Soon enough, Wayne got up on stage and started into a rendition of “Kick Out the Jams” that had more in common with a Stooges set than with the reformed “MC5” show I saw a handful of years ago at the Echo. It was blisteringly loud, too, and he went off on several sideways melodic tangents anchored by the sheer volume of the so-hard-it’s-like-metal garage band Good and the Bad behind him. Sadly it was his only song.

Up next was Shearwater… “I never thought we’d be following Wayne Kramer,” one guy in the band told the crowd. “Maybe that’s not a good thing,” another guy in the band replied. And he was so right. In comparison to Wayne Kramer and the Good and the Bad, Shearwater sounded wilted, flavorless, “watered” down. Someday, people will look back on this decade, and I’m pretty sure my photograph of this guy with his glasses and young Steve Jobs beard standing in front of his little electro box will be the symbol of all that was both right and wrong about our era:

The Bombettes were up next—Swedish gals with a good sense of humor. They even posed for me when they saw me whip out my camera…

Though they were a little cleaner sounding, they reminded me of the Demolition Doll Rods or the young Donnas on their first song, which spelled out the band’s name: “B, O, M, B, E, double-T, S!” They even picked on the other bands a bit. “This song is about old men with guitars! There are a lot of them here…”  The singer has a young Belinda Carlyle thing going on, with a touch of Roxette about her, and the band does what seem like three-five part vocals, in unison, like the Monks; “harmonies” would be less punk.

The next band was Sauti Sol, a Kenyan six piece with amazing flashy instruments, tons of great dance moves, a tall singer (who looks quite a bit like out-of-drag RuPaul) and a short guy who looks a bit like Kanye (or maybe DJ Jazzy Jeff, my uncle says) with his grid sunglasses. Each of their songs had three of four whole parts, with time-changes and dynamics, lighting-fast bluesy Prince guitar licks and lyrics in multiple languages, mostly about the wedding customs of Kenya, specifically Nairobi.  “There’s thieves, there’s whores and pimps, but it’s a beautiful city!”

It’s hard to pin down why this band would be in Roky’s Ice Cream Social, but they didn’t just have the most diverse sound, they had the most diversity of sounds. Sometime’s they’d have a bit of a reggae beat, but with some angry “bam bam bam” guitar fuzz! One song segued into a mellow song that almost became self-parody, with some whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa stuff like David Cross did in 3×1-1! But then right when it was about to get sentimental, a sax groove came out from the little guy, an insistent beat like your tongue would do on a woman you really loved: “Bum BUUM bum bum-be-dum, Bum BUUUM bum bum-be-dum!” Then they laid down a tight 4/4 beat over it and said something with the band name in it. They finished with a little synchronized dancing, and with the tall guy ended by waving a white hanky in a loop around his face, like he was forcing us to admit that WE have now just utterly surrendered to him!

After a set of Peelander-Z doing the exact same Yo Gabba Gabba-esque set they did last year, which was admittedly charming (they even pulled the Kenyan bassist on stage with them), Roky’s son led his band  in a song to prep us for Roky. “I’m going to play one song with my band, and then we’re going to bring up Roky—can you handle that? One song?” I felt a little bad for him, and a little upset. If you have to beg an audience to allow you play one song, an audience that did not come to see you, maybe you should just forget it? Then again, there’s a back story here that’s incredibly sad, and he has my sympathies—can you imagine how terrible, and absent, a father Roky must have been?

Roky Erickson was even rather absent when he got on stage. His voice is still killer—a gravelly country bluesman’s shriek, which worked great on his Bo Diddley introduction song—but he’s forgetting whole sections of his own songs. There are parts of them he remembers, like the spoken-word soliloquy from “Creature with the Atom Brain.” But he struggled on otherwise beautiful songs, like the 13^th Floor Elevator’s “Splash 1,” lagging then rushing to fill in half-remembered words on the verses. And for the life of him, Roky cannot remember that “on St. Swiven’s Day he was born” line from “Night of the Vampire,” my favorite! Fuck a duck!

I saw glimmers of hope in the rapport Roky had with his son, and I will probably always go see him for that voice, and for the chance that his mental faculties will one day return to the level they were a few years ago, when he confidently raised the roof at the El Rey (last month’s show was about the same as this one, i.e. not good). But watching him is sad. He’s a sad, confused old man, and he doesn’t seem to want to be up there for our amusement. Am I supporting a singer I love, or am I a freak show patron torturing an old man at the end of his life? Even the scene later, of people following Roky around and around the same car as he gently tried to escape his own scheduled meet-and-greet with the fans, was a sad perversion of A Hard Day’s Night.

I drowned my sorrows in a couple of Threadgill’s boiling-hot fried pickles, then headed for the culmination of all things Austin and L.A. RECORD, our showcase at Emo’s East, the exact same place I was the night before. Only, the previous night had been devoted to high-profile indie band of Montreal, and this night was all about the punkiest of garage bands, a totally different challenge for the sound guys to master.

And I don’t know that they totally got it right. It’s my third time to see Thee Oh Sees in about a week, and though I loved them again, the room seemed not quite suited for them. It was a little boxy. It was still good stuff, but compared to the other night at the Scoot Inn, where I didn’t even mind my head getting bashed in if I could just hear one more song.

Kid Kongo Powers’ band was up next, and damn, that guy looks like L.A. scenester Blaque Chris, who was also present, though somehow slipped through my fingers (ew) every time I wanted to take a picture of both of them together. Kongo’s band members were dressed in vaguely biker-esque denim jackets and singing some kick-ass songs, including a cover of Thee Midnighters’ “Jolly Green Giant,” a total mindfuck that made me go a little nuts.

