Tim O Thompson: SXSW Archives

April 05, 2007

No Fudge: The Mystery of the Missing Stooges' SXSW Bass Line

After Mike Watt's bass amp dropped out during a performance of "Skull Ring" at the Stooges' SXSW show at Stubb's, Austin American-Statesman writer Michael Corcoran speculated that the band may have used backing tapes:

A couple of disappointments: 1) it appears that the Stooges play to taped augmentation. This was revealed when the bass line for “Skull Ring” kept pumping while bassist Mike Watt was working amp problems with his sound tech. It’s OK to use the canned help, but never let the audience know.

On the same post, Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay responded, "I guess I should be flattered to have been mistaken for a taped augmentation but I was right there on the stage playing the riff on my tenor sax, just like always!"

After a response from the Stooges publicist saying the Stooges were never augmented, Corcoran admitted, "I saw what I saw — moments when both hands were off the bass — but who am I to dispute the greatest band to ever play SXSW? Let me set the record straight: Stooges don’t fudge!"

But this Wednesday in a letter to the editor, Iggy himself chimed in with the definitive last word (we hope?):

Re: March 19 concert review "Stooges let loose, put raw power on display." This rebuttal of Michael Corcoran's review is by a member of the Stooges:

Mike, dude, I would never, ever, ever play music to a freakin' tape. For real. This just never happened and never will happen.

What you probably heard is Ron Asheton's ability to play that riff picking a mid-range motif while also picking and sliding a bass line. This derives from blues players like Fred McDowell, for example. You definitely won't hear it on a Fall Out Boy record.

Have you ever heard a real guitar player? Playing live? That's how they do. You also heard Steve Mackay on sax backing Ron up. At the moment the bass went out, I, too, was amazed at how good it sounded without him.

I will happily slit my throat if you can find anyone backstage at that gig who saw us (fooling) around with a piece of (freakin') tape. We're the Stooges, and in my world tape is not alright. It's fat, rich and uncool.

Sorry about the guitar levels. This show was a freebie, so we left our sound man at home.

IGGY POP
Miami

'Nuff said! And there you have it, writers—one sentence can truly spawn a monster.

Posted by timothompson at 06:31 PM

March 27, 2006

SXSW Canvasser Without Grasp of Marketing

If you've viewed some of the videos by the Austin American-Statesman staff, you may have noticed the short "Canvassing SXSW," where the video crew follows a wayward poster artist shilling for his band by flyering downtown locales with an image of an alien. His first wild move in front of the cameras involves taping a flyer to the back of a short woman's navy blue sweatshirt, proclaiming, "You're saving the world." But the guy is so guerilla, he doesn't believe in putting the name of the band on his flyers: "Not even the name of the band – just an image," he declares proudly. For his final postering stunt, he says, "We need a new idea. We need something spectacular – we need a big finish, like that woman." He then tapes a poster on the side of a white loading truck. While you have to admire the guy's likeability and spunk, you can't help but wonder if it's dawned on him that seeing an image of an alien on the back of some woman's sweatshirt is going to engender brand recognition or just make them wonder if there's yet another sequel of "Alien" coming out. Though a band with a recognizable symbol like the Red Hot Chili Peppers might be able to pull such a feat off, this guy might need to brush up on his Marketing 101.

Posted by timothompson at 05:41 PM

March 24, 2006

Female Bassists Represent at SXSW

Female Bassists at SXSW

Roll over Kim Gordon and Kim Deal! Females were well represented in all aspects of this year's SXSW music fest, but I think I noticed the bassists more than other female musicians – maybe because of the heft of the bass. I borrowed a few Flickr photos for the above image. Here's quick, non-comprehensive list of SXSW bands using women bass players:

Superchunk (old school)
Magneta Lane
The Ponys
Silversun Pickups
The Subways
Art Brut
Serena Maneesh
Rainer Maria
The Willowz
Knife Skills
The Magic Numbers

Update: Rainer Maria photo, © 2006 Chris Foresman/Additive Theory. (I was attempting noncommercial use, but I'll attempt to credit other Flickr users as well. However, if you would like me to remove your photo or link to your site, please contact me.)

Posted by timothompson at 01:06 PM

March 21, 2006

Gang of Four at SXSW

Let's sum up SXSW 2006 in a cliched listing: large crowds, long lines, hipsters, Neil Young, the Beastie Boys, Ray Davies, headbands, Chrissie Hynde, Morrissey, day parties, Billy Bragg, barbecue, Perry Farrell, Echo and the Bunnymen, the Red Bull House, the Flaming Lips, the Podcast Pickle, Tapes 'N Tapes, garbage, exhaustion and the Arctic Monkeys. But by far, one of the biggest surprises to hit this year was the bootleg parking garage rooftop performance by Gang of Four. Even SXSW organizer Roland Swenson was surprised:

This off-site "shadow fest" is plainly a source of irritation for SXSW organizers, especially when corporate hosts import talent not booked at the official festival. With a hint of aggravation entering his voice, Swenson noted that Sauza tequila put on a private party featuring the English post-punk band Gang of Four.

"I don't want to stand in the way of somebody's payday, but we have to look after the event," Swenson said.

Hmm...next year may see a few changes (but we say that every year). Gang of Four's Dave Allen has posted a video of his band's secret performance on his blog.

