5:05pm, Marc: X has already started its set, which sounds fine and all, but man alive, John Doe and Exene Cervenka look unbelievably old—I later bump into an ex-coworker who describes her as looking like a "crazy homeless witch." Exactly. Rumor has it that Lou Reed is supposed to make an appearance, which he doesn't, but Stubb's has another guest celebrity in the house: Beatle Bob, the old mop-top guy from St. Louis with the ridiculous dance moves, who just the night before I wondered aloud if he was still alive.
5:29pm, Kyle: Back at the Spin party, X nears the end of their set with "Nausea." John Doe is completely covered in sweat and bounces around the stage with an exuberance that belies his age. Exene Cervenka, not so much.
5:46pm, Kyle: Walking back from the Spin party, I pass the outdoor stage where Billy Bragg played earlier. This time it's Carbon/Silicon, the new project featuring Mick Jones of The Clash and Tony James of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik. The crowd isn't nearly as big, but a number of passersby do double takes then stop to watch. One couple was walking down Red River eating popsicles, when the woman noticed who was on stage. "Wait a minute," she said, popsicle in mouth. "That's fucking Mick Jones!" That's everybody's reaction. Even better, Carbon/Silicon is really good, and Jones—who looks like your kindly British uncle—is obviously enjoying himself.
6:05pm, Marc: Headed back down Red River toward Sixth, I enjoy a quintessential SXSW moment as I pass by the Free Yr Radio Broadcast Corner—there's great music coming from every corner of this city right now, and I can tell that I should immediately change my plans and check out whoever this is. Turns out its Carbon/Silicon, the newish band from The Clash's Mick Jones and Tony James of Generation X and Sigue Sigue Sputnik fame. Jones looks just as rough as X did—with Amy Winehouse in mind, I'm wondering if England has finally made dentistry illegal—but the band sounds good, offering up lots of pleasantly poppy rock.
8:01pm, Josh: I talked everybody into seeing Wing, a Chinese woman who basically does weird karaoke versions of AC/DC and ABBA songs. Even former A.V. Club editor-in-chief Stephen Thompson was pulled along for the ride. I began to feel a little bad watching Wing, because she takes it so seriously. I summed up my feelings to my colleagues this way: "I'm sorry, and you're welcome."
8:06pm, Kyle: At Maggie Mae's upstairs, Chinese-Kiwi singer Wing opens with her rendition of ABBA's "Dancing Queen," which sounds like the worst karaoke song ever. She sings at the highest, most unnatural ends of her register, frequently falls behind in the songs, and generally mangles the material. Wing's fun in small doses, but 40 minutes of her can be pretty excruciating—and it makes me feel a little guilty. Wing stands poised on stage, her hands clasped, and a deadly serious look on her face that shows she's not in on the joke. You can sugarcoat it in an appreciation for outsider art all you want, but the irony in the room is thick.
8:16pm, Marc: It's hard to not feel like an asshole every time you laugh at Wing, but sometimes it's impossible to keep your mouth shut—the South Park-approved Asian singer from New Zealand is kind of like the new Wesley Willis, with schizophrenia replaced by broken English. And a falsetto that's about as on-key as I am when singing "Cherub Rock" as part of a drunken 5 a.m. Rock Band session. And a string of covers that includes songs by ABBA, AC/DC, The Beatles, and The Carpenters. I really am attempting to eliminate all irony from my life, but little miss Wing proves to be just a bit too tempting.
9:09pm, Marc: Lines in front of venues are already starting to get long, so I figure a set by The Little Ones off the beaten path is a good choice for right now. Wrong. The indie-pop band from L.A. has already started and my friend and I decide that we really don't want to stand in a line right now, so I consult my program and make the executive decision to spend the entire night at the Merge show.
9:30pm, Josh: After some ill-spent time at the Sub Pop showcase—Sera Cahoone was beset by feedback problems (and a cheesy-ish backing band)—I plunked myself down at the Super Deluxe Comedy Death-Ray show, intending to stay for an hour or two. I ended up there all night. Morgan Murphy, whom I'd never heard of, made me laugh lots. ("I was talking to my girlfriend—just a friend that's a girl, I love cock.") The Human Giant dudes did their T-shirt cannon routine. Eugene Mirman shared his enjoyment of the Internet. Brian Posehn told the same jokes I've heard him tell lots of times before, but they were still fucking funny. (He describes his physical appearance as a "bunch of farts that got dressed up in a man costume.")
