LA Weekly

Neil Hamburger
Spaceland, March 30

Walking on stage cradling three drinks in his arms, Neil Hamburger makes his first impression on the audience by spilling them slowly onto his own tuxedo while setting up his notes on the monitors in front of him. Much of the booze in his glasses ends up soaked into his jacket and shoes over the next 45 minutes, while Hamburger unleashes his tirades against celebrities, alternative musicians, the audience, and Jesus Christ.

"WHY?!" he screams at the start of a joke, "Did Robert Redford stick his penis into a jar of Paul Newman's spaghetti sauce?" The punchlines are often less important than the set-ups. It's the question that gets the most laughs. After several months of semi-regular Sunday shows at Spaceland, the audience is familar with Hamburger's M.O.: Offensive jokes, told in a seemingly bad delivery (his timing is actually excellent), mixed with audience abuse and self-directed bitterness about life.

"Why did Academy Award nominated actor Heath Ledger call Mary-Kate Olsen as he was dying?" The mention of Ledger's name was one of the few things that the audience seemed to recoil from. A collective soft spot for Ledger was clearly present. "It's ok," Hamburger consoled them, "Heath Ledger is in hell now. Nothing we do can hurt him."

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Pictured (l to r): David Geffen, Suge Knight, Chuck Philips.

Sure, on Friday I jested a bit at the expense of Chuck Philips and the LA Times. (I'm a professional asshole and truthteller. I'm just doing my job.)

Please, though, do not mistake any humor made at Philips expense for a claim that he, historically speaking, has done anything less than a stellar job as the LA Times's entertainment industry reporter.

However, I will plainly and proudly state that the LA Times is a poor excuse for a newspaper. That's why the New York Times does so well here. Need evidence? Next time you're at Sunday brunch in Los Angeles check out what paper everyone around you is reading. Full stop.

But, anyway, back in the day when the LA Times was (somewhat) less horrible, and I bothered to read it with some regularity, Philips entertainment industry pieces were one of the few bright spots in an otherwise blighted, stupid, and irrelevant publication.

Moral of this story: Let's not hang the messenger, let's see if we can put the paper out of business! Or better yet read this comment that came in response to a self-congratulatory interview with Philips the LA Times ran on its Soundboard blog:

Chuck Phillips is paid by Suge Knight and is in his pocket like a #2 pencil.

Hmm, wouldn't it be awesome if David Geffen joined forces with Suge to actually purchase the paper? If, as they say, politics really is the entertainment industry for ugly people, maybe newspaper publishing is the music industry for former moguls who no longer understand music?

I am also an idea man.

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Among the hundreds of responses to this week's debunked LA Times story on the murder of Tupac Shakur, and Sean "P. Diddy" Combs' alleged involvement in it, have been a few fascinating and incendiary allegations. What follows are a few of the most intriguing.

From an anonymous post to the Velvet Rope music industry message board:

That the Times continues to publish Philips in regards to this story is pathetic. This is not the random mistake of a seasoned reporter who slipped up. Philips has systematically bent, twisted, rearranged, processed, covered up and stomped on the truth. Either through the syntax of his writing or the false conclusions he suggests, it has been a textbook case of gross manipulation. To people who have spent any time studying this case (the most fascinating crime story of the past 20 years) Chuck Philips is simply a joke. It is sad to see The Times continue to be the butt of that joke.

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After reading this post, may I suggest you have some real fun and use the comments section to make up your own totally fictional news story about the contents of the image to the left. Fraudulent journalism can be fun for readers too!

But first, I want apologize on behalf of my fellow PLAY bloggers for the dearth of updates in the wake of our outburst of SXSW-related posts. Well, at least I blame SXSW-related injuries. My fellow bloggers may have just been overly impressed by the Los Angeles Times coup on Monday, March 17th -- linking P. Diddy to the murder of Tupac Shakur -- so much so that they considered hanging up their Scoops McGee journalistic hats for good.

Thankfully, the LA Times eternal spiral into idiocy has allowed us to reclaim our hats! You can get the full-scoop from the Times of London, the New York Times, and hey, fuck it, even the NME -- all of which put newsprint to better use than our LA Times friends at 202 W. 1st Street. (Google Map that shit if you want to send them a thank you letter.)

What can you do to help poor P. Diddy regain his reputation? I provide some ideas after the jump. Thankfully it doesn't involve having to purchase the new record by Danity Kane, Diddy's prefab girl-group which happens to have topped album charts for a second week in a row.

Yeah, basically, that LA Times story was really trying to put a damper on the champagne and strawberry party Mr. P was assuredly planning to have in St. Bart's or wherever to celebrate his latest, erm, creative triumph.

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On the afternoon of Friday, March 14, the LA Times' Stephan Pechdimaldji, senior manager of media relations, tossed out an email to his media list announcing the impending publication of Chuck Philips' now-debunked Who Shot Tupac story. There were a couple of red flags right off the bat. First, I'd never before received a press release from the LA Times announcing the arrival of a story, so it kind of felt like they were rubbing my face in the fact that they'd snagged an epic scoop. My second thought, though, was the question of how big a scoop it was if the Times was unwilling to commit to the print version. It seemed like they were hedging their bets a little to me. (Hindsight's 20/20, of course.) Here's the email:

Hi. I thought you would appreciate a heads up about a special Los Angeles Times investigative report scheduled to appear online Monday morning. In a web-only presentation, Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer Chuck Philips deconstructs the 1994 ambush of Tupac Shakur at the Quad Recording Studio in New York - the first shot of a lethal, bi-coastal feud that culminated in the killings of Shakur and rap’s other leading star, Christopher Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G.