Posted by timothompson at 10:29 PM

March 14, 2006

SXSW MP3 Torrent Blues

I've been going through the mp3 torrents looking for gems in the rough, I don't know how people like Vinyl Mine have done it. I am sick to my gills of hardcore, Blink 182-soundalikes and intentionally obtuse bands, and SXSW hasn't even started yet.

And even if I cloned myself, I couldn't see all the bands listed (not to mention just wanting to hang out with friends old and new and just relax). This year's SXSW just seems a little too intense right now.

Here's a raw dump of mp3s I enjoyed: the like, turn me on dead man, erin roberts/porlolo, the bats, calla, gingerbread patriots, mogwai, saturday looks good to me, irving, stardeath and white dwarfs, peel, foxymorons, circle takes the square, tapes n tapes, luminous orange, the meligrove band, novillero, antietam, faith kleppenger, kid congo and the pink monkey, oranger, the double, laura veirs, tim fite, peter case, page france, goldfrapp, dressy bessy, christopher o'reilly, silversun pickups, troy von balthazar, sia, ill ease, neko case, belaire, waterloo, the kingdom, blackbud, oppenheimer, dae strom, healthy white baby, doujah raze, vietnam, the carrots, great northern, the amazing pilots, the jai-alai savant, goldrush, the czars, magneta lane, seaflea, grupo fantasma, old crow medicine show, john schooley and his one-man band, the joggers, cold war kids, bound stems, levy, jim noir, mary lou lord, nomo, carbonas, the duke spirit, simon dawes, aloha, the eighteenth day of may, the beta sweat, the capes, corinne bailey rae, the longcut, people in planes, goldenboy, pilot's lounge, baboon, rogue wave, of montreal, times new viking, anthony hamilton

Posted by timothompson at 02:39 PM

March 10, 2006

SXSW Free List

The SXSW Free List PDF is now available.

Posted by timothompson at 01:03 PM

SXSW 2006 Posters

I've uploaded a collection of SXSW party posters to my Flickr.

Posted by timothompson at 11:49 AM

March 01, 2006

SXSW Recommendations: Round One

Here are some SXSW recommendations based purely on listening to mp3s from the SXSW torrent download.

Update: Garrick Van Buren is on the same wavelength.

Posted by timothompson at 02:50 PM

February 22, 2006

600 SXSW Wristbands Sold Tonight Via SMS

More here.

Posted by timothompson at 08:27 PM

February 13, 2006

Sixth Annual Porchlight Pop Fest

Our friends at Tight Spot Records will be holding their Sixth Annual Porchlight Pop Fest day party at Mother Egan's Pub on Saturday, March 18th, from Noon to 11ish. You can see some artists who will be performing there on their MySpace page.

Posted by timothompson at 07:35 PM

February 09, 2006

Tagging SXSW Bands

I met with from Austin blogger Prentiss Riddle and David Kivel from Austin startup Pluck for lunch yesterday to talk about a new initiative they have going. They run a Del.icio.us-like bookmarking application called Shadows, and their goals are to 1) make a more usable and ungeekified Del.icio.us (one that your Mom could use) and 2) to apply human filtering to search so that people can find what they want without SEO (search engine optimization) specialists fouling up the search results with their trickery.

Since they're from Austin, they've decided to focus their efforts on SXSW as a pet project. They've been courting bloggers who post about SXSW (like me) to get the word out about what they're doing. For the first part of this project, they've analyzed tags that people are using on sites like Flickr, Del.icio.us and Technorati and tried to to analyze the phrases most people are using and standardize the way SXSW 2006 bands are tagged.

They set up this page with their results that they call the "Official" (but I don't think this is SXSW-endorsed) Tags for SXSW 2006.

For example, these guys are adamant that we not tag SXSW with "sxsw" only. You must use "sxsw2006." They're sticklers, I tell ya. For a right-brained, rule-despising person like me, doing these things is great in theory but difficult in practice.

The long-assed unwieldy names of Austin bands are perfect for this kind of project. Take a band like (...And You Will Know Us By The) Trail of Dead. What do most people tag 'em with? According to the Pluck guys, it's "trailofdead."

Here's some other examples of superlong SXSW band names and the suggested tag equivalents:

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness: chosendarkness
My Summer as a Salvation Soldier: salvationsoldier
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster: eightiesmatchbox
The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower: blowuptheeiffeltower
They Shoot Horses Don't They: theyshoothorses
Viva l'American Death Ray Music: americandeathray.

Their next effort, which I'll be helping them with, is to find and tag the official band site and/or the MySpace site, any fansites, pages of Flickr photos, record label pages, and in-depth concert or album reviews, etc. for each of the SXSW 2006 bands (i.e. Aberfeldy). They're hoping that their pages become an additional third-party, human-filtered resource for people searching for SXSW information.

Posted by timothompson at 01:21 PM

February 08, 2006

SXSW News

Here's an info dump on some SXSW-related events (x-posted to the Unofficial SXSW List).

SXSW: Beggars Showcase and Too Pure Party Announcements

Update your iCals right now for the super fantastic Beggars showcase and Too Pure Records day party at SXSW 2006.

The Beggars showcase is happening on Thursday at Club DeVille and the line-up is hot like so many Taco Shack timales:

Film School
Roger Sisters
Calla
The Double
Celebration

Then on Friday afternoon, we've got your hangover cure with the Too Pure / Ba Da Bing Party at Ruta Maya out on South Congress (which for any SXSW novices, is where the cool kids hang during the day). Seriously good times with: