SXSW - DAY 2

WILDBIRDS & PEACEDRUMS
Soon as I headed over, work summoned me to hotel room, but I put it off enough to enjoy some hearty Nina Simonesque blues scat-bellowing & minimalist tribal drumming. Steel drum! Dude! Where'd that come from?? Do it again!

MARK OLSON & GARY LOURIS
Ran into Eric Danton of Hartford Courant. And uber-Last Town Chorus fan button man guy. And Trish Wagner. And David Hirschland. And gave Marky Mark a big hug. Then wached he and Gary sing sweetly folksy timeless tunes. Beauty.

THE GRATES
Took awesome photo with Mo, as we do. Drank free delicious shot of something and something. Then rocked the fuckity fuck out. Singer is something special. Like "special kid" special. And that's why I loved her. Tube socks! And white polyester shorts jacked up to her armpits. And high voltage rock n roll. And the drummer smiled nonstop. I love smiling drummers. I should smile more when I'm playing. Noted.

THE DRISKILL
Eat. Rest. Eat. Rest. Juliette Lewis, flower in hair. Eat. Rest.

HAWK & A HACKSAW
Tuba, trumpet, violin, accordion = gypsy jammin'. Sorry to the guy I kept elbowing not-on-purpose. And thank you for remaining stoic in the face of adversity.

THE GUGGENHEIM GROTTO
Hey UFO peeps! Word to the up. I like the way our favorite Irish folk rock duo is now incorporating copious ukelele. Uke it up.

THERMALS, BLITZEN TRAPPER
BUST. The lines for these were here to nevereverever. Find Daniel Higglesbeebigglesbeeboo, Nike JT, & others instead. Impressed by Daniel's meticulously ordered, notated, & bolded schedule. Wish my own included "sleep."

EFTERKLANG **FAVORITE OF THE DAY**
Sweet, delicious, melodic, 7-man surprise. I clapped, I danced, I marveled. Sing so pretty, play so pretty, moustache so pretty. All-star jamz, xylophone included. Top notch awesomeness.

SOME BAND I DON'T KNOW THE NAME OF WHOSE BASSIST LOOKED ALL OF 14 AND WAS BADASS
Finally, after nearly 48 hours of text/phone tag, I meet up w/ Kevin Taylor & Libby from the Shooting Gallery. Drinks, rememories, awesome times. Eyes start crossing. Start walking back to room. Well, hey Britt Daniel! Lookin' good. You can turn my camera on any ole time.

BED
Now. Had to skip the Deep Vibration because I may die if I don't sleep. Not an exaggeration. Good night.

SXSW - DAY 1

BEGINNING
Up at 4:15am. Text from Sir Ricardo Baca at 5am. Double-planing it to Austin. Caloric intake: a Luna bar and a coffee

SALT LICK
Ridin' w/ funny, road-weary Irishmen (The Guggenheim Grotto) on day 1,245,555 of their US tour. Delicious BBQ, first calories after Luna bar & coffee, besides caffeinated mints. (Yes, you read correctly). Start to feel human again. Enjoy the company of Domino, Native Tongue, The Guggenheim Grotto, Max Tundra, Mara from Bug, Mike from McCann Erickson, & JT from Nike. Belly full.

LADYHAWKE
Synthesized 80's lite through a veil of blonde bangs. "She could have been in Labyrinth with David Bowie. Who's got the baby with the voodoo? You do!" I say to Mo. She laughs. We hydrate.

HEARTLESS BASTARDS
Move closer, in Avett anticipation. Meet Carter w/ Rollo & Grady - he skools us in how to get yungins to gitcher drinks when you're at a show. It works. Carter is magic. Heartless Bastards...not so much. First two songs promising walls of wailing blues rock...and then it crawls into a wall and sits there like a dull midtempo country rock lump. They play for entirely too long. We fidget. They close with a number that included three REPEATED solos at the end. Like they're Primus. Or Zeppelin. Or...