Until the night he was murdered in 1996, the rap star insisted that associates of Sean “Diddy” Combs were behind the brutal ambush at the Quad. New evidence - FBI records and exclusive interviews with individuals who were at the studio that night - support his suspicions. Accompanied by a vivid photo-gallery of the cast of characters, copies of confidential documents, an interactive timeline and audio of lyrics from Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., Philips pieces together a case that has left many in the music world as well as law enforcement officials baffled.

Be sure to check out the story first thing Monday morning by visiting www.latimes.com/tupac >. Philips is also scheduled to conduct a live chat with readers on Tuesday.

Thanks in advance for your consideration.

Best, Stephan Pechdimaldji Senior Manager, Media Relations Los Angeles Times

I received a second little reminder email from Pechdimaldji on Monday morning reminding me that the story had gone live. I haven't heard from him since.

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L.A. Weekly blogger and former staff writer Daniel Hernandez uncovered a wild story about attacks on "emo" youths in Mexico City on LA Daily and his own blog Intersections.

Besides getting linked on Andrew Sullivan's blog at The Atlantic and Canada's Exclaim, there were plenty of other places who took his reporting and didn't even give him credit, like NME (I"ll reciprocate by not linking to them) and Time.

The story is now largely being told through YouTube clips:

Our sister paper the Houston Press checks in with their own take as well.

Social commentators are likening this to the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the late 1930s. Is that seriously the best metaphor they could dig up? Seriously, comparing the Nazi Party to a rag-tag group of Sepultura geeks and dudes in oversized Dickies beating up pansexual mall nymphs?

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Every time I write about Jens Lekman, I'm tempted to compare him to Morrissey, even though I know I shouldn't. After all, both songwriters specialize in witty and literate love-lorn laments sung in a smooth, mahogany baritone. And invariably, any time you can compare someone's voice to an article of fine office furniture, it's a good thing. Granted, Jens hasn't written anything nearly as good as The Queen is Dead but really, who has? Besides, Lekman has one thing on the notoriously chilly "Pope of Mope," namely an inherent charm and affability unmatched by few songwriters in recent memory.

You can sense Lekman's likability on his records. "A Postcard to Nina" finds him posing as his lesbian friend's boyfriend for her bigoted German father. " Yet rather than censure the old man's ignorance, Lekman takes the softer, kinder approach, wryly poking fun at the awkwardness of the meeting and the weird, kindly e-mails that Nina's father sends Jens in the aftermath. The hardest thing in the world is to be funny without being mean (perhaps one of these days I'll learn how), but in person, Lekman is the rare person who manages to be supremely nice without ever being dull. Forget the songs themselves, which are almost uniformly good, his between song banter is flat-out hilarious. With the timing and delivery of a crack stand-up, Lekman regaled the crowd with background stories that played like DVD commentary.

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Jim White
Amoeba, March 24

Jim White's songs depend on a good deal of atmosphere, and no doubt when he plays tonight (Tuesday) at the Silent Movie Theater, the ghosts of the venue's decades of mute comedies and tragedies will do wonders for his music. You should go see him play there if you can.

Monday night at Amoeba however, the room just isn't working in his favor. Some degree of harshness finds its way into White's voice that seldom appears on his records, and it sounds a little unsettling. Produced by Joe Pernice and Mike Deming of the Pernice Brothers (who also excel at catchy, whispery pop) White's new album, Transnormal Skiperoo, contains another dozen stories of sad people, small victories, bigger defeats and a good dose of philosophical musings.

If the translation of the songs to the stage isn't firing on all cylinders tonight, his stories still are. Between songs, White tells the story of a good friend of his, the son of a preacher, who married the daughter of another preacher, and despite all of that connection to a higher power, or because of it, he eventually lost his mind. On lithium and other brain candy, the two go to New York to see the Regis & Kathie Lee show. His friend had dated Gifford, whose last name had been Epstein and White had once kissed her. White said the conversation between his sick, drugged friend and Kathie Lee Gifford was one of the most surreal things he'd ever experienced. No doubt.

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With a spot on Entertainment Weekly's "8 to Watch in 08" and Ann Powers' SXSW rave in the LA Times, the Wale hype is getting pretty loud, yet it exists for good reason. After all, how many young guns can go toe-to-toe with Bun B and Pusha-T? Not to say he's quite there yet. From this angle, Bun-B wins the battle royal, continuing the rampage he's been on in the aftermath of Pimp's C's death. Meanwhile, Pusha delivers a pretty great 16 in his own right. But Wale holds his own, sounding like Kanye if Kanye was actually a great rapper. Indeed, between Wale, Jay Electronica, The Knux, Cool Kids, Clean Guns, Blu & others, the next generation is clearly bubbling. Coupled with fact that the 90s vets finally sound interested in making music again, the hip-hop is dead arguments of '06 seem, well, dead.

