my SXSW 09 in review: Tuesday

hey buddies! I gotta do this chronologically and then do my lists and shit later. Its the only way. I saw so many fucking great bands. Pushed my body and soul to the limit, and then on Saturday everything just went bonkers. Someone pressed the "Fuck It" button, and by someone I mean, life. Life, man....Life. But, what a blast!!

Tuesday: SXSW felt like it started in earnest once we had house guests. I was doing prep work the past 5 days straight on, just wracking my brain like "dont forget you need a soundman/drum rug/coffee cup/color flier/clean room/charged cell phone/duct tape/cleared band room/groceries/semblance of knowing what you are doing/ etc etc etc." jajajaja as my SXSW girlfriend would write (shes Mexican) but hey, we are getting way ahead of ourselves. And yes, she is a babe. Bragging about babes on a blog...nice one! OK Tuesday. Tuesday I got off work and rolled down to Ms. Bea's for a whiff of what was going on. I passed the "Fader Fort" on the way (whatever the fuck that was...no wait, i don't want to know.) I looked at it with a strange curiosity. I didn't remember Fader Fort like complexes from southby's past.

I easily found a parking spot (this being around 5 PM) and walked up to Ms. Bea's in my work clothes. It smelled like SXSW. The smell of PAs getting set up on dried straw. Ms. Bea's as you may know is where Todd P (DIY Promoter Emeritus) throws his shit. Red's buddy Adam delivered the quote of the festival for me which was (paraphrased) "Todd P is a fucking pro, and definitely not a pussy." Something is lost without his delivery, but it was a statement where a man was making a revelation as he was pronouncing it. It was fucking hilarious. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself...more on that story later (that would belong to Thursday). So that was my little stop off. The show there was starting in an hour, and I had to go home to do some shit, or something...maybe have a band practice. Actually definitely to have a band practice. Your RXRs were hard at work bringing a new tune up to a speed where we could over the course of our 7 performances get it to the point where it sounded like a song. Think about the logic behind that for a moment if you will (actually it turned out fine...mostly).

Anyways, at Ms. Bea's some (British?) lady (a promoter that works with Todd, I believe) showed me on her IPhone what was going on that night, which happened to be a Todd P house party at New Guild Coop. On his mailing list he called it the "Branch Davidian House" which is a funny little pro promoter marketing trick, because he obviously just made it up, as none of the guys in that band actually live there. Not to mention it also has a real name that people actually use. I called up my buddy, former EMHU and Imaginary Friends Sax wailer, and believed New Guild resident Steve Young. "Hey Steve, do you still live at New Guild?" He did. He had no idea there was going to be a huge fucking rager at his house that night. He was gonna go somewhere else. I told him to stick around.

I had wanted to go see Thee Oh Sees at Mohawk that night...it was my original plan, but my limited desire to find myself downtown is pretty much pushed to nil for the week of SXSW, and the prospect of a house show with The Vivian Girls made me straight up change my mind on my evenings plans. Plus I was gonna see them on Saturday night at Charlie Alvarado's house. I smelled trouble brewing because I had no closed toed shoes available to me and would be making the venture in sandals. The weather was perfect, although my route was altered by a zillion cops on campus who wouldn't let me use 24th street because an unknown substance was coming out of the science building. Just another day at the office.

The scene was cool...a mix between ATX band boys and girls who apparently got the memo on the show, NYC band boys and girls, college radio DJs, and hipsters of all the limited stripes that might be associated with those groups already mentioned. I knew some of these people and it was cool to see everyone in the same place. Lots of shaking of hands and whats ups.

I had figured this would be the ideal location to flier, and the only place to really flier for the Wednesday show, so I brought my backpack, some duct tape and the schedules for the show and began plastering them everywhere. I'm not sure that it boosted attendance, but I'm sure at least some people saw them and was like "damn, those guys put together hella good shows." General awareness baby, never underestimate it for the long term. Bathrooms are an ideal place to flier, because people wait around when they are up there, so I went up there. When I was up there one of the Beets (Juan) came up and we started chatting. We had played a show in NYC together last May. His friend who sings in Vivian Girls came up and sorta joined the conversation. It was all real pleasant, totally house party tastic.

I missed The Branch Davidians, but got there in time to see Total Abuse, who I have been wanting to see for a long time. It includes Dustin from Best Fwends/and some ex-Video Screams. They looked cool, and although it was definitely genre, I liked a lot of the the chugga-chug chug parts.