THE AVETT BROTHERS
Delicious. Happy happy times. A yungin brings me whiskey on the rocks. Good kid. Ric Baca & Denver gang appear and hugs all around. Delicious hugs and happytimes. But what...5 songs? Turns out the Heartless Bastards, true to their name, played 20 min too long and we all lose out. But Avetts are awesome. And they play a catchy tune from upcoming Rick Rubin album, for which I am simultaneously nervous & excited.

DD/MM/YYYY ** HIGHLIGHT OF DAY **
Mo and I stumble in after Kevin Taylor mentions he might be at Emo's post-Obey. No Kevin, maybe b/c it's Emo's Jr. I just want to say "Elmo" when I type that. This show is THE RAD. (Except for the couple ballroom moshing. Perfect description.) Loud, melodic, punk, spazzy, tuneful, masterful noise orchestrated by 5 superrad Canadian kids. Their guitar broke. Their drumhead broke. Then they said, "We're still looking for a place to sleep tonight. We have a tent. We're sleeping in a tent and our stuff's broke." And then the rocked the shit some more.

MUMFORD & SONS
I go solo. (Rollin in my 5.0, with my ragtop down, so my hair can blow? No.) I realize my Artist band will gain me entry to Artist Lounge, so I go in just because I can. Boring. But there's drinks. Head to Friends. Mumfords = Sweet English trio, looking tired and harried, begging forgiveness as they were stuck at La Guardia (cesspool) Airport for 10 hours today. Somehow, their keyboardist, Ben, did not make the cut. Is he still at La Guardia? Was he deported? Is he in a holding cell? Who knows. But they're sweet little British bluegrassy folksy sweetie pies and though I wanted to deck the girl in front of me who kept drunkenly falling backwards onto me, I had a tender Mumford moment. Even sans Ben.

NOW
Mo is plotting Thurs. I'm plotting sleep. Did I mention the been up since 4:15am L.A. time thing? Yeah. I did.

zzzzzz

WARDENS

The 2+ year hiatus is over.

Begin the musical stalking:

MySpace

Facebook

Wardens demo to surface very, very soon

WHEN WORK & PLEASURE DOTH MEET

This morning as we prepared to record Episode 24 of the iTunes Weekly Rewind (feat. the music of The Watchmen, Neko Case, Simon & Garfunkel, and the 20th anniversary of Do The Right Thing), Bobs & Rockbarry were chatting during his call-in about PPP, and I slammed my pointer finger ("index finger," my ass) down on the Talk button:

"Dude, PPP is amazing. We rep them for licensing. They. Are. Awesome."

Then I picked up my laptop, opened my iTunes, and started playing PPP's "On A Cloud," which is just a massively dope, catchy shoop-a-doop hip-hop ride to funkytown. And then I held up my laptop and pushed the Talk button again, and danced around in the control room, swangin' my hips with my laptop in the air. Bobs bobbed his head; Rockbarry couldn't hear or see me because he was calling in to the studio. Everyone else laughed.

Then Bobs requested a copy of the album and Tanya looked it up on her iPhone.
Because "On A Cloud" is the jam.

You have to check these guys out. I'd toss an mp3 up here, but that wouldn't be kosher since I rep them for licensing via my job at Sugaroo!, so you'll have to do the legwork yourself - I can assure you an iTunes download or (egad!) buying the physical product (their brand-new album Abundance) is totally worth it. These guys are the new wave of old school master craftsmen of hip-hop and they're gearing up for a well-earned breakthrough, I hope -

PPP MySpace: Go to "On A Cloud" feat Karma first. You'll thank me.

(Yeah, that one guy totally looks like a baby Tupac.)

It made me think about the redonkulous amount of music that passes through my ears on a daily basis. Some of it is meh, for sure, and some is good, but there are some really, really stellar artists that I have the utter privilege to pimp out on a daily basis. I should probably be turning you on to these every now and then.

Here be a few nuggets for now...

Drumroll...

NEKO CASE
Duh.

