“I listen to bands that don’t exist yet.” That’s what that guy’s t-shirt said, said Drew. He looked exactly like the comic book store owner from the Simpsons….exaclty. But, instead of his shirt saying ‘worst show ever’ it said ‘I listen to bands that don’t exist yet.’
We were making our way up to the as close as we’re willing to get without smelling the person in front of you spot for the MGMT’s Saturday afternoon set when this guy passed us and Drew relayed the t-shirt message. I searched around for about 30 seconds laughing my ass off and hoping to catch a glimpse of this guy but he had long disappeared into the crowd of 14-24 year old girls in cowboy boots, board shorts/hippy skirts, bikini tops and whatever outrageous pair of sunglasses of the day blended best with their pink and blonde highlights. Feeling pretty cool in my Ween tour 2004 t-shirt I realized that it wasn’t quite the armor at a music festival it once was. In the crowd of tween, teen and beyond MGMT fans, Ween might as well be the grateful dead and I might as well be an undercover cop asking if anybody has any dope for sale.
This is possibly my favorite moment of the Austin experience. The moment before someone I’ve never seen but have been wanting very much to see for awhile takes the stage. After 7 years of coming here and striking the perfect blend of seeing artists I’ve always seen and always loved, artists I’ve never seen but always loved, artists I’ve just heard and am kind of curious about, and the artists that don’t exist yet—at least, not in my own consciousness—not until the moment I pass by their set and stop and stare and listen; this ladder momentous occurrence by the way has resulted in the immediate purchase of records in the past upon my return to Raleigh of; Blonde Redhead, Andrew Bird, Ghostland Observatory, Stars, The Long Winters, and even the Shins (from SXSW in like 2001 well before Natalie Portman made it cool for the rest of the world to like them)------yes, I’ll be ordering my “I listen to bands that don’t exist yet” t-shirt off the internet after I finish this review.
For now, file the MGMT under ‘artists I’ve just heard and am kind of curious about.’ I had never seen them, but I had been wearing their record out in my car all summer. “Time to Pretend” just might be the best thing lyrically I’ve heard from the under 25 set all year and I don’t care how proud everybody is of how funky Jim James got on Evil Urges this year, no single bleeds more Prince meets Parliament Funkadelic d.n.a. like “Electric Feel.”
Drew had seen the MGMT twice in D.C. this summer and said they weren’t all that, in fact I could tell that he kind of wished we were standing on the opposite side of the park waiting for Spiritualized to come on instead. But again, I had not seen them and loved their mostly electronic record and this is a major part of why I come to ACL--to finally see this kind of band. With expectations low, I have to say that they impressed us……both. Even Drew said they had a much more full sound and when the 20k plus crowd was head-bobbing in unison to flying confetti we devilishly-smilingly agreed that they had overcome that dastardly little problem a lot of these new bands have with converting a mostly electronic record to an actual badass live sound with actual musicians playing actual instruments and the vocals and the everything magically coming together.
Unfortunately, for this year at ACL that was really the only band I can think of that provided the experience that had not existed yet…………except, for Byrne, but to a lesser degree as Byrne has been existing deep in my consciousness for over 20 years now. What year was ‘Stop Making Sense?” 1984?
O.K., I was a kid in 1984 and MTV was my window to the world outside of my elementary school and soccer practice limited reality and that crazy guy in the big suit was my Guide to that world. However, I had never seen him live and my short list was about to get a giant check. I was expecting the slower string section Byrne of recent DVD’s and tour reviews with about 25% talking heads songs. Instead, I got “Stop Making Sense” 2008 with more like 45% heads songs and Byrne only playing acoustic for I think one tune which was choreographed with office chairs on wheels that he and his band spun around in. The band was also all decked out all in white. And there were five or six people who were on stage just to dance the only David Byrne could choreograph dance routines. He was strong as ever vocally and on guitar and his band, especially back up vocalists were as tight as it ever was. Highlights; cross-eyed and painless, life during wartime, once in a lifetime, and every solo Byrne song he played. I could go on forever about how amazing Byrne was, but, I ain’t got time for that now.
We saw M Ward at the festival on Friday too with full band, but more on that later.
