SXSW DIARY PART THREE

John McCarthy — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:40:43 +0000

Date:

Sat, 2008/03/15

Venue:

Austin, Texas

In part three of his SXSW diary, John becomes increasingly desperate to find some ‘tunes of the day’, despite encounters with The Ting Tings, Bitshifter, and Lightspeed Champion! Will he escape the Texas heat unscathed? Read on to find out…

Elvis Costello said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”, so god knows what he’d make of a bunch of hacks sat around talking about writing about music. That’s the situation at the start of my third day at SXSW and the topic up for discussion is ’16 Magazine and The Birth of Music Journalism’. ’16’ was an American magazine, founded in the 1956, which was widely credited with inventing music journalism as we know it today. As one panel member, local music journalist Margaret Moser, observed, “it was very good at marketing homosexual men to adolescent girls”.

Bitshifter is a man who makes awesome hard dance music using a modified Nintendo Gameboy...

Also on the panel is Taylor from mid 90’s teen band Hanson. He recalls being interviewed by the magazine and states that he thinks that most music journalists are “really lazy”. This statement doesn’t go down well with the crowd and they consider storming the stage to beat him up but end up decide that they can’t be arsed. After the panel, in an effort to prove Mr. Mmmbop wrong, I head off to see four bands in a row. My findings are listed below: Wye Oak (Baltimore, USA): Bog standard White Stripes-esque rock. No Age (Los Angeles, USA) Bog standard skate punk. Health (Los Angeles, USA): Bog standard noise rock. Sound better on record than they do live. Headlights (Champaign, USA): Bog standard Broken Social Scene-esque pop. Good use of sleigh bells though. Four bands down and not a hint of any ‘Tunes of The Day’. This is a troubling situation and a change of tactics is obviously required. After detailed analysis involving flip charts, graph paper and a hearty lunch from Champions Sports Bar and Restaurant, I decide to turn my back on our American cousins and focus purely on wholesome NME-approved British indie pop. The results are slightly better but still not earth shattering: Lightspeed Champion (London, UK): Plays a set of unremarkable acoustic indie gubbins enlivened only by a cover version of ‘Get Free’ by The Vines which he unwittingly manages to make sound like the theme to 1970’s cartoon ‘Wacky Races’. The Ting Tings (Salford, UK): ‘Great DJ’ is great, the rest of their tunes aren’t as great. Their acoustic cover version of ‘Dub Be Good To Me’ should never be heard by human ears again. Kate Nash (London, UK) ‘‘Foundations’ is great, the rest of her tunes aren’t as great. Has a new song called ‘I Hate Seagulls’. When introducing it she confirms that, “I really hate them. But I don’t mind pigeons.” The Ting Tings All in all it’s not a great showing from the Britpop posse and the ‘Tunes of The Day’ situation is now getting desperate. I briefly consider abandoning the feature and starting a “T-shirts of The Day’ list instead as in the previous couple of hours I’ve seen garments with such fantastic slogans as “Killing People is Rude”, “Rap minus Lies = Hip-Hop” and “I Listen to Bands Who Don’t Even Exist Yet” on the front. In a last desperate attempt to find musical salvation I decide to visit a random bar with random artists playing. The bar is the Molotov Lounge and when I get there I discover a whole new musical genre. Have you heard of Chiptune? You have? Well that’s rather stolen my thunder hasn’t it. Up until 8pm on Saturday night I’d never encountered it. Then Tristan Perich started playing drums over the top of the strange bleepy sounds created by a tiny machine he’d built and I slowly began to understand, and then love, the music of the chip. The highlight of Perich’s set is the incredible ‘2000 AIGHT’. I’ve since listened to the song again on his myspace site and it sounds rubbish without him playing the drums on it. My advice would be to buy one his machines and then pay for him to come around to your house to play the drums over the top of it. It will be worth it. Perich is followed by the excellent Bitshifter, a man who makes awesome hard dance music using a modified Nintendo Gameboy. People passing the Molotov Lounge stare through the windows in amazement at sight of a room full of people dancing to a bloke playing a portable games machine. It’s not quite as bizarre as dancing about architecture but it’s not far off. * * * TUNES OF THE DAY* * * Great DJ – The Ting Tings 2000 AIGHT – Tristan Perich Reformat The Planet - Bitshifter READ PART ONE READ PART TWO

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SXSW DIARY PART THREE