Saturday, March 10, 2007
The getting there . . .
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Travel and Places
So here I am in Texas.
It took 10 hours of flying, 8 hours of hanging around in airports, a train and three cab rides to get me here but I made it.
Along the way there have been Wednesday night was the night Manchester United played Lille in the European Cup. the net result was 6 bus loads of aggrieved Frenchmen coming back once the game was over. Needless to say the slammed doors didn't help with my sleep patterns, but then again nothing else in the next 24 hours did.
Up at 6am and caught a cab to the airport where I had a three hour wait for my International flight. The flight was pleasant enough really, I am used to the 8 hour long hauls now so I got to see Rocky Balboa (predictable) and A night at the Museum
(even more predictable), so sleep called on and off but eventually I made Atlanta by lunch time, well a late lunch time even though my head thought it was bedtime.
After a pleasant time at US customs :), I hung around in Atlanta Airport for five hours waiting for my flight. Atlanta is a whole bunch of humanity, the busiest airport in the world it just never stops moving. This is cool if you like observing the pace of the world not so cool if you want to eat because the good restaurants where over flowing so I settled for a Diet Coke and a pack of Lays (walkers to you lol).
Eventually I was in the air again sandwiched between, as one helpful lady put it, the two biggest guys on the plane. Then one more cab and I am at the Quality Inn, or Best American Value Inn as it is now known since I made my booking. By then I was shattered so it was time to sleep and try again in the morning.
So this morning I hit the buses. The thing is you expect America to be full of gas guzzlers and to an extent it is, but they do know how to run a fine public transports system or Mass Trans as it is known here. One dollar gets you a day pass and lets you ride all day anywhere in a city that is huge. My trip this morning was to buy a laptop with which this blog is being written and to go downtown to my favourite eatery JB Riley's on 6th Street. At night time 6th is where the action is, with live shows every other building, during the day its a chilled out tourist zone. However Riley's is and Irish theme bar which does an incredible burger and fries for $6.95.
After that I cam home set up this website and chilled out. That pretty much it for me today, so I will be back later with some history stories. . . .
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Austin History 1
Current mood:Educating
Category: Travel and Places
Austin is the 16th largest city in the United States. There are 1.65 million people in the greater metropolitan area and has been around as an official settlement for 170 years. Before the Europeans came along there where settlements by three different tribes, Tonkawa, Comanche and Lipan Apache. The first European settlers came from Spain and was officially part of Spain until the Mexican revolution, it then became part of Mexico.
During this period a large proportion of United States citizens began settling with the approval of the Mexican Government. After problems began to arise with the Mexican government. Texas then declared independence, then in 1844 Texas became a state within the United States, with Austin as its capital. From colony, to province to nation, to statehood, then a change of nation as the United States Civil War saw Texas become part of the Confederacy and then once the war was over back to the Union. Austin is named after Stephen F. Austin who is generally considered to be the founder of Texas and the leader of the first settlers from the US.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Lone Star State of mind
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Travel and Places
Austin is a company town with three different companies that rely and nurture each other. Politics, music and education. First came the politicians, they brought the money in to build the Universities and the students demanded to be entertained. That's an over simplified sentence but you get the idea so today we are gonna concentrate on politics. Saturday is a good a day as any because Congress is open to the public. The congress building itself is an incredible structure, built from granite and marble it dominates the skyline of Austin. Built facing South (I wonder why) it houses the offices of the 181 legislatures of the Texas Congress and Senate.
The current Texas constitution dates from 1876 and has stood the test of time remaining unaltered, it has its own bill of rights like the American Federal constitution but with some extras unique to Texas. Along side the legislature there is a whole other raft of elected officials. Head of which is the Governor, then the Lieutenant Governor, State Comptroller that basically give a whole new edge to the American democratic model, the general belief is that the Governorship is the lesser office than that of the Lieutenant Governor as the LG is the head of the senate and therefore has much more direct control of debate. In actuality the Speaker of the House (leader of the dominant party in state congress) is the most influential person in the state.
Texas has had a lot influence on national politics, former Texas Governor George W. Bush became President, his father began his Presidential run by building his base in the Texas Republican party. Dick Cheney also lives in Texas though his political career has mainly been in other parts of the country. However even back in the sixties, President Lyndon Johnson lifelong Texas resident was put in power by the second big shift of American culture and politics after FDR's great reforms of the prewar and war years. So Texas has always been a microcosm of what has been going on nationally but also more directly the South.
The state building itself is huge, three floors of offices and chambers that house not only the senate and congress but an office for the Governor to receive official state guests and the Texas Supreme court, as well as the court of appeals. The Supreme court is given higher rank by means of furniture everyone else gets oak the Supreme court gets Walnut. The congress sits only every other year for six months, setting an agenda and leaving it to the workers of the state to enforce it. However sometimes this doesn't always play out as necessary, like last year when the education board found out it didn't have enough money to buy books or pay teachers so The Governor Rick Perry called a special session of the congress and senate to hammer out a new education budget.
From a cultural point of view Texas tends towards a conservative social and fiscal model, originally solidly Democrat it is now more or less solidly Republican. This is can be put down to the shift in the mentality of the parties. Austin itself however is one of the Democratic, strongly progressive politically and with a strong activist streak. Today for instance I had the joy of watching a choir sing about the need for a re-evaluation of consumerism whilst outside Starbucks, whilst across the street outside the Congress building one group was trying to explain that the whole 9/11 disaster was a conspiracy and finally a gospel choir supporting community development.
Just a cool story I found today, during the 20's there was trial which involved a high profile "gentleman's" club, as each member of the supreme court was a member of the club they couldn't sit on the case, eventually the governor promoted 3 female attorneys from doing regular research work to become the three judges on the Supreme Court because they couldn't find any male qualified judges who where not members of the club.
Well thats Texas politics, tomorrow I'll take some pics of the local, local political places.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Longhorns and other such animals
Well Today is wet, so I'm staying in my hotel. So lets talk education. Specifically Higher Education which is big business here in Austin. The main player in the game, in more ways than one, Is Texas University. It is huge, I mean really big but the biggest building's are not part of the faculty. The Texas state system is a large sprawling affair, each state in the US has a State system with campuses all over the state specializing in certain disciplines. The University of Texas at Austin Campus houses 50,000 students. To give you so idea of scope, Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam Universities combined house around fifty thousand students. Nearly half a million people have passed through it's doors since 1883 an is considered the flagship of the University of Texas system.
As early as Texas's Mexican history there where rumors of a statewide research and education facility. Upon the Texas Revolution the original constitution set aside land for Texas to have its own state University in Austin, giving over a million acres in grazing rights to the University so they could raise continuous funds. However in actuality not a lot was done about it until after Civil war, building then began on the old main building. Slowly but surely the state system evolved, however after the Civil war public money was tight and the University couldn't expand the way it wanted to. Fortunately the forty acres that Texas U called home in Austin happened to be on top of a large oil field. This money helped build on of America's best publicly funded and owned Universities.
Texas State is considered "Public Ivy", that is to say the educational standards are considered exceptional and almost on a Par with the older Princeton's, Brown's and Harvard's of the North East which are considered on a par with Oxford and Cambridge. But what really sets Texas apart is its sports program. Austin has no full time, grade A professional sports team. It recently received a minor league Basketball franchise and has a numerous other minor league attractions such as Ice Hockey and baseball, however the only top level sport on offer in town is through Texas U. The Longhorns as they are known offer around 13 scholarship programs. The scholarship programs are based on paying students tuition and living costs for their participation in various sports, this has been seen as a great economic leveling ground in Texas allowing otherwise ineligible students who may have the qualifications but not the income to afford University, especially those from impoverished none Caucasian backgrounds. It is hard to describe what an American College Sports campus looks like, its huge when your used to only going to one Varsity game in a British university where there's only about 400 people who have gone to see their mates and boo at people from the University across the street, seeing a stadium with 80,000 seats for American Football, then next door a 20,000 seat soccer stadium, then next door to that a tennis complex, across the street a ten thousand seat volleyball dome which also houses a the wrestling arena, oh and down the street theres the local arena where the college and professional basketball teams play and you can see that Texas takes its sport seriously. Theres good reason for this the competitions each year bring in millions and millions of dollars as every Mall in Austin seems to have a Longhorns store that sells T-shirts and caps and other memorabilia, plus income form the home games.
Texas State is not however the only place of higher learning, Austin also supports Austin Community College,Concordia University, Huston-Tillotson University, St. Edward's University, the Acton School of Business, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and a branch of LeTourneau University. That is overall thats a lot of students and campuses, and the architecture that supports it most of it untouched externally since it was built shows off Austin's growth.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Three steps to a good Austin trip
Current mood: happy
Category: Music
Today was the day, today is the day, today was a great day. There are three things I have to do when I am in Austin to make my trip complete, I have to a) Have a coffee and Bolabua on 6th, b) buy a guitar from Austin Guitars at the South Lamar strip mall, and c) go see the SRV memorial on Auditorium Shores.
The a) of that equation belongs to myself and my father as we went down there nearly every day on our last trip. In fact the store clerk asked after my Dad who is at home this year preparing for a trip to Barcelona. They do amazing coffee, their latte's are amazing, a nice chilled out atmosphere to sit and read my paper of choice, today The Onion (http://www.theonion.com) the local humor rag that is infamous world wide on the web, but actually based in Austin and gives out a free copy at most stores.
Trip b) is necessitated by a ridiculously low dollar value that I have mercilessly exploited for the last three years and today was no different. Steve who runs Austin guitars is as cool and as knowledgeable gentleman as one is as likely to come across. He kindly set me up with the Epiphone Les Paul Special you see in my pics page. That will keep me in practice till I get home, and give me something other to play than a strat or a tele which has been my career guitars so far, but you know a change is as good as a rest, and I'm never going to stop playing guitar so its nice to change it up every once in a while.
Trip c) is the main one, I go say hello to Stevie whenever I am in town because well I'm, never gonna get to see him play live however he and his brother Jimmie have had more influence on me than any other 2 musicians I can think of, my "Holy Trinity" of guitar players is made up by Mark Knopfler, the guy who really got me into guitar playing but Stevie and Jimmie became my route map to the blues and what to listen to and why. Stevie taught me that blues that is slow doesn't have to be boring and repetitive. Jimmie taught me to service the song is all that matters. Here I give you 2 examples, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDBIbJKjAZQ is Stevie playing a club in Canada with the large set and title piece of his first album Texas flood. Note how the slow tempo does nothing to slow down the intensity of the bands ( Double Trouble) playing as they hit the same three chords over and over again but approach each verse with a new sense of design.
Conversely Jimmie's band is all about restraint, playing the right notes at the right time and not waisting motion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_GfyW2sQQQ feature Jimmie's song Boom Bappa Boom from his first solo album. Featured guitarist on this song is Denny Freeman formerly of The Antones club house band and known Texas wide as The Professor pretty much knowing every blues lick ever played he grew up the Austin Scene that catapulted Jimmie and Stevie Ray to the upper echelons of guitar folklore.
I know earlier this week I talked a lot about politics and education, and I kinda touched on how they helped Austin become the live music capitol of the world. Well heres some insights into the full story. Texas is a notoriously conservative state, back in the sixties Dallas, Houston and other urban areas in Texas had not really evolved much sociallly from an acceptance stand point. You have to remember this was at the time of the great Civil Rights movements and things down south had barley moved on from the days of slavery, thought obviously this is generalization it still holds true that Black Music and Black culture wasn't wholly accepted, and the people who listened to it and performed it where not wholly accepted either. When long hair could get you beaten up for having long hair, and playing guitar was seen as a waste of time Austin was an oasis of people who understood. The Universities that where funded by the politicians brought with them liberal elites, middle class faculty members who set about liberating their students. The student body in return started listening to greater and greater voices, and those voices included the Black population of Texas and they played the Blues. What the youth of Dallas and Houston discovered on their AM radio's late at night was what the Austinites wanted to hear so a mass migration of talent occurred in the late nineteen sixties which gave Blues music a new home and a new generation to perpetuate its growth. The politicians also helped in their own small way, they may have a respectable veneer now however back in the day they pulled every dirty trick on the book, publicity stunts and corruption abounded and as Austin police had enough to deal with. Which meant they cared little about a bunch of long haired guitar players. (I was watching SMokey and the Bandit 2 before I cam out here and the opening sequence features a Texas Gubernatorial election going array as the candidates bomb each other with various substances at campaign rallies, this unnervingly was pretty accurate as one set of congress actually punched each other out on the capitol steps whilst singing the national anthem.) Bands and musicians form all over Texas flocked to a place where they could play AND make a living meager though it might have been. Billy Gibbons came up from Houston and got together with Dusty Hill and Frank Beard of Dallas (eerily enough they grew around the block form the Vaughan Brothers) to form ZZ top the blues and boogie band still playing today. Doyle Bramahall Austin native finally had people to write for who understood his music as well as perpetuate his solo success. Lou Anne Barton who sang with Stevie Ray in Triple Threat found a home here, then they began to bust out on the road as their live reputations took over. The Fabulous Thunderbird's (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRWV9ajLzXQ) Jimmie Vaugahn's band where getting rave reviews in Chicago as the blues legends they supported down south went home and spread the word. When they where out of town Stevie's band Double Trouble (the post Lou Anne Barton line up of Triple Threat after Lou Anne got a solo deal) would fill the T-Birds slots impress the Chicago talent and get their tickets to tour as well. One guy who had a bigger input than most was Clifford Antone, the son of an immigrant green grocer who set up a club in Austin who new everyone on the blues scene and wanted to get the living legends down to Austin before it was to late. Remarkably I walked past there today and took a few shots and found out this years anniversary show guest is Clifton Chenier the same Cajun accordionist who opened Antone's in the late Seventies. Clifford passed away last year and will be remembered at this Saturday's Austin Music Awards. Stevie's passing was even more tragic after 20 odd years of substance abuse he was finally cleaned up and reaching a new plateau in his musical output and quality when he was killed in a air accident after supporting Eric Clapton and trying to fly home early. Stevie is remembered on Auditorium Shores he has a permanent shadow casting over the city, much like his music.
Best over heard conversation of the last 2 days;
Two guys riding unicycles down Congress on Sunday afternoon doing about 20 miles an hour and shouting directions to each other.
Austin PD Officer 1: What in the HELL are those boys doing?
Austin PD Officer 2: about to get themselves run over, thats what.
They promptly ignored them Unicyclists and went on policing the demonstration.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Flooding down in Texas
Category: Music
So today was registration day, not much going on really. Though I would advise you if you have never been to a trade show of any description you should go, purely to see the herds of people with mobile phones stuck to their ears. Its a commandingly stupid site lol. In my pics today you get to see the storm that stopped me doing anything more interesting than having as quick flash round the interactive exhibition having lunch and coming home, you also get too see my pass which is worth currently about 200 quid and is made of paper so when it rains your screwed lol, it rained a lot today so i stashed it away until necessary still a little damp though. After last nights epic write up I don't have much to say today really hopefully later I will go out to dinner with an old friend but thats not really the music/history crossover you have come to expect lol. So tonight I'm gonna take it easy watch some TV and get some rest for tomorrow starts the hard work of being a pundit.
Friday, March 16, 2007
. . . then no one will
So I haven't posted in a couple of days, there is a good reason for this and as I sit in my hotel room desperately trying to find something to watch other than CNN, I shall explain, after I have made coffee.
