from:
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-alldiv?divstory=/diversions/sxsw/03-18-05-sxsw1.html
Major labels face the music at SXSW
BY ROBERT LOERZEL
DIVERSIONS EDITOR
Mavis Staples
AUSTIN, Texas - The death of the big music labels
is coming any day now. And independent musicians
will play a joyous tune at their funeral.
Well, maybe not, but those are the sorts of
predictions that musicians and record-label
owners are making at the South By Southwest Music
Conference this week in Austin, the largest
annual music-industry gathering.
Judging from the music being played here by more
than 1,300 artists, including a couple dozen from
Chicago and its suburbs, the soundtrack for that
funeral will be wildly eclectic, ranging from the
quietest of acoustic hymns (perhaps something by
the new British troubadour of calm, Adem) to
raucous, fiercely sung dance music (LCD
Soundsystem). One thing's for sure -- there will
be a lot of cowbells.
Good riddance from Elvis
During an onstage interview at the conference,
Elvis Costello bemoaned his experiences with the
corporate changes at various record labels over
the years.
"The minute broadband is cheap enough and
accessible to everyone, the record business is
over," Costello said. "All bets are off. You
won't need them anymore."
All the predictions of doom and transformation
may be a little overwrought, but big changes are
already happening in the music world. Downloading
of songs has changed the way people get their
music. Even illegal downloads are actually
helping many musicians, who make most of their
money through touring and merchandise sales
anyway.
"It really helped raise the profile of the
artists," said Eric Speck, owner of Ace Fu
Records.
"Records are just a souvenir. Live music is where
it's at," said Costello, who also cited an
unexpected hero in the field of independent
artists releasing records outside of the
corporate musical structure -- Slim Whitman. "He
was a forerunner." (Uh, OK, Elvis -- if you say
so.)
Meanwhile, satellite and Internet radio are
making it possible to hear a much more diverse
play list than the old AM and FM. During a
performance piece at the Austin Museum of Art,
Chicago's Jon Langford described the limited
selection of songs on American radio as "a sort
of Stalinist institution."
Even Robert Plant, whose music with Led Zeppelin
is one of the biggest blocks in that wall of
classic rock radio, recounted pledging money to
an independent radio station in Oregon when the
station announced, "We promise never, ever to
play 'Stairway to Heaven.'"
"It's not that I don't like it," said Plant, who
was the convention's keynote speaker. "It's just
that I've heard it before."
Burning Bright
Not surprisingly, Costello, the man who wrote
"Radio Radio," said, "Radio's my enemy. I really
have no home there at all."
Another change is the rise of blogs and other Web
sites as a way for people to find out about
music.
Martin Hall, the head of publicity for Merge
Records, cited the Chicago-based Web site
Pitchfork Media as the prime example of how this
new sort of "word of mouth" works.
"That's our audience," he said. "A good review in
Pitchfork sells more records for us than a good
review in Rolling Stone."
Not all of the changes taking place are
necessarily good news for independent record
labels, however. Even if people can get more
information about music now on the Web, fewer
people around the country can stop into a local
record store. Nan Warshaw, co-owner of Chicago's
Bloodshot Records, said she's not sure if
anything on the Internet can really replace that.
"Our business has become much more difficult over
the past five years with the demise of
independent retail," she said. "There are whole
scenes that are lost. Whenever you lose a local
record store, you lose that scene."
Trend spotting
With so many musical acts playing at South By
Southwest, no one can see more than a fraction of
the concerts, so any attempt at spotting an
overall trend is suspect. (Without cloning
technology, it's impossible to follow the advice
that performer Robyn Hitchcock offered: "See
everyone.") If any trend is obvious, it's simply
the diversity of the music -both in terms of
musical style and its geographic origins.
Almost 300 bands are visiting from other
countries (even including one from Iran). It
seems plausible that a group from just about
anyplace on the planet might win the hearts of
music fans and critics. And almost every musical
style that has ever been played seems like fair
game for reinvention.
The artists visiting here from the Chicago area
include some fairly well-known names such as
Langford, Mavis Staples, the Redwalls and
Lindenhurst country singer Robbie Fulks, who is
promoting his new album, coming out in May on the
Yep Roc label.