MP3: Wale ft. Bun B & Pusha-T

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Unlike Sasha Frere-Jones, my main gripe with indie rock don't stem from it's lack of blackness. More than anything, I have trouble dealing with the idea that Jenny Lewis is indiedom's official pin-up girl. No joke, I think she won first in the 2006 Stereogum poll and came in second in 2007. The winner last year, of course, being Feist, therein proving the voters themselves have bad taste in both senses of the word. Nothing against J-Lew though, she's certainly attractive and the fact that she was the star of The Wizard gives her enough street cred to play Super Mario Bros. 3 at my house anytime she wants. But let's all be honest with ourselves, Jenny Lewis looks like the kind of girl who fakes it every time. Granted, my only evidence is that last godawful Rilo Kiley album that had her singing the world's least believable sex songs. But really, you could almost hear her yawning.

VV from The Kills, doesn't need to write tacky and tawdry pop songs about porn stars because everything she does is indistinguishable from the notion of sex. She could recite the phone book and you'd be turned on. To say nothing of the back of the LA Weekly. On-stage, this notion is inescapable. She's got a a damaged, Suicide Girl beauty, raven hair, cream-colored skin. That prettiest girl in art-school look, immaculately put-together. silverly jangly bracelets, skin-tight black jeans, leather jacket, and a robin hood hat slung low over a searing stare.

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Bloggers are every journalist's favorite whipping boy. If a shitty band gets too popular, blame the bloggers. If the standards of professional journalism have eroded too much, blame the bloggers. If by 2010, Vampire Weekend has inspired legions of college freshmen to dress as ironic yachters, blame the bloggers. Ultimately, it's as easy to scapegoat the blogosphere as it is to blog and at worst, blogs are benign (at least music ones), at best you discover a lot of good music for free. The horror.

Most importantly, the blogosphere knows how to party, which I discovered at the blogger-promoted Hot Freaks party on Saturday afternoon, a place where Al-Queda could've wiped out 82 percent of the game had it gotten enraged by one post too many about the peace-promoting qualities of the Arcade Fire (Osama hates Neon Bible). I'm not exaggerating either, the place was a veritable Elbo.ws chat room (for those keeping score, that may have been my nerdiest joke ever). While watching Islands, Lykke Li, and Japanese cartoon psychos Peelander-Z, I stumbled across My Old Kentucky Blog, Gorilla Vs. Bear, Aquarium Drunkard and Rock Insider. Other bloggers in attendance who I didn't have the pleasure of meeting included Chromewaves, Largehearted Boy and You Ain't No Picasso, who was presumably searching for Picasso.

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On obsessive repeat in my abode this morning is this video for "Machine Gun" from Portishead's long awaited third album titled, erm, Third. It went live on the band's website last night 8pm London time, and some kind soul has helpfully uploaded it to YouTube so you don't have to give them your email address in exchange for viewing rights.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

I find this band's output completely intriguing. Their albums from the 90s -- 1994's Dummy and 1997's Portishead -- were viewed as particularly cinematic exponents of the trip-hop fad which, let's be honest, is essentially thought of as really good wine bar music. (In Portishead's case really really good wine bar music.) Since then they've made nary a peep, save for singer Beth Gibbons excellent, but low-key collaborative album Out of Season, created with "Rustin Man" aka Paul Webb, bassist for the even more mysterious Talk Talk (about whom a week of posting here is inevitable). It marked the emergence in Gibbons' music of a more rustic (no pun intended), British countryside vibe. i.e. More strummed guitars. Hazy memories viewed through a boggy mist rather than a smoky club.

You could be excused for missing the shift in sound on that album, however, since Gibbons' voice is so overdetermined, so torch singer, anything quiet is bound to blur into a sexy wash of sound.

But "Machine Gun" rubs your face in change. The mood has shifted from something sexy to something claustrophobic, industrial -- it's dark as in deadly and dangerous rather than dark as in Eliot Spitzer. It has more in common with the jungle craze that was a kissing cousin to trip-hop or, perhaps, the newly resurgent experimental noise of young bands like Fuck Buttons, Health, and Crystal Castles.

It makes me think of terrorism, pollution, stagflation and various other forms of global panic rather than ecstasy consumption.

Portishead have gone more than a decade since producing music for public consumption, and audiences would have warmly embraced a rehash of their older records. So kudos to them. In a season where the most veterans are rousing excitement sheerly through guerilla street date strategy -- NIN a week or so ago, yesterday's announcements of imminent releases by Gnarls Barkley and the Raconteurs -- Portishead are doing it with music. Who wouldda thunk it?

After the jump, a live version of some new album tracks.

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One of the bands that roused the most enthusiasm at SXSW this year was Britain's Fuck Buttons, a brave band with a braver name. You could feel the incipient buzz coming off them, a buzz that would lead Stereogum to name them their favorite band of the festival and that would act as a perfect lead-in to their elevation to Best New Music status in today's Pitchfork.

I've just started working with the group as part of my duties repping their record label All Tomorrow's Parties in the US, and I met the lovely and talented band members, Ben and Andy, just before their first official showcase on Thursday evening. On Friday and Saturday I had the pleasure of escorting them to a few of the half-dozen or so appearances they would make during the festival.