OK I am back, yesterday was the first full day of bands and I decided to spend the day meandering about looking at bands very few people have heard off. The only person I wanted to see was Jimmie Vaughn at the end of the night so I had no real agenda. The day stage is a quiet little industry venue on the second floor of the convention center, its kinda cool but soulless. Thats not the fault of the people watching its just hard to get that feel of a dirty packed club. Stand outs from this session where Say Hi To Your Mom who have been doing the rounds for quit sometime but played a delightfully whimsical set that reminded me of Stereolab and the Pixies, no bass player just drums guitars and keyboards so it really let the harmonies fly.
The other was a little strange, The Gray Kid sounded like Def Jam Records had wondered on to Broadway and found an Emo kid who could rap and sing and wanted to be part of the Misfits. Strange but entertaining. After that I mooched around town for a while, then came back to hotel got changed and headed back out. I spent the evening firstly going down to the convention center and catching Blacktop Mourning, this was an expereince just to see how live bands are put on Tv, firstly we where harangued by the director a Cockney, then by the an Irish Executive Producer who wanted us to not like act like music Execs and started to cajole us to party, which was nice. Overall they where pretty good, but that said its kind of hard to get into a band in a TV studio, bottom line its still flat when your listening to a band you have never (or anyone else for that matter, this was their first tour) in a room thats meant to hold 2000 people.. Emo's the punk/metal club at the end of 6th was a different story. The line at Emo's was huge, so I opted for annex, or gazebo as I believe they are called. A shot of pop punk (1997)and some Hardcore (A Day to Remember) later and it was all better.
After that I shot over to the Convention center for the Austin Music Awards. There I got to see the hero's of Austin music take a bow. However when I walked in I found Pete Townsend on stage playing in a tribute to Austin native Ronnie Lane the former New Faces member who passed away last year. The prizes where great however the music was amazing in tribute to fallen band mates Freddie Fender and Doug Sahm the Texas Tornadoes reformed with Doug's son whose own band also played the Tex Mex Experience, Tex Mex is probably the truest form of Texas roots music an even blend of country, blues and traditional Mexican sounds mixed in with rock to give you "A whole Texas thing you wouldn't understand.". I do, I like :). Then Ray Benson and his Western swing veterans Asleep At The Wheel won five awards including best band, not bad for a bunch of guys who have been on the road for 34 years. To close the show Guy Clark Jr. and Jimmie Vaughan lead an all star Acoustic Jam to pay tribute to Clifford Antone. Words really don't do justice to how privileged I felt at this very moment here I was an outsider getting to celebrate with the true Austin heads who had been there since the very beginning men of true greatness.
So then home, this morning I went down to Second and Lavaca where I was promised Roller Derby, that didn't happen for whatever reason so I had another day wondering down to Convention Center however there where two people in my sights for tonight. Booker T and the M.G.'s and Bob Mould, unfortunately I was not the only one who wanted to see him apparently half of North Texas did. So instead it was back to the annex where I was treated to Stephen Brodsky who was quite good if you like that kind of thing, which I did. Atonal acoustic rock who had the good sense to get a cheap pop with "Its all right" by Buddy Holly, go with them Texas natives when things are going slow and you don't know anyone.
Saturday, March 17, 2007
Bring the noise!
To be honest I only saw two bands worth mentioning today as I was trying to take a break after the hardcore music week, and to be fair all I have to say is when you hear Pete Shelley say "Ever Fallen in love?" and the E-string riff kicks in you know you have a little bit of manchester going on in your heart.When the sun sets on Town Lake and the lights go out, Security of the First World come on stage and you hear the words "Welcome to the Terrordome" your in for something special as Public Enemy own the city of Austin.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Final thoughts
Current mood: frustrated
Well here I am stuck in Austin for an extra day, unfortunately my flight got changed to tomorrow, so I have some time to reflect on whats been going on here this week but first an update on what happened yesterday.
