South By FauxWest: SXSW Day 4

Traipsin' the light fantastic in Austin without spilling a single beer!

By Johnny Mnemonic

Ed. Note: With South By Southwest 2010 in full swing, we decided to send BLURT blogger Johnny Mnemonic, who pens the "Music Journalism 101" blog for us, to Austin and report back with his daily misadventures, er, observations. Only hitch was, he neglected to inform us that he's currently in England and won't be back in the States until the summer. "No problemo," he assured us. "I've attended SXSW numerous times since its inception in 1987. At this stage, I think I can wing it." We hereby present the erudite Mr. Mnemonic's long-distance account of this year's SXSW - as he imagines it might be going down. Guarantee: all dialogue not reported verbatim.

Read also: Day 1 (Tuesday)

Day 2 (Wednesday)

Day 3 (Thursday)

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Day 4: Friday, March 19

Wow. Courtney Love remembers me.

Given La Love's track record, it's saying a lot if she remembers what she did last week, much less an encounter with a journalist over two decades ago. But she remembered this one - I'm getting off the elevator in the lobby of the Hilton and she's about to get on with a couple of skeez-looking friends. She notices me staring at her she suddenly gets a startled expression on her face, then a sly smile.

"Johnny, I lost my dress!" she blurts, in that signature raspy voice of hers. I'm speechless for a moment, then both of us crack up. See, back around 1990, I was assigned to write a profile about Hole for Option magazine, and a late lunch with the band in L.A. turned into an afternoon shopping spree at a bunch of vintage clothing shops over in Silverlake. Courtney insisted I come along, and I wound up being assigned the position of temporary personal assistant, following her up and down the aisles and holding onto the dresses and blouses she was yanking off the racks. One of the dresses I suggested to her, in fact, a greenish-blue flowered number with a scooped neck and a hemline just above the knees, caught her fancy and would later turn up on none other than Mr. Courtney Love, aka Kurt Cobain (whoops! Rickroll alert!),  in a Nirvana photo shoot.

Now she's telling me how the dress in question disappeared some time after Kurt's death during one of her many stints in rehab; seems there have been a lot of personal assistants over the years, some more temporary than others, and some of them a bit on the light-fingered side. "Someone told me they heard it was on eBay at one point," she tells me, shrugging. "You look good, Courtney," I tell her. "How is SXSW treating you?" Turns out she's getting ready to go get fixed up for the big Spin magazine party this afternoon over at Stubb's where Hole will be unveiling songs from the new Hole album Nobody's Daughter. "You wanna come see us play? My band kicks ass!" Courtney is positively beaming; she seems to be totally sober and in a really good space, so I make a mental note not to mention the fact that I've spent most of my SXSW thus far in a chemical- and alcohol-induced haze.

I swap cell numbers with the skeez on the left, who turns out to be, you guessed it, one of Courtney's personal assistants, and she promises to come escort me in at the Spin party when I show up, as it's one of those special invitation/laminate-only events that seem to be slowly taking over SXSW, and since the big national magazine I used to write for went out of business, I don't have the same juice I used to have where it comes to guests lists and music industry parties. (A lot of people have been complaining about the proliferation of RSVP and invite events at SXSW, whereby you now have a situation that often renders your official SXSW badge irrelevant; I mean, what's the point of buying the goddam thing if the shows you want to see have exclusive guestlists you have to get on? But I digress...)

Today there are so many day parties happening that I'm flummoxed as to where to start. I'm definitely going by the annual Bloodshot party out at Yard Dog Gallery on South Congress - I should have invited Courtney to come with me and I could show her some of the vintage and antique shops out that way - not to mention the 40 Watt/JamBase bash at the Side Bar on 7^th Street, which will double as a kind of tribute to recently departed artists Vic Chesnutt, Jerry Fuchs and Jon Guthrie. Before all that, though, I need to get some breakfast and then check out some more panels at the Convention Center like I did yesterday - they were pretty lively!

Only problem is, today's panels look like they were designed for a bunch of eggheads and shut-ins, and as tutorials for musicians who are so clueless they have no business getting into a line of work like this. They boast titles like "A Guide to Recording Music Online," "Shoot Your Concert DVD for Free," "Green Touring: Stupid, Dumb, or Best Idea Ever?" and "The Cloud vs. the Paradise of Infinite Storage." WTF?!? Who comes up with these dumbass names?

The one glimmer of hope is the official SXSW Interview with Cheap Trick, featuring the entire band plus nationally-known pop critics Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis. Indeed, this turns out to be a lot of fun, with a lot of interesting tangents and surprises, such as when Rick Nielsen pulls out his latest custom-designed guitar (it's shaped to look like DeRo, with Jim's face for the headstock), and when Kot leans over and removes the cigarette from Bun E. Carlos' lips (Carlos looks shocked for a moment, his look suggesting no one has ever done that before, until Robin Zander whispers something in his ear, presumably informing him that there's no smoking in the Convention Center, and hands him a pack of Nicorette).

