By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World My head is splitting in two and my eyes feel swollen. For about two hours, I've been staring at several dozen web sites dedicated to Tulsa's own sugar-pop export, Hanson. It's an exercise that, while eventually mind-numbing, is actually quite funny and sociologically telling. The World Wide Web is a sticky wicket in which the ratio of trivial nonsense to actual useful information fluctuates around 9 to 1. Where Hanson information falls into that equation is a bit subjective. But these days, young fans of pop bands do more than create a fan club and titter together at slumber parties. They learn HTML programming and set up a “tribute'' site on the web. The Hanson album hasn't been out for two months, and there are easily 100 Hanson sites ready for search engines to snag. Most of them have the same photographs and the same, misspelled pre-teen gushing about how cute the boys are, and a few are informative, entertaining and goldmines for any sociology student studying mass hysteria. Vicky, a youngster in New York, gets things rolling by swooning all over her page, Vicky's Salute to Hanson (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Academy/1384/index.html). Along with the ritual photo of the boys on the grass, she introduces her page with this statement: “I dedicate this page to the greatest band in the world (Hanson!). Even though they are already very special, hopefully this page makes them recognize it even more! Luv ya guys!'' If you're brave enough to click on her dedication page, you'll see several paragraphs of unmitigated groveling, including a sentence found on most Hanson sites: “I just wanna say I LOVE YOU GUYS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!!'' Actual number of o's varies from page to page. Vicky's site includes some important FAQs (frequently asked questions) about the boys, including “Are any of the Hansons looking for a girlfriend?'' The answer — sorry, girls — is no. Isaac already has one, she reports, and Taylor and Zac say they're too busy to bother. Vicky says that “millions of girls would get down on their knees to go out with one of the AVAILABLE Hanson brothers,'' and, well, I'll leave that one alone. One of many sites titled The Unofficial Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/5657) coordinates a running poll of your favorite Hanson brother. As of Tuesday, Zac was ahead with 128 votes, Taylor had 110 and Isaac had 102. Perhaps some of these voters should tune into Lisa's Hanson Page (http://members.aol.com/LMW3/lisa/hanson/hanson.html) and read some of her biographical information, which goes beyond the basic favorite color blather and includes things like “hidden talents.'' Isaac's hidden talent is an ability to imitate Kermit the Frog, Bullwinkle and Butthead. Zac's hidden talent is an ability to speak while belching. Taylor is a cartoonist. That probably explains why, despite that one poll, Taylor is the clear choice for young girls' hearts and web sites. He has numerous sites dedicated strictly to himself. The Taylor Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/7320) features a spot where you can post your own declarations of Taylor's cuteness for all to read. The site's author herself writes that when she first heard “MMMBop'' on MTV, she thought “the music was like nothing I had ever heard before.'' In addition to her comparison of Taylor to a young Kurt Cobain, this site serves as a painful reminder of just how old the rest of us are. There's also a Taylor Hanson Fan Club (http://members.tripod.com/~Hanson161411/hansonHITZ.html) and a Taylor Hanson Cult (http://members.aol.com/Shelly737/TayCult.html). If it's actual information you want, look to the official Mercury Records site (http://www.polygram.com/polygram/mercury/artists/hanson/hanson—hom epage.html) or the officially sanctioned Hanson site, where the boys receive most of their e-mail (http://www.hansonline.com). Another fan site, Weird's Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/1307) also has daily updates on the band's media appearances (a thorough listing of magazines — Tiger Beat, Teen, Sixteen, Seventeen, even Bop) as well as some current articles and tour information. This site even has its own Hanson theme song. A Bartlesville fan put up a Hanson site, Landon's Tribute to Hanson (http://users.aol.com/nadaace/hanson.html), which includes a few choice tidbits about Landon's family's vague connection to the Hanson family, something including a wedding appearance and a handmade wall hanging. The site even features a constantly updated picture window showing the view of Tulsa from a camera atop the KJRH Channel 2 tower. L.A.'s Hanson Reviews Page (http://www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/9792/hanson.html) features numerous reviews of Hanson appearances written by fans. One writer describes the mayhem at the group's mobbed May 7 appearance at a mall in Paramus, N.J. The scene is summed up when she says, “I do not believed(sic) that I have ever screamed so much in my life.'' Other pages feature aimless nattering about the boys