Cheap Time came and went, and then the Spits took the stage, dressed in Jack-Chick-approved black demon capes and wearing Reagan masks.  I’ve actually never seen the Spits live, though my whole friend group thinks they’re the best thing that ever happened to punk, and I can see why from their stage show—definitely more punk than garage, they looked to the street-thug side of punk from the 70s, the Dead Boys and Electric Eels and… fuck, is that Blaque Chris, and L.A. RECORD editor Chris Ziegler, and a host of other ne’er-do-wells, all dancing up on the stage? I have the same back-stage passes as they do! And so it was that I jumped up on the stage and danced like a spazz with all my friends.

Being onstage was pretty awesome, and I got to do it all over again for the Gories… holy fuck! This is what garage music is all about, with no bullshit cymbals to get in the way of more rock! And it sounded as good from the back of the stage as it did from out front, where the crowd was writhing and rocking at maximum velocity, with an occasional member of the extended L.A. RECORD crew flinging him/herself full throttle into the audience from above. We were hardly less rowdy on the stage, and while I kept trying to recite Philip Seymour Hoffman’s “Friendship is the booze they feed you” line from Almost Famous, I couldn’t help feeling transcendent, even grateful. Rock and roll is my god, and right now I’m at the feet of the guru. I’m on the freedom bus, to good time city, and I haven’t even paid my fare!

Mick Collins told me only a couple years ago that this band would never reform, but they seemed to have worked through all past grievances. Co-lead Dan Kroha kept looking back at drummer Peggy O’Neill with a clear expression of joyous “I’m rockin’! You rockin’?!? Let’s rock!” They finished the set with a rousing rendition of Link Wray’s version of Willie Dixon’s “Hidden Charms,” possibly the best rock song ever recorded, then did two encores, the second one a cover of “Mona,” which Kroka and Collins only agreed to because O’Neill just kept drumming until they picked up a guitar and finally did it—all at about 2:05 a.m.

It was a magic night, during and afterwards, when we drank and caroused and set off multiple fireworks in the parking lot and shouted and tried to pick up on each other and lost cell phones and set off for parties and ended up at other parties and talked to bassists for hours. But those are tales for my grandkids’ hip friends, not for you.

-D. M. Collins

Behold! It’s floppy, it’s flexi, it’s free to anyone who wants to wander in to our Gories / Spits / Oh Sees / Kid Congo / Cheap Time / Total Slacker show tonight at Emo’s in Austin and it’s got two-minutes-and-then-some of thee mighty Reigning Sound playing live at Alex’s Bar in your very own Long Beach, California!

Can’t make it? Don’t worry—we will be mailing these to all subscribers and seeding them around select L.A. locations for free, and you can get them from In The Red Records, too! Wanna subscribe? Click here! Flexis for everyone … while they last!

“We just signed the lease Thursday,” the adorable twenty-something proprietor of Wardenclyff told me while we waited for another noise band to start. “Wardenclyff” was once a tiny house that had been abused and then abandoned by its previous owners—the inside had stained dry scratchy hardwood floors and a useless sink in the middle of the room. Now, poof!, it’s suddenly an art gallery, with graffiti lining the walls inside and out, and a homemade quilt over the windows to keep out the sun. Despite the primitive accommodations, they had a grassy parking lot and a backyard and a couple rough stages—the perfect recipe for what is the true heart of SXSW, the impromptu showcase.

And nothing could seem more impromptu than a tribute band to Los Angeles’ favorite cult, the Source Family. A documentary about the Source Family had played before noon, and to celebrate, some local Austin musicians formed an impromptu “Source Family” band to play songs by the Source and its associated band, Ya Ho Wha 13. There was a viola player and a bunch of keyboardists and percussionists. But the Casio player seemed to have the most fun.

And some of the Ya Ho Wa cult members showed up, one even dressed in his white tunic and medallion! You’d think that being in a cult, they’d disapprove of young non-believers performing their songs as a lark. But the Source survivors seemed to love their tribute band’s sweeping vocal harmonies and Can-like, in-the-pocket bass grooves centered around the drumming from Lisa Cameron from ST 37. There’s nothing quite like the juxtaposition of a hippie in his transcendental tunic trying to capture something on a digital camera.

Then followed plenty of bands, mostly one-person noise acts such as Sky Chance. He was a delightfully pushy, prematurely graying young man who beat-boxed through a digital delay pedal and had the demeanor of Wayne Coyne from Flaming Lips, if Wayne had spent some time hunting alligators on Swamp People. The very second the Source Family tribute band ended, he brought the crowd from outside to inside the venue like the Pied Piper, screaming into a mike routed through effects pedals strapped to himself and some kind of radio—perhaps the same transistor radio he later used inside the house as a source for found recordings, which he manipulated and warped (in ever sense of the word) for his own purposes. And I really mean for his own purposes, since he never once looked at us or faced the audience.

We also saw Ferdinand Rising and Sprills of Ore and a couple other interesting minimal noise acts. But Daze of Heaven impressed me the most, if for nothing else because this guy approached loop-driven music from the exact opposite perspective of most one-man bands that might play Pehrspace or the Smell. Instead of creating beats with his mouth or a machine and then using that as a platform to make noise atop the beats, Daze of Heaven sets up his soundscape first, blasting his clarinet into the mike, then putting sounds from his mouth and from found feedback (I’m talking serious crackle, the kind of hiss that sounds like rain hitting drywall) into the mix.

When he’s all done setting up the sound, this dude jumps into his drum set, which he plays standing up, in attack mode, almost at random and yet synced somehow with the swirling noise mess he’s cocooned around himself.