But some of the Chicago bands chosen by the South
By Southwest judges for a moment in the spotlight
here are virtually unknown in their hometown.
Burning Bright, a pop-punk band with members from
Long Grove, Libertyville and Chicago, doesn't
have a record deal, but they're hoping to grab
some attention with their hard-charging
radio-friendly tunes. (A member of Robert Plant's
entourage watched Burning Bright's energetic set
at the Hard Rock Café, but Mr. Plant himself was
across town at the show by blues legend Hubert
Sumlin.)
Dark Fog, a band formed last year by Schaumburg
guitarist Ray Donat, will play Saturday night,
promising a "new psychedelic rock" that injects
Jimi Hendrix-style guitar soloing into the
"shoe-gazer" music of bands like My Bloody
Valentine.
The Redwalls, with three members from Deerfield
and one from Algonquin, are gearing up for the
June release of "De Nova," their second album --
and their first for Capitol Records. During a
daytime performance Thursday, the Redwalls were
still making it obvious that the early Beatles
are their biggest influence, but they played
their original Mersey Beat numbers with such
intensity it sounded fresh.
Langford's performance at the Austin Museum of
Art was more like a rehearsal than a fully
developed version of the performance piece he
plans to bring to other venues this year,
possibly including Chicago's Museum of
ContemporaryArt. Glenview native Tim Tuten,
co-owner of Chicago's Hideout nightclub, arranged
for the Austin performance and introduced
Langford by reciting Carl Sandburg's poems on
Chicago. With assistance from fellow Mekons
member Sally Timms and a violinist, Langford told
the story of his life and art while playing bits
of his punk and country repertoire.
Highlights
Musical highlights of the festival so far include
LCD Soundsystem, who play the sort of dance music
a rock music fan can love. The group's sound is
rooted in electronic-keyboard, but unmistakably
played by a real, live band, with plenty of
percussion-heavy grooves and incredibly intense
singing by James Murphy.
Gris Gris
Midlake, a Texas band that released one of last
year's most overlooked albums, "Bamnan and
Silvercork," proved that they're a great live
band, too, despite dealing with some technical
difficulties and a truncated performance slot.
With their indelible melodies and lyrics that are
simultaneously whimsical and disconcerting,
Midlake will appeal to fans of the Flaming Lips
and Grandaddy.
Canada has a strong presence at the festival,
with noteworthy bands such as Stars and Apostle
of Hustle (whose members include a flamenco
dancer, adding the percussion of her dancing
steps to the rhythms of some songs).
Japan also has many bands at South By Southwest,
though some of them, such as Titan Go Kings, seem
to draw attention mostly because it's a novelty
to see colorfully dressed, small-statured
Japanese women playing loud punk rock. Whether
they play it well is another question. But
Japan's Mono is another kind of music altogether,
creating slowly building instrumental glaciers of
sound with nuanced drumming.
The psychedelic and art-rock spirit of that music
can also be heard in the Syd Barrett-like
stylings of the Italian band Jennifer Gentle, who
have signed with Sub Pop, and the garage-rock
freakouts of Oakland's Gris Gris.
The most hyped bands include Bloc Party and
Kaiser Chiefs, each billed as this year's Franz
Ferdinand, and the Sri Lankan-British hip-hop
performer M.I.A. (This reporter waited in line
for about an hour to see M.I.A. and managed to
catch the last five minutes of her show, not
enough to learn what the fuss was all about.)
More established artists are here, too, some of
them trying to revive their careers (Billy Idol)
or just playing to their fans (Costello and
Plant).
During a morning performance at the convention
center before Plant's event, Mavis Staples
commented on the importance of not ignoring older
musicians. She noted that Chicago's Alligator
Records was the only label that would out her
latest album (recorded in Winnetka by Jim
Tullio).
"All these companies - they want Beyonce,"
Staples said. "Some days they think we're over
the hill, they want to send us out to pasture,
while they deal with those teenyboppers ... I'm
here to tell you I used to be a Beyonce."