and the girls who love them. Ruby, for instance, is a tad defensive about her love of Hanson on Ruby the Droogster's Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/4936/hanson.html). She writes, “If any assholes want to make fun of me, I don't give a crap. I can like whoever and whatever I want.'' Other girls are in such a lather they just out-and-out babble. Lisa, for instance, informs us that her guinea pig is named Melody “from the way she bounces around in her cage to ("MMMBop').'' Christine, a 13-year-old in Tuscon, Ariz., on her page, My Hanson and Me Page (http://members.aol.com/TeenAZ/index.html), tells us the fascinating features of her life: “I play soccer and the violin. I like to listen to Hanson and be with friends. I collect a lot of things such as rocks and stickers.'' If you still want more, the Ultimate Hanson Links Page (http://www.geocities.com/Eureka/6540) has links to 86 different Hanson sites, including a Hanson page run by KISS 101.9 FM — a station in Valdosta, Ga. (http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/8156). Wouldn't it be nice if the boys' hometown radio stations gave as much, if not more, such support as a radio station in Valdosta-freakin'-Georgia? (Must this city's print media do everything for local bands?) Not everyone adores Hanson, though. Plenty of anti-Hanson pages are out there, like the Hanson Haters Page (http://www.toptown.com/NOWHERE/fatpo/agree2.html). This site is under construction — photos are being digitally sliced and diced as you read this — but the page's homophobic creators urge anyone to e-mail them various fantasies to “kill, maim and then desecrate the bodies of the Hanson sisters.'' The Marilyn Hanson Page (http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/7936/mh.html) is actually run by a fan, but anyone can enjoy the gallery of Hanson photographs here all made up so that each Hanson looks like Marilyn Manson. There's also another site, whose title I can't print in this general newspaper, which contains adult language and situations concerning the digestion of a particular part of the Hanson brothers' anatomy. Find the other two anti-Hanson pages and you'll find this one. Whatever your take on the three Tulsa young'uns, there's a mountain of gunk out there to view. And it's got Excedrin written all over it. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Hanson "Middle of Nowhere" (Mercury) Say what you will about these three well-scrubbed rich boys -- they're going to be big. They'll take the unique sound of south Tulsa to the world! Oh, I, too, thought I was having acid flashbacks when I heard that these cherubic, largely ignorable local whinsies had not only landed a major-label deal but hooked up with the Dust Brothers to produce it. I thought, it's a wonder anyone could turn a doorknob, what with all the greased palms. But however it came to be, “Middle of Nowhere'' is just the kind of tight, slick record that will beat us over the head for years to come. Over each track's hurried, lite R&B and incessant record scratching, 13-year-old Taylor doesn't just sound like 1967-vintage Michael Jackson, he also sounds like 1996-vintage Michael Jackson. Sometimes his thin coo melts your childlike heart (“Weird''), and sometimes his roar is both “Dangerous'' and “Bad'' (“Look at You''). The one thing that will rescue Hanson from the inevitable oblivion of acts of their ilk, i.e. New Kids on the Block, is that they play instruments (11-year-old Zac is a maniac on the drums) and participate in their writing of their songs. Yes, Mercury hauled in some bigwigs to pen hits for the album, but the first single, the frighteningly catchy “MMMBop'' (from their Tulsa indie record of the same name), and a couple of the most interesting tracks are the ones with Hansons in the credit lines. These kids grew up listening to classic soul records, and when those influences show up through their young, modern rock-saturated filters, the result is some surprisingly fresh music. Maybe, just maybe, youth is not wasted on the young. Regardless, though, “MMMBop'' debuted at No. 16 last week, and it will be drilling into your head around every corner in no time. Meanwhile, the Tulsa sound still resides peacefully in Tulsa. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The Hanson album isn't due on record store shelves until Tuesday, but the buzz leaked out months ago. By mid-March, e-mail was already arriving in the Tulsa World queue from people around the world wanting more information on the fab three. “They are sooooooo cute!'' wrote one young woman. “Do you have any pictures of them?'' Another fan wrote, “Hi, I'm from Australia and ... Tulsa is about to be put in the global spotlight in a MAJOR way by none other than your very own local band, Hanson.'' The smart money is on that prediction. While legions of Tulsa kids try to put Tulsa on the map with still more groaning modern rock, along come the three Hanson brothers (Isaac, Taylor and Zac) with the slickest, sweetest pop sound since the Jackson Five — and they're better poised than anyone to win over the world. The album isn't even