Next were The Beets. I played a show with The Beets last May in NYC and at that time they struck me as any standard Black Lips ripoff band that at that time you found in every single city in the entire country. Before those bands all turned into Jay Retard ripoff bands, according to some. The Beets this go around were definitely not that. They were fucking awesome. I couldn't catch what they were saying really, but I saw them again at the Todd P Acoustic BBQ, and the lyrics are legit. Since last May (10 months ago) they have abandoned the full drum kit and just they are awesome. The time was right at some point and I lifted myself for a crowd surf. It was good. I pride myself on knowing the exact right time to crowd surf. You have to be first, and it has to be during the right song at the right point of the song. I just have good instincts for it at this point. If you've never been and you want, next time we are at a show, I will pop your crowd surfing cherry, just let me know. Yeah, but the Beets were great...the first good band (chronologically) of SXSW. There would be many

The next band was some band from San Francisco that I felt like was influenced by what's coming out of L.A. right now. They had some San Fran sound to them, but they made me want to watch Thee Oh Sees. I went outside for a while. There were a couple of tools having the following conversation, by the trampoline i was bouncing on.

"Man, there is no creativity in this country man!"
"yeah exactly! I totally agree!"
"Yeah, like, no one is doing anything!"

Usually I wouldn't do this, but I interjected to tell them they were wrong.
Response: "look man, I've traveled all across the country"

So lame...you really just can't argue with people like that.

At some point it was time for The Vivian Girls. I was excited to see if they were good or not. I had seen video of them on pitchfork and was unimpressed. I had heard their single and was intrigued, but skeptical. I thought they were a garage band, which they are not. Interesting fact...The Vivian Girls played SXSW 17 times! Awesome! Hilarious! Something tells me this show was the best out of all of them. It was Cassie's 23rd birthday. She is the lead singer/guitarist. Those girls are artists man, and talented too, I have a lot of respect for what they are doing. That show they were really the real deal. The place was packed, but I had been camping out and was on the front row. I was on the right, in front of the bassist. My spot was pretty perfect, but about midway through the set I decided I wanted to stand closer to Cassie so I went over to the right side. The crowd was too strong and I got sucked back into it. My sandals were gonna get broken, so I just took them off and threw them by my backpack which I had strategically placed by the gear. I was now in the middle of a crowd going nuts with no shoes on. I would step on peoples feet to avoid getting stepped on and to avoid any potential broken glass on the floor. Tuesday of SXSW would not have been a good day to get broken glass all up in my shit, not with what we had coming. It was to my dismay that for the end they all switched instruments and if I had just stayed where I was I would have been about 2 feet from the singer for the finale, which was great. As it was at some point I had to go crowd surfing just out of safety for my feet to get the fuck out of where I was. The set was great. I'm willing to bet out of the 17 they played over SXSW, Tuesday night was the best one. I managed to hand Cassie a CD-R of the new EMHU shit at some point afterward.

The last band to play that night was The Strange Boys. They were supposed to play at 2, but Phillip was working a shift at Beerland, so he was gonna get there when he got there. The first "everyone I know has hysterically over scheduled themselves" happened when he finally showed up. At some point, TSB had to start playing just cause it was getting so late and the cops had already come once. They were playing Sans bass, and from my perch on the side I see Phillip 2 blocks down running his goofy ass off all the way to the house, grabbing his bass and with a smile kicking it right into gear like "hey whats up guys!" I don't think I've ever seen that dude run, it was funny as hell. They managed to play like 1 or 2 more songs before the house cut them off cause the cops were gonna come back. This was a ridiculous party, probably 100 people at a given time in the front yard and street alone.

After that I think I biked home and made myself go to sleep. I didn't have anything to drink that night, unsure if I could handle starting the week off on that foot. Todd and his crew were getting wasted, pipes were getting passed around, and all these pros were running the show and partying their ass off simultaneously, the ultimate multi-tasking accomplishment.

And that was Tuesday....the party had just begun....

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incredible pt 3: re: steve b

for those of you who didn't catch it, steve b wrote this assumedly more informed opinion than my own re: "incredible..." pt 1.:

"Strange Boys, Barbaras and Oh Sees sound nothing like Vivian Girls.

One reason they're getting attention is that, while not trailblazing anything, they are playing a style of "indie/garage/punk/whatever" rock that hasn't been played in the past 10 years or so.

By that, I mean, noisy, melodic pop a la Black Tambourine, Tiger Trap, Aislers Set and you could go back earlier and say Marine Girls, Shop Assistants, etc.

