SXSW: More fun than No Fun?

By Kimberly Chun

› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER

Considering that my personal SXSW experience was fraught with technical difficulties and heavy blog traffic, there was a certain poetry to Sunday's "piss pour" finale with the night sky opening up and peeing down rain — as if the heavens had sucked back a six-pack and unleashed the water cannons.

It was all in keeping with the ground-level, vaguely dissatisfied vibe at this year's fest — one studded with sentiments ranging from "there's too many people here" to "everyone I've talked to is complaining about working too hard and not having any fun." No coincidence that the avant-garde No Fun Fest was also happening in NYC this weekend. As usual — though more than ever — you got the feeling that fun was an elusive butterfly that was always flitting elsewhere.

"The No Fun Fest will be happening in our van tomorrow," Jon Weisnewski of Seattle punk band Akimbo said.

Instead of spending Sunday evening on a plane back to SF, I missed my flight and was stuck in a Super 8 that night. SXSW dribbled to a halt, and a lightning storm moved into Austin, Texas, just as most of the musicians, bookers, journalists, and sundry music-industry types moved on out. Yours truly, Guardian contributor and now Alternative Tentacles staffer George Chen, and Akimbo piled into a single motel room, fresh from viewing praised Northwestern combo Mikaela's Fiend and the all-girl group Finally Punk at the final SXSW shows. Too bad everyone missed Minneapolis's Metallagher, a Metallica cover band with a Gallagher frontperson that goes so far as to combine song titles à la "The Thing That Should Not Let It Be." Instead, the drenched crew retreated to their own personal Alternative Tentacles wet T-shirt contest.

Sounds random? That's always an element of SXSW. There are the scheduled panels, interviews and press conferences, and shows. But there are also the many, many day parties with free barbecued pork, beans, slaw, and white bread; shows at boutiques, music stores, cafés, and taco stands; lunching; hangover remedies; assorted acts of schmoozing and flesh pressing; and the fest's rep as an unofficial vacation for the music industry. Still, somehow — amid the whining, disappointments, deal-making, relationship-forging, and rumored special guests who fail to materialize — it remains the best overall must-stumble-through music conference in the country for pros and fans alike.

But as far as essential events this year, it's hard to say. There was the predominance of UK bands (Arctic Monkeys, the Rakes, and the Hard-to-Takes — just kidding about the last one). There were the regular Houston hip-hop showcases with artists like Chamillionaire, thanks to HoustonSoReal and Ozone magazine. But in general the fest's musical range tends to scatter opinion. The Pretenders reunited, but so did revered UK indie punk band Th' Faith Healers and Charlottesville, Va., obscuro-punk jokesters Happy Flowers. "That was the best SXSW show ever!" was the sentiment emanating from the Goner Records crew after dodging plastic bath scrunchies flying from the Happy Flowers stage. Consensus had it that the feisty Evangelicals, the sprawling Islands, the poppy Tapes 'n Tapes, the proggy Circle, and the magical Gris Gris slayed, whereas Wolfmother played about three dozen times, impressive in itself.

Despite the Norah Jones, Perry Farrell/Jane's Addiction, and Ray Davies guest appearances and the rumored Gang of Four and ZZ Top performances, the sweetest secret show (though how secret was it when seemingly a thousand people queued up?) had to be the Beastie Boys early-as-an-earache 7 p.m. date right in the middle of town at Stubb's before Deadboy and the Elephantmen, the Noisettes, the Fiery Furnaces, the Dresden Dolls, Gomez, and, huh, Nickel Creek? Secretiveness in plain sight is hard to best, or "Beast." It was fun to see the now mature but still extremely witty Boyeez dance, mug, and lay down the rhymes in their street clothes, close-up — as awesome as it was to catch Ghostface's Wu-Tang Clan chapter break out the history right after Lady Sovereign left the stage, rasping, "I love you, Austin! Make some noise!" and then throwing her mic at the monitor, looking embarrassed, and sheepishly picking it up.