available yet, but the single, “MMMBop'' has drenched radio and thus debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard singles chart this week. The most recent band to pull off that kind of buzz was U2, and they had the luxury of resting on the laurels of a nearly 20-year career. All Hanson has are three cherubic faces and numerous glossy grooves. That was plenty to get Mercury Records excited enough to sign them and back the Tulsa trio with unheard-of support. When we caught up with the Hanson family last week, they were in London, still traveling across Europe to promote the new album, “Middle of Nowhere.'' Oldest brother Isaac, 16, was blase about his travels. “We're just back from Germany. We spent 10 days in the U.K., five days in France, three in Germany, doing interviews with different magazines, TV and radio,'' he said. “We've lived all over the world, so the travel we get to do now is fun, but it's not like we've never done it before.'' Walker Hanson is head of the clan (in addition to the singing trio, there are three younger siblings), and his job in international finance moved the family from Tulsa to Trinidad, Ecuador and Venezuela before returning home. He encouraged the boys to sing together one evening after a dinner blessing, and something serious began. “I never dreamed it would lead to this,'' Walker said last week, proud but slightly exasperated. The Hanson brothers debuted their act in 1992 on one of the Mayfest stages. They sang a capella, doo-wopping to standards from the '50s and '60s, and enough people gushed about how cute they were that they were encouraged to continue. Three years later, guitars and drum kits were purchased, and an independent record of lite R&B, “Boomerang,'' quickly followed. “We had all each played keyboard, but we'd been very interested in other instruments. We wanted to make our own music instead of singing to a background track all the time. Playing guitar gives you a whole different inspiration than the keyboard, and we needed that different inspiration,'' Isaac said. Zac, 11, took to the drums, and he's a maniac behind the kit. He offered a humble explanation for his choice of instrument. “I'm not that great a drummer, but everybody says I can play, so I'll take their word for it,'' he said. “The secret is, nobody else's arms are as long. I couldn't play guitar or piano, so I went to the drums because I've got long arms.'' By the time a second album, “MMMBop,'' had been recorded locally, the phone at the Hanson residence was ringing with serious business calls as well as the usual blather of giggling girl fans. Mercury Records signed the band last summer after seeing the kids perform on the Blue Rose patio — at 16, 13 and 11, they aren't allowed inside the bar — and the big wheels started turning. In February's Billboard magazine, the Hanson brothers appeared in a photograph next to two Mercury execs and the Dust Brothers, John King and Mike Simpson, who produced Hanson's debut disc for the big label. (Steve Lironi, of Black Grape and Space expertise, also produced parts of the record, and the Dust Brothers' last project was the Grammy-winning “Odelay'' album for Beck — whose last name, oddly enough, is Hansen.) When Billboard runs photos like that, boring shots of people just staring right into the camera, it usually means the corresponding label has made quite a fuss about the upcoming project. The record, fortunately, is worthy of the fuss. Both sets of producers found a sturdy balance between the brothers' latest pop leanings and their original soul-flavored sound, a sound that developed during those years living far away from home. “Before we left, we bought a bunch of these tapes of old '50s and '60s rock 'n' roll,'' Isaac explained. “We had no radio to listen to, and it was just coincidence that we picked this particular style to take with us. But it was very inspirational in our minds. It's just great music, all that Chuck Berry, Bobby Darin, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, old Beatles. These people are the origins for what all music is today. They're the ones that started it all out.'' This week, Hanson will take that reverence for rock's roots and debut their chirpy songs on national television. They're on “The Late Show With David Letterman'' on Monday (10:35 p.m. on KOTV Channel 6) and “The Rosie O'Donnell Show'' on Tuesday (4 p.m. on KTUL Channel 2). They're not even nervous. “Nah. If you get nervous, you don't act like the natural you,'' Taylor said. “It's Letterman! It's like, whoa, why would Letterman want us? But if he wants us, I'll go,'' Zac said. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World My friend Adrienne and I would stay up all night in her dorm room, smoking and playing guitar. She had already learned nearly every song on the Indigo Girls' debut indie record, and somehow I always got saddled with singing the high part in a wavering falsetto. We'd venture off into other tunes — wheezing through Melissa Etheridge and mumbling through R.E.M. — but we'd always come back to the Indigos' “Strange Fire,'' “Make It Easier'' and my favorite, “Crazy Game.'' “They're so beautiful and so easy to play,'' Adrienne would say. “I mean, I could write this stuff, but think about how great they're going to be in a few years when they've got 1,000 performances and some cynicism under their belts.'' Nearly 10 years later, with several thousand performances and a vital, sincere activism instead of mere cynicism under their belts, the greatness of the Indigo Girls — Amy Ray and Emily Saliers — has matured and aged like good wine. But they haven't mellowed. In fact, the newest record, “Shaming of the Sun'' (due in stores April 29) finds the Indigo Girls bolder and louder than ever while remaining in the tag-team folk-rock form that nurtures the duo's inviting harmonies and easily approachable social sensibilities. As the pair wound its way across the Midwest collegiate circuit last week, I caught up with Amy Ray — the growling, passionate yang to Saliers' studied, introverted yin — after a show in Davenport, Iowa. She talked about the new album, the pair's approach to writing songs and the Indigo Girls' constant challenge to maintain an activist integrity while safely inked into a major-label recording contract. Thomas Conner: I'm really taken with the new record. As the two of you get older, you're getting louder — both in the music and your political voice. It's usually the other way around. Why the reversal? Amy Ray: This is a loud record, isn't it? We'll probably do a soft one after this to show our true colors. We keep planning a straight-up folk record, and then this happens. This time around when I was writing, I was kind of reverting to when I was younger and finding my way again. The lyrics are very literal on this record. We're more comfortable that way now. I've always been fairly outspoken, and Emily's gone through some politicizing in the last two years. We're becoming more aware of how to speak on certain things we're involved in, from Native American issues to gay rights. We went into the studio and just let it all hang out. TC: The song “Shame on You'' is the most radio-friendly song as well as the most overtly political. Is that by design? AR: No, I just wrote it and it ended up that way. It didn't start to be about politics. I was hanging out with my friends in a park. There's a lot of immigration and illegal alien concerns in my area, and a lot of the poultry industry that hires these Chicano and Hispanic workers. They're not only underpaid and mistreated at work, but they are hassled all the time. That just all came up while I was writing the song. TC: I always think of the Indigo Girls as politically important musicians, yet I'm hard-pressed to think of a bona fide protest song in your repertoire. AR: Hmm. Well, “This Train'' from the last record (“Swamp Ophelia'') is a pretty good social commentary on the Holocaust and genocide in general. It's not like we're Billy Bragg, though, with a history of writing labor songs. That's part of the thing. We just write what we write. In my life, everything I see is through a political lens. As a gay woman — or just as a woman — everything I do is more political. So even the songs about relationships, even though they're not written with some agenda in mind, have some political stake. TC: You've never necessarily denied your sexuality, but you've never grabbed at the cover of The Advocate to tell the world about it, either. Why choose the low-key approach? AR: Emily was less concerned with it early on than I was. I did a lot of interviews for gay publications by myself when we were starting. I remember doing one with this journalist from Hits! and he asked, “Are you gay?'' and I said, “Well, yeah,'' and felt so good that the question had finally been asked and was done with. Then he didn't even print it. I was so miffed. They give musicians such hassle for not coming out, but then they don't care when you're forthright about it. They usually only care unless you don't want it known. We've never made a big issue of it because it's not a big issue, but we feel it's worth sacrificing some of our personal life to talk about it when we need to. TC: What are the differences between the way you and Emily each write songs? AR: Emily's more disciplined about it. She can make space and time for herself and sit down to write and really craft the song and the lyrics. She has a very large chord vocabulary ... and a very large word vocabulary, too. I'm not articulate that way. I write whenever it comes to me, wherever I am. I feel I'm hard-pressed to take it when it comes. TC: Both of your songs tend to be intensely personal. I know it's sometimes easy to write a very personal song but that performing and recording it tend to be a burden. Have you experienced that? AR: The sharing of things doesn't bother me. We both feel a certain amount of protection because of the music, and in the spirit of the music we're willing to bear that. We're protected by its good energy — by the good witch of music. (Laughs.) The problem I have is having to relive it every time I sing it. Sometimes it's painful. I write something to get it off my chest, and when I relive it, it's