention. The lesson of Lady Gaga is that the internet needs spectacle. So, this blurb about Radio Moscow falling apart onstage has been making the rounds. Much like Todd Snider's "band that wasn't even together", Radio Moscow dissolved at the start of their North American tour. According the press, the drummer hurled frontman Parker Griggs' own guitar into Griggs' face.


Ouch. Poor guy! 14 stitches in the emergency room and he's left in the lurch when his drummer and bass player desert the tour. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. At least he's already found replacement players because The Show Must Go On.

Of course, the spectacle was all captured on video:



Far from bolstering sympathy for Griggs, the video shows him provoking the attack when he threw his guitar at the drummer Cory Berry and his drum kit. From the witness reports, Griggs was trash talking the band well before the ugly set closer.

In a cynical world, no press is bad press - but this kind of lame acting out isn't going to win Griggs or his new line up any fans. It's a shame, Radio Moscow has made some good music in the past.

Best of luck to Parker Griggs' new bandmates. Be ready to dodge!

Catching up and staying in the loop

I'll split this post into a couple of sections: catching up on news and a little bit about my latest musical obsession. Neither of the topics is that lengthy, so it makes sense to combine them.

Catching up

On the review side, I've posted the new things I want to write about. Los Amigos Invisibles is the only CD that I didn't write up. I decided not to write that one because it's mostly a '70s pop/disco thing, which is not very interesting to me. On the other hand I do have a couple of new things coming in: Sonic Youth and VNV Nation. A friend recommended the VNV Nation, so that should be interesting. Another friend recommended Chris Joss, so I'll look into that too. Finally, I'll be writing up the story of my recent copyright conflict once it's resolved.

As far as playing goes, I'm still on my own. The reggae band did not pan out. We never got together. Also, they were talking about 12 hours of rehearsal a week spread over 4 nights, which isn't workable. So, I've got several solo shows coming up and I'm still in the market for a band. The solo gigs are fun, but it's not quite the same. In fact, I need to keep it all a little more interesting...

Staying in the loop

...which leads nicely into our next topic. I've been evolving in my use of the Boomerang phrase sampler. This is a cool toy that lets me record what I'm playing, then it repetitively plays that recording in a loop. I can overdub and add parts if I want to. Additionally, I can record a second looped section and shift back and forth between them. This comes in handy for recording verse and chorus pieces. This lets me have a one man band sound in my live performances. In my initial work, I would simply record the verse and chorus while I played and sang. Then, I could take a lead over the two whenever I wanted. Nice, but fairly trivial.

The next level is taking the bass and layering that onto the recorded loop. This involves laying down the initial loop with guitar, switching to the bass, and then overdubbing the bass line. After that, I can switch back to guitar and add parts or just play along while I sing. Sometimes, I even tap on the guitar body to get a percussion part. Most of these songs are one guitar and one bass part, but I do have a couple where I layer on a number of additional guitar parts. My cover of Drive by Incubus is a good example. I lay down the initial changes, then add bass. Then I layer in another two or three textural guitar parts to build a funkier sound. By the time I'm done assembling all of this, it's thicker and has a fuller groove.

Lately, I've started working on this to assemble more jam oriented parts, where I might start with guitar or bass, then I build up. The difference here is that I have a looser idea of where the piece is going to go. I'm almost ready to bring out my drum machine to fill out the rhythm section and turn this into a real band arrangement.

There are musicians out there like Keller Williams, Arthur Lee Land, and Zoe Keating who take this to a much higher level (with better equipment than me, too;-). They help me see some of the potential of what I can create. The key, though, is to remember that this is supposed to be fun for the audience. So, I can't let myself turn into a loop-obsessed shoe gazer, where the technical challenge overwhelms the entertainment aspect. Those artists keep it very interesting, but I have seen boring loopers, too.

Unless I find a band soon, I anticipate getting a lot better at this.

Update

I just wanted to catch up a little. I've got a nice stack of new things to review, including Jill Sobule's California Years, Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown, Los Amigos Invisibles, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, and a Dengue Fever DVD called Sleepwalking Through the Mekong. That's enough to keep me busy for a while.

I don't have much on my concert calendar right now, but I am thinking about going to see the tribute band Lez Zepplin. They're supposed to be pretty good, so I'll probably give them a try.

In other news, I've started looking for a different band situation. In the next week or so, I've got an audition to play guitar with a reggae band, which has some potential, though I haven't heard them yet. There are a few other possibilities, too. I'm excited anyway to find a musical situation where I can get out and play again.

Newsflash

Just a quick heads up. I'm going back and editing my blog entries where I have photos to include a link to more concert photos. I'll be adding these links as I upload the sets. Please add a comment if you think this is useful.

News update

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I've slipped away from writing like I should. That will soon be remedied: I've got a couple of CDs ready to review (Prince and Gogol Bordello) and I'll be posting my review of My Morning Jacket's Okonokos DVD shortly.

Even though I haven't been writing, I have been playing. My band, the Fabulous Juveniles had our first gig in almost a year at a private party, which went relatively well. And I played a freezing cold solo gig at the local Farmers' Market this last weekend. Of course, I've been listening a lot, too.

On the radar

Just a taste of what's coming up:

• Concert review: Jonathan Coulton
  
• CD review: Macklemore
• CD review: Whiskey Blanket
• CD review: M.T.H.D.S.
• More musical musings