Why not break SXSW down into those ever popular bullet points, with interjections by Akimbo as they made fun of the shank fight in "The Hunted"?

• Glad I saw: the aforementioned; Zombi; Kris Kristofferson dueting with Jessi Colter at the Austin Music Awards; the Nice Boys; Octopus Project; Morrissey; Peaches DJing with Gang of Four's Dave Allen; Stórsveit Nix Noltes; Mike Relm; South First Street in-store shows with Octopus Project, Palaxy Tracks, and John Vanderslice with Nada Surf vocalist Matthew Caws and Rocky Votolato; a sharp, intuitive Neil Young on songwriting; the ever busking Mary Lou Lord and her friend Jason with his beautiful falsetto and fingerpicking.

• Regret I missed: Roky Erickson; ESG; Serena Maneesh; the vaunted "Band of Gold" with Archie Bell; José González; Kid 606 and Friends; the canceled Whitehouse; the Bob Seger cover band with Comets on Fire and Colossal Yes's Utrillo Kushner and the Cuts' Garrett Goddard; Richard Hawley; Ray Davies; Zeena Parkins and Rhys Chatham's Guitar Army at the Table of the Elements showcase in the Central Presbyterian Church; Big Daddy Kane; Die Die Die; His Name Is Alive; and Allen Toussaint and Sam Moore at the Louisiana night.

• Best sideshows: Flatstock music poster exhibit showcasing a healthy silk screen scene and, reputedly, the Vice parties; Arthur magazine's "Happening"; and Fuck by Fuck You. The latter was the SF-heavy Rambler and Snake Eyes music store punk resistance effort located apart from SXSW's Sixth Street center. Chen called me earlier to praise FBFY's shenanigans as kids raced around in cardboard boxes and a reanimated DMBQ destroyed the first of several drum kits.

• XXX musical evening: Zolar-X playing with a crustacean-costumed X-Girl, visited by original dirty rapper Blowfly.

• Favorite Morrissey snipes and jabs in a SXSW interview: his early love of Magazine and the Fall (the latter "looked drab and sounded drab; they sounded very rudimentary — I loved them"), and his dismissal of Joy Division ("They were always incredibly boring; I saw them a few weeks before Ian died, and the audience was five miles from the stage — flat as pancakes").

But what did everyone else like?

"I really liked my AT show," Chen said. "Last night I ended up seeing a freestyle guy from NYC, Supernatural. Other things I really liked were Sir Richard Bishop. The Table of the Elements show was beautiful. I played drums with Gray Daturas. Parts and Labor has improved a lot."

"The Decibel showcase with the Sword," Akimbo's shirtless Nat "Adonis" Damm said. "Epic, soaring, majestic riffs through valleys and crevasses of radness."

"Jucifer was fantastic," Burke Eglington of Akimbo said. "Hug — it's like seeing a John Waters movie with a keyboard soundtrack. The singer had a crowbar mustache, and there were obese midgets and a huge 300-pound woman in a G-string."

"It was a 'Far-out Trip Through a Hard Rock Tunnel,' " Damm added, slyly referring to one of their own songs.

And in the end, isn't that the real reason so many troop to SXSW: the promise of taking that far-out trip to one's own musical paradise? Whether it's the Sword, or watching Malmo, Sweden's the Ark work those "Sunday's best" white hot pants, climb the walls and pillars of Emo's IV, and announce, "It's paradoxical but funny that at Emo's we are witnessing emo rock!" before leading the crowd in a sing-along and putting smiles on the faces of the teens standing outside looking in.

The rain, rain went away, now that the Ark was there to play. *

AKIMBO

Fri/24, 8:30 p.m.

924 Gilman Street Project

924 Gilman, Berk.

$5–$7

(510) 525-9926

Also Sat/25, call for time

Stork Club

2330 Telegraph, Oakl.

$7

(415) 444-6174

For more on SXSW, go to www.sfbg.com/blogs/music.