We went to Emo’s for an after party Friday night and saw Wax Fang, Dead Confederate and the Heartless Bastards. Wax Fang does more for the power trio since the Jimi Hendrix Experience and the Heartless Bastards are just plain good. Dead Confederate I had never heard before nor heard of and if I had just heard their name I would not have gone. You would think they were a Drive By Truckers tribute band based on that name, but their sound actually owes all its admiration to early 90’s seattle grunge. Think Mother Love Bone fronted by Kurt Cobain. I would even go so far as to point all casting directors for future Hollywood biopics about Cobain to a Dead Confederate show to watch this guy who fronts them sing and play and well, pose. Not to disparage their music; which is actually quite good. To all the people out there crying over the demise of grunge and pissing on all those creed, fuel, alter bridge, p.o.d., puddle of mudd, etc. ad nauseum c.d.’s and wondering where it all went wrong for grunge after taking the commercial turn of stupid melodied crunch guitars and Eddie Vedder impersonators, you can dry your eyes on Dead Confederate. Again, mother love bone meets nirvana. ‘nuff said. Enjoy, grunge fans.
*I suppose you could classify dead confederate as one of those bands that don’t exist yet for me, but since I’m not running out to buy their record, I don’t think of them that way.
Saturday was kind of a blur. Interesting highlights would have been CSS and Man Man, two bands that are definitely doing their own thing based on other obscure things from the 1980’s, and they are respective things that I can only tolerate for about 20 minutes at a time.
CSS, young French girls raised on Go-gos and Sugarcubes who really can sing and play and make the kids have a good time.
Man Man, a band that has dedicated their entire sound to the Tom Waits record Rain Dogs. Seriously. Go listen. Tell me that isn’t a fair assessment.
Erykah Badu was a nice mid afternoon breeze and she and her back up singers just kind of patted me on the back and told me that everything was going to be o.k…..which is nice, even though I didn’t hear “Tyrone.”
The MGMT was Saturday too, as were the Black Keys who were dirtysicknasty, but I’m looking more forward to seeing them in a juke joint like Disco Rodeo this weekend where that kind of dirtysicknasty guitar sound belongs.
But, Saturday night the badassness was brought most bodaciously by Beck. Looking like desire era Dylan, he walked out with a more stripped down band than I’d ever seen with him wearing a floppy hat and long long hair he drew the slide down the strings for a long awaited ‘loser.’ Unlike the Brooklyn gig I saw from him 4 years ago, he played well. His band was solid and not trying to do too much experimental dumb shit (see the years beck and his band spent about 20 minutes mid gig to play tea pots and dishes on a dining room table in the middle of the stage). This weekend’s gig was more like the Odelay tour with Beck knowing that the audience came to groove and love and admire. Groove to ‘devils haircut,’ ‘where it’s at,’ ‘guero,’ ‘girl’ and love and long to ‘golden age’ and my personal favorite, ‘Lost Cause.’ He pretty much played the best three songs off all his records as any mature artist should for a festival crowd. Oh, then he turned around and played ‘leopard skin pillbox hat’ and told us all ‘that was a song by Mr. Bob Dylan’ before saying thanks and walking off stage to go back to wherever it is that the crazy little geniuses go when they aren’t making records in whatever genre they feel like.
Sundays are blissful exhaustion at this festival. You’ve essentially been standing and walking for 60 hours--at the park during the day and in bars and venues at night and you’ve stretched your body and your bladder to its extreme with beer and the fear of missing something on stage and the general awkwardness of leaving your spot and heading through the crowd for the bathroom. You’ve also been eating a lot of tex mex and barbeque and sleeping very little. This is the Sunday that three years ago I somehow managed to cut my head open on a porta-john during a Flaming Lips set to find myself loaded on percocet at the Austin hospital where a very nice female doctor was stapling the top of my head back together when my little schedule said I should have been watching Ween round out the Sunday afternoon time slot instead. In other words, On the third and final day of the festival you are exhausted and sore beyond belief, your body is worn out and your brain is not really functioning clearly, but it’s a blissful kind of tired nonetheless.
So, we slept late. Did some shopping at waterloo records and headed out late afternoon to the fest. We only wanted to see three bands that day. Okkervil River, The Raconteurs, and band of horses, but we surprisingly were handed Gillian Welch and David Rawlings with a special appearance by Allsion Krauss. We also saw Stars and Neko Case who were all fine and dandy before heading over to see the Okkervill River guys.