I started of late wanting to stay in town and catch really only two bands, firstly The Buzzcocks again in the tent across the road from the convention center. The where OK really, I know that doesn't do one of the great bands justice but the sound was awful, you could here only one guitar and they just seemed annoyed about things. However when things got going they improved still impassioned after all these years its great to see guys in their late 40somethings rocking this hard. Even if I couldn't understand a damn word they where saying
My meandering got me to SXSW closing down, they where still registering people up until 4pm though not many of them would have gotten to see much. I did get an interesting conversation lol. Guy at a film restoration stand said to me "theres a face thats hard to forget" I had never met him before . . . what can you do? Lol.
Then on for the main course of Soup. You know people give them a hard time for being commercial, but they can play and know how to work a crowd. The place was sterile as hell as I mentioned earlier this week however Bowling For Soup where they guys to make it work, possessing as good a sense of humor as they are a live band, I guess they did their best to annoy producers of the show however they really wanted to do a New Kids on the Block tribute because they all had radio mics but forgot to get the clearance. Ah well they smoked anyways and then it was time for home.
Or so I thought, my ticket got changed to the 19th not the 18th as I had originally booked so here I sit writing to you with a day to kill, so I am gonna have a think and post some thoughts about Austin and about SXSW.
Austin is an amazing place, if you like sport, education, music and film this is the place to be. I know other places can claim to have more heritage, but Austin has the heritage and the atmosphere and the pro's to get the job done. Its remarkable this week how many people I have seen who call or have called Austin home. The reason is because its such a good place to be to be a artist. Its not just music, Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater call Austin home or did too. Museums abound beautiful scenery and you can't help but be inspired. The flip side of this from a performing point of view is with that much competition you got to be better than great to get noticed. When I was at the Austin Music Awards on Tuesday it startled me as to how many people not only where locally considered top notch but where also nationally recognized as well. They are just world class.
Now as far as the industry side is concerned and for those of you who make music what can I say? You need to get better, then even better than that. I saw around twenty odd bands this week, even the ones playing for tips in the free shows that where nothing to do with SXSW where top notch quality pro outfits. Even the cover bands who make a living playing bars on the outskirts of the fashionable areas are better than any cover band I have ever seen in the UK at any venue. They are authentic well placed, slick professional, know how to work a crowd, know how to pace their sets. That is one thing that makes American music so consistent, if you tour here anything bigger than your home state its going to take 3 months. You get good or you starve trying. So should you take it upon your self to try and get a SXSW showcase start practicing and playing as many gigs as you can right now.
As far as a the direction of the industry goes, I think like most people have come to realize the future isn't in your traditional; record CD, get airplay, tour kind of package obviously touring is going to be the bread and butter of any band, but downloading is the way to get it out there. There was an interesting film about the music industry in general called "Before the music dies", I strongly recommend you go see it, or at least find it it explains how the US model of music business is changing and why. It is vital to understand the difference between the UK and Us music industries, here everything is ruled by the radio and as people are switching off the radio because it has been neutered to the extent of bland revivalism people are turning too any other form of listening to music they can get cheaply or freely top find the songs they want to hear. As on line play lists get better and more user friendly and directed they appear to be the way to go. What you have to do as a performer is make yourself stand out form the groundswell of people getting on line, this maybe be a more democratic way of going about things but it means its going to be much harder work for you in the long term. That means better graphics, take a media course, try and do things other people are not already doing, we all do myspace so lets try and find the next big thing, whats going to improve our network in the long term? Whats going to make us better at what we do.
Thats just my thoughts and I'll be happy to answer any questions you have, for now I am going to go find some lunch somewhere.
Then it was back over to buffalo Billiards for another set by Say Hi To Your Mom and then my legend for the day Bob Mould, I have loved his guitar playing since Husker Du, and tonight he played out his hits filling in with new stuff but he wanted to make sure his Austin fans (again he used to live here) went home happy so dug out some Sugar classics, including my personal favorite "If I can't change your mind", made my day.
Well its 12.15 here and I wanna get some sleep and I need to post some pics so I'll sign off here, tell you whats going on tomorrow, tomorrow.
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