Yaris

Go to yaris-sxsw.com and download over 40 free MP3s (and exclusive videos) from showcasing SXSW artists!

Official SXSW Music Parties

AND...this just IN! If you've got the Platinum, Gold, Film, OR Music Badge, the Film Closing Party has now *merged* with the Music Conference for SXSW's first-ever Music Opening Party!! Tuesday Night! And you most definitely can rest assured that it's gonna be a rockin' good time! Complete with live performance by Sleater-Kinney.

No wristband? Quit yer whinin'!

Check it out y'all! (to borrow a phrase from the Beastie Boys)

If you ain't got a wristband or a badge, quit yer bitchin' people. Look at all these great FREE SXSW showcases on the Town Lake Stage at Auditorium Shores! including...yes, it's true, Echo and the Bunnymen!!



The Bunnymen perform Thursday night, along with Blackalicious & Spoon. Friday's headliner is Roseanne Cash, complete with a grand finale of incredible fireworks. And Saturday all day is a New Orleans Tribute/Fundraiser - Louisiana at Town Lake. All these shows are FREE to the public!

SXSW International

From this week's Austin Chronicle, here is the SXSW International Bands supplement. A good little guide that covers the cool bands comin' in from th UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, etc.

The SXSW site is pretty cool on that fact. For example, you can search all the bands coming in from Australia, and perform other searches like that.

Attention! SXSW Showcasing Artists!

Hey SXSW Showcasing Bands & Artists! Be sure to pick up your artist package on TUESDAY MARCH 14, opening day of Music Registration, so that you, too, can take advantage of the excellent Panels, Crash Courses, and Interviews that are on Opening Wednesday of Music! Artist Wristbands (without the badge) are allowed access to all the Wednesday Panels! One day only! (A Badge is needed with an Artist Wristband Thursday through Saturday.)

Everyone local or in town on Tuesday should really pick up their SXSW Music Badges on Tuesday. Reg is open all day until 8pm.

* Tuesday March 14, SXSW Registration Hours, 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM *

Wednesday March 15: The first round of panels (SXSW Interview: Ted Cohen, Crash Course - Management, and the Mentor Sessions) begins promptly at NOON on Wednesday, so get your badge the Tuesday before!

And yet another reason to get yo' ass on up to the Convention Center on Wednesday March 15 with your Artist Wristband on:

SXSW Audience Interview: Beastie Boys
4:30 PM - 5:45 PM

oh yeah.

More info here.

And so, on that note, the Song of the Day: Shake Your Rump

SXSW Text Messaging

Well besides the fact that I'm way behind the times and have no idea how to use text messaging (yeah, I know, "Catch up, Jill!"), well, I think SXSW is way ahead of the times with their new SMS text messaging.

You can ask where the closest mexican food restaurant or pizza joint is, what time a certain panel is, which night/venue your favorite band is playing, etc etc.

So jump on the high-tech bandwagon! And then let me know how cool it is cuz I don't have text messaging capabilities...ha!

SXSW Music Festival Showcasing Over 1200 Acts

Brett Dennen, Castanets, Dionne Farris, Fatal Flying Guilloteens, Gomez, Gretchen Peters, Jon Langford, Kiss me Deadly, Love Is All, Polytechnic, Sally Crewe & The Sudden Moves, Snow Patrol, The Appleseed Cast, The Exit, The Meligrove Band, Tilly and the Wall, and Vega 4 represent just a glimmer on the surface of the ocean of over 1200 confirmed SXSW Music Festival performers. In the next few weeks, individual band pages including music samples and descriptions will be included on the website. In the meantime you can review the alpha list currently available online.

Happy New Year!!

And I'm back with a vengeance. Stay tuned for daily updates. And apologies for the extra long break during the holidays...I needed to unplug.

