In the Mix

“Imagine our disappointment,” said Stephen Ramsay of the Montreal band Young Galaxy. “After driving 30 hours from minus 3 celsius temperatures, to arrive here only to find that we can’t wear our matching lime green band thongs. It’s too cold.”

That’s right, folks. I flew down here to Texas on the same plane with a couple of the many 215 music business folk - like Terry Tompkins, who teaches in Drexel’s music program and runs the school Mad Dragon label, and R5 Productions promoter Sean Agnew (more about them later) - who have migrated to the 512 for the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, which kicked off today and will be the capitol of the music industry until Sunday. Only to find that it’s unseasonably drizzly and chilly.

All in all, you’d rather be in Philadelphia.

Young Galaxy, though, warmed the cockles of my heart. Fronted by Ramsay and songwriting partner Catherine McCandless, the Canadian six-piece outfit, which has an album due on the Arts and Crafts label next month, were the second band I saw since landing in the Lone Star State, and the first nice surprise of the week. Hadn’t heard of them 20 minutes ago. Stumbled upon them at the Canadian Blast outdoor showcase where I had come to see the Cliks, the buzzworthy Toronto garage pop quartet fronted by transgendered man Lucas Silveira, who were introduced as a band “that makes music like Chrissie Hynde would if she were still eating moose barbecue.”

What I caught of the Cliks was promising –- bracing riff rock, with a driving beat -– though I had to bolt early to go hear Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian tropicalia singer and Minister of Culture who was being interviewed at the Convention Center. But I really enjoyed Young Galaxy, whose moody indie pop built up to a dramatic crescendo, even though they only had 15 minutes to showcase their wares. They go on a list of bands to keep an eye on, which hopefully will be plenty long by the end of the weekend. Oh, and if that really was moose barbecue, it was excellent, by the way.

SXSW is a place for little- and lesser-known bands to come and play in front of an audience of music business and media professionals, and do deals, and try to gain the exposure they need to have a career in an industry where nobody's quite sure where the money's coming from in the digital future.

But it's also a place for aging rockers to come to promote new product -- like Iggy Pop, who'll be playing with the reunited Stooges this week. And for legends of the business who have always displayed an independent streak -- like Emmylou Harris, who's speaking to conventioneers on Thursday, and being feted by a roots-country lineup that includes Steve Earle, Charlie Louvin and Kelly Willis, among others.

This year's big baby boomer fish in Austin is Pete Townshend. He didn't bring Roger along. Instead, the Who guitarist is doing an intimate "In the Attic" show on Thursday with his girlfriend Rachel Fuller, plus young 'uns Martha Wainwright, Sean Lennon and Mika, the Lebanese-American Londoner who sounds a whole lot like Freddy Mercury and whose first single, "Grace Kelly," is named after a certain tragic Philadelphia Princess.

And Townshend's up on stage in the gi-normous ballroom at the Hilton in downtown Austin right now being interviewed by former Musician magazine editor Bill Flanagan talking about his belief in the immediacy of live performance broadcast on the Internet. "Music is about congregation, gathering, and sharing," says the child of the '60s, who's also the author of "Won't Get Fooled Again," named the greatest conservative rock song of all time.

He's also here to announce "The Method." That's got nothing to do with contraception and the Roman Catholic church. Instead, it's a software program that will be available on the Internet starting April 25th that will, according to Townshend, allow people to enter information about themselves onto a web site and have a personalized piece of music composed for them.

Townshend, who later played with Brit turned Austinite Ian MacLagan at a tribute to the late Ronnie Lane, is a great, rambling talker, and he's quite engaging confiding that he often has dreams about a naked Siouxsie Sioux, or talking about "my incident with Abbie Hoffman," when he tossed the hippie activist off the stage at Woodstock, or about how he prefers Quadrophenia to Who's Next, in part, because "it's just about a kid who had a bad day."

Flanagan asks him if he ever regretted being as confessional of an artist as he is, and if it's taken a toll. "No, he says, though, "sometimes I do put my foot up my a-- and do stupid things..." And then he walks off to a standing ovation, as "My Baby Gives It Away," from his Rough Mix collaboration with Lane plays over the speaker system.

The nighttime showcase segment of SXSW -- in which more than 1,400 acts will perform at (at last count) 59 venues in Austin -- could not have gotten off to a much more beguiling start on Wednesday than with the Pipettes. Following a DJ set by Philadelphia's Making Time promoter Dave Pianka, the three women from Brighton, England, took to the stage at La Zona Rosa in their (non-matching) polka dot dresses, and delivered their playfully nuevo retro feminist update of the sounds of classic '60s girl groups like the Shangri-Las.

