Shepard Fairey ‘beautified’ SXSW

I hadn’t known about this, but Arrested Motion reports:

Visiting the Lone Star state with buckets of wheat paste and some good old fashion Obey elbow grease, Shepard hit up many prominent spots including Lance Armstrong’s Bike Shop: Mellow Johnny’s, Red 7, Emos, Home Slice, and many more.

(Via OMGP.)

UPDATE: More from Fairey’s site, Obey Giant.

SXSW: The bands unseen

My eardrums tell me I heard a lot of music at South by Southwest, but the numbers show that I caught only a fraction of what was available.

Typically I see about 50 shows, or about 2.5 percent of the total lineup (around 2,000 bands). This year I had to leave a day early, so I saw only about 40, or 2.0 percent. That’s inevitable, given the size of the event, but it’s also frustrating. How can anyone truly get a sense of the festival when you’re missing 98 percent of it?

Here are some of the performers I had wanted to see, and in some cases planned or even tried to see but couldn’t because of basic time-space physics, long lines, coverage redundancy or because they played while I was performing some essential biological function like eating or sleeping. (I’m sure I’m forgetting about at least 100.) Biggest regrets in bold itals.

• Webb Brothers with Jimmy Webb
• Diane Birch
• Jason Lytle
• Theresa Andersson
• Afternoons
• Magneta Lane
• The Rural Alberta Advantage
• Flower Travellin’ Band
• Wolves in the Throne Room
• Rolo Tomassi
• Lissy Trullie
• Girls
• Port O’Brien
• John Forte
• An Horse
• Gabriella Cilmi
• Descartes a Kant
• The Asteroids Galaxy Tour
• Mariachi El Bronx
• The Drones
• Passion Pit
• Little Boots
• Natalia Lafourcade
• Chin Chin
• Cancer Bats
• La Gusana Ciega
• Jana Hunter
• Belong
• Rokhsan
• Nid & Sancy
• Mieka Pauley
• Roll the Tanks
• Ron Flynt
• Shelley Short
• Alela Diane
• Lisa Hannigan
• The Low Anthem
• Shellshag
• Micachu and the Shapes
• Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
• Slaraffenland
• Slow Club
• Abe Vigoda
• Titus Andronicus
• Jack Oblivian and the Tennessee Tearjerkers
• Afterhours
• Hollywood Holt
• Pato Fu
• Belong
• Chairlift
• The Mae Shi
• Or, the Whale
• Max Tundra
• White Lies
• GZA with the Black Lips
• Explosions in the Sky
• Sleepy Sun
• Ringo Deathstarr
• Say Hi
• Monotonix
• The Shackeltons
• Takka Takka
• Those Darlins
• Dananananaykroyd
• Fionn O Lochlainn
• The Octopus Project
• Thao with the Get Down Stay Down
• Ponytail
• PJ Harvey and John Parish
• Woods
• Psychedelic Horsesh*t
• Deradoorian
• Phosphorescent
• Deer Tick
• Cursive
• Janelle Monae
• Roky Erickson with the Black Angels

I’m also bummed that I missed Flatstock. Biggest regret of all, though, is that I never bumped into Joe Gross. Shoulda made it to Flower Travellin’ Band. Maybe they’ll play in another 30 years.

UPDATE: After looking at Jake’s list, I can now add these:

• Mount St. Helens Vietnam Band
• The Week That Was
• Viva Voce

More awesome than Austin?

Rob wrote the other day with news from Los Angeles, in an e-mail with the subject line “More awesome than anything you will see at SXSW”:

Last night I attended the Greg Proops Chat Show at Largo, which has become a regular enjoyment for me. His “house musician” is Jon Brion, and his special interview guests were David Cross and Dave Grohl. The format is that of a traditional late night talk show (opening song, stand-up monologue, two interviews, closing songs).

I had two revelations during the show:

1. David Cross is an insufferable a**hole — something I already knew, but have now confirmed without a doubt.
2. Dave Grohl is a funny-ass motherf***er, and quite possibly the Best All-Around Guy In The World.

But the true euphoric moment came at the end of the show, when Mr. Grohl expressively read aloud the lyrics of two Manowar songs (“Gloves of Metal” and “All Men Play on Ten”) while Mr. Brion accompanied him on piano playing lullaby music.

Then the two of them jammed out a medley of ’70s cock rock songs like “Slowride” and “Two Tickets to Paradise” — Brion on guitar and Grohl obviously on drums. In the middle of it, Brion yells “Drum solo!!!” and Grohl just stops, looking around and feigning confusion. After about 7 seconds of silence, Brion yells again “John Cage cover, ladies and gentlemen!” and they immediately pick back up again. For the rest of the set, Grohl looked and acted like Animal from the Muppets.

TOP THAT, SON!

He’s right, I didn’t see anything as awesome as Dave Grohl reading Manowar. But I did see a few good things. (And ate a few good things, too.)