Major lables face the music at SXSW
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from:
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-alldiv?divstory=/diversions/sxsw/03-18-05-sxsw1.html
Major labels face the music at SXSW
BY ROBERT LOERZEL
DIVERSIONS EDITOR
Mavis Staples
AUSTIN, Texas - The death of the big music labels
is coming any day now. And independent musicians
will play a joyous tune at their funeral.
Well, maybe not, but those are the sorts of
predictions that musicians and record-label
owners are making at the South By Southwest Music
Conference this week in Austin, the largest
annual music-industry gathering.
Judging from the music being played here by more
than 1,300 artists, including a couple dozen from
Chicago and its suburbs, the soundtrack for that
funeral will be wildly eclectic, ranging from the
quietest of acoustic hymns (perhaps something by
the new British troubadour of calm, Adem) to
raucous, fiercely sung dance music (LCD
Soundsystem). One thing's for sure -- there will
be a lot of cowbells.
Good riddance from Elvis
During an onstage interview at the conference,
Elvis Costello bemoaned his experiences with the
corporate changes at various record labels over
the years.
"The minute broadband is cheap enough and
accessible to everyone, the record business is
over," Costello said. "All bets are off. You
won't need them anymore."
All the predictions of doom and transformation
may be a little overwrought, but big changes are
already happening in the music world. Downloading
of songs has changed the way people get their
music. Even illegal downloads are actually
helping many musicians, who make most of their
money through touring and merchandise sales
anyway.
"It really helped raise the profile of the
artists," said Eric Speck, owner of Ace Fu
Records.
"Records are just a souvenir. Live music is where
it's at," said Costello, who also cited an
unexpected hero in the field of independent
artists releasing records outside of the
corporate musical structure -- Slim Whitman. "He
was a forerunner." (Uh, OK, Elvis -- if you say
so.)
Meanwhile, satellite and Internet radio are
making it possible to hear a much more diverse
play list than the old AM and FM. During a
performance piece at the Austin Museum of Art,
Chicago's Jon Langford described the limited
selection of songs on American radio as "a sort
of Stalinist institution."
Even Robert Plant, whose music with Led Zeppelin
is one of the biggest blocks in that wall of
classic rock radio, recounted pledging money to
an independent radio station in Oregon when the
station announced, "We promise never, ever to
play 'Stairway to Heaven.'"
"It's not that I don't like it," said Plant, who
was the convention's keynote speaker. "It's just
that I've heard it before."
Burning Bright
Not surprisingly, Costello, the man who wrote
"Radio Radio," said, "Radio's my enemy. I really
have no home there at all."
Another change is the rise of blogs and other Web
sites as a way for people to find out about
music.
Martin Hall, the head of publicity for Merge
Records, cited the Chicago-based Web site
Pitchfork Media as the prime example of how this
new sort of "word of mouth" works.
"That's our audience," he said. "A good review in
Pitchfork sells more records for us than a good
review in Rolling Stone."
Not all of the changes taking place are
necessarily good news for independent record
labels, however. Even if people can get more
information about music now on the Web, fewer
people around the country can stop into a local
record store. Nan Warshaw, co-owner of Chicago's
Bloodshot Records, said she's not sure if
anything on the Internet can really replace that.
"Our business has become much more difficult over
the past five years with the demise of
independent retail," she said. "There are whole
scenes that are lost. Whenever you lose a local
record store, you lose that scene."
Trend spotting
With so many musical acts playing at South By
Southwest, no one can see more than a fraction of
the concerts, so any attempt at spotting an
overall trend is suspect. (Without cloning
technology, it's impossible to follow the advice
that performer Robyn Hitchcock offered: "See
everyone.") If any trend is obvious, it's simply
the diversity of the music -both in terms of
musical style and its geographic origins.
Almost 300 bands are visiting from other
countries (even including one from Iran). It
seems plausible that a group from just about
anyplace on the planet might win the hearts of
music fans and critics. And almost every musical
style that has ever been played seems like fair
game for reinvention.
The artists visiting here from the Chicago area
include some fairly well-known names such as
Langford, Mavis Staples, the Redwalls and
Lindenhurst country singer Robbie Fulks, who is
promoting his new album, coming out in May on the
Yep Roc label.