Rose Dougal, Gwenno Saunders and Rebecca Stephens, whose 2006 British debut still isn't out in the States, make music, along with the boys in the band behind them, that shares an ebullience with their Memphis Industries labelmates The Go! Team. And they pronounce their name so it rhymes with "in case you haven't noticed yet, we're the prettiest girls you've ever met," not to mention "and we haven't even finished with you yet." Even though, once they finshed singing "We Are The Pipettes," it turned out they had. Was fun while while it lasted, though.

I didn't plan for Wednesday to be International Night at SXSW. It just worked out that way.

First on the unmissable list was Gilberto Gil, the Brazilian songwriter who unfortunately was only interviewed at the convention center, and didn't perfrom. (It's also unfortunate that the U.S. tour he's just embarked on isn't bringing him to Philadelphia.) Still, an audience with the major Tropicalia player who's now Minister of Culture for the Brazilian government - kind of like having Lou Reed or Bob Dylan in George Bush's cabinet - is a rare thing. He talked about how Tropicalia, the late 60s psychedelic movent he founded with Caetano Veloso and others, presaged "the fragmented world of post modernity" and talked about the importance of "the amalgamation between tradition and invention." The ponytailed politico also paraphrased Jean Cocteau - "from up close, nobody's normal" - and argued that "the mind expanding principles of psychedelic culture" led directly to the technological innovations that reshape the world today. "It's not an accident that Silicon Valley is in California," he said with a laugh. "Near San Francisco."

From there, after the Englishwomen in the Pipettes, and a taste of New York jagged funksters the Rapture (who are gamely bringing the saxophone back to indie rock), it was off to see Kava Kava, a band I knew nothing except that adult alternative guru Nic Harcourt had allegedly said they were groovy. (This is how a buzz begins.) Turned out they were big burly guys from Huddersfield in Yorkshire in the north of England, where love for American soul music has always been ardent. Lead singer (and trumpeter!) looked like Pierre Robert crossed with David Clayton Thomas, and was unafraid to bellow out the words "Oh Lawdy Mama!" at the top of his lungs. Excellent guitarist doing strange things wiith foot pedals a la Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead, but otherwise it's a staggering (and blessedly) unhip band, with a hard-blowing horn section that reminded me of Tower of Power. Could have done without the flute solo, however.

From there, it was over to Mohawk Patio for Twilight Sad, skinny black-clad Glaswegians demonstrating that Joy Division despair never goes out of style. Their attempt to express inner turmoil proved futile. Next.

Down the street at Spiros, the revelation of the night: Lonely China Day, a stunningly accomplished indie rock band from Beijing with a layered textured sound that mixed minimalism and hard rock crunch, along with a sense of drama and sonic theater that suggested that left-handed guitarist Deng Pei (who claims the Red Hot Chili Peppers' John Frusciante as an influence, has been paying careful attention to the Icelandic atmospheric rockers Sigur Ros. Yes, they know about Myspace in China: www.myspace.com/lovelychinaday.

There are acts from 38 countries playing at SXSW. I closed the night with an Irish singer songwriter, Damien Dempsey -- a tip courtesy of World Cafe Live booker Karl Mullen -- who turned out to be the testosterone antidote to Emerald Isle sensitivos like Damien Rice. Then back to La Zona Rosa for Peter Bjorn and John, the crafty Swedish trio who are the subject of the blog stoppeterbjornandjohn.blogspot.com, whose mission the three band memebers claim to wholly endorse. There will be no stopping them, however. Their goofy, simple power poppers songs are too infectious to resist.

When you want to get the attention of mp3 blog surfers, it pays to have a tag that stands out. (Ask Clap Your Hands Say Yeah).The Missouri quartet Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin wins this year's SXSW band name of the year.
Runners-up:
Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly.
Muck and the Mires.
I Can Lick Any Sonofabitch in the House.
Turn Me On Dead Man.
Deaf in the Family.
Oh, Beast!
The Sundresses.
Flosstradamus.
Yo Majesty.
Tiny Masters Of Today.
The Mother Truckers.
Delicious Food.
The Faintest Idea.

Austin is home base for roots music heroes like Willie Nelson, Joe Ely and Alejandro Escovedo, but when the ever growing SXSW comes to town to clog traffic, alt-country twang often gets drowned out by amps turned up to 11 and the hubub of music bizzers scurry down Sixth Street searching for something to sell.