Now, Fuck Buttons are a band with roots in the harsh experimental noise scene -- they're a kind of UK-equivalent to Los Angeles's own noise/punk heroes No Age and Health. But even more than those bands, Fuck Buttons' chosen moniker seems like an effort to take the 80s outrage over band names like Butthole Surfers and one-up it for the age of ubiquitous online pornography. Color me surprised, then, when I noticed the scene in the picture above during their set at the Stereogum/Paste day party on Saturday afternoon. (You can see a bit of Andy in the lower right hand corner of the photo.)

You are looking at Dell's new effort to unseat Apple from their "hippest computer maker in the universe" perch, a campaign I'd first encountered this a week earlier at the Plug Awards in New York ( the indie music equivalent of the Grammies). At least at the Plugs, though, Dell had the good sense not to place the, erm, blogger cage, so prominently as to make it obvious how little anyone actually wanted to use the damn thing. Now you name your band Fuck Buttons and you figure: that'll keep the wolves of commerce at bay, right? Well, welcome to the brave new world of indie rock.

I'll be honest, though, my surprise was tempered somewhat by the this scene which I witnessed a day earlier at a party they played sponsored by the marketing company / record label / magazine / online broadcaster, Vice.

You can see band member Ben in the right side of the photo and, yes, that is an actual audience member transacting with an ATM during the band's performance -- perhaps exhibit #1 in why sponsors are likely to continue flocking to indie for some time to come.

Indie is more than willing to show them the money.

After the jump, less sponsors, more music!

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A Pitchfork party without Sparks? That's like Eliot Spitzer without whores: fatigued, thirsty and miserable. And rest assured, Sparks flowed like the River Ganges, even going as far to sponsor the bash, which wasn't really as bad as it was boring. A bunch of people sitting in bleachers trying to look affected and disaffected all at the same time. Granted, I arrived late and didn't stay long, but this had to do mainly with Yeasayer and my aversion towards their Spin Doctors brand of hippindie rock (caused by a collision of the hipster and hippie comets sometime around the year 2006). Inside, Times New Viking delivered a set of ear-drum fracturing noise, but as I'd seen the Matador-signed trio absolutely kill it the night before at the Siltbreeze show, I had no need to stay.

That's the thing about festivals like this, you've got to approach them with the mentality of a baseball player, where hitting safely three out of ten times makes you a Hall of Famer. But there's something about being surrounded by all this great music that leaves you impatient and fidgety. It's the same iPod phenomenon of having thousands of songs at your disposal, none of which you want to listen to longer than 90 seconds. Accordingly, Day 4 was dominated by a supreme case of Musical ADD. Or I as saw it, I was taking the buffet approach, not a very difficult prism to assess things through, considering all my childhood Sundays spent at The Soup Plantation.

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Last night. Last night? Umm, last night ... What the heck did I do last night? Wait. Where the hell am I? In a hotel room, okay ... yeah ... good. At least I'm safe. Okay, now, what the hell did I do again? Jeez. Think. Flashes is all I got, and one grainy image on my cell phone. A half a taco on my bedside table, chomped sloppily. A few sparkles of memory burned into my happiness that no amount of Chimay can diminish. A pile of something in my head. But more than anything, what stayed with me into this morning is a feeling.

See the quality of this picture? This captures the blur of Friday night.

It was there at midnight when you're walking downtown. Not so much on 6th, which on the street is more like a celebration of stupidity than of tapping into the creative wellspring. Down Red River Street at 1 am, however, this palpable excitement is in the air like a mist, and the beats float into the street from a hundred different bands in a hundred different bars and combine to create this unplanned symphony of competing rhythms in different time signatures and dozens of basslines rumbling our innards, and screamers harmonizing with folkies competing with rappers eclipsed by the jumbo sound of Blue Cheer riffing on "Summertime Blues." It all touches the ear drums, all enters the same two holes in opposite sides of our head, each note swimming through our ear canals like spermies on a mission to fertilize our minds. And so on Red River walking past Emo's and Stubb's and Club De Ville and Mohawk, lines tangle down sidewalks and people march from here to there and back again, while this big-ass accidental symphony rises from the street and fills the world with music music music. It'd make John Cage's head explode.

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"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."-Hunter S. Thompson

"What you gonna do when the people go home/ and you wanna smoke weed but the reefer's all gone/ And somebody had the nerve to take the herb up out the doobie ashtray/Why they do me that way?"-Devin the Dude

If the going hasn't gotten weird by the third day of SXSW, you clearly haven't been trying hard enough. By now, it's make or break time, you've finally surveyed the lay of the land and begun to accept certain inalterable realities: the crooked spine that feels like it needs to be re-aligned vertebrae by vertebrae, calves that feel like someone has slit cement in the back of, and not nearly enough time to properly convey the bizarre phenomena of this admittedly wonderful excuse to do for nothing but go to shows, drink, and eat burritos (often all three at the same time). You'll have to forgive me--if these posts feel rushed and ill-thought out it's because they are.

There's a thin line that separates artists, the media, and the fans here. After a few days, it's little surprise to see Jim James walking down 6th in a purple suit on his way to presumably blow the minds of people at the Austin Music Hall. Or watching El-P successfully run game on a very attractive female inside of a make-shift roped-off, VIP section at the Def Jux party, surrounded by Del tha Funkeehomosapien and half of Hiero, smoking beadies. Which was where I ended up last night, after watching Islands open up the Anti Party with an absolutely mind-blowing set that I can't even begin to talk about, lest I go off on another 1,000 word ramble.

