SXSW - day 5

On Thursday, Brendan and I took our little festival tour to a downtown club where we had hoped to see MF Doom and (Brendan a lot more than me) Helmet. Well, we missed MF Doom (apparently by a couple of hours) and caught at least some of (if not most of) Helmet. Helmet is not my thing. Too much of a barrage of sound. I feel assaulted by bands like that.

After leaving that club, where, on the way out the door, Brendan scored a little string backpack full of Scion merchandise (the Japanese/Korean/Chinese/whatever car maker was the sponsor for the show and was filming - so look for a very unexcited looking me in the very back of the crowd if you see it on tv) which included a t-shirt, a visor, some wristbands and a CD compilation, we wandered around for a bit. Ducking, for moments at a time, into little and big bars alike and then promptly leaving when we found no real music.

Eventually we made it to Nuno's on 6th where a guy was sitting at a piano and sometimes strumming an acoustic guitar playing a few Little Feat covers and several other classic rock ditties that leant themselves well to his particular style of playing. We had a beer, sat on big plush sofas and waited for a little bit to head back out to the shows.

We got to Elysium at just about the best possible time, snagging like the fifth and sixth spots in the wristband line (we were just in front of these 5 very punkish but also kind of new wave-y and fey British/Scottish/Irish (probably Irish but how do I know?) guys who were not very good at personal space. But we stood in this line so we could see Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A.

First up was Electrocute, and, the fact that they sport a very unoriginal name (The Electrocutes was the first name of the band that became The Donnas), this little girls-dressed-sexy duo backed by a fairly well-programmed drum machine sang little pop/punk tunes that poked fun at just about everything while they insulted the crowd. Not really great but entertaining. No Mark Mallman, but still entertaining.

Next came dj/turntablist Z-Trip. For the first half of his set he mixed and mashed platters seamlessly but, to me at least, it seemed little more than club mixing to get people dancing. Good but not stunning. While I was in the bathroom though, new rapper The Bus Driver (also playing early tonight so I might try to go to that) came out and dropped some knowledge on the crowd. This guy is as good as everyone is saying. I'll definitely be picking up some of his stuff. And this also gave Z-Trip a chance to get down to heavy mixing. And he was good. He put beats together like I used to build with Legos. He used every available piece. And the end of his show was more of the same - minus The Bus Driver. Beats upon beats and some pretty deft scratching.

Next up was some band called Ratatat and, aside from their name logo bearing a striking resemblence to that of 80s hair-metalers Ratt, their show was pretty generic. Actually I guess that logo ripoff is pretty generic too. Two guys - one guitar, one bass - and a guy at the back at the mixing board putting their backing beats in. This band could have had the same sound from a traditional formation - you know, using an actual drummer - but instead they chose to do it this way. Is this what is called electroclash? I'm really asking. If it is, is this simplistic approach the reason it had a such a shortlived shelf-life of hype?

Then M.I.A. came out. I didn't realize she had another girl that rapped along with her but that didn't matter. Diplo was her dj and he spun the records with due diligence (it looked like he was doing stuff but wouldn't you think they'd press that stuff so he didn't have to mix it the same every time?). The skinny little girl took those banghra beats and laid her message on top all while jumping around the stage in some very spangly track pants. Seeing live rap shows is always hard because it's not easy to catch the lyrics when they're muddled with the pants-shaking bass of these clubs' speakers but you could catch a few. It was a very good show.

After this, I took off to head over to the Lava Lounge for Athens, Ga., band Love Tractor. I'm not sure if this was the Athens band I'd wanted to see but they were good enough. Fairly straight up rock with that kind of early Athens vibe. I got a free CD and I'll be playing it on my show so I'll add more to this description later.

The real reason I headed to the Lava Lounge was to see Magnapop. While they never really did have any breakout success, they did enjoy a little fame in the early- to mid-90s and were featured on the soundtrack to the Drew Barrymore/Chris O'Donnel fiasco "Mad Love" along with bands like Seven Year Bitch. This show was just what I expected and the small crowd (like 30 or 40 people) let me get right up to the front for several songs. They may be a little bit older but that doesn't make them any less good. Better than on album and still just a little shy of catchy.