like, "Oh, jeez, I'm gonna have to sing this every night for a year. How am I going to do it?' The songs have to take on an esoteric meaning for me to get through it. TC: I was warned to prepare myself for a drastic difference in the sound of this album, but I wasn't really that shocked. The presence of more electric instruments really doesn't sound so out of place. The difference I noted was that the songs and their arrangements are more ... tortured. Am I getting it? AR: Oh yeah, you're getting it. The sound really isn't that different. I had a couple of hard years during our time off. There were some hard things I had to deal with. They were hard but I learned a lot. My songs and the arrangements of them are more tortured, and there's a reason for it. Emily's lyrics aren't as tortured, but there's something going on in her musically that's intense. She expresses anger well through music — very dignified. For instance, the song “Scooter Boys'' was recorded completely off the cuff. She doesn't even know what tuning she was in. We were jamming on something completely different, we moved into this song idea I had and what came out of her was from a completely different place. I don't even know if she knew what I was singing about. TC: When you were on the “Politics and Music'' panel at last month's South by Southwest conference in Austin, some panelists made a point I was glad to hear voiced: that the argument over major labels vs. indie labels is irrelevant. Do you agree with that? AR: I think that's right on some level, but I don't agree on another level. Logistically speaking, a major label is bigger and there are more people, so it's more bureaucratic and you automatically lose some quality control except for the niche of people close to you. The people close to us at Epic are great, but when you look at the whole company, you know there are probably people there with questionable integrity. In an indie, you can spot those people quickly and get rid of them. As a person who has an indie label, I agree with the capitalism argument. An indie is selling a product just like a major is, and they'll screw you just as quickly as a major will. People who cut down major labels as being more capitalistic than indies are lying. But an indie is a different spirit. It's harder for a major label to have a grassroots effort, but it's easy for an indie. TC: How has Epic responded to your activism? AR: Epic's very cool about the poltics. Rage Against the Machine is on Epic, and so is Pearl Jam. Those two bands are constantly pushing the boundaries with the label. Every chance they get to express their opinions, they do. We just went on a trip to Chiapas, Mexico, with Zach de la Rocha from Rage. The Epic publicist worked really hard for that event, and the label donated video cameras and equipment so we could document the work down there. This wasn't a project that would make anyone a lot of money or even make the label look better; they did it to support our interests and because they feel our politics have a certain amount of importance. TC: Was the idea for the upcoming (in June) Pay-Per-View special yours or Epic's? AR: It was theirs, and that's the kind of thing I would totally shy away from. But Epic helped us keep the price low and are allowing us to hook up with politically correct sponsors, like The Advocate. They said we've got three hours of air-time to do with however we please. So we're like, “Great! What bands do we want to push? What politics do we want to talk about?'' Still, it's frustrating at times... But you have to fight things from the inside out. We'll stay with Epic until we need to go. Indigo Girls With the Scud Mountain Boys When: 7 p.m. Wednesday Where: Expo Square Pavilion, 17th Street and New Haven Avenue Tickets: $19.50, available at The Ticket Office at Expo Square, call 747-0001 This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual conference and festival ...
© Tulsa World Go SOUTH-West Young Man By Thomas Conner 03/23/1997 AUSTIN, Texas — Shortly after I checked into the Lazy Oak Inn in Austin, I met Flash Gordon. This should have clued me into just how far out this weekend would be. Flash sings and plays flute in a basic Florida bar band called the Pundits. They didn't make the cut for one of the nearly 750 showcases at this year's South by Southwest music conference, but Flash and his wife, Jo, came anyway. When your band gets rejected from SXSW, the conference offers you registration at half price, which we determined was reason enough to apply each year. We sat on the porch, soaking in a warm Austin evening and watching Molly, the inn's resident pooch, chase imaginary squirrels around the inn's massive namesake tree. Everyone had their SXSW booklets out and was making notes, circling band names, highlighting times in the schedule. You have to plan your attack carefully. At the top of each hour, about 40 musicians and spoken word artists will begin a new set in clubs all over town. Just as any sage would advise, you first must accept that you will not be able to see it all. Then you plan your route, lace up a comfortable pair of walking