Beginning her ascent from the alt-country ghetto into the greater consciousness with her last release Fox Confessor Brings The Flood, Neko Case is finally allowed to own the stage (in the case of Los Angeles in June - the Greek Theatre!) that is so rightfully hers on Middle Cyclone, her 6th solo album after leaving the New Pornographers. Her voice is a singular powerhouse, a bellow both wild and willfully wrangled that simultaneously hits below the belt and forces you to fall in love with her. If you're not a fan of "alt-country" or "country," give Neko a chance. Her music is a complete and utter knockout, and her voice a weapon of mass destruction.

Listen to "People Got A Lotta Nerve" from Middle Cyclone. Then go buy it. If you haven't already.

(And despite all of you naysayers that don't like it for whatever tightassed reason, I think the cover art for this album is badassedy delicious. That woman is not just a firecracker, she's one of those giant wads of dynamite tucked under Wile E. Coyote's armpit).


MIKEY & THE GYPSYS
The Swedish pop train will not be stopped.

You don't know them, and you probably won't hear about them for a while, because a) they're in Sweden, and b) they haven't yet released an album stateside...or in Sweden. But they're about to...and it will be a pitch-perfect piece of expertly crafted power pop, heavy on the infectious choruses and sunbright guitars.

Mikey & the Gypsys MySpace: Go straight to "Echoes" and "Monday." It's like snorting pixie stix while doing a keg stand.

(Since the upcoming album - Enormous Shows Combined is not yet available in full, head over and download the Caravan EP from iTunes to get your sweet Swede on.)


SHAWN LEE
Multi-instrumentalist genius-man

This man works harder than Manny Ramirez or any of those other pro sports crybabies, that I can assure you. He is a wizard of the recording studio, the jammiest of jammers, funkmaster fresh, soul brotha #1, commandeer of a mental musical army. In Shawn Lee Hits The Hits, he Shawnicized everything from Eve to Outkast to Gorillaz to Amy Winehouse. And on his newest, Soul In The Hole, he Shawnicizes the shit outta...wait for it...soul. Guest vocalists galore, spot-on production, total jams.

Preview & buy Soul In The Hole on the Ubiquity Records site - same label as PPP, these guys are clearly purveyors of taste. Start w/ "Jigsaw," feat Nicole Willis, and march on from there.

(When you're done foaming over Soul In The Hole, venture over to iTunes and download Shawn Lee feat. Nino Moschella - "Kiss The Sky" - you can thank me later. Or in a comment or something.)


Now I need to go feed my Eddie Cat Halen so he stops chewing on my leg.

40-LOVE

The last 24 hours have been a hearty bounce on the musical equivalent of the sweet spot on a tennis racket..

HELL YES: 33 1/3
Considering I've already blasted this across the internets, it's now old news, but for the sheer joy of it - my proposal for Continuum's 33 1/3 series (http://www.33third.blogspot.com/) on Sleater-Kinney's One Beat has been moved forward onto the shortlist. HOLY HELL YES!!!

I WANT TO WRITE THIS BOOK. I really rolled it around in my head for quite some time before sending in the proposal. Hell, I even suggested in my proposal that I probably wanted to write this book after my virgin listen of One Beat. It's an album that has personal meaning to me, but I don't propose to worship drooling at its little indie altar...I see a real story behind its making, it's place in and the demise of the riot grrl canon, and numerous other things I'd be jinxing myself to vomit into the blogosphere. I would totally rock the fuck out of this book for you, friends, acquaintances, and general public, even if you've never heard a single Sleater-Kinney song in your some-odd decades on this earth.

In fact - let's remedy that right now. Courtesy the official Sleater-Kinney website (both from One Beat, of course):

One Beat.mp3

Oh!.mp3


WILDBIRDS & PEACEDRUMS
Dude. Dude. Dude. Thanks to Rachel from Woodwork for turning me on to this...