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So I have not seen any of my fellow LA Weekly bloggers down here in the lovely town of Austin, Texas but that's because this whole thing is a nightmarish clusterfuck that would do Hunter S. Thompson or Hieronymus Bosch proud. (The latter allusion for those of you whose tastes run more towards some classic rock.) It's hard to run into people you like down here and oh so easy to get lost in the throng of tarted-up girls marketing Miller Light; young kids who will eventually go on to take over their family's insurance business handing you demos; bloggers capturing exclusive "content" on their cell phone cameras; and drunk people.

For those who claim this thing is all about the music, I will -- by way of contrast -- offer my experience of SXSW point-by-point:
- Most of the bands here suck and are doing it for the wrong reasons.
- Most of the audience here have bad taste and are listening for the wrong reasons.
- Sponsors are a necessary evil though that doesn't lessen their evil.
- I fucking hate people.
That last point was actually an aside. Sorry for editorializing. That said, I am getting a lot of business done down here on behalf of my various and sundry ventures.

There are a few events I do regret missing this year because I had, like, actual work to do. For one, Van Morrison's performance at La Zona Rosa. The best of the blue-eyed soul singers thumbed his nose at the general shennanigins that too many other artists too readily accept. He took the following actions, as reported in the NME:

Morrison had the bars in the venue closed for the duration of his set, while cameras, voice recorders, and any recording or filming device were prohibited throughout his set.

I'm also sorry I missed the Lou Reed covers extravaganza at the Levi's (sponsored) FADER fort. The line ran around the block, and though I've heard reports from those that got in that it was underwhelming, Lou Reed actually showed up. That it was probably the hottest ticket in town this week only enforces my feelings from my post earlier in the week that "Lou Reed is a complete maniac and he will probably kick your ass in hand-to-hand combat..."

Basically, Lou Reed and Van Morrison gets it. They too kind of hate people who think the dominant youth culture of today has anything to do with the kind of art they make. And Lou Reed in particular understands that blogging about boxing has more to do with rock'n'roll these days than any youth culture festival.

For a true Internet 2.0 metaphor of what this whole SXSW thing feels like you should check out this ad that ran in China for a wool producer that is sponsoring this summer's Olympics. The Wall Street Journal reported the thing was so damn annoying it led to a massive consumer backlash, which media reporters are taking to suggest that "increasingly sophisticated Chinese consumers are rejecting low-budget, low-quality marketing."

SXSW is basically like that ad, only the thing being advertised is America's out-of-control youth music culture. It too is too often just low-budget, low-quality marketing. And too infrequently is it actually about music.

Why don't all the reporters down here understand this?

After the jump, video of that really annoying ad.

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Okay, so I actually cried tonight. Not sobbed, not wept, not got all blustery and snotty. But about five songs into Le Loup's remarkable, thrilling set at Emo's IV Lounge, they hit upon a combination of chords and chorus that, coupled with my joyful mood and the feeling of how lucky all of us assholes in Austin are to be here and not, say, Baghdad, or Kabul, or the Gaza Strip, or still living in the parents' basement, rushed from my ears to my heart and head and flooded my eyes with tears beautiful tears. What a life this this!

Le Loup at Emo's IV Lounge

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There are a lot of sacred songs in the rock and roll canon, songs that are so connected with their composer that any attempt to replicate them, to put your spin on them, to reinterpret them, is at best doomed to fail, at worst will insult not only the song but your fans. Near the top of that list, right next to "Like a Rolling Stone" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit," is "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen. Today at the Twangfest showcase at Jovina's, I witnessed not only a cover of the latter, but a double-whammy.

"Born to Run" was attempted by a collection of rockers called the This Is American Music Revue, featuring members Grand Champeen, Two Cow Garage, Glossary, and The Drams. It wasn't bad, per se. It was capable, they were having fun, and there was enthusiasm. But it was "Born to Run," and even if I think The Boss is over-rated, "Born to Run" is a perfect pop song so tied to Bruce that even capable musicians fail miserably. The shortcoming wasn't in the execution. It was in the very idea of it.

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Hey, Aren't You Juliette Lewis?

Walking down 6th street yesterday, you had to wonder if everyone in the world somehow heard that Art Brut song, "Formed a Band" and decided that if Eddie Argos could do it, how hard could it really be? I've seen telephone directories thinner than the official SXSW guide they give you to registration, with about 54,322 bands scattered out in tiny print over four days, with each one playing an average of 3.2 shows. Even at the Red Roof Inn right now 15 miles out of Austin, I'm watching two dudes with long scruffy hair, goatees, porkpie hats, and skinny jeans bemoaning how their van broke down on the way here and how their keyboardist got denied entrance. As far as I can tell, they weren't demanding a Myspace Music page to enter the city limits of Austin this week, so the band must be Canadian. Or else very very stupid.

If you aren't in bands, you work for a newspaper, or you write a blog, or work for a music-related tech company, or in promotions or for an agency--something. Which goes back to my trade show theory. To paraphrase Back to the Future: it's like an alternate Austin 1998 Corvette Day. But things here actually look a little more '88. There are a lot of mustaches running wild, beards, blazers, lame head bands, ironic MTV sunglasses, the accursed neon (confession: I own one neon jacket that I purchased in the fabled year of our lord, 1998.). Even the Ice Cream Man showed up and gave me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle ice cream bar, something I probably haven't done since l learned to tie my shoes (translation: roughly four weeks ago).