shoes, and hit the bricks. It's all highly subjective. Wednesday, 7:55 p.m. The music part of the conference (film and multimedia kick off the week) always begins with the Austin Music Awards on Wednesday night. Storyville, the rootsy band that's been through Tulsa (and will be back April 4), dominates the awards, winning Band of the Year, Song of the Year (“Good Day for the Blues''), Best Rock Band, and so on. Ian Moore lands Musician of the Year. Junior Brown, of course, wins Best Country Artist. And everyone is obsessing about the January death of local hero Townes Van Zandt, who is inducted into the Austin hall of fame. Wednesday, 10:15 p.m. Always on the cutting edge of cowpunk/twang-core/alt-country/whatever it's called now, Jason Ringenberg of Jason and the Scorchers tears up Liberty Lunch in a flurry of fringe and wins the Michael Stipe lookalike contest with a freshly shaven head. Warner Hodges remains one of rock's most overlooked and electrifying guitar masters. Wednesday, 11:45 p.m. Decked out in shiny silver space suits and flailing around far more than keyboard players should indeed flail, Roger Manning and one of his partners from the Moog Cookbook dazzle a slovenly audience of media registrants at the Iron Cactus restaurant. It's the first performance of the all-Moog “band'' outside of L.A. or Japan. Thursday, 12:10 a.m. As Tito and Tarantula start their set at Steamboat, film directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarrantino are refused admittance to see the bunch that played the vampire bar band their film, “From Dusk Till Dawn.'' The fire marshals had been ticketing club owners for overcrowding their establishments, and the film moguls had to get over it like everyone else. Thursday, 10:30 a.m. Carl Perkins delivers the conference keynote address in the Austin Convention Center. Certainly one of the most surreal experiences of the week, Perkins noodled on the guitar while speaking, mostly about Jesus but he did demonstrate the difference between Bill Monroe's version of “Blue Moon of Kentucky'' and that of Elvis Presley. Thursday, 3:15 p.m. Tanned, rested and ready, Tony Bennett sits down for a Q&A and talks about his “comeback'' and his irrepressible love of singing. When talking about getting booted from Columbia in the '70s, he told the story of Duke Ellington's similar fate years earlier: “They called him into the office at Columbia and said, "We're going to drop you from the label.' Duke said, "Why? What's wrong?' and they said, "You're not selling records.' Duke said, "Oh, I thought I was supposed to make the records and you were supposed to sell them.''' Thursday, 5 p.m. Tulsa modern rock band Epperley takes the stage at the Voodoo Lounge for a “pirate'' show — one not officially part of the SXSW showcase. Perhaps that officialdom has its advanatages because the quartet plays its heart out for an audience of about 12 listless club rats. In whatever setting, though, Matt Nader is a thoroughly entertaining live guitarist. Thursday, 9 p.m. Fulflej plays a subdued but affecting set at Liberty Lunch, including a cover of Sinead O'Connor's “Nothing Compares 2 U.'' Guitarist and singer MC No Joke G uses the lingo (he actually said “homies'') like he's the hippest dude around, but the music is more deeply rooted in arena rock and power pop to allow his thick, dark curls to become dreads anytime soon. Thursday, 10:30 p.m. Now that his original power pop band 20/20 has resurfaced, Tulsa native Ron Flynt tried out his solo chops in the tiny space of Bob Popular's Headliner's Room Upstairs. With fellow 20/20 member and Tulsa native Steve Allen adding lead guitar flourishes to Flynt's acoustic strum, the two rolled easily through a warm set of 20/20 classics and new Flynt originals. Flynt's soft, childlike voice is better suited to this folkie setting, but Flynt is still concerned with his primary (and unabashedly pop) lyrical topic: the love and loss of chicks. Thursday, 11 p.m. Dwight Twilley takes the first step in his, what, fourth comeback? Safely rooted in Tulsa once again, Twilley and his new band lean into the set of power pop gems they'd been trying out on small crowds at Caz's last fall. The large patio of Austin's Waterloo Brewing Company is nearly SRO for this gig, and Twilley looks as young and sounds as fresh as he did in 1975. He plays a classic like “I'm on Fire'' right next to something brand new, and no one knows the difference. He isn't slumming for the nostalgia addicts; he's just doing what Twilley does — rocking with more melody than the radio has played in 10 years. Susan Cowsill, a former Twilley sweetheart, backs him up at the mike for three songs. The set is flawless and exciting. Friday, 12 a.m. 20/20 follows up Twilley at the Waterloo with more stripped-down and direct rock 'n' roll. Fresh from his solo gig, Ron Flynt now wears shades and Allen's finesse on the electric guitar proves that's his real forte. Opening with the classic “Remember the Lightning,'' they charge into last year's “Song of the Universe,'' a driving melody that gets better every time I hear it. The crowd cheers every solo from drummer