Four-word reviews from SXSW

So. Despite the new Twitterific agony of deadlines every 10 seconds, SXSW was very good this year. It’s getting harder to select a single “breakout” band, or even a dozen of them. Partly that’s because the festival gets bigger every year — there were 1,958 official bands this time, and who knows how many more unofficial ones — but also because the “breakout” itself was an effect of a more monolithic media era when a handful of critics and publications created a consensus.

It wasn’t an illusion, exactly: there really was a consensus. That no longer seems to be possible, although I would love for a new band to be so great that they steal the show for real. (That would also be a great excuse for getting out of the other 1,957 shows, which get tiring.)

Herewith, all the four-word reviews I wrote for the ArtsBeat blog. There were maybe 10 or 11 more bands that I either didn’t see enough of to form even four words of an opinion, or didn’t think they were worth it. Wow, the introduction to a list for four word items is nearly 200 words long.

• Daniel Francis Doyle: Spasmatic, atonal, yet precise.
• Micah P. Hinson: So pretty, twangy, relaxing.

• Gomez: Groovy ... whoa, double-kick!
• Decemberists: Want opera? Must wait.
• Crocodiles: Stylish wall of throb.
• Wavves: Another duo bashes away.
• Thermals: Sweaty; thanks for Nirvana.
• Motel Motel: Yowling, exuberant Band-isms: emocana?
• Two-Way Radio: Homely, cute. Metal disrupts.
• Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers: That scream is primal!
• Department of Eagles: In church, harmonies envelop.
• St. Vincent: Graceful, ambitious. Odd banter.
• The Wheel: Stark, eloquent Cash echoes.
• The Donkeys: Mellow; sitar’s potential unrealized.
• K’Naan: Schooled me re Mogadishu.
• Dirty Projectors: Omigod omigod omigod omigod!
• Blitzen Trapper: Lo-fi Americana doesn’t translate.
• Pains of Being Pure at Heart (at Malverde): Childlike bounce brings smile.
• Pains of Being Pure at Heart (at Opal Divine’s Freehouse): Too loud; intimacy lost.
• Telepathe: Tribal futurism? Futuristic tribalism?
• The Soft Pack: Prefer former name, Muslims.
• Matt and Kim: They swear too much.
• King Khan and the Shrines: Unabashed sleaze = rock’s origin?
• Mi Ami: Tight like a fist.
• Earthless with J. Mascis: Cathartic waves of electromagnetism.
• Tinted Windows: Non-obvious supergroup actually works.
• Crystal Antlers: Overcame double-drummer skepticism.
• Silversun Pickups: Metallica opener. Shortest straw?
• Metallica: Slayed. Surprisingly, didn’t overshadow.

Next list: all the bands I didn’t get to see.

Guitar heroes

Metallica questions, with mustard

My four words are nothing

By popular demand I’m doing my four-word reviews of bands at South by Southwest again this year. If I do every band I see for more than five minutes, I’ll end up with probably 30 to 40 reviews. But I’ve been put to shame by Paul Ford at The Morning News, who is doing six-word reviews of every act that has an MP3 posted on the SXSW site, and so far he’s done 1,302 of them. You can even view them on a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Hats off to Paul for his productivity, and for the zingers, like Alessi’s Ark (“Let’s camp and hug each other”), Very Be Careful (“Everyone stopped chewing and just stared”) and Silk Flowers (“Casiotone that should be left alone”).

(Via SXSW Baby.)

Carnivorous urge, 1; resolve, 0

Promised myself I would try to limit intake of barbecue, burgers, Mexican and any other food that spills across the plate in caloric gobs. Then I stumbled on this place:

My penance: $30 in healthy staples at the local Whole Foods. I now have a hotel mini-fridge filled with pineapple, bananas, OJ, yogurt, milk, and yummy-smelling coffee.

SXSW blog, tweets, and actual articles

For all the South by Southwest news you could ever want, and more, I direct you to the extensive, mutli-platform coverage by myself and my colleagues at the Times.

We’ll be blogging at ArtsBeat, and I’ll be popping my Twitter cherry there too, to get you all those 140-character bons mots that just can’t wait for a full blog item. (Or full copy-editing.)

And, as a special bonus, we will also be writing actual articles for the paper — we’re talking thousands of characters here, allowing for things like quotes, ideas and narrative. You’ve already read some by David Carr and Jenna Wortham (right?), and over the next several days you’ll get more by me and Jon Pareles.

Thank you for your kind attention.

First wonderful surprise of SXSW

Jimmy Webb with the Webb Brothers, Saturday at 11 p.m., at Prague.

I’ve given my fanboy huzzahs before, but it really will be a special performance: I hear that in addition to Jimmy and his brilliant sons, the show will include Jimmy’s father, Robert Lee Webb, a Baptist minister. Wonder if they’ll get grandpa to help sing “All the Cocaine in the World”?

Seriously, though, Christiaan, Justin and James, finish your album already. It’s been six years.