So, to catch you up on some of the greatest albums of last year, here are some year-end "best of" lists to tune you in to what you might have missd in 2005:

Rolling Stone's top 50 albums

Pitchfork's top 50 singles & top 50 albums

PopMatters Picks: The Best Music of 2005

BBC's "Collective" lists top 2005 records

Top 25 from tiny mix tapes (and this is one of the coolest sites out there)

Another topic of note:

Make your own podcast! Tutorial from Webmonkey

And in case you completely missed it...

SNL Narnia rap-skit - better than actual rap?

Hotel Lights

Jimmy forwarded this music to me yesterday (or the day before). Very nice. I believe he said the drummer/writer used to be in Ben Folds Five.

I did like that Ben Folds Five song: Song for the Dumped (clip)

Give me my money back
Give me money back, you bitch!

Wait a minute, I got off track again...as usual. So listen to five Hotel Lights songs here. Downloadable? I don't know. Just listen and enjoy. And buy their cd.

"Sometimes Hotel Lights songs are honest and raw. Sometimes they rock out. In many ways it's as if they were written under cold fluorescent lights. And you can't stop listening."

The (International) Noise Conspiracy

Last night @ Emo's



Listen to their newest album Armed Love here. And there are quite a few MP3s to download here.

Grateful Dead

Here's a little blast from the past for ya. But I'm actually posting, though, because they have been in the music news these past few days:

- Deadheads Boycott Dead over Download Flap (Nov 29)
- Deadheads Outraged over Web Crackdown (Nov 30)
- Grateful Dead to Allow Free Web Downloads (Dec 1)

courtesy of The Daily Chord

So we have here a live stream of the Dead's November 8, 1970 concert @ Capitol Theater in Port Chester, NY, via the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org. There are many more live Dead concerts that you can stream here. What a great site! And all free & legal, I think...

Super Furry Animals

They sure don't give you even a wee taste of their music on their site. But...you can listen to their live appearance from this morning on KCRW: Morning Becomes Eclectic.

Super Furry Animals played a couple of Wednesdays ago at La Zona Rosa (Wed Nov 16). This I know because I was hanging out at the Backstage (the bar connected to LZR) the next night, as my friends were waiting to go see MMJ Thursday night. In walked a man (almost a boy) and he had forgotten his credit card at said bar from the night before due to the fact that he was partying on the SFA tour bus all night. Funny thing though, my coworker also said she ended up on the SFA tour bus the night before. These guys must be pretty laid-back and cool...and sorry I'm one of the few who missed the after-party on the tour bus!

There must have been something in the air, though, cuz that next night, my friend slept in her truck right outside the door of the Backstage/La Zona Rosa after the MMJ show. Perhaps the only thing in the air was too much whisky. But hey, I like it that way...

Jonny McGovern is the Gay Pimp

Too fun!



So I caught the Lookin' Cute/Feelin' Cute video during the intermission at AGLIFF this October. But the Soccer Practice video is the one that started it all. Last year at work, my friend/coworker Mr. Grumbles circulated it around. And boy, was it my favorite for months!

Videos:

• Gay Pimp - Lookin' Cute/Feelin' Cute
• Gay Pimp - Soccer Practice

MP3s:

• Gay Pimp - Electroboi
• Gay Pimp - Dirty Stuff
• Gay Pimp - Soccer Practice
• Gay Pimp - Soccer Practice Remix (in case you just can't get enough)

I'm a dirty frat boy
on a dirty soccer team
Go into the locker room
after wrestling

But don't enjoy it too much...or you just may need this.

Find 74 Bands

Find the 74 bands in the following picture:



(To get a better look, click the above picture and use the magnifying glass.)

-Forwarded from my friend T. Cooke. Him and his friend have found about 30 bands. See if you can find the remaining 44...

Hot Hot Heat

Tonight @ Emo's



I know the Make Up the Breakdown album, but not their new one. If you enter the flash site, you can stream three songs off their new album, Elevator. Or you can watch two of the videos here. Go see 'em tonight. They're a fun, energetic band (probably because they're all about a decade younger than me).