And we were ready to leave, but we couldn’t go without watching How I Quit Crack all the way through. This two-piece consists of a relatively normal dude on guitar accompanying a neon goddess covered in bright day-glo colors and face paint. She even wore a spindly set of plastic toys projecting into a pointy cone in front of her, like something the doozers at Fraggle Rock would make. The band had put black lights all around her, so that her face and clothes (and did I mention there were paper flowers all around her?) gave off an odd psychedelic glow, somewhere between the cheapest horror ride at the state fair and the most futuristic movie Roger Corman never got to direct.

But we are at South by motherfucking SouthWEST! And after burning myself with some fireworks in the parking lot, we headed for the Spider House, and caught a band who we’d never heard of before, but who were not shy at all about letting the sound guy know their name.

“I don’t know if you know, but our band is called Deep Space, and so the reverb has to send us to deep space!”

The guys played a really fun version of space rock, refreshing in its simple set up: no giant cacophony of echo, just a Vox Jaguar and a Rickenbacker or two. There wasn’t even a bass! This was the straight-up rock from outer space, akin to Hawkwind or Spacemen 3, easily digestible over a beer. Me and some other guy pulled out our cameras, and the singer started hamming it up a bit, lying with his head upside down at the base of the stage and going on about how “People don’t know how to love!”

So we scooted on over to the Scoot Inn, where people don’t care if you don’t know how to love—they’d much prefer to put a Sailor Jerry’s drink in your hand or let you play ski ball for a buck. Fun times!

All the times on the schedule were utterly different than what we’d been told in the preceding weeks, so it was sheer fate that allowed us to see K-Holes, a sax-wielding band with a singer whose hair was so blond, it was almost white—kind of a Sylvia Miles thing going on. And she’d sometimes sing in a sinister “huff huff” style, like Miriam Makeba in When We Were Kings, but, you know, whiter. The rest of the band was just as hard to pin down stylistically—to describe them as being like the Stooges’ “Fun House” wouldn’t be far off, but they also sometimes approached the dark side of surf and instrumental rock, e.g. Mexican bands like Los Locos Del Ritmo. Many of their songs began and ended quite a bit like “Get Off the Road,” the theme from She Devils on Wheels, so I suppose you could call them “retro” but in the way that every band everywhere is retro in the wake of the death of rock and roll.

It was in that spirit that we then went to Elysium to catch the Stones Throw Showcase, thinking Peanut Butter Wolf and the gang would provide us with some solid sample-based hip hop and electronic music—which is why Vex Ruffin freaked us the fuck out with their rock and roll! In hindsight, I should have expected their inclusion. Vex has been all over the place (including, at some point, my backyard), and in fact just released a free EP a couple days ago on Stones Throw. But it was oddly delicious to walk into a hip hop show and see people playing bass, drums, and guitar and making solid garage rock, albeit with one dude twiddling a delay pedal in his hands.

JonWayne got on the stage for a bit to throw down his rapier-wit witticisms, but it was MED who really kept the crowd in a frenzy. Not always my style (I’m a weirdo, and MED could easily be a massively successful artist who appeals to millions), this time MED’s raps were spread across some Serrato-scratched breaks from Peanut Butter Wolf, whose wacky sense of timing meant the beats were dropped in and out, with the bass side of the mix coming and going in a funky but quirky manner. It must have been hard for MED to rap over, yet he came in on time every beat, and encouraged the room full of flushed faces to talk to him about how often they smoke weed as he encouraged them to smoke it often.

Satiated and in a state of beat-ific bliss, we moseyed back to the Scoot Inn and caught a set by Thee Oh Sees. Perhaps no garage band out right now inspires such enthusiasm from crowds, who slam-danced to their catchy garage riffs in a manner as brutal as at the Cathedral/Nails show I saw last week.

To secure my spot near the front meant getting pummeled for the entire set by the elbows and armpits of sweaty young men. In the melee, I wound up losing a cool Burger Records button and nearly losing my hat! I saved it from the ground before it got stomped on too many times, but couldn’t save myself when some guy’s skull came crashing down at me from 10 feet away, busting my lip and causing me to play the world’s tiniest violin for myself as I threw a much-needed personal pity party.

The band itself was far better than they had been last year (not that they sucked then), and Petey Dammit’s plucking of the old Japanese Fender Jazzmaster guitar, down-tuned to the bass register, really kept the songs a poppin’ with the “ba ba doo, ba ba doo” beats. We were already salivating to the point of pure drool when they full-on blew our minds, closing out the set by having Nick Murray of White Fence sit in on drums.

Soaring on waves of euphoria, we somehow managed to make it home and to bed for a couple hours, before morning and more shows beckoned.

-D. M. Collins

I revisited Eagle Rock for another FYF/ERMF collaboration, in which they presented Daylong Valleys of the Nile, Dom, and Thee Oh Sees. Daylong kicked it off with an audience seeming mostly unfamiliar, with this Lavender Diamond side project. They’re heavily new wave, and their love for music is both audible and visible when they’re performing. They gave us a genuine 1980s sound, and couldn’t have portrayed the beginning of punk/new wave sounds 30 years later better. They said “Thank you, it’s nice to see some old friends tonight,” and quickly packed up so that DOM could begin their set. In between bands, I enjoyed the sounds of Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love,” and Polaris’ “Waiting for October” while each band quickly got things going instead of making us wait around. I believe it might have been because of how close in proximity the Center for the Arts is to residential areas, but it was still refreshing.