Occasional A.V. Club contributor Andrew Earles and his partner in comedy Jeff Jensen have a new prank-call CD coming out on Matador soon, and their two-man act was about as meta as the disc. It ended with Jensen in a dress, pretending to be Elaine Boosler.
Reggie Watts mixes beatboxing with jokeless comedy, which sounds like a recipe for disaster but is, in fact, pretty hilarious. His entire act also served as a setup for Mr. Show alum Paul F. Tompkins, who spent about five minutes talking about how he was going to come up and do beat-box comedy, but now he couldn't, because he had to follow Watts.
The weirdest part of the show belonged to Janeane Garafolo. I thought she was joking when she came out all jazzed up and freaking out about her various neuroses—and maybe she was. But it was less a comedy set than an onstage therapy session, with some punchlines thrown in on occasion. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good, either. And at times it was a little bit scary. As Scott Aukerman and BJ Porter said, after wrestling onstage in their underwear, "alternative comedy!" Still far better than regular comedy, I say.
9:32pm, Kyle: Friday night turns out to be a series of anticlimactic sets by hyped bands. Kicking it off at the Bourbon Rocks back patio is Pissed Jeans, who play slow, sludgy post-rock with frontman Matt Korvette doing his best David Yow impression. The shtick gets boring quickly and sets precedent for what will follow the rest of the night.
9:40pm, Sean: Pissed Jeans singer Matt Korvette clearly loves David Yow—and I love people who love David Yow—but you can tell he's slightly too shy to, say, pull out his balls here. Still, his drunken paces and yowls are convincing, and his band careens behind him in the grand tradition of swampy rock like The Birthday Party, Gallon Drunk, and yes, The Jesus Lizard. It's the kind of music that would have inspired a lot of sweaty thrashing back in the day, but this audience doesn't do much more than stare.
10:19pm, Kyle: Carissa's Wierd has spawned at least three projects: Band Of Horses, Sera Cahoone (who played at 9) and Grand Archives. The last one features Mat Brooke, who was in BOH until going off on his own. The group takes an eternity to set up, and its light, folksy pop doesn't bring the energy level up much. Time to see what's going on outside on the patio.
10:25pm, Marc: That executive decision turns out to be a great one, as it was pretty easy to get into The Parish, and the last few songs by Baltimore duo Wye Oak are perfectly dreamy and rocking. I can't figure out where that low end is coming from until I notice the drummer has two jobs: keeping the beat with his right arm while he plays keys with his left. Right now, however, the spotlight is on me, as Radar Bros. singer Jim Putnam has noticed my Zankou T-shirt, the one that gets me the most comments at SXSW, since it's a restaurant in L.A. and half the people here this week are from Southern California. I tell him that I'm not from L.A. and I only bought it because it was four bucks, and suddenly he seems unimpressed, and instead of dedicating the next song to me, he dedicates it to Zankou.
10:30pm, Kyle: It's electro-pop duo Handsome Furs, the side project of Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner. The music has a nice spark, but the songs quickly blend together. But Boeckner gets points for his quip about gaining weight: "Ever since Wolf Parade signed to Sub Pop, I've been eating so much foie gras that I've gotten so fat."
10:35pm, Sean: One of the cuter couples in indie rock, Dan Beckner and Alexei Perry channel their adorable love into some surprisingly dark synth-pop as Handsome Furs. The songs from Plague Park remind me of the really minimal new wave that I love—they're like slightly more rockist takes on early OMD and The Human League, which isn't as easy to pull off as it sounds. (Ask one of the thousands of other synth-pop bands playing this week.)
11:10pm, Sean: Kelley Stoltz's band looks like it was hastily assembled via Craigslist, and my friend from Sub Pop confirms that it changes nearly every show. The band also ups my official glockenspiel tally to four; it is indeed this year's banjo.
11:21pm, Kyle: Now I'm just drinking because I'm bored.
11:29pm, Kyle: Recorded, The Helio Sequence sound bigger than their drums-and-guitar setup, but outside on Bourbon Rocks' patio, it just sounds thin. That said, the airiness well suits "Lately," the opening song from the new Keep Your Eyes Ahead and their first of the night.
