Austin Sound

Good god, this one’s gonna leave a mark. Because we can’t go more than a couple of months in this town with having an official festival, Chaos in Tejas is finally exploding into a real-deal impressive event. Brooklyn Vegan today dropped a huge chunk of names of those playing the event, which will be upending Emo’s, Mohawk, Beerland, and Red 7 on May 27 through May 30. Safe to say Red River will be ripped to shreds that weekend. Thank God we have plenty of time to find the perfect wallet chain to match our sleeve tattoo! Plus there is a double dose of Iron and Bastards to look forward to in the form of Iron Age and Iron Lung, and Bastard Noise and a reunion of the Japanese band Bastard. There’s also going to be artwork from the likes of Tim Kerr and others, and Kerr will be playing a set billed enticingly as Tim Kerr and Friends. Check out the full list courtesy of BV below:

Last year we had Silver Scooter, and it looks like this year we’re going to get an awesome reunion from fuzz-rockers Sixteen Deluxe. Their’s was a sad saga of local band makes good - signing to a major label, leading the Austin music scene out of the late Nineties wilderness with promise, and the crashing spectacular amid infighting and drugs. Hey, it’s only rock n roll! But time, they say, heals all wounds, or something. So the band is getting back together for some shows after the 3/4 reunion a couple of weeks ago at Continental Club, this time with Frenchie Smith actually on board. The show will likely be a benefit gig - we assume for the SIMS Foundation, because karma’s in the air. We also hear-tell of hopefully some possible reissues in the works, but nothing official.

In other SXSW news, over 200 more bands have been announced, most notably the dB’s. Check out the full list here.

We’re four months away from SXSW (damn, where the hell did 2009 go?), so that means let the teasing begin. SXSW last night announced six bands from around the globe that will be making the trek to Austin come March 17-21. What can we say about this initial drop? Well, it’s a list. Guess we all have to start somewhere. Seriously though, we know our beat is Austin and Texas a bit more generally, so we don’t pretend to be as tuned in to all the hot young things as, say, vegans and cage fighting wild animals, but this list is really some kind of international coalition of meh. Who knows, maybe a couple here will surprise us, and you - we can guarantee that their Myspace pages probably had a huge bounce as folks like us scrambled to answer the collective question of “Who?” Anyway, your first round selections of SXSW applicants offers up the following:

* Giulia y los Tellarini; Barcelona, Spain
* The Hong Kong Blood Opera; Hermosillo, Mexico
* Archie Bronson Outfit; London, England
* The Temper Trap; Melbourne, Australia
* Japandroids; Vancouver, Canada
* CHEW LiPS; London, England

Yeah, you read that right - The Hong Kong Blood Opera from Mexico. That’s pretty sweet. Expect to see more of these dribblings from SXSW for the rest of the year, and we also suppose this means that local bands can now officially start whining about SXSW not paying them enough attention.

This year’s 4th annual Fun Fun Fun Fest once again proved to be a testament to the eclectic pull of Austin’s music scene, dosing the base of indie rock with metal, punk, hip-hop, electronica, and even comedy. With a headlining reunion on Saturday of the Jesus Lizard and Sunday with Danzig, the hardcore Black Stage set the bar, but across the board, performances were impressive despite the rain that muddied the Fest’s close. Local acts proved impressive among the bigger national names, showcasing some emerging new artists like L.A.X. and The Roller to and those about to break like Harlem and the Strange Boys, as well as top tier Austin bands like Shearwater and the Sword. Our crew was liveblogging the Fest the entire weekend, with photos from the pit and live reviews. Click through to check out all of our coverage.

The first Fun Fun Fun Fest emerged almost by accident in December of 2006, the result of too many big names converging on Austin at once for then-Emo’s booker Graham Williams to place in various venues. A year later, Williams had founded Transmission Entertainment and reinvigorated the north end of Red River, with the Fun Fun Fun Fest serving as the capstone of the new company. Now in it’s fourth year, the Fest has become a uniquely Austin event - dedicated to a small but eclectic grassroots and indie music scene that has come to represent the aesthetic of Transmission Entertainment itself. We sat down with Williams at Transmission’s new headquarters in a house at the corner of 8th and Red River as they readied for the final run of Fun Fun Fun Fest preparations, and spoke at length about the evolution of the Fest, how big Transmission and FFFFest can get, and the good and bad of Austin’s contemporary competitive booking scene. Fun Fun Fun, of course, goes on this Saturday and Sunday in Waterloo Park, with afterparties spilling out all down Red River through the weekend.