I made my way to the very front for Dom, as they said “We’re Dom, we’re from western Massachusetts. This one’s called “Things Change.’” Their music is what I’d classify as girl garage music. It’s sort of grungy and alternative, but in the end it has the sweet vocals and fun lyrics that attract girls. I don’t really consider myself a girl-girl, but I understand why girls enjoy this group’s energetic stage presence and witty songs. “Living in America” had electro backtracking, and seemed to be a crowd-pleaser that pumped everyone up. The biggest fans in the front called out for “Bochica” and the band played it happily. This song embodies a good time montage in a teen movie, and the crowd was feeling it shamelessly. Dom sounded very loud and clear, and had a lot of movement. The set finished after an OK from Thee Oh Sees’ John Dwyer for a few more songs than originally planned, with the announcement, “Next up, Thee Oh Sees, they fuckin’ rule.”

I was in my good picture taking/dancing spot, overjoyed to see Thee Oh Sees, and it wasn’t long before my joy went away because some guy that presumably was on every type of drug and drank every type of alcohol was behind me. He stood with his back to me, kept pushing me and elbowing me while loudly talking to his friends, and even continuously pushed me out of the way to touch Brigid Dawson’s keyboard. I now couldn’t wait any longer for Thee Oh Sees to play, so I could 1)go crazy over the immense talent, and 2)punch this guy in the face and blame it on moshing. As soon as Thee Oh Sees began to play, the crowd came to life and trampled each other vehemently. So, I elbowed the shit out of that guy, shook the spilled beer off of me, and went to the makeshift backstage area to take pictures and not die. The band played the addictive “I was Denied,” which starts out very old school then modernizes on the chorus as it gets louder and progressively badass. Everyone freaked the fuck out when they played hit song “Meat Step Lively,” which reminds me of The Stooges type garage punk. The crowd surfers caught waves during “Crushed Grass” and of course “Tidal Wave,” two songs that exemplify a surf punk sound that is different from the current. Thee Oh Sees gives an original surf/garage/punk that definitely has its influences, but the band is mostly set apart from the rest. “Warm Slime” brings out each of the musicians’ talents; powerful fast drumming, tight swift bass, beautiful loud vocals from Brigid, and John defining punk rock with his skillful vocals and ear-splitting guitar that rests just below his neck. This was their last show after 31 in a row, and now they’re going home to San Francisco for some much needed rest.

—Alyssa Holland (words + photo)

You know how the smell of pink sawdust can bring you immediately back to your elementary school hallway? This music was bringing me back emotionally to mixtapes and 120 Minutes on MTV in 1992, not in a dreamy haze but in an arresting, “wake up and FEEL this!” sensation that paired well with a good beer buzz to take the edge off. There was just a hint of boogie in the bass, and when these kids bobbed back and forth on the stage, their long hair billowed out in front of them like a freak flag flying high! I first saw the Dum Dum girls on this very same stage—maybe the Megaphonic Thrift will reach the same kind of giddy fame, but probably not, since they live in Norway.

Over on the Theater Stage, Alana Amram and the Rough Gems were laying down some heart-wrenching barroom country with just a tinge of Laurel Canyon decadence, even though they’re from Brooklyn. She poked fun at the Apache boys between songs with jokes about their far-out threads—the Apache wing of Burger Records knows Alana from her stint in power pop band the Fame a handful of years back, so I’m sure this ribbing would be considered the “good natured” kind. She’s changed a lot musically since those days—even just a couple years ago, I saw Amram with a slightly different line-up that included her sister and was a bit more rocker/singer-songwritery. But despite the fact that she still looks and dresses a bit like the female Marc Bolan, her modern Rough Gems has gone full-tilt country now.

After seeing Leslie Stevens two days in a row, it’s hard not to compare Amram’s brand of country to Stevens’, since it is in fact more or less the same brand: pedal steel, classic storytelling from a female perspective, and a rock rhythm section. But Amram’s voice, while not as strong or melodious as Stevens’, is a little darker, and so are her stories. She jarred me out of my sunny afternoon haze by commanding the audience to “Take a drink in your right hand, in honor of your mother’s man…”

The Badgers’ mothers are the voice of reason, but the Rough Gems’ moms are honky tonk ne’er do wells that the Badgers’ moms wouldn’t like. If these two country ladies were on a record of early seventies pop HITS, Leslie Stevens would be Melanie, and Alana Amram would be Suzy Quatro.

But the Dead Milkmen were calling. The fucking DEAD MILKMEN! And so we high-tailed it south to 6th Street and the East Side Drive In, where the lines were around the block! I was afraid we wouldn’t get in, so I found Steve MacDonald (whose band OFF! was playing the same gig) sitting in a van, and threatened him with bad album reviews for life if he didn’t try to get us into the show. But then the line started moving really fast, so I got in anyway and I wound up looking like a jackass. Sorry, Steve! But hey, you owe me one for not saying in print that you look like Dr. Ruth.

Dead Milkmen

Inside the place, dance band !!! (Chk Chk Chuk) was on the stage. It may just be that I wasn’t in the mood, but really, do we need another Happy Mondays? Maybe we do.

!!!

Thee Oh Sees were playing the lower stage, and wow, with proper sound and a big crowd, these guys are fantastic, actually BETTER than the hype they’ve been getting. I’m talking full-throttle rock and roll in a way that felt less hard, and maybe less tight, but more real and dangerous than the Riverboat Gambler’s set the day before, though both bands would do well on a bill together. Thee Oh Sees’s tunes went from Sonics-esque stompers to Dead Moon-esque throat-slitters to one or two Kiss-meets-Slade double-time anthems. And they brought their Californian fans with them! The aforementioned Mr. MacDonald as well as a gaggle of Smell-frequenters with Lamps and Growlers T-shirts were stomping their feet in the dust, as were L.A. RECORD’s newfound El Paso friends, who seemed to be having a jolly time that may have involved large amounts of alcohol.

