}
Photos By Phelan M. Ebenhack
Right: The crowd at 311 Club participates in a little dancing with Les Garcons Bouchers' singer
Sapu Favre during the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin Friday night.
Below: Parisian band, Les Garcons Bouchers, perform their wild style of music before a packed
audience at 311 Club.
music
overdose
By Rob Newberry
|
| never thought I would see so much live music that I just
I wouldn’t want to see any more. But after spending four
nights at Austin's South by Southwest '91,1 think I’m suf
fering from live music burnout. I think I OD’d on live music.
The conference kicked off with the Austin Music Awards
on Wednesday, then for the next four nights (I didn't stay
through Sunday, though) bands play at more than 20 differ
ent clubs in town. Usually five or six bands play each night,
each one ripping through as many songs in 45 minutes as
they can.
The Austin Music Awards showcases on Wednesday
were a decent way to get ready for the rest of the weekend. I
got to watch Austin Battle-of-the-Bands winner E.R. Shorts
do his bluesy three-piece thing; I got to see the Texas Tor
nadoes perform some very Texan, very Latin rock’n’roll, and
I got to find out what Austinites felt about their music scene
over the last year. But I had to sit through an incredibly unori
ginal set by Charlie Sexton's new band the Arc Angels, and I
had to watch glam-rockers Dangerous Toys perform bad
songs like "Sportin' a Woody” (yeah, the title’s funny, but the
song just isn’t any good).
T he next few days at the conference, I felt basically the
same. Some bands were pretty good; some were just
OK, and some really sucked. I got back into Austin on
Thursday in time to see about 20 minutes of Atlanta’s five-
piece psychedilic-pop band Lava Love at Liberty Lunch.
Lava Love is like a Deelite-meets-Jellyfish — lots of upbeat
music and clever guitar riffs. On the above scale, I would
stick Lava Love in with the bands that were just OK.
Next up at the Lunch was Austin’s own David Garza and
the Lovebeads. You could tell that an Austin band was get
ting ready to take the stage as soon as Lava Love left; more
than 100 extra people walked in the door, and everybody
crammed for the front near the stage. When the Lovebeads
played here at College Station a few weeks ago, they were
missing their two backup vocalists, and although I really en
joyed their set here, I liked the one at Austin even better.
Garza played a lot more stuff off of his new release, and after
seeing it played live, I actually like it better.
After the Lovebeads, we trucked it over to Chances to
see Athens, Georgia's the Jody Grind, only to find out that
Chances wouldn't let minors inside. I bitched a lot — “I don't
understand how I can pay ninety-five bucks to attend this
damned conference and not get to see one of the most
hyped-up acts in the country” — but the girl at the door
wouldn’t budge. SXSW needs to fix that; anybody who pays
that much ought to be able to see everybody.
IA f ith a no-go at Chances, we headed to the Lunch
1 ‘ to watch Bela Fleck and the Flecktones leave the
■ stage. Next up was the Lousiana band Wayne
Toups & Zydecajun. Toups mixes up cajun melodies and in
struments like the accordion with classic rhythm and blues
for a result that, well, sounds interesting on paper, but really
sucks when you hear it.
On Friday, I decided to check out some of the dis-
page6
March 28,1991
Life Style mac