We can hardly get through one festival around here without having to start preparing for the next. The dust (er, mud) has settled from ACL, we’re exercising daily in anticipation of Fun Fun Fun Fest in two weeks (not really), and now SXSW has to stick its nose back above the water for some attention. The madhouse fest, scheduled to run its music portion from March 17-21 next spring, announced today that Smokey Robinson, sans any Miracles, will be keynoting the Fest on Thursday, March 18. You can’t really argue with that selection, especially as Motown is going through its cyclical reissue and honoring phase these days. We just hope he doesn’t go on speaking for three friggin’ days like Mr. Quincy Delight Jones last year! Robinson’s awards, achievements, and influence are, of course, incomparable, but we love the fact that SXSW felt the need to highlight his current impact on music by noting that “Robinson continues to forge new trails, mentoring “American Idol” contestants in 2009 and writing and recording new music.” Ah, career, consider yourself climaxed!

Yeah, ’cause that’s a fair tradeoff! (And no, you can’t make us happy).

So the FX3 Fest today announced their schedule, and we get this PR from reputable indie PR company announcing said schedule. This is the kind of email that everyone gets these days, because everyone’s a blogger. This schedule had already been posted earlier in the day on the Fun Fun Fun website, and yeah, it’s good, yadda, yadda, yadda. You heard this on twitter. But what we found so damn funny, is that for some reason the email sent out by the awesome folks at Forcefield PR (and this is true, they are awesome), sanitized the damn email by asterisk-ing out the bands Fuck Buttons and Fucked Up. What, are you afraid you’re mom is going to see this when she reads it on Facebook or something? This is the FFFFest for christsakes, they’re supposed to be the unruly kids drinkin’ their PBR and not giving a shit what The Man thinks! Their so much don’t care, that they gave their stages random color names with a half-assed Bonnaroo-like cleverness. No corporate sponsoring here, damnit! Or something. Luckily, FFFFest themselves seem to have no problem with said bands’ censorable monikers (but we are interested to see if they get a shout out on KUT’s coverage!). All this is really just a longwinded way of saying what you know by now anyway, which is that the Fun Fun Fun Fest posted it’s schedule. We copied and pasted it below, as presented to us by the PR email, because we don’t want to fucking offend anyone. And shit.

See now, this is the problem with booking the nostalgia ticket - they start backing out. We blame the Alzheimer’s, mostly. Sadly, Sonic Youth appears to be headed to the trashheap of the ACL lineup cancelations, a rumor that’s been bubbling all week and that the Chronicle just reaffirmed with news that their ACL taping has been canned. It seems that ACL is beginning to look like high school not only in its aesthetic this year, but also its drop out rate. They should get Lil Wayne on that shit! Anyway, the reason for the pullout is apparently that Lee Renaldo broke his wrist, which sucks, but we suspect this is really just the catty kind of shit that happens when start hanging around with those damn Gossip Girls. Sonic Youth is currently still scheduled to play Sunday night from 7-8, right before Pearl Jam’s headlining set and opposite Dan Auerbach and Girl Talk. C3 refuses to confirm, because they’re like the damn New England Patriots when it comes to announcing status updates. We’ll keep you posted.

Oooh, look kids, a Supergroup! Them Crooked Vultures, this year’s installment of bored rock stars fooling around, has been announced by ACL to fill the vacant Friday evening slot. Featuring the Led Zep’s John Paul Jones (back to rocking out after playing hillbilly the past few years), Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme (because he clearly needs another group to channel all that genuis) and the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl (because it’s not officially a super group until Dave Grohl is involved), Them Crooked Vultures only started playing live this August, so let’s not get our hopes up too much there, folks. Their Myspace page is really stellar, too! If you want to get a taste of what a crooked vulture sounds like, we posted a live video from a recent English show below. They apparently played with the Arctic Monkeys. Talk about one shitty zoo!