The beer line itself was ginormous, and we were still in it when suddenly the strains of “Taco Land” hit our ears. The Dead Milkmen! For the second time in one day, I was transported back to the nineties, when I’d seen the Dead Milkmen play oh, about a thousand times in Oklahoma. Talking to them before a show at Ikon in Tulsa when I was 14 or so was a pivotal moment in my life, and off or on the stage, they were always a witty breath of fresh air in an era that had tons of irony yet perhaps not enough levity.

I was worried that after the death of bassist Dave Blood (who committed suicide with an overdose of pills just a couple years back), the fire might have gone out of their fun. But they and their bassist stand-in were in top form, making their old chestnuts like “Stuart” and “Punk Rock Girl” sound laugh-out-loud funny (or, okay, at least ear-to-ear grin funny) and captivating the thousand-strong throng despite all its efforts to become a nineties mosh pit. At one point, in the middle of a story that somehow tied together Austin, black people, and a rant against Zooey Deschanel that of course would become the intro to “Bitchin’ Camaro,” Rodney Anonymous caught a young Mohican gentleman just inches from a stage dive, put his arm around his shoulders, pulled him back and said, “Wait a second, you’ll love this part,” and continued to hold the impatient fan for the duration of his story before letting the young man crowd surf away.

It was a triumphant performance that reminded me how fun these songs are to listen to, and not just to laugh to. Like the Dictators, or Zappa, or even the Misfits or Descendants or pick-your-band, these guys have picked some observations of life to sing about that can be pretty funny, but laugh or not, the songs stand up, especially live, and maybe even more so! That’s why it made perfect sense for them to slip Gary Numan’s “In Cars” into their set.

And the night wasn’t even done! We skedaddled to Mohawk, where the Strange Boys proved that their lackluster performance the previous night really must have been a fluke. Or maybe they just wanted to live up to tonight’s competition—with everyone from Quintron to Meanside to the Woggles to Prince Rama on the bill—because they pulled out all the stops, with a lot of energy, great mewling vocals, and even a smile here and there!

The Strange Boys

Jeff the Brotherhood also rose to the challenge of rocking and rolling our brains out…

Jeff the Brotherhood

…. but Ty Segall may have been my personal point of pride of the evening—I’ve watched his career grow and blossom, and for a second, I almost felt like I had put the showcase together, like, “see how fucking GOOD this kid is??? This is MY kid!” Until I realized that really Ty has been an immortal rock and roll God since he was a teenager in Epsilons, and probably everybody here knew it. But for any newbies who may not have seen him before, they definitely left with his name on their lips.

Ty Segall

Because there were two stages, and strange quasi-English girl who was trying to make out with me because she thought I was in a band, I didn’t get to fully appreciate sets by Mean Side and the Woggles, which is too bad, because these fuckers were giving it their ALL, sweating, rocking, getting the crowd going, and all inside on a hot night when people would probably have rather been sprinkling ice cubes on their heads.

But I jettisoned the girl by the final hour of the night (or rather, she me) and was able to fully appreciate Miss Pussycat’s puppet show, which led up to the third Quintron and Miss Pussycat show of my life—probably only the second best Quintron show I’d ever seen, but the BEST Miss Pussycat puppet show, which revolved around an eerily appropriate magical pizza that had to get snuck past the cops, who finally received a beating and/or murder at the hands of some monkeys, or something.

Quintron

Miss Pussycat

The actual music was wonderful too, though compared to the Strange Boys, Ty Segall, and all we had seen today—well, it was tough to live up to. Plus I couldn’t hear enough of the Drum Buddy in the mix, and I feel like somewhere along the line, Mr. Quintron has sort of abandoned the pure “keyboard as a noise tone” approach to his music in favor of more straight-ahead garage, which while wonderful, has about a THOUSAND old, new, and recently fortified competitors, some of them playing RIGHT INSIDE on the other Mohawk stage. I wanted to take Quintron aside and remind him that a little veer towards John Cale-era Tony Conrad simplicity on the keys wouldn’t kill him, and would be fitting to the manifesto I thought he wrote when he went “pop” in the first place.

But then again, maybe I was just cranky. I had been watching bands all day, I had blue balls, and sadly, it was the last show of the entire festival, which had been more fun than telling Blaque Chris to eat a bag of dicks. Things weren’t really over—but I knew the remainder of my time in Austin would be a wind-down, and that a real life without Milkmen, monkeys, and day-long music would soon begin again on a West Coast still tainted with radiation and budget crises. It was time to put down my beer and pick up a newspaper… er, but maybe not just quite yet!

—Dan Collins

1. Kyle Ranson – Warm Slime (Thee Oh Sees)
Walt Gorecki: Kyle Ranson’s work is extremely visceral making him a perfect fit for Thee Oh Sees, whose live performances of hard hitting garage rock at it’s best are not to be missed. It probably doesn’t hurt that he used to live with frontman John Dwyer, along with noted artist Maya Hayuk. This piece slimes it’s way to the top of my picks with ease.

2. George Condo – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Kanye West)
Well Kanye is obviously no stranger to controversy, which is probably why it was hardly even noticed that his most recent release faced heavy censorship issues for the cover art. With album art by world class fine art painter George Condo, the fans win out in the end with a beautiful series of alternate covers by the artist.

3. owleyes – Repetition: A Tribute to David Bowie (Manimal Vinyl)
L.A. Based artist owleyes, aka James Weigel, captures the character of Bowie in a way we haven’t seen before, while also hinting at the eclectic nature of the album within, an instant eyecatcher. The sillhouette of Bowie is immediately recognizable yet bends your perception of spatial physics in this charity benefit release by Manimal Vinyl.

4. Tony Millionaire – National Ransom (Elvis Costello)
Comics artist Tony Millionaire, perhaps most well known for his Drinky Crow series, which was later animated in a hilarious, yet short-lived, Adult Swim show, does a great turn on Elvis Costello’s latest release, bringing to mind the old timey oil barons, which are unfortunately all too current of a concern.