But some of the Chicago bands chosen by the South
By Southwest judges for a moment in the spotlight
here are virtually unknown in their hometown.
Burning Bright, a pop-punk band with members from
Long Grove, Libertyville and Chicago, doesn't
have a record deal, but they're hoping to grab
some attention with their hard-charging
radio-friendly tunes. (A member of Robert Plant's
entourage watched Burning Bright's energetic set
at the Hard Rock Café, but Mr. Plant himself was
across town at the show by blues legend Hubert
Sumlin.)
Dark Fog, a band formed last year by Schaumburg
guitarist Ray Donat, will play Saturday night,
promising a "new psychedelic rock" that injects
Jimi Hendrix-style guitar soloing into the
"shoe-gazer" music of bands like My Bloody
Valentine.
The Redwalls, with three members from Deerfield
and one from Algonquin, are gearing up for the
June release of "De Nova," their second album --
and their first for Capitol Records. During a
daytime performance Thursday, the Redwalls were
still making it obvious that the early Beatles
are their biggest influence, but they played
their original Mersey Beat numbers with such
intensity it sounded fresh.
Langford's performance at the Austin Museum of
Art was more like a rehearsal than a fully
developed version of the performance piece he
plans to bring to other venues this year,
possibly including Chicago's Museum of
ContemporaryArt. Glenview native Tim Tuten,
co-owner of Chicago's Hideout nightclub, arranged
for the Austin performance and introduced
Langford by reciting Carl Sandburg's poems on
Chicago. With assistance from fellow Mekons
member Sally Timms and a violinist, Langford told
the story of his life and art while playing bits
of his punk and country repertoire.
Highlights
Musical highlights of the festival so far include
LCD Soundsystem, who play the sort of dance music
a rock music fan can love. The group's sound is
rooted in electronic-keyboard, but unmistakably
played by a real, live band, with plenty of
percussion-heavy grooves and incredibly intense
singing by James Murphy.
Gris Gris
Midlake, a Texas band that released one of last
year's most overlooked albums, "Bamnan and
Silvercork," proved that they're a great live
band, too, despite dealing with some technical
difficulties and a truncated performance slot.
With their indelible melodies and lyrics that are
simultaneously whimsical and disconcerting,
Midlake will appeal to fans of the Flaming Lips
and Grandaddy.
Canada has a strong presence at the festival,
with noteworthy bands such as Stars and Apostle
of Hustle (whose members include a flamenco
dancer, adding the percussion of her dancing
steps to the rhythms of some songs).
Japan also has many bands at South By Southwest,
though some of them, such as Titan Go Kings, seem
to draw attention mostly because it's a novelty
to see colorfully dressed, small-statured
Japanese women playing loud punk rock. Whether
they play it well is another question. But
Japan's Mono is another kind of music altogether,
creating slowly building instrumental glaciers of
sound with nuanced drumming.
The psychedelic and art-rock spirit of that music
can also be heard in the Syd Barrett-like
stylings of the Italian band Jennifer Gentle, who
have signed with Sub Pop, and the garage-rock
freakouts of Oakland's Gris Gris.
The most hyped bands include Bloc Party and
Kaiser Chiefs, each billed as this year's Franz
Ferdinand, and the Sri Lankan-British hip-hop
performer M.I.A. (This reporter waited in line
for about an hour to see M.I.A. and managed to
catch the last five minutes of her show, not
enough to learn what the fuss was all about.)
More established artists are here, too, some of
them trying to revive their careers (Billy Idol)
or just playing to their fans (Costello and
Plant).
During a morning performance at the convention
center before Plant's event, Mavis Staples
commented on the importance of not ignoring older
musicians. She noted that Chicago's Alligator
Records was the only label that would out her
latest album (recorded in Winnetka by Jim
Tullio).
