Gay.com, The Advocate and ShoutTexas host a gay and lesbian showcase called RockOut during SXSW. It’s one of those pesky hanger-on shows that the festival doesn’t like, and it’s happening on Thursday night, the one night I’m leaving pretty wide open.
I’m tempted to check it out, if only because I haven’t been to Oilcan Harry’s in years, and I’ve never stepped inside Rain. One thing, however, makes me hesitant — the music itself.
For some reason, "emerging independent gay artist" is code for "sad gay folkie". All of the musicians featured on the program are all singer-songwriter types armed with the requisite acoustic guitar. Yes, I understand SXSW is held in Austin, Texas, a magnet for singer-songwriters, and the town is overrun with them during the five nights of the music festival. But when you’ve got R.E.M., Steve Reich, Wing and toddle playing at the same week-long event, maybe some of that diversity could have rubbed off?
I’m not expecting the Gossip, the Magnetic Fields or Matmos, but between Ari Gold, Sacha Sacket, Dylan Rice, Office and — to throw the curve out really far — Jennifer Higdon, gay musicians make all kinds of music. Why focus only on the folk ilk?
Shows I want to see loaded on my iPod Nano calendar? Check. (I have to say carrying my tiny Nano around was incredibly convenient. Far more than folding up a copy of the showcase schedule from the Austin Chronicle.)
Wristband picked up? Check. (The friendly SXSW folks put it on you, so I’m saddled with this thing till Sunday. It’s not so bad so long as it stays dry.)
Cash? I’ll withdraw some from the credit union on Wednesday.
Cigarettes? I’ll pick some up the next time I gas up, which should be soon. I think, though, most of the venues I’m going to have no patios, therefore, the smoking ban is in place.
Phone charged? Yes, but I’d better recharge it on Wednesday.
So yes, the SXSW 2008 music festival begins in two days. Last year, I attempted to write about the festival, but I was so exhausted by the end, I didn’t replace some temporaryentries with real ones. I’m not going to promise I’ll do any better this year.
The myriad of oak trees in the Central Texas area get frisky this time of year, and they get their horniest at the start of April. I’m pretty sure I’ll be basket case around then, despite copious amounts of Zyrtec in my system. I also did a marathon of writing over at Filmwhore.org, putting up reviews of movies I watched … last year.
In other words, I’m kind of tapped out at the moment. I find myself wanting to start a weblog entry, only to back out and do something else entirely. The backlog of reviews grows yet again, but I’m going to ignore it till, oh, maybe mid-April? For now, I’ll post when I encounter something newsworthy. I also have a number of Favorite Editions of Years Past saved up.
The fact I can’t make a full list of ten indicates how far off my judgment was in 1995. I bought a lot of music that year, no doubt, but I also let a lot of it go.
John Zorn launched Tzadik Records that year, and he promptly reissued a number of albums released only in Japan. Burgeoning student composer that I was, I snapped up a whole bunch of those initial Tzadik releases hoping to glean something instructional. It didn’t quite work out that way.
Emmylou Harris also released Wrecking Ball late that year, and it pretty much squeezed out everything else. Combing through my collection, I noticed a number of greatest hits collections from that year. I kind of remember going through a nostalgic period right around that time.
I thought about shoehorning one more title, but that just felt dishonest. Why rank something for which I don’t feel any real passion? So a list of nine, it is.
Ueda Gen, a former member of LA-PPISCH and the songwriter behind Hajime Chitose’s big hit "Wadatsumi no Ki", passed away on March 9, reports Bounce.com. He was 47.
Ueda announced he had cancer two years ago, and he would give his treatment undivided attention. Services for Ueda happen on March 13 at Sennichidanikaidou.
Ueda co-wrote and produced much of Hajime’s first releases, from the self-titled covers EP to her second album, Nomad Soul. He contributed two tracks to her third album, Hanadairo.
Before devoting his time as a songwriter and producer, Ueda played keyboard and saxophone for the ska band LA-PPISCH from 1984 to 2002. LA-PPISCH recorded for Speedstar Records before moving to Universal Music in the late ’90s. The band went on hiatus in 2003 but reunited for the Rising Rock Music Festival in 2007.
Over the weekend, I made a purchase from Amazon MP3 Downloads that I would have found unimaginable in the 1985 — Meeting in the Ladies Room by Klymaxx.
Back then, I was a seeeeeeeriously arty kid, and from my youthful perspective, the amateurish, frivolous lyrics of the album’s title track barely rose to any semblance of artistry. I had to be taught that was the point — "Meeting in the Ladies Room", the song, was not aspiring for anything lofty, and for something fun and silly, it’s really quite excellent.
I still remember the emblematic image from the video of Fenderella’s lopsided hair, which turned her into a cyclops. Her spoken word contributions had all of the attitude and little of the rhythm of hip-hop, but it still felt musical.
