Hangin' With Vashti in the Green Room - Zach's SXSW Report.







Here's some SXSW reporting for ya. From the store point of view, here is a summary of Wednesday to Saturday:


We had some great DJs play at the store though including Eric and Hill, Daetron Vargas, Dirk Diggla, Othertempo, Quantide, and Bitch Ass Darius. Not a ton of traffic to see them, but when you have the Stooges and Public Enemy playing for free, that's probably to be expected. Maybe this time next year we'll be in a bigger space and we'll be able to up the ante on the instores but it's all good, we had fun.

On Thursday I went with my wife to a show at the Central Presbyterian Church downtown. I like this venue a lot because the acoustics are great, you get to sit down, and because people are sort of in church they seem more well behaved in that half the audience isn't yelling at each other over the music like most club shows. If I sound like a cranky old man, so be it. We saw Nina Nastasia first. She is a great singer/songwriter from New York who we like a lot. If you haven't heard her she falls somewhere between Cat Power and Neko Case and is as talented as either in my opinion. We saw her at SXSW a few years ago and bought all her albums after that. This time she was only playing with drummer, Jim White, and it was slightly off putting as his 'jazzy' drumming style could best be described as apocalyptic which didn't seem the perfect fit for what she was doing but I guess that's how they planned it. After her, cult folk legend Vashti Bunyan came on. Her story is interesting as she released an album in 1970 and quit singing but that album managed to live on for more than 30 years to be discovered again and championed by a lot of the current folk artists and listeners. The original UK press of "Just Another Diamond Day" would fetch about $1k if you happen to have one laying around. She was great.. as fragile and honest and sublime as her legend indicated she would be.

On Friday, I didn't see anything. Saturday was a good day though. I went to Stubb's to check out the Ghostface & Rakim show. Unfortunately I got there in time to see Mickey Avalon open. I guess I could see the appeal of this guy on the radio or maybe in a club but in the context of a hip-hop show featuring Ghostface and Rakim... no. Ghostface came on with the Rhythm Roots All Stars which seem to be another name for the guys who go by a lot of different names.. Breakestra.. Antibales.. El Michels.. Connie Price and the Keystones.. Budos Band.. they all seem to share some members but this configuration was about 12 members and they were awesome. The sound was insane (loud, clear, LOTS of bass) as they blasted Ghost's sample based tracks live. I can't remember what all tracks he played, but early on was Daytona 500 (which had the All Stars killing it on the Bob James Nautilus Break). He also did Ice Cream & Biscuits which is one of my favorites from the Pretty Toney Album (probably my favorite Ghost album if you don't count Only Built For Cuban Linx, which I kinda consider a Ghost album even though it's not). I love Ghostface, he's one of my favorite emcees out today for sure. He's one of the few cats who can capture the spirit of classic hip-hop without needing to comment or talk about classic hip-hop... it just comes out in what he does and on his albums. For the big finale Ghost got some girls on stage and had a little dance party to a medley of of Dawn Penn's "No No No" (which Ghost also freestyled over back when now MIA Jae Millz came out with his version of No, No, No), Cher Chez Le Ghost and Back Like That with the crowd happily replacing Ne-Yo on the sing-a-long chorus.

Rakim came on next. I saw Ra play at Emo's last year and that was one of the greatest shows I have ever seen and I wasn't expecting this to top that show but I knew it would be good. I would say it was pretty close performance wise although the energy of the crowd was not quite there like it was at Emo's. The band recreated his beats as ably as they did Ghost's... the whistle of "Check Out My Melody", the fat synthetic bassline of "Eric B is President" and the moving jazzy drum/bass/sax combo on "Check the Technique". He played some classics (most all his songs are classics) that he didn't play at the Emo's show including Juice (Know the Ledge) and Mahogany He gave a great compliment to the band before playing "I Know You Got Soul" saying that old school rappers sampled so they could sound like the band sounded now. Overall the intensity was not equal to Ghost's set but as Ghost himself said to be in the presence of the greatest emcee of all time is a gift that should be cherished to which I could only say - word.

Saturday evening I took my wife to the Central Presbyterian Church again as she was performing with Bill Callahan and Joanna Newsom that night. We got there in time to see another cult hero/legend type guy Jandek. Unlike Vashti Bunyan, Jandek did not aim to capture the folk sound that he was known for. Instead he had a band and they played incredibly loud, droning noise with intermittent bouts of 'singing'. It was loud and creepy and since Elizabeth was nervous we decided to just walk around the block a few times until he was done. I've always found Jandek a really interesting character as I am a fan of outsider music (especially the Shaggs and Daniel Johnston) but this was not the Jandek I wanted to hear. A lot of people seemed to be expressing the same sentiment. I admire him for doing his own thing and NOT doing what people would expect him to do. When we heard the noise die down she went to get set up and I got a seat. I was always aware of Smog but I had never been intimately familiar with his work. Having listened to select songs quite a bit (OK a lot, as Elizabeth had been playing them in the car on repeat to learn them) I have become quite a fan. He has an unmatchable voice and there's not too many artists who can match the song writing either (Robert Pollard? Isaac Brock? James Mercer.. maybes). After stating he had one more song after playing just five the crowd went pretty nuts demanding more. After the sixth the trio got a long standing ovation. I was both moved by how well they played the songs and also proud of Elizabeth and her contribution to the set and also relived that it was over and everything went well (she didn't fall off the stage or anything like that). We are both looking for some pictures, video, audio or even reviews of the the show if any one out there happens to come across them. Bill's new album comes out in April and it's great. I'm sure you will hear more about it as it gets closer to being released. Elizabeth also played on six songs on the album so obviously it gets the ZachSpin/BackSpin seal of approval automatically but I'm pretty sure it will be well received by fans and critics alike because he's a great artist and its a great album.

That was all I did and that's about all I needed to do.



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