I can see some of what you're saying, but you come up short on a lot of your analysis.

For one, yes they are attractive, but not in a textbook kind of way, like a pop star or what-have-you. There are LOTS of bands with goodlooking girls (you'll see this when you see Golden Triangle) and it hasn't benefited them at all.

Basically, the attention they're getting comes from these things:

1. Touring relentlessly. Look at their tour schedule. This is how the Black Lips and Jay Reatard became successful. Touring. Touring. Touring.

2. In The Red. It's been a label that major indies have scooped artists from for years. Black Lips, Jay Reatard, The Ponys, King Khan & BBQ Show.

3. The 1st press of their LP sold out in about 5 days. Obviously, this gets the ball rolling as far as internet interest.

Ok, that's it."
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so I thought that was well thought out enough to repost in its entirety.....

Anyways before I continue, I'd like to further caveat my position by saying I'm not familiar with Black Tambourine, Tiger Trap, Aislers Set Marine Girls, or Shop Assistants, which should tell you something about how skin deep I'm actually in the garage thing (which matters--I'm not claiming to speak for people really into it). OK, so thats one caveat. The other caveat being that that previous blog post would have been more well thought out if I hadn't had a show to go to. So thats that.

As far as Strange Boys, Barbaras and Oh Sees sounding nothing like Vivian Girls, I agree to an extent---the previous post was intended to comment strictly about commerce and nothing about art. As far as the Vivian Girls touring relentlessly, I had no idea, and obviously that strikes at my own regional bias. I've got mad respect for all bands that tour relentlessly.

But with that out of the way, I think its worth mentioning that I'm of the opinion that what those 3 bands do is more difficult than what The Vivian Girls do. Beyond that, while I personally don't value "difficulty" in music on its own, I begin to find importance in "saying something new" from genres with a strong formal/less-experimental history. Lotta quotation marks...

I think its worth bringing up the short term (last 5 years) history of bands getting picked up off In The Red and I'm glad you did. The band The Vivian Girls actually reminded me of (again, only from video) was The Ponys. I picked up a copy of Laced With Romance and was pretty into it, especially the first 2 tracks, and though I think at this point it sounds sort of specific or I guess you could say dated, if I could do it all over I would still probably get really into those tracks again. That record all had a bunch to do with the production on it in my mind but thats a different story...the point of this is to say I'm not going to be too stuck up not to get into Vivian Girls, because I think their songwriting is legitimately good.

Anyways, yeah, I was really into it, but I saw them live and thought it was just OK. Then their second record came out, and it felt like a real lateral move to me, like, it didn't have the same singles, but at the same time, other than that it wasn't really worse, just them doing a different sound. I just couldn't figure out exactly why. Like, I could see the connection from the first record to the second, but it was the sort of record that left me hoping the 3rd record would be somewhere in the middle of the first 2 and like....i don't know...I don't even want to get too into it to be honest. I managed to see them live a second time (a year later-ish), and thought the first time I saw them was better.

And I would imagine the Vivian Girls will stick a little closer to their sound for subsequent records, and again I'm not completely familiar with them, being in Austin, Texas. But the comparison to me is that the sound they are working with is a pretty simple one. I think the Black Lips are a great band and also a great band to contrast them with to try and communicate what I think the difference between creativity and non-creativity within the genre is. "Good Bad Not Evil" has as least 6 different things going on. There is the chord thing, where everything is sort of based off these basic chord shapes, E, A, G, D, and C and their minors, and these common progressions that involve these shapes. There is this stylistic country under-vibe. There is this sort of Deerhunter style psych under-vibe---I'm sure if I knew the exact guitar looper pedal I could point to it, but it definitely feels very modern to me. There is this "we sound different live than on this record" vibe (I used to have their live record which I probably loved way more than Good Bad Not Evil, although really now I'm curious to hear it again if for no other reason than just for the sake of comparison). There is a strong lyrical point of view. And on top of that they are laying some pretty funky rhythms on these chords that you really have to go through the steps before you discover. And that's really just the record, and what I can think of right now: that's not to say about what their live deal is.

But for me, when I hear the Vivian Girls there are about 2 things going on. There is this shoegazey guitar, and there is this 3 part harmony. There is also the fact that in one manner of speaking they are really great songs, but it feels very "great, where do you go from here?" for me. Maybe in a manner of speaking a good band to compare them to would be The Clean. The Clean wrote a number of songs that I think are really incredible, but that doesn't change the fact that their entire output basically has the exact same drum beat. That to me in itself should disqualify you from the upper floors of the proverbial rock and roll hall of fame.