Bill Belknap. Flynt introduces “The Night I Heard Her Scream'' as “a song from our second album, or is it third? We've got four or five. I don't know.'' Someone from the audience shouts, “I bought one!'' Flynt looks relieved and says, “Thank you.'' Friday, 1 a.m. Justly introduced as “one of the great songwriters of the universe,'' Okie-born songwriter Jimmy Webb slides behind a grand piano in the Driskill Hotel Ballroom and pounds out several of his touching, smartly arranged songs. He sings with much more power than he gives himself credit for (“These songs were made famous by others who can actually sing''). Sure, Barbara Streisand wrapped her silky voice around Webb's “Didn't We,'' but when Webb sings it, the nuances of each original emotion are wrenchingly vivid. He pounds the piano with a confidence that's built up for 30 years, but his voice still caresses the yearning for that 21-year-old woman on a Galveston beach. There is indeed magic in the Webb of it. Friday, 2 a.m. La Zona Rosa is offering “breakfast shows,'' featuring non-SXSW acts whooping it up next to a spicy buffet line. Tonight it's Oklahoma City's Red Dirt Rangers. Someone always dances at a Red Dirt Rangers show, and one woman was so eager to get to the dancefloor that she beaned me in the head with the Miller longneck in her grip as she ran by. No problem, though, the slow laments like “Blue Diamond'' and the male bonding of “Dog on a Chain'' had already knocked me out. Multi-instrumentalist Benny Gene Craig absolutely wails on the steel guitar. Friday, 4:10 p.m. Thomas Anderson, a spaced-out folkie (a native of Miami, Okla., now based in Austin), finally goes on at ABCD's and once again proves the strength of his songwriting skills. Anderson, exactly like Elliott Murphy, writes intricate and intriguing character sketches — songs that are too big for his timid, thin vocal chops. In trademark shades, doo-rag and blazer, he sings of Bill Haley's tragic death in Mexico and a freaked-out killer named Nash the Slash. Even with subjects that could easily have been far too precious — the admiration of Deadheads in “Jerry's Kids'' and the touching “White Sands'' — Anderson boasts a tenderness that's usually hard to find in songs of this intellectual caliber. Friday, 5 p.m. This time, Epperley drums up a teeming crowd at a skate shop called Blondie's. They sound better, too, playing mostly new songs — “She's Like a Marine,'' “Jenks, America'' and “You're So 1988.'' The crowd whoops it up and cheers without the prodding of the band's rep from Triple X Records. Friday, 6:20 p.m. Just as every public establishment in New Orleans has a cocktail lounge, every place in Austin books live music, especially this weekend. As we savor the Mexican food at El Sol y La Luna, one of those South American bands with the drums and pan flutes fills the place with tropical ambiance. Greg Brown, the guitarist for Cake, is at the bar. “I see guys like this everywhere I go now,'' he says with a hint of boredom. “Better not go to Tulsa's Mayfest,'' I advise. Friday, 9:10 p.m. On that note, there's even a band scheduled to play at the inn where I'm staying. Scheduled at 8 p.m., Seattle's urban-folk progenitor Caz Murphy arrives late. His excuse? He was taken to the hospital after being bitten by a bat on the Town Lake bridge. I love this town. Friday, 10:05 p.m. I could bypass the lengthy line and get into Stubb's with my snooty press badge, but I opt to watch from outside the fence with the cheapskates; the sardined crowd on the Stubb's lawn is wallowing in mud from the previous week's rains. Supergrass plays a solid set of very British Invasion rock 'n' roll, looking a great deal more mature than the superb but spastic debut album that spawned what fans feared would be the band's wondrous one hit, “Alright.'' New songs from the album due this May included “Cheap Skate,'' “Richard III'' and the Who-ish “Silence the Sun.'' Friday, 11:20 p.m. It's Japanese Night at the Tropical Isle, and I wander into the adorable screech of Lolita No. 18. Fliers on the tables declare that the band “captive (sic) the heart of both punk rock fan and cartoon fan immediately.'' True enough — the all-girl thrashers are, to our Western sensibilities, cute as cartoons, and any punk fan would enjoy their racket. Singer G. Ena squawks with a smile over the band's quirky time signature shifts. Suddenly I recognize one of the choruses — my God, it's “Hang on Sloopy.'' Saturday, 12:30 a.m. After an interminable delay, Spring Heel Jack finally begins their set, only you can't really tell. They remain in the dark on Bob Popular's inadequate stage, and the ambient techno the London duo begins punching out of a huge bank of machines is not discernable in quality or style from the tape that was filling time between showcases. Techno of any kind is simply unsuitable for environments outside a dancefloor. Saturday, 1:05 a.m. The Mysterious John pleads for quiet through a bullhorn at the start of the Asylum Street Spankers' show, declaring that “we make music the way God intended — without the use of de-e-e-mon electricity!'' When some patrons continue