Avant-garde percussive blues opera that is neither a) as hippie-dippie as the band name might make you think nor b) as pretentious as my description might make you think. Caught their set at Amoeba tonight* and it was raucous and beautiful at once. Sister has some freaky/gorgeous pipes, brother can bang some serious textures out of those drums (reminding me a bit of when Liam Finn goes all shit-nuts on the drums and then loops them and then goes even more shit-nuts on them, but this guy does it without even having to loop them).

Maybe I shouldn't refer to them as "sister" and "brother," now that I think of it, a'cause they're married and all. Neither here nor there.

Instead of my getting all tangential, just check them out for yerself:



*RE: Amoeba - I was there to check out the band, but also to pick up the new Dan Auerbach and Bon Iver offerings. I saw You Are The Quarry on sale, as well, so I thought I'd add it to my Moz arsenal, considering we've been dancing in the same air at the Sunset Marquis as of late...le sigh...

Ok, back to the story. So I go to the check out counter and present the dude with my selections. He starts to ring them up and then I look at them: Morrissey....Bon Iver...Dan Auerbach...and I feel compelled to blurt out:

"OH. Well, it's a rainy day. Don't think I'm going to like, go home and put these on and cry and stuff. Ok?"

Counter dude: "Sure. Ok."

I pay for my saddoe music and when I grab it at the other end of the counter, Counter Dude fires off a sly little zinger:

"Enjoy your crying."

Nice.


SCOTT WALKER, WHERE YOU BEEN, YO?
Completing the triad is my newfound obsession with Scott Walker. I've heard of him, but I've never really listened, until Mo invited me to join her at Bronson's last night for Rock Music Movie Night. Now I need mo' Walker.

Bronson screened the Scott Walker doc 30 Century Man to a small room of friends/music nerds, and it was pretty special. The doc is heavy on the music, necessary since Ohioan Walker became a British recluse of sorts over the past few...decades...and his music has generally not been released in the US (aside from imports, some of which I found tonight at Amoeba).

Now, homeboy is not for everyone. But if you have a yen for art rock, Eno, Bowie, Antony & the Johnsons, and the freakier side of Radiohead, you'll find something here to latch onto. Walker's voice is a wounded spectre against a backdrop of haunted (art)house creaks, booms, and rattles and his lyrics are absolute mysteries (even exec producer Bowie laughs at one point during the doc at how ludicrous some of it is).

The doc opens next Friday, Feb. 27th for a weeklong run at Landmark's NuArt Theatre, and I highly recommend you set aside a few bucks and 90 minutes to check it out if you consider yourself any music fan whatsoever. There's also a par-tay/tribute show next Wed. at Bordello feat. the ubiquitous John Doe, Ann Magnuson, & a slew of others. You should go there, too.

In the meantime, here's the trailer. Dig:

SHORTLISTED

Friends, drank a lil whiskey for momma, a'cause her proposal for the 33 1/3 series has just moved onto the shortlist: http://33third.blogspot.com/2009/02/shortlist.html

Hard to maintain bladder control and all with the excitement, but try your best. I know I am.

MY PRETTY, PRETTY PONY

I drove home from work this evening with clogged sinuses (and a bit of a clogged mind). I thought about traffic, I thought about work, I thought about love, I thought about music, I thought about dinner, I thought about friends, I thought about my damn sinuses.

And then I stopped thinking.

The San Gabriels hulked in front of me at the end of the 10, like it was a runway to the moon. They were totally dipped in snow, peak to horizon, and because the sun was setting, they glowed a faint My Pretty Pony pink. It was magical.

I divvied my attention between these glowing rose behemoths and the road (maybe they should have a no-staring-at-pretty-mountains-while-driving law, in addition to the no-talking-on-cell-phones-while-driving law). They were like smooth peaks of strawberry ice cream jutting out of a bowl of palm trees. Delish.

I try not to take this city (or the amazing opportunities it's afforded me) for granted - but sometimes you forget. THEN you see giant pink snowy mountains on your drive home and you remember and you're totally thankful.

You want to see a picture?

I don't have one.

I mean...dude, I was DRIVING.

But here's some photos from last year's Olympic National Park trip to give you a sense of just how sexy mother nature can be...