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Van Morrison at La Zona Rosa, Austin, Texas; Division Day, The Ting Tings and The Duke Spirit at Buffalo Billiards.

Van Morrison's pretty cool, wearing his trademark cap and sunglasses, holding a saxophone and totally nonplussed about this show. He's got nothing to prove, nothing to hide. He couldn't care less about "The State of the Industry," the collapse of the label system, digital downloading. He's Van Morrison, motherfuckers. He's gonna do what he pleases. And if, when he's scat-singing, he breaks off into, literally, a riff on the words "blah blah blah" -- and he did this during the show -- who's gonna call him on it? He did. He got stuck on "blah blah blah," and did a little vocal solo with the words, as if we wouldn't catch it. But a few of us did, and it didn't really bother us. He played the sax, as he is wont to do these days, and his dozen-odd band members filled the club with a variation on the cool jazz that he used to such great effect on his early classics - Astral Weeks, Moondance and St. Dominic's Preview - and the crowd enjoyed it. Which isn't to say he tore the house down. He could have, had he dropped "Moondance," or "The Way Young Lovers Do," or "Ballerina," or "Brown-Eyed Girl." But Van don't pander, has no time to give the people what they want. He gives them what they need. At one point between songs, he said, "I'm glad we're getting somewhere, because I've got other things to do tonight." Not many people can get away with saying such a thing on stage, but, well, this is Van Morrison, and his boredom is our medicine.

At least for a while. About six songs into the hour-long set, the crowd started getting a little restless. We all had other things to do tonight, too, and one of the joys and curses of SXSW is the reality that even when you're seeing Van Fucking Morrison, the greatest of all blue-eyed soul singers, in the back of your mind you're still thinking, what's next? Who will I see next? Maybe (ugh) Yeasayer? (I will remind you all again: the dude plays a FRETLESS BASS, which are, by definition, WACK). Or Vampire Weekend? Or some other Men at Work flavor of the week?

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If you do a Google Image search for "Austin" this is one of the first things that pops up. Two girls at the 1998 Austin Corvette Day. Granted, this probably has nothing at all to do with SXSW--yet judging by my first impressions of this place, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if by the end of the week, I end up seeing two highly siliconed and bleached women purring atop a sleek sports car. It's shaping up to be that kind of trip.

SXSW is essentially a trade show. Except instead of blonde spokesmodels insinuating that they will be yours provided you spend $60,000 for a car that will make you look douchier than Steve Sanders, SXSW (and the major corporate behemoths paying for it), attempt to ply you with nothing but free booze, free food and free music. As Dilated Peoples once aptly put it, "You Got to Work the Angles."

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Ordinarily announcing a SoCal date for Aphex Twin would be pretty damn cool. In fact, I was just wondering recently if the guy was ever going to come out of his shell, or if he was going to get all Chinese Democracy on us.

In fairness, Aphex Twin hasn't been exactly unproductive since his last proper album, Drukqs in 2001. But even then some people were wondering if that one was a bit of a put-on, a clearing out of the old hard-drive of experiments that didn't really work out. (It's worth a re-listen or two now, and probably holds up better than a couple of his earlier albums.)

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It's not as if you need additional proof of the fact that Lou Reed exists on a different spiritual plane than you, I, or any average rock star.

Exhibit #12: This man was making Velvet Underground albums IN THE SIXITIES.

But still, more than any one rock star I can think of, he goes out of his way to prove his extra-planetary, erm, vision? Uh, his consistency? (Well, no that's not it.) How about HIS INTEREST AND EXPERTISE IN VARIOUS FORMS OF HAND-TO-HAND COMBAT AND MARTIAL ARTS.

Yeah that's it. So I bring you...

Exhibit #5,000,032 in support of Lou Reed's extra-planetary interest and expertise in various forms of hand-to-hand combat and martial arts: Lou Reed recently did some freelance photography for Madison Square Garden during a match between boxers Wladimir Klitschko and Sultan Ibragimov in late February. And he appears to have completed the assignment WITH HIS CELL PHONE. A few lovely samples accompany this post thanks to the kind folks at Pitchfork whom made an off-handed post about Reed's sideline, alerting me to the complete madness.

What you ask is Exhibit #5,000,033 proving Lou Reed's otherwordly interest and expertise in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts?: He Twittered about the match. And I quote:

Here at the Garden and ready to head upstairs in a few moments - just got done with a gig w/ John Zorn @ Henry Street settlement 09:20 PM February 23, 2008 from web

3rd row in - first round and a lot of dancing going on - no real damage! Sitting here beside Vince McMahon and WWE stars 09:45 PM February 23, 2008

there is where they are supposed to let it all hang out and go for broke - it's not Klitschko's way! 10:26 PM February 23, 2008

After the jump, the real mind exploder: my favorite ever incarnation of Lou Reed, that being Tai Chi Lou Reed!

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There is a point at which an ironic gesture is pulled off so convincingly that it transforms said ironic gesture into a overpowering stylistic shift which washes over the culture like an Indonesian tsunami.

Examples include Nirvana's combination of metal and sludgy punk rock; Paris Hilton's efforts to turn Edie Sedgwick-style, heiress careerism-slash-air-headedness into an authentic career; and whatever it is that Britney Spears does.