There was plenty of sweet country harmony to be heard, however, on Thursday in the ballroom of the stately Driskill Hotel, former LBJ campaign headquarters that sits smack in the middle of the Sixth street action, for a tribute to Emmylou Harris that, naturally, was timed to the release of an upcoming box set of rarities.

It was a who's who of the daughters of Emmylou: Claritin saleswoman Kelly Willis (with husband Bruce Robison), Jenny Lewis helpers the Watson Twins (who twinned their voices around "Blue Kentucky Girl"), Nashville hellcat Elizabeth Cook, and for some reason, Paula Cole, who once had a big with a song about cowboys. A couple of Charlies, Louvin and Sexton, showed up. But the absolute killer was rugged voiced Buddy Miller and strawberry haired soulwoman Allison Moorer knocking Felice and Boudleaux Bryant's "Love Hurts" dead in a rendition that might have been even better than Cher's.

It's past my bed time, people, but first a few Thursday night highlights. Mika - pronounced Mika - who guested with Pete Townshend and his pottie mouthed classical piano playing girlfriend Rachel Fuller at La Zona Rosa early in the evening, and then brought the house down later at Eternal in his own showcase. The guy's a pop star, in tight red trousers. Did his breakout poperatic UK hit "Grace Kelly," at the piano, and won over boomer Who fans with the Harry Nilsson hit "Everybody's Talkin'" .... Joe Purdy, who also played at the Townshend-Fuller shindig, and apparently has had his songs on Lost, unbeknownst to me. Played acoustic guitar and harmonica, moved over to the piano on a whim, and held a crowd that didn't know him from Jay Farrar rapt with a quiet intensity. Also had Townshend join him for "Let My Love Open the Door" ... Fujiya & Miyagi, who are not Japanese but British and not a duo but a three piece. (The bass player is the ampersand.) Taut, trancey half electronic half organic dance music that knows its way around a funk groove, and how to insinuate repeated catch phrases like "No more pussyfooting" into your brain ... The Gossip, the riot-grrl soul-punk trio fronted by plus sized belter Beth Ditto, who started out a rambunctious set at Emo's by quoting from La Belle's "Lady Marmalade." Ditto has always had a huge voice, on this night she and her drums and guitar (no bass) backup band showed they've learned know how to do more than overpower a crowd.

"When I say I'm in love, you best believe I'm in love, L-U-V!" When Mary Weiss first uttered that line at the start of "Give Him A Great Big Kiss" - later put to use by David Johansen of the New York Dolls in "Looking for a Kiss" - she was a teenager singing for one of the great girls groups of all time.

"Just a pup," was how the former Shangri-Las lead singer - she's the one in the middle - put it Thursday night at Red 7, where she launched a comeback with the assistance of the Memphis garage band the Reigning Sound. "Hard to believe I'm the new kid on the block," she said as much to herself as the audience, many of whom, as she noted, weren't born way back then.

She gave them such Shangs songs as "Walking In The Sand" - though no "Leader of the Pack" - as well as a wide selection from the stunningly credible Dangerous Game, which is just out on Norton Records, preserves the girl group drama without ever being merely nostalgic. http://www.myspace.com/maryweiss