5. Caroline Roberts – The Suburbs (Arcade Fire)
This beautiful photo-manipulation by Montreal based Illustrator / Graphic Designer Caroline Roberts sets an early 70s Southern California tone employing vernacular photography popularized by such greats as Larry Sultan and William Eggleston.

6. Leigh McClosky / Aaron Meyers – Cosmogramma (Flying Lotus)
Two artists? Well yes, Leigh McClosky did the album art, which is excellent as a minimal meditative piece that incorporates the mandala structures which are much of the artist’s focus. What puts this in the top 10 category is the online interactive version engineered by Aaron Meyers. Feel free to give this “augmented reality app” a try – http://flying-lotus.com/fieldlines

7. Becca Mann – Have One On Me (Joanna Newsom)
Painted in a realistic style, Becca’s paintings often work from found photographs. She really captures the serene chaos evoked by Newsom’s music in this elaborately staged composition.

8. Kristina Collantes – The Inanimate Sermon (Mothers of Gut)
Collantes, a self taught illustrator who’s work is unmistakable, captures the psych-influenced rock of Mothers of Gut in this classy combination of art nouveau aesthetics and 1970s new age elegance.

9. Kymia Nawabi – In Evening Air (Future Islands)
Kymia Nawabi’s work is perfectly befitting, capturing the dreamy quality of Baltimore post-punk trio Future Islands. Her “psychic doppelghangers” populate a fantasy world of endless oceans borne out out of the human form.

10. Jessalyn Aaland, Invocation (KIT)
San Francisco based artist Jessalyn Aaland’s collage work, a composition of the clutter of everyday suburbia, supplies the viewer with a very calm sort of apocalypse to ponder while listening to this genre-bending punk based West Coast quartet.

Bonus Section:
Walt’s top 3 cat album covers of 2010

1. Themselves, Crowns Down and Company

2. Best Coast, Crazy For You

3. Klaxons, Surfing the Void

OFF!, THEE OH SEES, NOBUNNY, AND WHITE SHIT ON FRIDAY DEC. 17TH AT THE SEX, 816 SOUTH SANTA FE AVENUE, LOS ANGELES. 8:00PM/ FREE/ ALL AGES.

Brian Stewart, Growlers, Drums: Pelvic bone
Kyle Schuster, Growlers, Keyboards & Guitar: devil
Scott Montoya: Growlers, Bass: Scarab
Brooks Nielsen: Growlers, Vocals: Lil’ Clownie
Warren Thomas, Growlers, Bongos: Pelvic
Matt Vachon, Growlers, Guitar: The Moth Man
Chris Ziegler, L.A. Record Editor: A face…like somebody rolled in something dirty and then rolled their face on some paper
Christina Benson, L.A. Record Associate Editor: This looks like a Hawaiian Voodoo Goddess surrounding by people worshipping it and some eagles bringing it offerings
Bridget Dawson, Oh Sees, Vocals: Tapestry
John Dwyer, Oh Sees, Vocals & Guitar: Clown
Kevin Stewart, Crystal Antlers, Drums: My dad’s face
Sean Borman, Burger Records: Panda Bear
Lee Rickard, Burger Records: Owl
Micheal Quinn, Corridor/ Swahili Blonde,  Multi-Instrumentalist: Pumpkin
Mike Shoun, Oh Sees, Drums: Leon Trotsky combined with the skull of a bear
Marissa Paternoster, Screaming Females, Vocals & Guitar: Two women stabbing each other in the throat
Dan Collins, L.A. Record Music Editor: Like Predator, when he takes off his mask and he’s got those claw things, but a little different, like maybe it’s a metal guy who shaved his beard to look like that
Michael Abbate, Screaming Females, Bass: That is my dad
Joe McGarry, Pop Noir: Teeth
Luke McGarry, Pop Noir: A face
Bob Bruno, Best Coast, Guitar: Goblin
Allen Bleyle, Residual Echos/Happy Birthday, Bass: Cat
Preston Olsen, Woah Hunx, Guitar: Mike Tyson mixed with Luigi from the Mario Bros video game…and really mad in prison, actually.  Like he was in prison and then got fused with Luigi and he got really mad about it.
Cameron Crowe, Audacity, Bass: Presidential Seal
Gabriel Hart, Jail Weddings, Vocals: My own reflection 3 days ago.
Matt Eagleson, Jail Weddings, Piano: Have you ever had to do soul laundry?  Like, do you ever get a stain on your soul?  That’s what that looks like to me.
Jack Hutchings, Starving Daughters, Guitar: Creature climbing a wall
Ali Koehler, Best Coast, Drums: Looks like a dude, like, sitting…meditating…with weird baby carriges floating on either side
Jorge Davila, Davila 666, Guitar: smushed face
Angel Davila, Davila 666, Tamborine & Vocals: A Japanese Woman
Brandon Thomas, Future Ghosts, Vocals: Tiger
Jesse Clavin, Bleached, Bass: Some kind of skull, not a human skull…but some kind of skull…it’s very intense
Bennett Foster, Magic Kids, Vocals & Guitar: Monkey’s paw print
Stephen Pope, Wavves, Bass: A two faced cat, who’s spitting at me, but lovingly thinks spit is love, but it’s NOT…I don’t like you cat!
Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast, Guitar: Lungs
Jennifer Clavin, Cold Cave, Synths: A king sitting in a lake
Dane Chadwick, Abe Vigoda, Drums: Sort of a skull
Juan Velazquez, Abe Vigoda, Vocals & Guitar: A smashed up panda face
Brian Hill, Soft Pack, Drummer: You know the guy who’s transforming himself into the lion-man, or the tiger face? He got all the plastic surgery.  That’s the tiger face man!