What can I say but that the next time you see me, I will come bearing a mustache AND EVERYONE ELSE WILL BE BEARING MUSTACHES AS WELL.

(via BrooklynVegan)

After the jump, another sentence! Maybe even two!

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Thursday March 6th to Saturday March 8th, cult singer-songwriter Phil Elverum is playing a handful of California shows. We've used this as an opportunity to talk to him about hardcore punk, nature worship, and where he wants to die. Here is the unexpurgated Q&A.

- Read Pt I
- Read Pt II
- Read Pt III

You talk about grunge being a formative influence. I'm trying place you generationally.
I'm 29 and my first CD came out in 1997. I was usually the youngest person around when I started going at it. I moved to Olympia in ‘97 and I went on my first tour in ‘97 with and I realized, “Wow I can do this with my life holy shit why would I every do anything else.” Nirvana was happening when I was 14, kind of the perfect age. Growing up in Anacortes, Washington, it was close enough to Seattle that it seemed like a local thing. These people that worked with my dad doing landscaping were in a grunge band so the music on the cover of Rolling Stone was in a very real way connected to people practicing in the woods near my house while I was home doing my homework. From there it was just further and further specialization -- tracking down weirder and weirder bands until I became aware of this local music scene. And then it became known to me: I can make tapes.

In Anacortes, the one record store was run by this guy Bret [Lunsford] who was in the early K Records band Beat Happening with Calvin Johnson, so he had the store stocked with a lot of weird music of bands from Olympia that no one ever bought. But when me and my friends discovered this place we saw these 7” records and weird compilation cassettes and were like “Oh wow, what is this? What's going on here?” And that was our entry point to alternative music. And we were able to get specialized through that route. And yeah…

Is that record store still open?
Yeah and it's still there and it's still the coolest place in Anacortes.

Where do you live now?
I live in Anacortes.

After the jump: Does what happen in Anacortes stay in Anacortes?

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Work is very important to Phil Elverum. How do I know this? Well, it may be hard to find a photo of him with Google image search. But it's easy enough to find him on Flickr.

Here's my favorite image:

The original caption?

"PW Elverum and Sun production center: iBook, stamps, tape, cardboard boxes, records"

The one comment?

"beautiful"

I will repeat one of his upcoming shows is in celebration of his latest release “Water Activated Alpine-Themed Packing Tape #1.

After the jump, a picture of PW Elverum's water activated alpine-themed packing tape #1.

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Thursday March 6th to Saturday March 8th, cult singer-songwriter Phil Elverum is playing a handful of California shows. We've used this as an opportunity to talk to him about hardcore punk, nature worship, and where he wants to die. Here is the unexpurgated Q&A.

- Read Pt I
- Read Pt II

Are you still working with a record label? Your most well-known album, The Glow Pt. II, came out on the well-known Olympia, Washignton cult imprint, K Records.
No I’m putting out my own records these days. I'm working mostly on my own stuff. Occasionally I might do a single with somebody else.

I’d like you to talk more about the philosophy embedded in your music and lyrics?
It's not necessarily about anything. Some of these things are not sayable at all. But these five words, if I say them all together, they give you some feeling that is so weird and beautiful to me…

So, I go through... I do notice I go through themes where I’m thinking about the same thing over and over, and going through it at many different angles and trying to articulate this thing that I just go around and around, zeroing in on it, and that's where I’m not…

I'm working on a bunch of songs where I keep using the wind. They're all about the wind somehow, and thinking about symbolism.

Do these nature themes only get stronger in your work as time goes by?
Actually I tried to get away from it but I can't. For awhile the only thing people were talking to me about my music, that's all they ever said: “You must be a nature lover. Are you camping all the time?”

I like camping, but I was like “No that's not the point,” and I have made efforts to talk about the real world. But that's… For whatever reason, that's the language that is most powerful to me, these tales that take place in…in place without humans…

Do you have musical influences? Literary influences? Or do you feel that your music comes from someplace else?
I don't really see myself in a lineage which is fine with me. Sometimes I do try to explicitly copy an exact song, an arrangement, a sound -- and I fail. And so you can't even tell I was trying to do that thing. It makes sense in my own head but I'm incapable of copying. I listen to all kinds of music and sometimes I try to do something that's referential to an era or a genre, but it still sounds like me. That's what my weird thing is.

It is a bit weird. You have billed your new EP Black Wooden Ceiling Opening as being Mt. Eerie’s take on hardcore punk.
Again, I think if someone who actually listened to hardcore heard this, they'd say this isn't hardcore at all, but it is my attempt. I had a band for this short tour. It's mostly this drummer, Kjetil Jenssen, this Norwegian kid that I met there, and he can play that kind of music really well. And then combined with me and my songs which have melodies and actual lyrics the music turned out to be… Maybe it's just hard rock? They're inspired by hardcore and the most intense music I can find.

After the jump, Phil Elverum delves deep into what he likes about hardcore punk.

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The Church of Glitter. Photos by Rena Kosnett.

For the rest of this review, body glitter = sweat. Iowa’s mainframe zaftig-white-female hip hop star, Leslie Hall, cleaned house at the Echoplex Friday night with her traveling circus act Leslie and the Lys. It looked like a neon fringe and gold lamè factory exploded all over Echo Park.