It’s a long way from Broad Street to Sixth Street, but just as the shrinking music industry migrates to the growing SXSW here every March, so does the Philadelphia music scene.
No matter how hard you try to immerse yourself in the 512, it can still seem like you never left the 215.
That’s not just because the dude working the door at the Norton Records garage rock showcase at the Red 7 wants to shake your hand, ‘cause he’s from 10th and Federal.
Or that on Saturday afternoon at Cream Vintage on Guadalupe Street, over a dozen rockers and rappers and DJs – including the Capitol Years, Plastic Little and Dave Pianka - with play the Philly Jawn, an event that counts the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation as among its sponsors.
(The name, for those not in the know, comes from “the neighborhood slang ‘jawn’ which can be, in various circumstances, taken to mean any given proper or improper noun,” according to the press release sent out by the event’s co-sponsors, Philebrity and Move to Philly.)
It’s that besides all the acts in town – from indie poppers the A-Sides, to producer turned singer RJD2 to rapper Amanda Blank – its seems like you can’t make it from one showcase to another without running into a behind the scenes Philly music bizzer, looking to sign bands to their label, or book acts for their club. Or perhaps, just catch Public Enemy playing for free in the park on Flavor Flav’s birthday, as R5 Productions Sean Agnew was hoping to do on Friday night.
Even as the music industry withers – sales down 16% compared to last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan, SXSW booms. There are over 1400 acts playing official showcases, and more than 12,000 registrants slurping margaritas and chowing on barbecue. But over the years its purpose has changed.
“Bands don’t really come here to get signed anymore,” says Dryw Scully, Philly based music and promotions director for Urban Outfitters, who manages the A-Sides and was running promo events in conjunction with Yaris, the hipster targeted economy car. “They come here for exposure, to raise their profile.”
For Agnew, the availability of information on new acts on Internet mp3 blogs such as Brooklyn Vegan has made SXSW a place to see bands he’s already heard on the web.
“The Internet has made it easier to find out about little bands,” he said, at a party sponsored by Fader magazine and Levis, while the Scottish band Fratellis were playing an acoustic set in the background. “That’s what driving the music industry.”
For Terry Tompkins, though, SXSW offers an unmissable opportunity to scout acts, and hopefully make deals. The Drexel University music business professor who heads up the student run Mad Dragon label was in Austin pushing one of his artists – West Chester roots band Hoots & Hellmouth – but also looking for an artist with an already recorded album to sign to a licensing deal for release this summer.
He had his eye on several acts, including former Philadelphia suburbanites and now Brooklyn band Langhorne Slim, but the group’s Wednesday night showcase underwhelmed him. “I saw them at the Khyber recently and loved it,” he said. “But they played the exact same show down here. Now I believe in it a little less.” He loved north Jersey self described “cinemelodic” vocalist April Smith, who he said, “commanded the room like Capt. Kirk on the Starship Enterprise.”
Meanwhile, Karl Mullen of the World Café Live, was racing from gig to gig, looking for bands that he can bring in to the University City venue.
He found a bunch – northern England r & b rockers Kava Kava, Montreal indie act Besnard Lakes, among them. “This is the one time of the year that you can not only see all these bands, but also meet the band managers, the booking agents, all the people you never see face to face,” he said. “The word of mouth is invaluable. Who’d you see? Who was great, who wasn’t? For all the talk of the digital, there’s no substitute for that.”

Everybody I asked who they were hoping to see in Austin this week answered with what the hypester handling intoductions at La Zona Rosa on Friday deemed "two of the most exciting words in the English language right now": Amy Winehouse.

(Well, almost everybody. My friend Amy from Pitchfork dissented: "I HATE her," she made perfectly clear, then wished me luck getting into the Brit soul diva's showcase. "Have fun at the other Amy.")

By then, I had already tried and failed three times to see Winehouse, whose drunken escapades (chronicled extensively in the British press), devastating soul voice and impeccable songwriting chops displayed on her staggering break up record Back to Black has succeeded in getting the attnetion of the most jaded of music wags.

On Thursday morning, I interviewed Joe Boyd, famed producer of British folk-rock who's got a first rate new memoir, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s. Afterwards we agreed there was one thing to do: cross the street to the British music barbecue, and see Amy Winehouse. Only by the time we arrived, she had just finished a 20 minute set, backed by only an acoustic guitarist. "It was amazing," witnesses assured me.

Next chance came that night at her full band showcase at Eternal but when I arrived, it turned out it had been pushed back to the same time as a show by Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las, who Winehouse regularly sites in interviews as one of the models for her updated '60s girl group. Sorry, Amy, Mary comes first.

The next afternoon, Winehouse closed the show at the Fader party over on San Jacinto, but by the time I got through with RJD2, the West Philadelphia producer and songwriter who was busily promoting his new The Third Hand down here, the line was two blocks long. Still, I was able to to stand out side the gate of the outdoor venue and make out Winehouse doing an acoustic "Rehab" over the din.

(This offers one key to how the bonfire of Winehouse buzz at SXSW spread: the music industry arrives for its annual spring break in Texas, and as it swigs Shiner Bock and throws down Tequila shots, it finds a siren who sings: "They tried to make me go to rehab - I said no, no no!")

That night, I was finally successful - though I paid a price to secure a spot at La Zona Rosa by sitting through Scott Mathews, the supremely uninvolving Nick Drake manque who opened.

Was it worth the buildup? You betcha. Winehouse, who is scheduled to play the TLA on May 6, came out in her Vampirella 'do and Cleopatra eye shadow, tattoos of a naked woman and a horseshoe on her emaciated left arm. Behind her was a smartly dressed, crack band with three horns and two shimmying male back up singers, each of whom got a solo turn on on Lauryn Hill's "That Thing."

