by Johnny 99
SXSW 07' was by far the most interesting, bizarre, & confusing of my last 3 trips down to Austin. If you are a live music lover, it is definately a must see event.
On our way down to SXSW we had a great series of club dates with our pals Bang Sugar Bang. The most memorable was staying at a cat named Winner's house after a gig. Winner seemed like your average beer guzzling Johnny Cash lovin' Rockabilly sort with a fondness for the Muffs, which was cool. He had Hot Wheels laced all over his wall, which I found interesting. I passed out - the Iron Needle & Twang Sugar Twang singing angel's wrote a song about me snoring while Daniel conducted the piece. Apparently shortly after Winner brought out a horse whip & started whipping everybody. I guess there was a lot of testosterone going on. Again, I am still sleeping during this. Later that night a member of Silver Needle passed out & woke up in the gentle arms of Winner "spooning" this member which apprently freaked this person out. Thank goodness Winner didn't get creative with his Hot Wheels collection & we would have had another Mr. Slave & Lemmiwinks on our hand.
My favorite gig was at the POD in Amarillo which was a youth center which was BYOB. The kids dug the needle so that energy was amazing.
On Monday I had to fly to New Orleans for work & worked 16 hours straight for Monster, at 12:46am I found myself parading down Bourbon Street with 12 Monster Promo Girls, Wee Man, my buddy Poncho & capped off with a riding of the Budweiser Clydesdales down the street. True story. That night, my friend Patrick & I met 4 co-eds from North Carolina on Spring Break, we ended up partying & they convinced me to take them to the Live Sex Show on Bourbon which I told them was a tourist trap. They didn't believe me. Southern Girls usually can talk me into anything, that drawl from a hot girl is my kryptonite. Again, same thing. Tourist trap, nasty girls dancing, no live sex, girls bummed, onto dance club. We ended up at a venue accross the street with a cheesy cover band doing classic rock covers. I hate it when people cover Journey & they can't sing it. It's a challenge, don't even try if you can't hit those highs. I needed several shots to bear with the cover band. Ditched co-eds to get some sleep.
Before I flew home, I hit Marie Leveau's House of Voodoo, I bought Austin. Hit the seminars & convention with Cooper. I realized that the world is open to the Independent Musician, they are a lot of opportunities out there. The big issue now is that the music world is flooded with tons of sub par bands vying for attention. It's not really a competitve marketplace, but oversaturated. I sat through 3 demo critique sessions to hear what was out there & in the audience was the guy that wrote "Doing Da Butt" by EU, a band from Estonia, & a couple of kids with stage moms. It took 3 sessions to finally get Silver Needle heard. Out of that we were approached by a label that has interest. Every song I heard was a singer/songwriter, a pop-punk copy, or a bizarre jokester Frank Zappa type. It's really a challenge to be heard.
One panel member stated an interesting statistic that 20% of music is downloaded, 80% is still bought on cd, What is hurting the industry? File Sharing, weak acts, etc? I think it's a combination of all. The industry gatekeeps acts that will not sell records in the midwest. All the hot acts that I heard about still have limited audiences. Every industry panel said they want good songs with interesting character, but I think they either put out intersting character acts because they are too geeked out on following the hip or they put out the mediocre to hope to gain the general market. It's a real Catch 22. When the Arena acts such as the Chilli Peppers, AC/DC, etc. stop touring, there will be a huge void to fill in all those ampitheaters & large clubs that popped up in the 90's. Who will take those reigns there are maybe just a few that have the catalog to keep the attention of music lovers. We need true rock stars again. They don't have to be pretty, they just need heart & substance & the ability to write songs that connect.
I did catch 3 great shows - Sloan. The Stooges were raw & I love Mike Watt in the act. I did miss some classic Iggy solo stuff, but it's so cool to see Iggy upstage the whole festival with his raw energy. Sloan was a classic power pop act that I always dug. I also saw the Good the Bad & The Queen at the Levi's party. Very interesting & carefully articulated music from Paul Simonean from the Clash & a member of Blur in the mix. One really bad show that I walked out of, at the Blender Bar - I saw a "Rock" hipster act which was so lame & going through the motions, that had that 70's tip without the madness or balls of a Joe Walsh lick. It was like taking Mother Tongue, adding a lame hipster element to it & mixing it with Milwaukee's Best. Long live the "Buzz" band.
It's an interesting time & a time to find out why you play music in the first place, for the love of your art or your ego. Art will prevail if you the individual is satisfied & you can touch people no matter how big or small the venture. After all the bullshit, it comes down to good music.
Long Live Spoonin'
J99
Long Live Spoonin'
J99
As we all continue to recover from the mayhem that was SXSW in TX, we will post our stories throughout the week. So stay tuned for all the dirt...
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