More than a musician, Leslie Hall is a movement, because Leslie could not do what she does (and she does it so well) at any other time than the present. She exists now as the result of a culture in whiplash from several pop commodity crashes: Suzanne Somers, Jazzercise, heroine-chic, daytime talk shows, the celebutante, Tony Robbins, and, of course, the Bedazzler.

Leslie rapped about being a Midwest Diva (she insists guys like to please those corn-fed girls in their WalMart jeans), killing zombies, and her ass, which she introduced with: “I’d like to sing a song about my butt cheeks. So round, so ripe.” I got the feeling that she wanted to be more sexually explicit than she was, as her hands kept creeping down from rubbing her gold covered belly to rubbing her gold covered groin; but, the good Midwestern girl she is, Leslie restrained herself, as there were several very young kids decked out in glitter and purple leggings at the show, holding up “We Love You Leslie” cardboard signs.

Many more pictures after the jump.

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In our ongoing attempt to prop some worthy musicians headed to Austin this week, yet another list of LA bands/songwriters to chase down at SXSW in Austin this week. This is a tipsheet for those of you with $$$ in your eyes. Looking for a band to break, license, co-opt, manipulate, convince to sell out? Here are some tips.

Tom Brosseau
Gender: One man
His MySpace Descriptive: “Folk/Acoustic/Emo”
How might they make money for your label/agency/blgo/film project/TV show/bake sale? Brosseau has a sweet voice, high in the register, delicate but not without weight, and his Fatcat Records debut, Cavalier, was one of 2007's under-appreciated gems. “Kiss My Lips” is especially wonderful, and would make for a great bed for a lipstick commercial, or maybe a sweeping, bittersweet health insurance spot featuring snapshots of an aging couple spinning on a merry-go-round.

Buddy
Gender: Six men.
His MySpace Descriptive: “Indie/Acoustic/Alternative”
How might they make money for your l/a/b/fp/TVs/bs? Well, actually, one of Buddy's songs, “Say A Lot,” has appeared on Gray's Anatomy. It's a gentle piano ballad, and perferctly nails their self-described “wimpycore” sound. The band cites Sebadoh as an influence, which totally makes sense: simple and from the heart, little dramas for rainy days. (Below is an unauthorized video featuring "Say A Lot."

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Pitchfork recently ran this sweet hearted interview with The Frames' founder Glen Hansard and Markta Irglov, suddenly well-known stars of the film Once. As with most things this duo does, I liked how the Q&A showed off their warmth to good effect; but also for how it provided a sense of scale between the modest world of music and the crazy world of movies; and also for how it once again shows that Bob Dylan, the guy from the panty commercial, is cooler than everybody else.

Pitchfork: Well, you are an outsider. [The Oscars are] a completely different world. GH: It was for me. I said it in one of the interviews that I felt like a plumber at a flower shop. I guess that wholly sums up how I felt about the whole thing, standing among all these...it's just a different world. It's not a good world or bad world or anything. It's just a different world and a different kind of reality. People kept saying to me all night, "So, what neighborhood are you going to live in?" I was like, "What do you mean?" They said, "Obviously you're going to come out here and get into film work." I was like, "No." Everybody just assumed we were going to move to Hollywood, and next year try to get another one. Dude, this is once in a lifetime. I'm going straight back to making music after this. I had this conversation with a few people who just didn't get it. People are trying to sign you up to an agency or write music for another film. As much as I would do it if it was the right thing, the last thing I want to do is move out here and try to make my money doing that.

Pitchfork: It's wild, coming from an independent music background. Once has made about $14 million at the box office, which in Hollywood is modest at best. But for an independent musician, that's inconceivable.
GH: It's insane. We honestly have no idea how this all happened. The original marketing plan for Once was to get one 35mm print made, which was going to cost us like four grand. A lot of money. We were going to drive around Ireland in a car, and [writer/director] John [Carney] was going to introduce the film. We figured there were enough Frames fans in Ireland to fill the cinemas. I was going to play a few songs with Mar at the end, and we were going to sell the DVD on the way out. That was huge. That was our plan to make our money back, and if it worked in Ireland, we were going to take it to the Czech Republic and try it there. In the background, John was sending it to all the festivals. Everybody refused it. The mad irony is that we sent it to Sundance but it didn't get in! It got refused. You probably know this story, but we showed it in Galway and one guy just happened to be in Galway and saw our film by chance. He said he worked for Sundance and wanted to bring them a copy of the film. We didn't even tell him that we had been refused! We said yeah, cool, brilliant, take it. And we got in.

After the jump, a funny anecdote about Bob Dylan

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LA musician and a longtime acquaintance of mine, Hrishikesh Hirway, just sent me a private message about my Phil Elverum series of posts.

Hi Alec,

Another wrinkle to your post on the Microphones. Phil also inexplicably and subtly changed his last name, from Elvrum to Elverum.

H.

Interestingly, Hirway is just the kind of musician who comes to mind when I think about the example Elverum has set for how to make one's way in the world. Hirway, who releases most of his music under the name One AM Radio, makes music that is extremely fragile, yet the context in which he plays his shows is often that of hardcore bands and the DIY scene.

The One AM Radio's video "A Brittle Filiment" was a recent YouTube hit, and a wonderful introduction to Hirway's thing:

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