Brian Stewart, Growlers, Drums: I see some butts and boobs
Kyle Schuster, Growlers, Keyboards & Guitar: I see some butts and boobs and a penis cross
Scott Montoya: Growlers, Bass: Balloons
Brooks Nielsen: Growlers, Vocals: Jellyfish
Warren Thomas, Growlers, Bongos: Psychedelic intestines
Matt Vachon, Growlers, Guitar: Diarrhea
Chris Ziegler, L.A. Record Editor: Splatter
Christina Benson, L.A. Record Associate Editor: Marshmallow puff guy from Ghostbusters if it flew against a window splattered
Bridget Dawson, Oh Sees, Vocals: Squid
John Dwyer, Oh Sees, Vocals & Guitar: Stain
Kevin Stewart, Crystal Antlers, Drums: A bunch of ink on a piece of white paper
Sean Borman, Burger Records: Wasp
Lee Rickard, Burger Records: Buddha
Micheal Quinn, Corridor/ Swahili Blonde,  Multi-Instrumentalist: Space Pumpkin
Mike Shoun, Oh Sees, Drums: Andromeda Galaxy Super Cluster
Marissa Paternoster, Screaming Females, Vocals & Guitar: Kid in black metal make-up, masterbating
Dan Collins, L.A. Record Music Editor: That one’s totally, like, a SOBE commercial.  First of all, I know these are supposed to be phallic, but it’s very phallic here at the bottom…a little chubby, but that’s cool.
Michael Abbate: Butterfly
Joe McGarry, Pop Noir: Brains
Luke McGarry, Pop Noir: A bunch of balloons
Bob Bruno, Best Coast, Guitar: Broccoli
Allen Bleyle, Residual Echos/Happy Birthday, Bass: Goat
Preston Olsen, Woah Hunx, Guitar: This kind of looks like a napkin that’s been laid in a coffee shop and a bunch of coffee just spilled on the napkin, and then  someone picked it up, and they stuck it on their friend’s back, and then their friend got mad and crashed their car.
Cameron Crowe, Audacity, Bass: Lion
Gabriel Hart, Jail Weddings, Vocals: The mess I made three days ago
Matt Eagleson, Jail Weddings, Piano: That looks like my cat when it gets super pissed and fuckin, takes a chunk out of my nose
Jack Hutchings, Starving Daughters, Guitar: Soapy bubbles
Ali Koehler, Best Coast, Drums: A guy wearing glasses with an atom bomb coming out of his head and spreading his legs, and a tree is growing out of his butt
Jorge Davila, Davila 666, Guitar: Star of some kind with dots around it
Angel Davila 666, Tamborine & Vocals: An alter, but very angry
Brandon Thomas, Future Ghosts, Vocals: Skull and cross-bones
Jesse Clavin, Bleached, Bass: Splattered paint around toad from Mario Cart hanging at the tip of the splattered paint.
Bennett Foster, Magic Kids, Vocals & Guitar: Blood
Stephen Pope, Wavves, Bass: That’s another cat that I’m even more allergic to!  That’s a long haired cat, and I can’t be around them.
Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast, Guitar: A mushroom
Jennifer Clavin, Cold Cave, Synths: A bouquet of flowers
Dane Chadwick, Abe Vigoda, Drums: I see a skull up top and kind of this alien-insect-bug thing
Juan Velazquez, Abe Vigoda, Vocals & Guitar: Genital warts
Brian Hill, Soft Pack, Drummer: That one almost has a zebra face, but it has all these dots around it, but I see a zebra face in the middle of it.

Good/Common answer: Bat, butterfly, female figure (in the center), moth
You may be a little paranoid if you see: Mask, animal face, jack o lantern
Bad answer:Anything insulting about the female figure (it is an indicator of your own body image)”

Brian Stewart, Growlers, Drums: tarantula
Kyle Schuster, Growlers, Keyboards & Guitar: manta ray
Scott Montoya, Growlers, Bass: Donkey
Brooks Nielsen, Growlers, Vocals: Crackhead rocks
Warren Thomas, Growlers, Bongos: flying wolf-hawk…two of em’
Matt Vachon, Growlers, Guitar: Goat
Chris Ziegler, L.A. Record Editor: Pelvis bone and a tail bone
Christina Benson, L.A. Record Associate Editor: Bat
Bridget Dawson, Oh Sees, Vocals: Wolf
John Dwyer, Oh Sees, Vocals & Guitar: Yoda
Kevin Stewart, Crystal Antlers, Drums: A Halloween costume of a wild boar
Sean Borman, Burger Records: War Hog
Lee Rickard, Burger Records: Satan
Micheal Quinn, Corridor/ Swahili Blonde, Multi-Instrumentalist: Hordak from She-Ra
Mike Shoun, Oh Sees, Drums: A smushed bat on hwy 95 in Arizona
Marissa Paternoster, Screaming Females, Vocals & Guitar: Your parents having sex
Dan Collins, L.A. Record Music Editor:  That looks like the front view of a post Apocalyptic hover craft covered in dust that’s coming at you.  There’s a guy, you can’t see him, but he’s sitting down there, maybe these are controls he’s holding, and he’s gonna get you, because he needs the juice.
Michael Abbate, Screaming Females, Bass: Female reproductive system
Joe McGarry, Pop Noir: Jet ski
Luke McGarry, Pop Noir: Two dogs
Bob Bruno, Best Coast, Guitar: Elephant
Allen Bleyle, Residual Echos/Happy Birthday, Bass: Moth/Butterfly hybrid
Preston Olsen, Woah Hunx, Guitar: It looks like the main older gentleman from Fiddler on the Roof, and he’s holding a doppelganger of himself and dancing with his hand back, and they’re both twirling on what looks to be a pogo stick
Cameron Crowe, Audacity, Bass: Satanic Tarot card
Gabriel Hart, Jail Weddings, Vocals: The demon’s head I saw  when I was fourteen except there was thousands of them that took up my whole peripheral vision
Matt Eagleson, Jail Weddings, Piano:The millennium falcon
Jack Hutchings, Starving Daughters, Guitar: Bat
Ali Koehler, Best Coast, Drums: A beetle with two Santa Clauses dancing, holding on to its antennas
Jorge Davila, Davila 666, Guitar: Bird mask
Angel Davila, Davila 666, Tamborine & Vocals: A fox face
Brandon Thomas, Future Ghosts, Vocals: Jack-o-lantern
Jesse Clavin, Bleached, Bass: A bat
Bennett Foster, Magic Kids, Vocals & Guitar: Pelvis
Stephen Pope, Wavves, Bass: Oh my god!  That’s Bennet [Foster of Magic Kids] in the dream I had.  We took acid together and just fucked each other for hours and all these colors bursted out of our cocks and out of our eyeballs and we loved each other and then his girlfriend got mad at me
Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast, Guitar: Two birds touching claws
Jennifer Clavin, Cold Cave, Synths: Clowns on, like, the teacup ride at Disneyland
Dane Chadwick, Abe Vigoda, Drums: Very dark…It’s almost like war pigs or something.  I don’t know I’m getting, like, this weird…like if a pig were to go to war and it wore this mask, this is the mask it’d wear…like a metal face plate
Juan Velazquez, Abe Vigoda, Vocals & Guitar: In the middle is a scarab and on the sides are these two dancers
Brian Hill, Soft Pack, Drummer: Taranchula
You should see this image as: Two human-like forms (females or clowns)
Other good/Common answers:Butterfly, cave entrance”