Hot Hot Heat on MySpace.com

Scott H. Biram

Tonight @ Hole in the Wall



I don't think I'm gonna make it...I'm a little too lazy, and I just can't seem to turn off that damned TNT! If you do go, you must curse, talk loud, and drink whiskey. It's mandatory for his shows. And say hi to all my drunkass friends.

But you should definitely go. Not only is Scott Biram great to see live, but all shows are free at the Hole in the Wall. I believe one of the first times (if not the first time I saw him live) was in the parking lot of the Austin Film Studios, after we had just completed the Alamo Drafthouse/Rolling Roadshow scavenger hunt and were about to watch Smokey and the Bandit. Aaah...good times!

I couldn't find any complete MP3s online, but here's a little snippet of Truckdriver. You can also listen to three of his songs on MySpace:

Scott H. Biram on MySpace.com

Shout Out Louds

Tonight @ the Parish



Hello. We are four boys and one girl from Stockholm in Sweden and we play music together in a band. We used to call our band Luca Brasi but because of another band who also called themselves Luca Brasi, that name now sleeps with the fish. These days we call our band Shout Out Louds. That has nothing to do with Kiss although we do not mind Kiss under any circumstances. Now we are going to tell you about our band...

How could you not love them with an introduction like that of themselves?

Watch some videos here (or just listen):

• Shout Out Louds - The Comeback
• Shout Out Louds - Please Please Please

Besides good music, their lead singer has a bit of Jason Schwartzman-like appeal. I heart Jason Schwartzman. Oh wait! I meant, Go see the Shout Out Louds at the Parish tonight!

More videos here (or should I say films as they like to refer to them in Sweden).

Shout Out Louds on MySpace.com

Happy Thanksgiving

Now get offline and go celebrate Thanksgiving with your family or friends.

Or just spend some great time alone...away from the computer.

Elephant Man

• Elephant Man - Jook Gal (Remix)

Shake that booty, turn it around
Back that ass up, wine go down

To see what else they're saying, here are the rest of the lyrics. I really wanted to find the R Kelly/Elephant Man's Reggae Bump Bump song. So if you can get your hands on R Kelly's TP.3 Reloaded, listen to song # 8. It's a blast. It makes you wanna clap. clap. clap. clap. I'm gonna start using the phrase 'junk in da trunk' all the time now. So don't make fun of me, cuz I've turned rasta, mon.

I tell you what though...while googling for "elephant man" images, besides the obvious hits, you get some very interesting finds...especially this one. But no, he just doesn't stop there. I sure hope this elephant man won that radio contest...whatever it was for.

Aqualung

I don't usually like sad/slow songs. Mostly because they make me want to just slit my wrists (see: Elliot Smith). Anyways, this fella from Aqualung actually has an interesting approach, and you slowly realize that this sad song has suddenly turned happy with its uplifting pitch and newfound hope:

• Aqualung - Brighter Than Sunshine

(If you can't open this link, just go here and stream online.)

I never understood before
I never knew what love was for
My heart was broke, my head was sore
What a feeling

Tied up in ancient history
I didn't believe in destiny
I look up you're standing next to me
What a feeling

What a feeling in my soul
Love burns brighter than sunshine
Brighter than sunshine
Let the rain fall, I don't care
I'm yours and suddenly you're mine
Suddenly you're mine
And it's brighter than sunshine

If you were with me and caught them/him* earlier this summer at the Parish, it was probably a better show than the one that's tonight @ the McCullough Theatre, but that really is just my opinion. I prefer more intimate venues, and I don't like being told which seat I have to sit in.

*Matt Hales leads the band, but his brother is also in it, Ben Hales playing guitar and getting none of the limelight. I mean none at all. But Ben's tour diary is awfully funny. And bitter. Just how I like my men:

• The Commandments of the Road
• Letters from America