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Some or all of you (depending on who’s reading today) may know that my wonderful sweetie pie orchestrated a trip for me to my beloved South By Southwest Music Festival. This was the 8th time I’ve been down, and this year I went with Alex, Chris, and Chris’ homey Craig.

This is the first of 2 posts (thought it better to break them up), the bands in this one are my definitive favourites of the 30 that we saw.

This one is pretty link heavy, but there are a lot of good tunes and stuff to check out.

Onward and upward.

Galactic definitively comes in first. In addition to being a first rate New Orleans funk band they brought along 3 innovative rappers to perform. I knew two of the rappers, Gift Of Gab from Blackalicious and a guy called Lyrics Born. Also on the bill was a guy I’d never heard of called Boots Riley from a band called The Coup. Galactic lost their own vocalist, The Houseman, a year or two ago. As I understand it fans are 50/50 as to whether they’re just as good as an instrumental band. After seeing this I’d almost side with the pro-vocalist folks.

The club, Emo’s Main Room, was packed to the hilt. The band took stage at 1:20am and I loved that we were about to see a funk and hip hop show start that late.

The band came out and played a tune by themselves (guitar, bass, drums, sax, keyboard/organ) and then brought out Gift Of Gab. Blackalicious uses some pretty simple samples and rhythms so that the focus can stay on his educated lyrics. The first of 3 songs they did was a tune called Alphabet Mix. The song is (if I remember right) 52 lines long, each 2 lines starting with the next letter in the alphabet (read the lyrics). It’s a simple beat behind him and it picks up pace as the song progresses. The band replicated that beat masterfully and repeated that with the full song Supreme People. I was really geeked to hear Gift Of Gab do his thing live. With the beauty of the Internet you can too! These aren’t from SXSW, but the same songs and same band (mixed together for your convenience). Gift Of Gab’s label has a Blackalicious song to download as well (click to go to the page).

Lyrics Born was up next and he really jammed out with the band for (I think) 3 songs. His lyrics could get repetitive but the band and the crowd fed off his energy. I’ve only heard 1 of his cd’s and wasn’t that impressed but will reconsider after such a good gig. Whether it’s right or wrong I don’t know, but a good performance can change how I hear a record.

Boots Riley was up next, the only one of the 3 that I hadn’t heard. Appearance wise he was Undercover Brother. He has a slightly sardonic, raised eyebrow delivery and some nifty dance moves. I liked him enough to check out some stuff and found that the original version of one of the songs he did with Galactic, We Are The Ones , is available on his website as is one called My Favorite Mutiny.

Having spoken about the rappers a bit, let’s talk about Galactic. They were incredible on so many levels. The drummer is one of the best, Stanton Moore. He’s done a couple of albums on his own and writes a lot of the bands music. Moore locks in masterfully with the bass player who laid out beautiful grooves through the whole 45 minute set. The other fellas in the band were just as tight and you can see why they are as popular as they are. The thick sound they achieved was impressive considering their were only 5 instruments on stage. Heck, I was really close to full on gettin’ my groove on and it takes an act of Funk to get those juices going. Funk has magic powers.

I digress (although you know what I say is true).

We were originally going to see Patrice Pike in this time slot, whom is always a good show and has been a SXSW favourite for years. However, she still tours, while the band configuration we saw may not appear here in St. Louis. The atmosphere of the festival is such that to see a one off gig like this isn’t strange. The songs they did aren’t projected to be out until the fall. I’m super glad the choice to see them was made.

There is a 3 way tie for 2nd favourite, here they are in no particular order.

Tubring is a band that I got into while still doing the show at KDHX. To abbreviate the discovery, I got a promotional disc that mixed some of their songs with interview snippets. The musical chunks were very interesting and I was particularly intrigued by the fact that Trey Spruance of Mr. Bungle and Faith No More produced the record they were promoting (Drake Equation). The station had a copy of the disc and it was love at first pumped metal fist in the air.

