FRIDAY

Woke up, ate and we're off! A quick 15 block walk to digest the breakfast tacos, and we're at La Zona Rosa for the Village Voice Media party. The first band was HEALTH, a noiserock quartet from LA. I had been excited to see them, but they suffered from a serious case of venue mismatch, blowing sheets of aggressive noise into a half-empty warehouse in air conditioning in the middle of the day.

There was no one for the spastic frontman to play off of, and no force from the audience for the noise to push against; I felt like an utterly passive recipient of this piercing feedback assault, like I was watching it on television. I went outside and skipped the rest. Doug said he liked it, though. It's OK, I would see them again later in more favorable circumstances.

After them came the Cribs, who were kind of like the Archers of Loaf, if the Archers had no sense of dynamics at all, and simply played all of their songs at a maximum yell and a metronomic tempo. Since the fluid rhythms and tasteful dynamics are what I really like about the Archers, I thought this band sucked.

Well, two bad ones in a row, so I was really getting fired up for The Black Keys, when . . . I had to walk 15 blocks back to the hotel room and spend an hour on the phone for work. But, when SXSW closes a door, she opens up a window. Because I left the Voice party early, I was close enough to the Mohawk to catch White Denim's full afternoon set once I finished my call. This time around I was much closer to the stage, and they blew me away again.

I really like these guys; the songwriting is unique and strong, with immediately memorable melodies (see "All You Really Have To Do," from Wednesday), and the drummer is as inventive a rock timekeeper as I have seen anywhere recently. They are one of the bands I will be following in the wake of this trip, and I have already bought their EP. (Available on iTunes! Go git it!). No video from this show, but heres a fun live clip anyway:

As White Denim wrapped up, Mike, Doug, Adam, Mark and Dave all arrived from the Voice party in time for Blitzen Trapper. We got great seats above the band on the deck:

I know it doesn't look like it in the picture, but I promise, everyone was happy. From these seats we were looking straight down on the band, maybe fifteen feet away, resulting in probably my best band picture of the trip:

The set was great. These guys definitely come from a Grateful Dead, jam-band place, but with a strong dose of heavy guitar in there to keep it interesting, and a very strong drummer. No clips from this show, but here's a couple of short clips from SXSW 2007 that are pretty close (except for the sleeping girl in the second one).


The show was a nice mix of their loose-limbed jam stuff and their more bashing, straight ahead songs, and they were a perfect match with a hot, crystal-clear day.
Doug and I then went inside to catch a couple of minutes of Jason Collett, the Broken Social Scene guitarist performing a set as a solo frontman in the inside bar:

It was low-key and enjoyable. No clip of the actual show, but this clip gives a pretty good idea:

I had to cut out early, because I got word at that point that Aaron was arriving soon, so I left to meet him.

I met Aaron and we went to the Mongolian barbecue place across the street and ate too much Mongolian barbecue. We wandered up to 6th and met the others at Flamingo Cantina for the start of a long, noisy bill. We watched the end of the Clip'd Beaks show, which was okay:

I swear, that's a photo of Clip'd Beaks. Here's a roughly analogous clip:

Doug and company wanted to go see Pissed Jeans at Bourbon Rocks, and Aaron did not have the required credentials, so he and I went wandering. We went into Emo's Annex and saw Black Earth, a ROCK BAND with a frontman who looked like Penn Gillette, and who played ROCK with lots of FUCKING RIFFS, MAN and KICKASS SOLOS and ROCK. They were just awful:

There were some diehard fans there, including a squat, tattooed, shirtless, fifty-year-old, bald biker who kept shouting "FUCK YOU" at the stage, before nodding his head furiously to the ROCK. After the show, some young Black Earth street-teamer tried to give me the hard sell for their CD: "C'mon, you liked it, right? Pick up the CD! C'mon!"

We walked on up Red River and poked our head into Jaime's Spanish Restaurant long enough to catch a couple of songs by Perfect Pants (kind of the anti-Pissed Jeans, I guess), an amiable jazz-rap-folk hybrid with a sax player. Not bad, not great, we left after three songs:

We got back to the Flamingo in time to see APES, the DC band fronted by the riveting, spindly singer, and driven by the riveting, spindly, but preposterously authoritative drummer (clip not from show):


APES were followed by Old Time Relijun from Portland, from whom I didn't know what to expect; the band consisted of a female drummer in a polka dot dress, a nattily dressed sax player in a pinstripe suit, a stand-up bass player in Portland hipster flannel, and the guitarist, in a long-sleeve black t-shirt, porn 'stache, extremely tight biker shorts and a pair of red noise dampening headphones not plugged into anything:

These guys set up a series of crazily propulsive five minute drone songs that were really incredible. This live clip kind of gets at it, but live it was much, much better (not from the actual show):

After Old Time Relijun came HEALTH again; this time the place was packed, the crowd was eager, and the show was amazing.

I have never been so completely turned around on a band in one day as I was for that show. Aaron liked it, too:

This clip's from their SXSW 08 Saturday show, but the vibe is similar:

And closing out the Flamingo, and my last show of SXSW was, you guessed it, THE MAE MOTHERFUCKING SHI!