I’d hate to come down to the level of becoming a BW, a Basic Woman, but if they don’t stop it’s going to get scandalous. (Uh-ooooh!)
It’s all in the delivery.
Sometimes I’ll take a peek at music blogs not in my RSS readers, and I never get the sense that music writers really own (what could conceivably perceived as) their poor choices in listening. I’ve worked with people who bristle at the idea of listening to something as innocuous — or in their eyes, milquetoast — as Enya.
I received an e-mail bulletin from gay R&B singer Ari Gold saying he was invited to perform at SXSW. I found that odd since I didn’t see his name listed in the schedule. As it turns out, his sponsor, the USA Songwriting Competition, is holding a piggyback showcase during SXSW. The language is crafted in a way not to indicate any actual affiliation with the festival.
The venue in question is the Borders bookstore near my apartment. I’m kind of glad his performance happens somewhere convenient for me, but as a venue, that location is a booby prize. It’s essentially a dark corner of a cramped coffee bar, far removed from the bustle of the downtown clubs, where the real action takes place.
SXSW turns Austin into an entire playground, really, so any exposure is helpful on some level. Unfortunately, the event happens on Friday, March 14 at 7:30 p.m., and I’ve already promised myself to catch Wing’s performance at Maggie Mae’s at 8 p.m. that night.
I hope Ari knows what he’s getting into.
If you’re going, the Borders store in question is located at 4477 S. Lamar, in the same mall as Central Market.
To celebrate its 15th anniversary, Speedstar Records last year hosted a special concert featuring artists on the label’s roster paired off in duets. The Back Horn’s Yamada Masashi joined Tsuji Ayano, UA paired with Hosono Haruomi, while Cocco and Quruli’s Kishida Shigeru revived a bit of SINGER SONGER. That concert is being released on DVD on March 26, so says Bounce.com.
Here are the featured performances:
"Yume no Hana" by Tsuji Ayano and Yamada Masashi
"Ikareta Baby" by Tsuji Ayano and Yamada Masashi
"15sai" by Tsuji Ayano and Yamada Masashi
"Edelweiss" by Cocco and Kishida Shigeru
"Tsuyoku Hakanai Monotachi" by Cocco and Kishida Shigeru
"Arushu Mash" by Cocco and Kishida Shigeru
"Super HACCHI Lover" by Cocco Kishida Shigeru (Not sure what ハッチ transliterates to)
The last peep we heard from ACO was the best collection she released in December. We’ll, she’s duetting with a fellow Sony Music artist, Takacha, on his next single, "Namida", so says Bounce.com. It’s something of a bouncy tune, but it’s pretty much mainstream J-pop. Nothing particularly remarkable. According to the article, he does a cover of MISIA as a coupling track. Sure …
Right now, I’m listening to the demos of golden pink arrow, ACO’s band with producer Taeji and lostage members Tanaka-kun and Simmy Hendrix. There’s some promising stuff here, very electronic and gritty, with a taste of rock guitars to make ACO sound the toughest she’s ever been. Wish they’d release an album or an EP already.
Before 1993, Tower Records and Honolulu-based Jelly’s were my primary sources for music, but my demands as a customer were … specialized. A lot of music about which I was curious just wasn’t carried at the local stores.
Then I was told about online music shops available through telnet. Yes, before there was ever an Amazon.com or even a World Wide Web, there were merchants leveraging the power of the Internet. For a time, I did a lot of selling and buying on rec.music.marketplace.cd, while CDConnection, Music Boulevard and CDNow were accessible through telnet before each launched a web presence.
Because I lived in Hawaiʻi, shipping costs tended to offset any discounts these sites offered, but the ability to bypass the limited stock of local shops felt empowering. It seems passé now, especially in a post-Napster/iPod era, but even the hint of greater access to a world of music was thrilling. A few of the items on this list wouldn’t have been acquired any other way.
Deutsche Grammophon launched its music download service in 2007, and I bought two titles to see how the user experience compared to other such services. I ended up really liking both albums — Osvaldo Golijov’s Oceana and Emerson String Quartet’s American Originals — so I bought them on CD.
Then I realized I fell for the classic trick of the music industry — make consumers buy titles multiple times between different formats.
It reminded me of the late ’80s, when I moved from vinyl to cassette tape, then finally to CD. At first I thought I would dub my vinyl albums to blank cassette, so that I may listen to them on my Walkman. (Remember those?) But I ended up buying pre-recorded cassettes because the sound quality was better than what my aging boombox could capture. Then I got a CD player, and the dubbing option became moot.
With each format change, the question remains the same — what makes the leap to the new format and what doesn’t? It applies as much to new purchases as to catalog.