"All these companies - they want Beyonce,"
Staples said. "Some days they think we're over
the hill, they want to send us out to pasture,
while they deal with those teenyboppers ... I'm
here to tell you I used to be a Beyonce."
http://www.pioneerlocal.com/cgi-bin/ppo-alldiv?divstory=/diversions/sxsw/03-18-05-sxsw1.html
Major labels face the music at SXSW
BY ROBERT LOERZEL
DIVERSIONS EDITOR
Mavis Staples
AUSTIN, Texas - The death of the big music labels
is coming any day now. And independent musicians
will play a joyous tune at their funeral.
Well, maybe not, but those are the sorts of
predictions that musicians and record-label
owners are making at the South By Southwest Music
Conference this week in Austin, the largest
annual music-industry gathering.
Judging from the music being played here by more
than 1,300 artists, including a couple dozen from
Chicago and its suburbs, the soundtrack for that
funeral will be wildly eclectic, ranging from the
quietest of acoustic hymns (perhaps something by
the new British troubadour of calm, Adem) to
raucous, fiercely sung dance music (LCD
Soundsystem). One thing's for sure -- there will
be a lot of cowbells.
Good riddance from Elvis
During an onstage interview at the conference,
Elvis Costello bemoaned his experiences with the
corporate changes at various record labels over
the years.
"The minute broadband is cheap enough and
accessible to everyone, the record business is
over," Costello said. "All bets are off. You
won't need them anymore."
All the predictions of doom and transformation
may be a little overwrought, but big changes are
already happening in the music world. Downloading
of songs has changed the way people get their
music. Even illegal downloads are actually
helping many musicians, who make most of their
money through touring and merchandise sales
anyway.
"It really helped raise the profile of the
artists," said Eric Speck, owner of Ace Fu
Records.
"Records are just a souvenir. Live music is where
it's at," said Costello, who also cited an
unexpected hero in the field of independent
artists releasing records outside of the
corporate musical structure -- Slim Whitman. "He
was a forerunner." (Uh, OK, Elvis -- if you say
so.)
Meanwhile, satellite and Internet radio are
making it possible to hear a much more diverse
play list than the old AM and FM. During a
performance piece at the Austin Museum of Art,
Chicago's Jon Langford described the limited
selection of songs on American radio as "a sort
of Stalinist institution."
Even Robert Plant, whose music with Led Zeppelin
is one of the biggest blocks in that wall of
classic rock radio, recounted pledging money to
an independent radio station in Oregon when the
station announced, "We promise never, ever to
play 'Stairway to Heaven.'"
"It's not that I don't like it," said Plant, who
was the convention's keynote speaker. "It's just
that I've heard it before."
Burning Bright
Not surprisingly, Costello, the man who wrote
"Radio Radio," said, "Radio's my enemy. I really
have no home there at all."
Another change is the rise of blogs and other Web
sites as a way for people to find out about
music.
Martin Hall, the head of publicity for Merge
Records, cited the Chicago-based Web site
Pitchfork Media as the prime example of how this
new sort of "word of mouth" works.
"That's our audience," he said. "A good review in
Pitchfork sells more records for us than a good
review in Rolling Stone."
Not all of the changes taking place are
necessarily good news for independent record
labels, however. Even if people can get more
information about music now on the Web, fewer
people around the country can stop into a local
record store. Nan Warshaw, co-owner of Chicago's
Bloodshot Records, said she's not sure if
anything on the Internet can really replace that.
"Our business has become much more difficult over
the past five years with the demise of
independent retail," she said. "There are whole
scenes that are lost. Whenever you lose a local
record store, you lose that scene."
Trend spotting
With so many musical acts playing at South By
Southwest, no one can see more than a fraction of
the concerts, so any attempt at spotting an
overall trend is suspect. (Without cloning
technology, it's impossible to follow the advice
that performer Robyn Hitchcock offered: "See
everyone.") If any trend is obvious, it's simply
the diversity of the music -both in terms of
musical style and its geographic origins.
Almost 300 bands are visiting from other
countries (even including one from Iran). It
seems plausible that a group from just about
anyplace on the planet might win the hearts of
music fans and critics. And almost every musical
style that has ever been played seems like fair
game for reinvention.