Their records are that missing link between Bungle and FNM but not necessarily a clone of those 2 bands. Crazy guitar parts give way to jerk changes that seem to geared towards disrupting whatever groove the listener is developing. It get’s your attention. Live, Tub Ring killed everything within the path of their aural assault. To give you a visual, the stringy mohawk wearing goatee guy with the 5 string bass might be working at Best Buy’s Geek Squad to make ends meet (or to have medical insurance, he was all over the place) while the guitarist and drummer were solid without much flash. I take solid any day because flashy and sucky is still sucky. The lead singer looked a bit like Michael J Fox if he had joined Faith No More instead of Family Ties and can scream the words or sing lyrically (during the same verse sometimes). Most exuberant was the keyboard player. It’s extraordinarily difficult to make keyboards in a rock band look cool. Many have tried it, all have failed except for the guy from Type O Negative. Rob from Tub Ring was leaping off one keyboard stand to hit another on the beat after striking a rockin’ pose and he sang back up with a fervor that made his forehead sweat the demons out. By himself, he played harder than some of the lead singers we saw, as a band, they were certainly out to make their set an experience instead of just a gig.

They are a good band you should dig on. Emusic has all their records, they have four mp3′s on their site. Right on for them for posting the stronger tunes from the respective albums. Also, poking around I found a hidden section of their site with some covers.

Oh, I almost forgot. They were supposed to play The Creepy Crawl 3 years ago and I was slated to interview them but the tour got canceled. I mentioned that to the singer after their set and he chuckled gleefully, “Yeah, that was probably me. I’m a bit of an ___ sometimes. Hee hee!”

Kid Beyond was an early favourite. He’s a beatboxer and songwriter, which may not excite many of you – or – it may conjure up a specific image. While he can do the things you’d expect from Rahzel, Scratch, or a other folks. He takes that mad skill and layers it into songs. Using a midi controller and a lap top he’s able to live sample himself, loop those vocalizations, and create a complete rhythm and lead track while he sings over it. There are some folks who do that to a lesser extent with guitar (KT Tunstall being the most succesful at the moment) but I’ve never seen anyone do what he does. Quite a feat now that I think about it considering I’ve seen better than 500 bands play. That said, the creative technical aspects are worthless without creative songs, which he has. Mothership is the songs that got us interested, but you can check out Kid Beyond extensively at his site. Emusic has the EP. Some credit goes to Chris ‘Freydaddy’ for recognizing the hineywhumpitude of this song amongst the 700 posted for the festival. He posted a good picture of him here.

We actually saw his Henry Rollins like presence twice during the festival. We caught the last couple songs the first night we were there and he was so good that we got really stoked when he said he was playing the next night as Beyond. Festival organizers didn’t permit multiple gigs as Kid Beyond, he worked around that technicality. That particular venue was way smaller and We got there in plenty of time to see almost all of his show. We were able to watch him construct his songs, recite some slam poetry, perform a version of the Nine Inch Nails song ‘Closer’ using this method as well as a cover of Portishead’s tune ‘Wandering Star’ which is on the EP.

It’s good to mention that the dude was totally professional in what he did and the way he promoted himself. He gets some more respect from me for that. Poking around, I found a song he did with avant guitarist Buckethead and an appearance with Particle doing the funk classic Superstitious. And even more, an appearance he did for a storytelling site called Fray.com. This file is his bit and is really really cool, go here to hear the whole thing. To wrap it up, hear this NPR bit too. Spend some time with Kid Beyond. Join my growing obsession.

Mohair had a song posted called Stranded that got our attention. Chris’ in particular because of his diligent prep work. Musically they were extremely tight and played with more energy than I would have expected from the last gig of their tour. Their songs were lots of fun, much fabulosity in the arrangements, and I’m a tool for 3 part harmonies.

Their gig was at a club called La Zona Rosa, site of many great SXSW gigs. Among them the aforementioned Patrice Pike’s first band Sister 7 (note to self: write a post about the Most Bravest Waitress In The World), John Paul Jones (from Led Zeppelin), and we saw David Byrne debut material with a string quartet, just to name a few). We would have felt naked not seeing a gig there and this worked out perfectly. The band came out wearing their Queen influence on their sleeves. Very British looking (since they are).

I found a wonderful fansite and a decent sounding bootleg. It appears they only have one album so far and it’s been released half a dozen times. I’m kind of regretting not buying the cd directly from them.

Alex and Chris where watching the crowd from a rooftop (there was a gig there, we weren’t climbing random buildings) when they spotted the lead singer greet a fellow festival goer by tackling and then dryhumping him at 1:30 in the morning in the street. I came down and joined Alex and Chris in chatting with him. Nice guy.

That raps up this first post about the 2007 South By Southwest Music Festival. I’ll do a second post soon about some of the other bands we saw, for better or worse.

In the meantime, if you aren’t already buried by all the links in this post, browse around (alphabetically) fo yoself and see what you can discover.