As far as the first press of their LP selling out in 5 days, I would love to know that story.

To kind of switch gears, as far as Golden Triange is concerned, I thought they were awesome. In regards to the commerce aspect of their band, I really can't attest to it because I don't know their history well enough, but I am glad they caught this tour with Quintron and Miss Pussycat, because people will be accidentally see them, get into them, and I thought they were really great. As far as the other bands (Strange Boys, Barbaras, Oh Sees) those are all great live bands I've been fortunate enough to witness, and I feel they are all successfully extending the idiom (more than what could rightfully be called a "twist"). This is in opposition to playing a sound that, for whatever reason, just hasn't been played in 10 years.

So that's what I got on the subject for now...stoked on Steve B that he coaxed me into writing it, cause it was fun.

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Incredible...

...the way you can watch these things as they are happening. This is a rant, so it will inevitably include leaps of logic and easily misunderstood language. Be prepared. It's a little piece on how the music industry works, which is something every citizen in America should be aware of, IMO. It's a case study, and the source material is The Vivian Girls.

Pitchfork just reviewed the new Vivian Girls record and started with this line:
"In a year when Brooklyn buzz travels around the world at lightspeed, you can probably count on one hand the number of new bands that, when the hype settles, are more than inconsequential collections of postures and exhausted second-hand styles."

I have a one word answer to that: Yes.

You could read the rest of the review, but to me, this first line reads as "you are going to accuse us of this, and we are going to let you know we are aware of your forthcoming accusations, and use them as a straw-man argument to debunk them as they pertain to this band, even though that's not the sort of thing you can really debunk in a record review."

It realy strikes at values, I guess, but I have a number of theories involving this "Vivian Girls explosion" (which i'm calling pitchfork best new music a culmination of.) Before I continue any further, let me say I don't think they are bad. The point of this "article" doesn't related to how good or bad they actually are, outside of the fact that they are not IMO that super fucking awesome. And i feel comfortable saying that as someone who has only seen their live material on the internet and hasn't heard their whole record, given partially to the fact that what i saw of them live wasn't interactive in a way that would suggest the experience live is different than the record really, and also due to the fact that their "LP" is TWENTY TWO minutes short, so having heard their myspace tracks, and from the live footage, its possible I have heard their whole record.

The point of this article for me is more why "The Vivian Girls" instead of The Strange Boys (also on In The Red), The Barbaras (In The Red/Goner), or The Oh Sees (just to name the bands that off the top of my head I think are better, doing a similar sound for longer, been working harder for longer, and not immediately sucessful in the same way)? This is not to mention the bands that have done the garage sound recently who I'm not familiar with, but know I should be, a list which would include Reigning Sound, and I know there are some others that I should be able to think of and just can't.

the short answer:
1) The Vivian Girls are from Brooklyn, where the music media industry literally lives, works, and breaths.
2) There are 2 hot girls in the band.
3) They have a good single, with an accompanying music video.
4) There are certain elements of known quantities about them: they will be able to sell records (see items 1-3), they play a sound that has an established national scene, and they have buzz, which is related to items 1-3 and also a considerable about to the first half of item 4.

what is buzz? Buzz is when a bunch of people see a band and say to themselves "this band is going to be a much bigger band than they are currently." not "this is a great band that no one knows about!" If 95% of people in the music industry literally did not know the difference between good and bad music, they would be saying the same thing about Yellow Fever, starting, oh, 9 months ago. I think Yellow Fever is going to be fine (from an "industry standpoint" to totally seperate the commercial side from the art side...im literally rolling my eyes as i type this)

I should also mention, another reason this example in particular strikes a chord with me has to do with the fact that its garage, which is a) not that hard to do a shitty job of, witness the wave of shitty bands inspired by The Black Lips and then again I've been told by Jay Retard, and b) this current garage revival has created its own circut which it is possible will now become infested with money-grubbers and kill a lot of creativity, and also, even though it may have only been a matter of time, I think Vivian Girls is going to be the band to do it.

So why not those other bands? 1. geography. 2. they aren't hot girls, and certainly not in this typically American early 20s definition of what hot is way

Anyways, this probably isn't all I have to say on the subject, but I gotta go see a show, so anything else will have to wait (I'm going to see Golden Triangle, who may be one of those 5 bands that is not all hype from Brooklyn...I'll find out soon enough...and also Quintron and Miss Pussycat)

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