The band was borrowed from Sharon Jones, but the songs are Winehouse's own. And the songs made the sale.

She expertly wields her smokehouse voice - she slurred her vocals for emtional effect, not because she's drinking Guinness. And in "Rehab," but also "Love Is Losing Game," the Billy Paul update "Me and Mr. Jones" and especially, "You Know I'm No Good," she displayed that rarest of knacks for writing deeply personal yet universal songs in a timeless idiom.

She savvy enough to lead you to the unmistakable conclusion that she's mad, bad and dangerous to know. And the pleasure, and conviction, with which she sang the - "I cheated myself, like I knew I would/I told you I was trouble, you know I'm no good" - makes you worry that when the train wreck comes, you're not going to be able to look away.

There's a 10 piece all-girl Japanese ska band called Pistol Valve in Austin this weekend, but I'm not sure that there's anyhthing as strangely enchanting as Bobby Lounge, the Mississippi piano man who closed Mojo Nixon's Jalapeno Pancake Breakfast on Saturday.

Wheeled onstage in an Iron Lung, and introduced by a white suited Southern gentleman modeled after Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the 57 year old Lounge rose up and took to his piano stool, where he proceeded to reel off a series of biting, absurdists narrative that would make Randy Newman envious. As he displayed a powerhouse arsenal of barrelhouse, boogie woogie and gospel piano moves, and ripped off ribald numbers such as "10 Foot Woman," he was joined onstage by a bifocaled woman who spent his entire set ignoring him and reading a book. Lounge is a regional treasure and a singular lyricist who rarely performs outside Mississppi or Louisiana, so here's hoping playing SXSW gives him a measure of the recognition he deserves. "Keep Bobby Lounge in your prayers," Big Daddy requested of the faithful at the Continental. Amen. www.bobblylounge.com

Mainstream rap doesn't really exist at SXSW - though Houston rapper Chamillionaire did kick off the music festival this year with a show on Tuesday night. But hip-hop of independent spirit is not so hard to find this week in Austin, as the man with the lightbulb in his mouth can attest. He's Busdriver, the delightfully Dadaist rapper born Regan Farquhar, a supremely quick tongued rapper frm Los Angeles who offered me an escape from a poorly mixed lethargic performance by Brit supergroup the Good, Bad and the Queen on Friday.

Following his fellow Los Angeleno rappers Of Mexican Descent on stage, Busdriver showed himself to be a cut up unafraid to appear on stage wearing a silly party hat and a I'm the Gangster of Love T-shirt, while unleashing a series of tripped out songs of lyrical and verbal complexity from his excellent new RoadKillOvercoat.

But the hip-hop heroines of the week had to be Yo Majesty, a trio of female rappers from Tampa who I caught at the South Congress avenue bar Trophy's on Saturday afternoon. Philly-Baltimore electro-funk rapper Spank Rock was in the house, and that made sense: Yo Majesty deliver a similarly frenetic neo-primitive attack of finger in the socket electricity that expresses its sexual prerogatives by demanding that the listener "rub on my monkey," as well as other more overt commands. Not for the faint of heart, but ridiculously entertaining. www.myspace.com/yomajesty4life

Where does Iggy Pop rank among the greatest of rock and roll front men? Let's have that discussion another day. The Stooges comeback album, The Weirdness, is a sorry disappointment, with Iggy's studio reunion with Ron and Scott Asheton not generating, shall we say, quite as much raw power as might have been hoped.

But the band's closing show at Stubbs' outdoor barbecue on Saturday was an entirely different story. With the eyes of Texas upon him, the shirtless Iggy, who turns 60 next month, was in robust voice and as much of a primal force on stage - and in the crowd - as he's ever been. With the Ashetons augmented by bassist Mike Watt and a saxophonist, the legends created a mighty wall of sound for a frenzied crowd as stoked for the moment as the band obviously was.

Iggy howled like a wild man on a whole bunch of early 1970s Stooges nuggets - like "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "TV Eye" and "Fun House" - that take catharctic glee in exploring the darker side of human nature. Besides the Stooges, who will play the Electric Factory on April 11, I saw a couple of other perfectly good bands earlier in the evening - tap dancing indie optimists Tilly & the Wall and local Austin heroes Spoon. Both were in fine form, but they seemed small in comparison to the returning proto-punk monsters who ate up everything that was left of SXSW.