SXSW Journal

The Illuminati's Nick Sewell at the Spin showcase. Photo by Joshua Ostroff.

Known as the “Sundance of music,” the South By Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Tex., is the single biggest event in the independent music calendar. First staged in 1987, SXSW has become the most vaunted testing ground for up-and-coming bands; last year’s festival showcased 1,279 bands in 60 venues. Toronto journalist Joshua Ostroff was in Austin last week following various Canadian musicians, and kept a journal of words and pictures.

Day 3

By the time I rolled into the Spin magazine barbeque, the hacks, flacks and rock acts had inhaled every animal product in sight — baby-back ribs, pulled pork, beef brisket and sweet greasy sausages. I feared the free beer was next to go.

Denigrated onstage by New York Dolls singer David Johansen as "the Vanity Fair party for whatever this thing is" — meaning SXSW — the musical lineup for the Spin shindig was nonetheless solid.

Partially reunited and surprisingly reinvigorated, the New York Dolls were precursors to punk rock in the early 1970s, but disbanded long before the decade was done. Their performance at the Spin party served as a reminder to the many musicians in the crowd that if you want to be seen as an originator, you first have to make original music.

That’s certainly not the case with derivative British dance-rockers Bloc Party, who were slotted just before the Dolls. They’ve managed to become one of this year's most buzzed bands. Singer/guitarist Kele Okereke bantered, "We're not used to playing in the sunshine – we're from London," referring to the welcome emergence of southern heat following two disturbingly cold days. Their enthusiastically raucous performance did manage to meet the hype, if just barely.

Less well known, but much, much louder were Toronto rockers the Illuminati, whose bassist/co-vocalist Nick Sewell was hanging out at the Spin bash sans bandmates, who were too hung over to make it out of the hotel.

"We're basically just here to raise awareness for the band," Sewell said. "It's really just an introduction to the States." His band opened the inaugural showcase for their new and hilariously named L.A. label, Liquor and Poker Music, a CanRock-hungry imprint that has already signed Toronto's Crash Kelly and Vancouver's the Black Halos.

Having still not eaten, Sewell and I split a cab to the “Canuck Back Bacon BBQ and Shindig.” It was a freebie feast co-sponsored by Toronto's North by Northeast festival and the Manitoba music industry. The promise of more meat appeared to have attracted most of the other Canadians in town.

Rapper K-Os was there, though rather than perform, he was just in town to check out bands. For some unfathomable reason, Astralwerks, his label, didn't apply for a performance slot, even though SXSW would have seemed like a useful platform to launch K-Os’s impending U.S. tour. He surely would have stood out among SXSW's minimal hip-hop content.

Then it was off for a seemingly endless stream of sonic splendour: an on-fire M.I.A., a sick turntable set by Vancouver trio No Luck Club (whose name was apt given the near-empty room they played to) and a sleaze-rock barn-burner by British-American duo the Kills, whose psychosexual intensity hit David Lynchian proportions.

The streak came to a thudding halt with a performance by Stephen Malkmus — former singer of legendary California band Pavement — whose maddeningly bland solo show had so little meat to it that we started heckling by calling him "Stephen Malkovitch."

A few hours later, in a packed hotel room party, I was loudly complaining about my night's one grievous disappointment, not realizing that the small, impromptu bash had been organized by someone at Malkmus's label, Matador Records. Malkmus himself was standing not three feet away from me. Had he heard me, I doubt I would have cared. The best sign that indie rock — known as “alt-rock” back in Pavement’s mid-90s heyday — has returned in full force is that the old school can no longer compete with the new.