AUSTIN - A giant milkshake, french fries and a meatball amble down Sixth Street on Thursday at midnight. They're promoting the hit Cartoon Network series Aqua Teen Hunger Force (which stars a giant milkshake, french fries and a meatball), and South by Southwest revelers are having a blast getting photos.

Suddenly, a drunken idiot breaks from the crowd and tries to tackle the meatball, barely missing. A friend of the meatball stares at the idiot. "You know, there's someone in that costume." The idiot stares back blankly, the mental casualty of too much green beer.

And this is what happens when St. Patrick's Day overlaps with South by Southwest (not to mention a regional bracket of the NCAA Tournament). The zoo becomes a jungle. And no meatball is safe.

Sometimes, the madness extends to the concerts themselves. The line for the Big Buzz show of the night - the Kaiser Chiefs, Louis XIV et al. - stretches down the block outside La Zona Rosa. Badges are turned away before 9 p.m. Inside, there are more than enough people to make it almost impossible to venture near the stage. You might as well be in an arena, or at the Austin Music Hall, another cavernous venue.

Thankfully, there are far more intimate shows to be found, and some of the music sounds better than the Kaiser Chiefs. I walk up to Congress Avenue and into the aptly named Hideout, where a well-oiled Albuquerque outfit called the Oktober People is cranking out melodic rock tunes with a political bent and a big sound created through mastery of guitar pedals. The stage is in a small black-box room, not unlike the main stage at the MAC, where Kitchen Dog has wowed so many Dallas theatergoers.

The place holds about 100 people, most of whom are able to sit. (My back thanks the Hideout.) Not only that, but the band is able to hold a running, exceedingly friendly conversation with the audience.

"Where are you from?" asks a woman in the back. "Albuquerque," replies the singer/vocalist. A couple of songs later, another woman pipes up: "What are you called?" "The Oktober People. It's actually the name of my father's band in the '60s."

Band and audience could be sitting across a table from each other. Even better, the music is great. This is the antithesis of the La Zona Rosa show. It is cozy. It is intimate. You can hear every note perfectly.

The moral of this SXSW story: The big show isn't always the best show.

And if possible, stay out of the jungle. Especially if you're a meatball.

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News, 3/19/05



Posted on Sat, Mar. 19, 2005

R E L A T E D C O N T E N T
The Dears at Waterloo Records Friday in Austin, The Arcade Fire, Death From Above 1979, The Dears
STAR-TELEGRAM COMPUTER ILLUSTRATION
The Dears at Waterloo Records Friday in Austin, The Arcade Fire, Death From Above 1979, The Dears

Canada takes a bow this year

By Cary Darling

Star-Telegram Pop Culture Critic

• Blame Canada for the huge influx of bands, with 75 acts, double the number of last year.

SXSW AUSTIN 2005

AUSTIN -- In the past, it was the Aussies and the Japanese. And, of course, the Brits are eternal. But this year a different country is on the lips and minds of those at South by Southwest: Canada.

The place that took the blame in that famous South Park song is now taking a bow. The Great White North is fielding 75 acts this year at SXSW, double last year's number and not far behind the 88 from the United Kingdom.

This invasion dovetails with a huge spike in global interest in Canadian bands. The music scene in Montreal -- home of such acclaimed bands as The Arcade Fire, The Dears, Sam Roberts and Pony Up! -- has recently been given the imprimatur of hip by The New York Times, Spin and England's New Musical Express. But Montreal gets lots of competition from Toronto (Death From Above 1979, Broken Social Scene), Halifax (Buck 65), Victoria (Hot Hot Heat), Vancouver (Be Good Tanyas), Winnipeg (The Weakerthans) and even Whitehorse in the Yukon (Boy).

Many Canadians, who sometimes feel ignored by their neighbors to the south, believe that it's about time.

"I've always thought Canada rocks, but now a lot of people are noticing it," said Jennifer Price, a Los Angeles-based consul and trade commissioner for the Canadian government assisting the SXSW marketing effort, which is dubbed "Canadian Blast."

Although the music scene may be defined by geography, it can't be defined by sound. The darkly epic, cinematic rock of The Dears -- who played to a packed, rapt SXSW audience Wednesday night -- has little in common with the infectious pop of Sam Roberts or the whip-smart folk/hip-hop storytelling of Buck 65, who simultaneously is reminiscent of Tom Waits, Stan Ridgway, Prince Paul and The Streets.

But getting more Americans to listen long enough to appreciate those differences is key.

"It's a tough market to break into, no doubt about it," Donna Murphy of the Canadian Independent Record Producers Association said about the United States. "For indie bands, it's even tougher. It's always hard marketing to another region."

So the Canadian government -- taking a cue from the Australians and others from previous years -- helped put together its first-ever concerted effort at SXSW.

"South by Southwest has been on everyone's radar. It's where the world comes," Price said of why they chose SXSW 2005 for their big push. "The last couple of years, people have been talking about it more and more. Last year, people were here scouting, seeing what we could do and looking at what Scotland, the U.K. and Japan were doing, and we thought it would be a good time to try it."

The Canadian presence is part of a ballooning number of international faces at SXSW. Thanks in large part to the weakness of the dollar -- making travel to the United States easier for foreigners -- there's been a 30 percent jump in the number of global acts playing the festival, according to the Austin American-Statesman. One of the most controversial, 127 from Iran, is scheduled to play tonight at Tambaleo.

It remains to be seen how successful all of this will be for the Canadians. For all their critical acclaim, the new wave of acts has yet to cross over into the U.S. mainstream, and that means, for most Americans, the face of Canadian pop music remains Celine Dion, Shania Twain and Nickelback. Price can't say definitely if there will be a similarly strong SXSW showing from the Canadian government next year.

But expanding beyond their borders will still be a necessity. Murphy summed up: "Because we're such a small market, we have to look internationally."

NEWS AND NOTES FROM AUSTIN

Some other showcases

Hype over talent is no stranger to South by Southwest. Case in point was Wednesday's packed set from Kaiser Chiefs, a British flavor-of-the-month, at La Zona Rosa. While the band has a certain '80s-pop charm, there's little depth worth exploring beneath the facile surface.

It's too bad that more of that crowd couldn't have been over at The Hideout for New Mexican export The Oktober People. The band's big, complex sound -- with its huge sheets of cascading, billowing guitar -- deserves some of what Kaiser Chiefs are getting. Maybe they should move to England.

It often gets overlooked, but South by Southwest is a Latin music showcase, too.

The pairing of Monterrey, Mexico's savvy hip-hop-pop Plastilina Mosh and Colombian world beat-pop singer-songwriter Andrea Echeverri for a Wednesday show at Mambo Kings made a strong case for what's going on in the Spanish-language scene.

-- Cary Darling