11:40pm, Sean: I haven't really given The Helio Sequence a chance in recent years, so I'm fairly surprised at how much I enjoy the new songs. The music seems much more dance-oriented than I remember, and some have a definite whiff of Madchester that I really like. It might be time to catch up with them.
11:41pm, Marc: The Shout Out Louds are just as jangly and good here as they were at the A.V. Club party yesterday, and right now this cover of Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" is taking the whole thing up a notch. Every time I see this band I kick myself for dismissing them for years, having assumed a band called Shout Out Louds would play shitty pop-punk.
12:10am, Sean: This is my second Fleet Foxes set of the day and it doesn't disappoint. What does disappoint is that while I've been outside watching The Helio Sequence on the Bourbon Rocks patio, the inside bar has suddenly filled to capacity, so I'm stuck standing on the deck watching the band play with their backs turned to me. It's still great stuff, even with the shitty view; it's looking more and more like Fleet Foxes may be my only SXSW "discovery" this year.
12:20am, Marc: I'm pretty much in front of the stage, which means I can't tell how crazy it's gotten inside of The Parish, but it's safe to assume that actress Zooey Deschanel is the main draw here. She's the She half of She And Him (M. Ward is Him), and though her voice isn't anything special, it sounds good over these old-fashioned pop songs. The backing band—which includes Omaha hired gun Stefanie Drootin (The Good Life, Bright Eyes, Art In Manila, etc.) and some guy who looks like he's probably someone's grandpa—is solid, to the point where it's almost possible to stop staring at Deschanel.
12:20am, Kyle: I'd debated going to the Emo's for the Biz 3 showcase with Flosstradamus, The Cool Kids, A-Trak, Kid Sister, and Clipse, and I officially regret it when I get a surly text message during Kid Sister's set from Genevieve, who's here on vacation and thus not blogging: "Fuck your sad emo bullshit! Mortherfucking DANCE PARTY up in here!!!"
12:40am, Sean: Considering how many people—young and way too old—I've seen wearing those gaudy neon No Age shirts this week, I'm really surprised at how sparsely attended their showcase is. The band is loose, and not in a good way: By now they've probably played more than a half-dozen gigs around town—and they have another one after this at the Lamar Pedestrian Bridge—so it's understandable that they'd be a little tired. The pieces are all there, but something's missing; they never add up to the barely contained chaos that I've seen them pull off before. I imagine anyone who followed the hype trail over here to see them for the first time will be confused as to what all the fuss is about.
1:10am, Sean: The inside room is packed again for Blitzen Trapper, and while I've slowly come around on the band's hiccupy Southern stomp, the wind is fast draining from my sails. I stick around for a little while waiting to see if maybe they'll pull out the jaw-harp, but my wife's face says, "Let's go."
1:25am, Kyle: Thanks to Sean "I've Got The Hook-up" O'Neal, I get into a packed Emo's, where Clipse is running half an hour late. When they finally show up and open with "Momma I'm So Sorry," it's easy to see why Sean was so blown away the other day. The crowd is psyched, Clipse is tight, and I can't get enough of those minimalist beats. Fuck my sad emo bullshit, indeed.
1:30am, Marc: The crowd has definitely thinned out for Destroyer, and the technical difficulties certainly aren't helping the momentum, but Dan Bejar and the gang are still making a gloriously epic racket. I still haven't heard the forthcoming Trouble In Dreams, but I'm hoping most of what I'm hearing is on there.
1:35pm, Sean: Sixth Street is swarming with amateur musicians seeking attention any way they can get it. Leaving the club I'm nearly run down by a mobile hip-hop crew consisting of a DJ spinning from the back of a converted pedi-cab while some dude shouts into a miniature megaphone random boasts like, "We run this city!" On the way to our car, we pass the usual clusters of dudes strumming acoustic guitars and banging on overturned buckets, but we also spy: a band of Indian musicians sitting cross-legged and making droning ragas with accordions and other odd-looking instruments; an obnoxious drum circle crowded with drunken frat boys exorcising their fear of rejection; a swaying ren-faire girl playing the recorder like she's perched on a toadstool in the Shire; and another rapper wearing a fake Afro who's muttering into an amplifier draped with a Texas flag and banging on a tambourine that says "Jesus." At SXSW, everybody's a star!
2:25am, Marc: The only late-night party I've been invited to can't be found on my SXSW map, which means it's too far away for me to bother with. Besides, my dogs are barking. Time for sleep.
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