« Spiral Brain |
Main
| Tasty Funk »
February 08, 2007
First Glance - SxSW 2007
Preliminary SXSW Musical Festival Lineup Announced
It's weird. I'm looking over the alphabetical mass of 1300 band names and hometowns to get a feel for the event this year. I've noticed a few things ...
1. More than ever it has occured to me that I do not know about a LOT of Houston music. I think it has to do with the fact that they pick a lot of hip hop from here and I am not really a follower of The Hip and The Hop. There are actually more bands I have NOT heard of from Houston on this list than ones I HAVE heard of. For example, I found one band called Peekaboo Theory - Their MySpace says that they are "Electro / Progressive / Experimental". Never heard of them. I listened and they seem to me like some sort of spacey R&B. Cool.
2. I love using nothing more than band names to help me determine who I am going to look into further to help me make a list of bands I want to put on my SxSW schedule.
Bands I need to look into just because they have a cool name:
- Green Milk From The Planet Orange (Tokyo JAPAN)
- The Apples in Stereo (Denver CO)
- Aqualung (South London UK)
- Astronautalis (Jacksonville FL)
- Birthday Suits (minneapolis MN)
- Cat Scientist (Austin TX)
- Evidence of Dilated Peoples (Los Angeles CA)
- Indian Jewelry (Houston TX)
- Junk Science (Brooklyn NY)
- Metalchicks (Tokyo JAPAN)
- Montefiori Cocktail (Forlì ITALY)
- MuteMath (New Orleans LA)
- Psychedelic Horseshit (Columbus OH) - (no way this can be anything but good)
- Quetzal (Los Angeles CA)
- Say Hi To Your Mom (Brooklyn NY)
- The Sippy Cups (San Francisco CA)
- Voxtrot (Austin TX)
- Young Galaxy (Montreal QC)
3. I'm excited about many of the surprises I found on the list:
Bands I KNOW I want to see:
- Hiromi (Shizuoka JAPAN)
- Scott Amendola (Berkeley CA)
- Galactic (New Orleans LA) - YES!!!
- Mogwai (Glasgow UK) - yes, again
- Ian Moore (Seattle WA)
- The Octopus Project (Austin TX) - still haven't seen them
- Ozomatli (Los Angeles CA) - them either
- Papa Mali (Austin TX)
- Spoon (Austin TX) - yes, again
4. Lots of familiar names:
Interesting names we all know:
- Emmylou Harris
- Duncan Shiek
- Jello Biafra
- James Morrison - really???? :P
- Thomas Dolby
- Jandek
- Les Claypool
- Meatpuppets
- Rickie Lee Jones
- Charlie Sexton
Pearls of "wisdom" by Jamie at February 8, 2007 10:23 AM
Comments
I DON'T know about 90 percent of the bands on the list (Houston or otherwise) and that's ok. I haven't found SXSW to be particularly relevant for me since probably the mid-90's. Of course, at that time, it was still at least margnially relevant in the music biz too. Today, it's just a big EXPENSIVE indie hang. Nothing wrong with it, but certainly not the central nexus for discovering new talent it was the first 10 years or so it existed.
Posted by: Jeff at February 8, 2007 12:30 PM
and don't forget the FREE show on Friday at Town Lake with Public Enemy!
I can't miss that, and try to get in touch. We should try and wave to each other if we don't have time to hang out a bit. It'll be crazy and friends are again coming from all over so I'll be busy doing interviews and lots of other crazy stuff.
Mike
Posted by: Mike at February 8, 2007 11:51 PM