The artists visiting here from the Chicago area
include some fairly well-known names such as
Langford, Mavis Staples, the Redwalls and
Lindenhurst country singer Robbie Fulks, who is
promoting his new album, coming out in May on the
Yep Roc label.
But some of the Chicago bands chosen by the South
By Southwest judges for a moment in the spotlight
here are virtually unknown in their hometown.
Burning Bright, a pop-punk band with members from
Long Grove, Libertyville and Chicago, doesn't
have a record deal, but they're hoping to grab
some attention with their hard-charging
radio-friendly tunes. (A member of Robert Plant's
entourage watched Burning Bright's energetic set
at the Hard Rock Café, but Mr. Plant himself was
across town at the show by blues legend Hubert
Sumlin.)
Dark Fog, a band formed last year by Schaumburg
guitarist Ray Donat, will play Saturday night,
promising a "new psychedelic rock" that injects
Jimi Hendrix-style guitar soloing into the
"shoe-gazer" music of bands like My Bloody
Valentine.
The Redwalls, with three members from Deerfield
and one from Algonquin, are gearing up for the
June release of "De Nova," their second album --
and their first for Capitol Records. During a
daytime performance Thursday, the Redwalls were
still making it obvious that the early Beatles
are their biggest influence, but they played
their original Mersey Beat numbers with such
intensity it sounded fresh.
Langford's performance at the Austin Museum of
Art was more like a rehearsal than a fully
developed version of the performance piece he
plans to bring to other venues this year,
possibly including Chicago's Museum of
ContemporaryArt. Glenview native Tim Tuten,
co-owner of Chicago's Hideout nightclub, arranged
for the Austin performance and introduced
Langford by reciting Carl Sandburg's poems on
Chicago. With assistance from fellow Mekons
member Sally Timms and a violinist, Langford told
the story of his life and art while playing bits
of his punk and country repertoire.
Highlights
Musical highlights of the festival so far include
LCD Soundsystem, who play the sort of dance music
a rock music fan can love. The group's sound is
rooted in electronic-keyboard, but unmistakably
played by a real, live band, with plenty of
percussion-heavy grooves and incredibly intense
singing by James Murphy.
Gris Gris
Midlake, a Texas band that released one of last
year's most overlooked albums, "Bamnan and
Silvercork," proved that they're a great live
band, too, despite dealing with some technical
difficulties and a truncated performance slot.
With their indelible melodies and lyrics that are
simultaneously whimsical and disconcerting,
Midlake will appeal to fans of the Flaming Lips
and Grandaddy.
Canada has a strong presence at the festival,
with noteworthy bands such as Stars and Apostle
of Hustle (whose members include a flamenco
dancer, adding the percussion of her dancing
steps to the rhythms of some songs).
Japan also has many bands at South By Southwest,
though some of them, such as Titan Go Kings, seem
to draw attention mostly because it's a novelty
to see colorfully dressed, small-statured
Japanese women playing loud punk rock. Whether
they play it well is another question. But
Japan's Mono is another kind of music altogether,
creating slowly building instrumental glaciers of
sound with nuanced drumming.
The psychedelic and art-rock spirit of that music
can also be heard in the Syd Barrett-like
stylings of the Italian band Jennifer Gentle, who
have signed with Sub Pop, and the garage-rock
freakouts of Oakland's Gris Gris.
The most hyped bands include Bloc Party and
Kaiser Chiefs, each billed as this year's Franz
Ferdinand, and the Sri Lankan-British hip-hop
performer M.I.A. (This reporter waited in line
for about an hour to see M.I.A. and managed to
catch the last five minutes of her show, not
enough to learn what the fuss was all about.)
More established artists are here, too, some of
them trying to revive their careers (Billy Idol)
or just playing to their fans (Costello and
Plant).
During a morning performance at the convention
center before Plant's event, Mavis Staples
commented on the importance of not ignoring older
musicians. She noted that Chicago's Alligator
Records was the only label that would out her
latest album (recorded in Winnetka by Jim
Tullio).
"All these companies - they want Beyonce,"
Staples said. "Some days they think we're over
the hill, they want to send us out to pasture,
while they deal with those teenyboppers ... I'm
here to tell you I used to be a Beyonce."
