The race is on: Earl Greyhound made an appearance at the Afro-Punk/Matrix showcase at SXSW.
By Kandia Crazy Horse
In the wake of my man John Edwards’s withdrawal from the current presidential race and subsequent taking up the torch for our fair music editor’s fellow Punahou alumnus Obama as Negro First, I officially became old. So I lacked sufficient energy and brain cells to take on SXSW 2008 – but, music ‘ho that I am, I did it anyway.
Clearly, Barack Obama’s sustained ascent as the most dissected American presidential candidate has by now confirmed his superfly rock-star status, crowding and overshadowing the field pursued by artists with recent/forthcoming new releases such as Jack White of the Raconteurs, the brers of Gnarls Barkley, Union Jack black singing cowboy Lightspeed Champion, and Saul Williams, a.k.a., Niggy Tardust - the latter two made the South By scene all around hip Austin (and Gnarls appeared via tacked-up Odd Couple lampoons, courtesy of Atlantic). I hesitated to fly down into Bush Country, considering the volatile political climate at present and the specter of terrorism making every airport visit unpleasant at best.
And, too, I had personal reservations: at the last three South By festivals, my life has fallen apart by degrees: in 2006, with the diagnosis of my late Mother’s pancreatic cancer and decision to divorce being the absolute worst. Still, I was invited to speak about press and, whether SXSW has completely devolved into “hipster spring break with bands” in recent years, the festival retains the possibility to offer exposure to unheard-of music and/or reconnect with rarely seen friends from the Left Coast and abroad.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12
Rising before cockcrow at 3 a.m., I saddled up in bespoke hat, denim and black leather to hit a too-early flight out of NY LaGuardia and made it to Austin’s Bergstrom already dazed and confused via Houston connection from George Bush Airport. After a swift check-in at the Hilton Garden Inn downtown where I happened to run into my panel mate, Nick Baily of Shorefire Media, and we concurred that we were in the dark about how to express ourselves (one of last year’s highlights was meeting O.G. Expressor Charles Wright), it was off to run the Convention Center gauntlet in pursuit of festival badges, assorted data, schwag and making it to the panelists’ green room on time. No surreys nor press satoris available. So Nick and I jes’ winged it (wung it?) before a surprisingly full room, and tried our best to respond to the artists trailing in our wake all the way back to the hotel.
Essentially, the other reasons I’d come to town were to (A) see Daryl Hall, and (B) attend the Afro-Punk/Matrix showcase on March 12, put on by my Brooklyn-centric friends/colleagues James Spooner and Matthew Morgan.
Due to some still baffling interpersonal skullduggery and late dinner at Magnolia Café, I missed Divine Daryl’s 8 p.m. performance that evening, and the grande dame Bonnie Bramlett (backed by Muscle Shoals fam like Scott Boyer and David Hood) as well. Yet I did make it to Vice on main drag Sixth Street, in time to catch the tail end of LA’s Afrobots, an electro-rock quartet fronted by São Paulo-native Rico Dolce Riot.
There seemed to be a menagerie of furry freaks onstage and beyond, mirroring my funhouse delirium since the keyboard player masqueraded with a leopard face. Whether the “Alvin” in the chipmunk suit was a band member or random local eccentric, I admit he freaked me out as he posed for phone snaps with Afro-Punk revelers, boogied with them and bum-rushed the stage for the Afrobots’ last cut.
Fortunately, after the Exit’s subsequent more mild-mannered set, some revitalizing bum-rushing ensued with the appearance of Game Rebellion, the Brooklyn power metal sextet whose South By jaunt my look-in hinged upon. It was very gratifying to see some headbangers carrying on up front who’d obviously seen the light at the Rebels’ SXSW debut last year, for the band’s cultish Mosh Generals were mostly back in BK.
As the crowd slowly but steadily swelled in anticipation of the “Niggy” first look, we fought for our right to par-tay with dreadlocked-and-polemical Game, thrashing and throwing down with devil horns through highlights of their mixtape, Searching for Rick Rubin, the cut-ups of re-envisioned Nirvana, Tupac, and Jigga only whetting the appetite for such originals as the cheer-evoking science of “Freedom Ring” and wall-to-wall rocket blast of “Sun.” If you’d licked the walls at Vice, you’d most definitely have been high by then.
And there were even more glorious heights to attain whilst donning the Rock Face, for Game’s fellow BK black rockers channeling the metal from the sands of central Téneré, Earl Greyhound, followed, as did the UK Blak Noisettes. Between Richard’s lu-fuki drumming throughout Greyhound showpiece “Yeah I Love You” and the laser focus required to follow Shingai Shoniwa’s fearless tripping from monitors to bass drum, I was wore out after the Noisettes and limped back down the still-thronged streets past the Sixth and Red River crossroads already mounting with trash and human excreta towards the relatively safe haven of my packed-to-the-gills hotel room (muchas gracias para las hermanas Pesin de Nueva Yorque).
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