They came with their tattoos, mutton-chop side-burns and Marshall amplifiers to the land of the singer-songwriters. Any second, one expected a legion of Hell’s Angels to roar into town on their choppers, with pool cues in their fists and murder in their hearts.
Was this ready the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference, arguably the year’s most prestigious music industry event, or a gathering of Headbangers Anonymous?
The conference, which concluded Sun day, traditionally caters to performers of a certain refinement, and there were plenty of singer-songwriters to savor among the hundreds of bands showcased at dozens of clubs. But the flavor of the event was best summarized by Nebula drummer Ruben Romano, who took a flaming mallet to his gong–perhaps imported from the set of “This is Spinal Tap”–and brought the California trio’s set at Emo’s to a spectacular conclusion swathed in fire and two-fingered “sign of the beast” salutes. The next night, the thuggish brutes in Men of Porn put it another way in the midst of one of their hellish, slow-grind workouts: “It’s not a pretty sound; it’s not a pretty sight.”
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in this case the view was bloodshot and blurry, a purple haze of smoke machines, ghoulish red stage lighting and men in black. Beelzebub’s charge was three-pronged: a wave of Nordic punk, metal and garage bands such as the Nomads, Gluecifer and the Backyard Babies; the power punkers and MC5 throwbacks championed by the recharged Sub Pop label, original home of Seattle grunge; and the “stoner rock” of the conference’s breakout label, the San Francisco-based Man’s Ruin imprint.
Together, these bands hardly represent a commercial threat to the new pop hierarchy of Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys, and it’s arguable whether they represent a progression of any kind musically. At times, one felt cast in some bad 1973 movie about high school burnouts, with all the cast members in period jean jackets and scruffy goatees. But it was great to hear some bands putting the physicality, the aggression and the raunch back in the R-A-W-K. And, as enthusiastic audiences throughout the five-night conference demonstrated, it was difficult not to get caught up in the sheer cosmic and sometimes comic overkill of these no-longer-closeted aficionados of Johnny Thunders, the Scorpions and AC/DC. No one, for example, could forget Oslo’s Gluecifer, with their ill-fitting crushed-velvet shirts and daredevil guitarist who swung from the rafters and rode the bassist’s shoulders into a cheerfully misbegotten oblivion of beer-soaked fuzz chords.
In contrast, Stockholm garage-punk veterans the Nomads offered a more disciplined but no less brutal demonstration of four-chord alienation. “Get off my back, don’t pull my strings,” they commanded, striking a splayed leg stance while a cowboy-hatted drummer sprayed cymbal shrapnel. When the guitars dropped out, leaving just a pummeling backbeat, it was if the air were suddenly sucked out of the room, only to have the band fill the vacuum anew with what sounded like twice the original volume.
Acid King, fronted by the dynamic Lori S., crawled with reptilian menace through the land of the E tunings. Their deliberation evoked molasses-rock prototypes the Melvins, and though the trio seldom tours outside the West Coast, it found itself a new audience at one of the weekend’s most anticipated showcases for the Man’s Ruin label. The music ranged from Fatso Jetson’s highly evolved fusion of jazz, surf and punk–with a drummer chopping up beats like a sushi chef–to the magnificent slow burn of High on Fire, an offshoot of underground legends Sleep (whose parting shot was an album consisting of a single 52-minute song).
If Sleep represents the apex (and the excess) of the hazy, heavy stoner-rock sound, Fu Manchu represents its pop potential. Reveling in the three-minute highway anthem, the Orange County, Calif., quartet brought the solo-free boogie in a manner more reminiscent of ZZ Top than Black Sabbath. Nebula, consisting of three Fu Manchu refugees, explored a more free-form dimension, digging into the power-trio dynamics of the Jimi Hendrix Experience for inspiration.
Two of Nebula’s Sub Pop labelmates played variations on the cranked-up agit-metal of the MC5, with The Go exploring the more R&B side of the Detroit spectrum by covering Bob Seger’s “Heavy Music,” while Zen Guerilla reveled in high-octane “Sonic Reducer” amplifer meltdowns. Even as Zen’s towering singer mimicked the Five’s manic Rob Tyner, right down to his freaky Afro, the relentless deep-bass attack sent a quiver through nearby sternums, aggression so extreme that it instantly polarized the audience into giddy, fist-pumping acolytes and terrorized victims.
Though the conference had its share of high-profile cameos–a rapturous two-hour set by Patti Smith; an informal guitar-picking session that brought Joe Ely, Steve Earle and Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas together at a taco bar; a starmaking set by neo-country singer Shelby Lynne–it was the fringe players, the oddballs without a radio-station format, who drew the most enthusiastic audiences.
Metal and garage-rock have never been in fashion, but they had a renaissance of sorts at South by Southwest, if only because young bands were attacking their familiar conventions with such glee. The blues audience also had reason to cheer in the North Mississippi Allstars. This was not the Delta blues most familiar to Chicago audiences, but the droning, one-chord trance-boogie of northern Mississippi’s hill country. Playing the songs of spiritual mentors such as Fred McDowell, RL Burnside and Junior Kimbrough, the Allstars made hips shake and brows sweat at the packed Continental Club.
The band is built around the slide-inflected leads of Luther Dickenson, who injected the buzzing, primeval moan of his heroes with a baroque lyrical drive worthy of the Allman Brothers’ Dickey Betts. His brother Cody oiled the joints in the sparsely structured songs with rolling rhythms. With bassist Chris Chew, the Dickensons didn’t so much gussy up the blues with crass rock pyrotechnics as demonstrate how the ancient hill-country sound is endlessly adaptable, its simplicity and mystery sounding positively postmodern.
It was yet another sign of renewal at a music conference that reveled in the sound of loud guitars and brutally overtaxed amplifiers. Strap on those wallet chains, folks. The rock isn’t dead yet.