I love Okkervil River records. “The stage names,” the record they released last year I listened to over and over, but these guys did not deliver live. Their sound was thin and weak. It kills me the same way that other great band from Austin who makes great records but sounds weak and thin live kills me….Spoon. I don’t get it. It pisses me off. These bands are like that beautiful girl at the bar that says really cool and interesting things so you take her home only to find out that she can’t kiss worth a damn. It’s crazy, and I just don’t get it. How does a band that makes such great records suck so much ass live? And furthermore, how is it that both bands are from Austin, the LIVE music capital of the world? The city that has the only festival I go to because I know this town has the best sound men in the country and by far the most appreciative audience because every single bar on every single street has a frickin stage for frickin bands to play on every frickin night of the week. How the hell do the two bands who I think are making the best records out of Austin have the thinnest sound on stage? Sorry to all the diehard Spoon and Okkervil river fans, but your bands can’t kiss worth a damn.
On the other hand, The Raconteurs make some of the best straight ahead rock records since led zeppelin and they proved to me once again that they kick out the jams on stage like they’re the MC5. Jack White apparently woke up that morning with doctors telling him he had a ‘disc in the wrong place’ in his back and he factored the blues he felt over this news into at least three songs which was impressive in it’s bluesman virtuosity but kind of weird to be an audience member wondering if he should be out there on stage peeling the leaves off the trees with his wailing and guitar banshee screaming if he had a physical medical problem of any level of seriousness.
Anyway, they ripped. I’ll go see the Raconteurs any place, any time. There’s nothing out there in rock’n’roll land that even comes close. Their drummer is the jack white of drums, their bass player is rock solid, Brendan Benson is more like Simon and Simon to Jack White’s Simon and Garfunckle…….if you know what I mean.?..........they’re both like Paul Simon in terms of talent. There isn’t a Garfunckle to be found amongst the Raconteurs, he’s busy playing drums for the white stripes.
I kid Meg because I love her and I will never know how well she kisses.
Two years ago I returned from the ’06 festival with a head full of staples and stories of bands I had just seen when you and Drew told me to shut up because y’all had just seen the two best artists coming up that weekend here in the triangle at the Cat’s Cradle. One of those bands was Band of Horses, the other was M Ward. That weekend two years ago, you and Drew saw Band of horses with about 50 other people at the cat’s cradle and last Sunday night Drew and I saw them with about Thirty Thousand people at the ACL festival. They played after the Raconteurs, at night. The music business, it’s crazy. I can’t tell you anything about BOH that you don’t already know because you and I have seen them plenty over the past two years. So, they were great and just as blown away by all the attention as we were. You probably know this, but they tour with two other guitar players now which makes for a much fuller BOH live sound. Oh, and they played two new songs that sounded very promising.
That did it for the festival and on to our final nighttime show at la zona rosa for M Ward, Jenny Lewis, and Conor Oberst. I’ll never understand why M Ward isn’t at the top of a bill like that, but I’m glad he came out first because I was tired. He did about 6 songs by himself and then was joined by Gillian Welch and David Rawlings for a handful of songs off Transistor Radio which I could easily imagine Gillian and David doing backflips over into a bathtub in some farmhouse just outside of Nashville. Those transistor radio songs are what that couple is all about. It occurred to me that Rawlings and M Ward are probably the most interesting acoustic players of their age group and I felt like watching the two of them play together was really something special. Not to mention the vocal blend of the two of them with Gillian.
It also occurred to me that M Ward’s material is mostly about looking at death as an appreciation of life and life as an appreciation of death. Death of relationships, death of the heart, what the heart wants, death of a passion for living and just plain death in general delivered in a manner that somehow forces the listener to appreciate both life and death. I think that’s why he always wears a hat when he performs. He keeps the bill low over his eyes so you can’t really see what he feels about his songs. Not cryptic, but complex. Not agonizing, but wry and funny. Like life. Like his guitar playing style. And like his old man’s song at the end of Chinese Translation.
It should be noted here that M Ward was the only artist I saw twice this weekend and he is also the artist I listened to all day in and out of airports and airplanes on my way back to Raleigh on Monday. I sort of rediscovered him as if he had not existed before, even though I’ve been listening to his records now for two years. Ever since you and Drew went to see him and you told me he was a genius.
Anyway, he is a genius.
Jenny Lewis was as hot as I thought she’d be, and she sounded really good.
Conor, thank god is clearly trying to move away from that bright eyes thing and be more of a it’s about the music and not my persona artist, but let’s face it, for someone like me, after seeing M Ward at eleven o’clock on the Sunday night of that three day marathon I wasn’t really paying attention to anything but how quickly I could get my ass back to the hotel and into bed.
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