The subsequent Q&A session is less enlightening, although one priceless moment occurs when a helium-voiced fanboy rambles on and on with what's apparently a five-part question involving whether or not the re-recorded In Color that the band cut with Steve Albini will ever be released, Nielsen winks at the crowd and casually says, "Could you repeat the question?" Before the fidgeting, red-faced kid has an epileptic fit from the embarrassment, however, Nielsen rescues him by quipping, "Albini stole the master tapes because we never paid him, then he threw them in Lake Michigan, so we've been negotiating with a tape collector who apparently got ahold of a copy." All throughout the auditorium you see people tapping away furiously on their smartphones and netbooks, no doubt trying to be the first on their block to post this fascinating info (fake, as many Cheap Trick fans reading this probably already realize) to their blogs and newsgroups. I'll have to check those blogs and newsgroups in the morning to see who was duped. Meanwhile, the band appears to be getting a lot of traction in Austin...

Leaving the Convention Center, I start doing the zig-zag thing for the day parties, down to South Congress, out to the west side, back in to the main drag, then finally over to Red River for the Spin party at Stubb's where I rendezvous with my roommate Artie. Artie made the wise decision to avoid hanging out with me yesterday, because for the past 6 months he's been "grooming" (his term) this cute young female publicist - is there any other kind? - who works for a prominent NYC p.r. agency, and now that SXSW has arrived it's time for the big payoff, and in the past he has found that being associated too heavily with me can sometimes have a deal-breaking effect, trim-wise. I'm not sure why, although I am told that I have an "unfiltered" personality, go figure. The smile on Artie's face tells me that his efforts, which included penning rave reviews for pretty much every client of the gal's p.r. firm over the course of the past six months, were not in vain. If you've ever wondered why some male journalists always seem to favor certain acts, this is one of the reasons:

Anyway, he's holding me a spot in line outside Stubbs and it is stretching halfway up Red River almost to 10^th Street. There must be a thousand people here! I tell Artie about running into Courtney earlier, then give the personal assistant a ring - pretty soon we are standing in the backstage area of the venue, watching members of various bands mill around while Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are finishing up a blistering set that has the Spin crowd going nuts.

Meanwhile, Courtney spots me from the dressing room door and waves me over. "You wanna do something really fuckin' cool?" she whispers. After she explains what she has in mind, it's pretty obvious I'd be nuts not to go through with it event though I'll look like a total idiot. The personal assistant takes me over to another dressing room and we get started.

Time for Hole. The band swaggers on first, then Courtney comes out in true diva fashion, lights a cigarette, props one foot up on the monitor, and glances over her shoulder at me. I am standing behind a big set of bongos (on loan from the Dap-Kings) and dressed like some kind of African witchdoctor. She smiles, counts the band off, and then we're off - Hole is doing the Stones' "Sympathy For the Devil," and I'm onstage playing it with them. Holy shit. This is just like the Stones at Hyde Park in '69. Courtney is a genius. I will have to check the blogs and newsgroups tomorrow to find out how I did.

So now you know - that was me up there. If anyone has a video of the song, please post it to YouTube and let me know.

After that I get off so I can watch the rest of the set from the wings with Artie. Standing there in my witchdoctor getup, I feel a tad self-conscious, at least until I see the lead singer for glam band Foxy Shazam walk by, decked out in tight leather and looking like he just came from an oil-wrestling contest. That makes me feel better. Meanwhile, Courtney is at the mic going into a little Bret Michaels riff, cracking her bandmates up. Artie and I hold our lighted cellphones up in the air and mouth the lyrics to Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." Seriously, it doesn't get much better than this at a rock show.

Following Hole's set, Courtney invites me and Artie to a party in north Austin, but we respectfully decline. We are, after all, professional journalists, and we are here to report on SXSW, not go get all wasted at some party. To tell you the truth, though, the rest of the night kinda goes past in a blur, and something I have experienced year after year of attending SXS is something other people have told me they've experienced too, which is hitting a wall of sorts after about three days of this. To an extent, adrenaline kicks in, but jolt after jolt of adrenaline tends to wear you down over time too.

One thing's for sure, however: I am winding up at Club 1808 up on 12^th Street, as there is some serious psychedelic shit going to happen, and as Courtney's personal assistant handed me a small bag of ‘shrooms as a thanks for helping the band out onstage, well... you can see where this is all leading.

I float into the club around the time Rusted Shut is finishing up, and then right at midnight, Austin's premiere sonic alchemists ST 37 take the stage amid a discombobulating stew of feedback and liquid light show. They are followed by Japan's Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO, which is to say, the entire venue achieves lift-off somewhere around 1:30 a.m.

Wandering back towards the hotel an unspecified amount of time later, I purchase a neon purple hotdog with bright orange chili from an awesome-looking street vendor at the corner of 6^th and Neches. It is the best hotdog I have ever eaten in my life.

To be continued.

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Johnny Mnemonic is the pseudonym of a "highly-regarded" national writer with, he advises us, over two decades' experience working as a music critic, reporter, editor and marketing consultant. We've never met him face-to-face, and he further advises he will be delivering his blogs to us via the "double blind drop-box method," whatever that is, to ensure his anonymity.