Brian Stewart, Growlers: Teen Wolf
Kyle Schuster, Growlers: A bunny rabbit of Brian [Stewart]
Scott Montoya: Growlers: Sad Pac-Man
Brooks Nielsen: Growlers: Two fat Shriners drinking beers
Warren Thomas, Growlers, Bongos: Looks like the Cookie Monster if he lit his face on fire
Matt Vachon, Growlers, Guitar: House with a face…laughing at me
Chris Ziegler, L.A. Record Editor: Two dudes high-fiving each other
Christina Benson, L.A. Record Associate Editor: Scary face
Bridget Dawson, Oh Sees, Vocals: Monster
John Dwyer, Oh Sees, Vocals & Guitar: Maple Leaf…Canada!
Kevin Stewart, Crystal Antlers, Drums: A guy reaching his hands out, and he’s wearing a dress
Sean Borman, Burger Records: Those guys from Secret of Mana, a video game I used to play
Lee Rickard, Burger Records: Wolf
Micheal Quinn, Corridor/ Swahili Blonde, Multi-Instrumentalist: Grimace from McDonalds
Mike Shoun, Oh Sees, Drums: Japanese rabbit thing
Marissa Paternoster, Screaming Females, Vocals & Guitar: One of those ghosts from Pac-Man
Dan Collins, L.A. Record Music Editor: That is the grim bear of death…he’s like, “Oh bother” but he’s gonna swallow your soul
Michael Abbate, Screaming Females, Bass: That’s my dad again
Joe McGarry, Pop Noir: Pac-Man ghosts
Luke McGarry, Pop Noir: Two clowns on a round-a-bout
Bob Bruno, Best Coast, Guitar: Space invader
Allen Bleyle, Residual Echos/Happy Birthday, Bass: Satanic Castle
Preston Olsen, Woah Hunx, Guitar: It kinda looks like a drooping Garfield, like he ate a bunch of Lasagna and it was so hot it melted his mouth open extra wide, so he’s in a lot of pain.
Cameron Crowe, Audacity, Bass: Two old men playing checkers
Gabriel Hart, Jail Weddings, Vocals: A monster that’s going to  soothe me in some way
Matt Eagleson, Jail Weddings, Piano: also, the millennium falcon, but this time with Indiana Jones inside
Jack Hutchings, Starving Daughters, Guitar: A beheaded monster
Ali Koehler, Best Coast, Drums: Two weird goose humans playing patty cake
Angel Davila, Davila 666, Tamborine & Vocals: A Cartoon from Adult Swim
Jorge Davila, Davila 666, Guitar: Two clowns playing patty cake
Brandon Thomas, Future Ghosts, Vocals: Skull
Jesse Clavin, Bleached, Bass: I just see a crying animated creature that wants to, like, NOT be animated anymore, it’s like “I’M HUMAN!”
Bennett Foster, Magic Kids, Vocals & Guitar: A different kind of Pelvis
Stephen Pope, Wavves, Bass: That’s my mom.  Hey mom, I love you!
Bethany Cosentino, Best Coast, Guitar: Two jokers high-fiving
Jennifer Clavin, Cold Cave, Synths: Also clowns, high-fiving
Dane Chadwick, Abe Vigoda, Drums: Rocket taking off back in time somewhere.
Juan Velazquez, Abe Vigoda, Vocals & Guitar: A vagina
Brian Hill, Soft Pack, Drummer: Two dudes, wearing fezes, that are dancing, and they’re high-fiving

KSCR FEST 2010

4:15-4:45 The Smiles

5:00- 5:30 Trolley Station

5:45- 6:30 Princeton

7:50- 7:35 Rumspringa

8:15-9:00 The Growlers

8:00-9:20 Dublab

9:20- 10:05 The Entrance Band

10:05-10:25 DJ Set- Dublab

10:25- 11:15 Thee Oh Sees