talking, the elder ukulele player jumps out of his chair and shouts, “Don't make me cut a switch!'' The bawdy songs — played with clarinet, ukuleles, guitars, banjos, kazoos, washboards and a little soft shoe -- highlight the roaring part of the '20s (“Roll Me One of Those Funny Cigarettes''). As homespun and rollicking as bathtub gin. Saturday, 1 p.m. Art Alexakis, leader of Everclear, is the first hungover musician to take the Daytime Stage for a string of sets benefitting Artists for a Hate-Free America, which Alexakis helped to found. With just an acoustic guitar (he obviously writes with an electric — listen to those strings buzz!), the songs about trying to kick yourself out of the gutter are somehow more ostensible. I must have been hungover, too, because I swear he introduces one song as being “about my dog.'' The lyrics make sense: “You know I'm never home / I call but you don't talk on the phone.'' Later I'm told he said “daughter.'' Saturday, 2 p.m. Back to the Daytime Stage for my hero, Mark Eitzel, former frontman for American Music Club and a patron saint to all who drink for reasons other than escape. He knocks out five of his gems, getting lost in every song, flailing his body awkwardly and with abandon (so much so that during “Firefly'' he hits the mike with his head). He finishes a new song, with a chorus of “Why can't you leave my sister alone,'' this way: “That song's about my sister. She's a pro-rights kind of person. Her brother-in-law banned her from seeing the kids because he said she was from Satan. My sister is not from Satan.'' Despite that conviction, Eitzel momentarily retreats into an unusually potent moment of pessimism: “They told me to say lots of nice things about a hate-free America. Is there such a thing? No. This country is finished.'' Someone in the crowd asks, “Then where are we going?'' “We're going to hell, man,'' Eitzel replies. Saturday, 4 p.m. About 2,000 people cram into the second level of a downtown parking garage to hear the Car Radio Orchestra, an experiment led by Wayne Coyne of Oklahoma City's Flaming Lips. Lips manager Scott Booker says they had expected about a fifth of this crowd. “I'm just trying to keep people from destroying my car,'' he said. “I wish I'd used a rental.'' (Though, in a Dallas Morning News note about the event, Coyne had advised that most rental cars “won't have adequate sound systems for the experiment.'') After an hour of positioning 28 vehicles and running two tests, the real music begins. Coyne gives each driver a pre-mixed cassette and instructs them to press play and blare it on cue. Soon, soothing synthesizer parts are swelling from various auto systems, and then the sound of a gasping, moaning woman begins building from Coyne's car in the center of the fray. The sounds build to a, well, climax, whereupon the ecsatic female cries are sped up, manipulated and squelched and begin rapid-firing from every car. The piece is called “Altruism,'' subtitled “That's the Crotch Calling the Devil Black.'' The second piece uses more looping drum sounds, but the ending fizzles because the principle sound was on tape no. 16 -- and that car had blown a fuse. Saturday, 10 p.m. My one and only personal indulgence — Paul K. and the Weathermen play at the Atomic Cafe. Even though he wears a turtleneck tonight, the darkness of his tales of a criminal past are not blunted. The fiddle player is superfluous, and the rhythm section only adds spine to the brooding, mythical post-punk-blues Paul pulls from his surprisingly powerful acoustic guitar. “30 Coins of Gold'' tells the spooky story of a beggar who posed as Judas for da Vinci's rendering of “The Last Supper.'' Saturday, 10:45 p.m. A Ryder truck is parked on the edge of Red River Avenue, and there's a big film screen in the back door showing a director's reel of film and video clips produced by L.A.'s Underground Media, which has provided videos for everyone from Marilyn Manson to David Bowie. This reel is dominated by videos for Cottonmouth, Texas — a group from Dallas featuring musicians from the New Bohemians providing a backdrop for the clever spoken musings of an ex-junkie. The work is more accessible than that sounds. Watch for the Virgin Records debut this summer. Saturday, 11:20 p.m. Who knew Fred Sanford had given up the salvage business and launched a hip-hop career? Endlessly toying with his voice effects, Mike Ladd slops through some captivating rants. The crowd was paltry but enthused, and Ladd will probably get used to that because his raps are about topics that matter, not sex and guns. When he gets furious, as he does in his lambaste of Richard Herrnstein's race-and-education theories in “The Bell Curve,'' he sounds like he's about to clutch his chest and have “the big one.'' Sunday, 12:05 a.m. Deborah Harry may not be aging gracefully, but her vocal chops are juicy in her latest project, the Jazz Passengers, a sharp jazz outfit that sidesteps the latest retro-lounge fad in favor of stream-of-consciousness, almost avant garde compositions led by sax and trombone. Harry's role as singer is well-suited to her dynamic voice, purring one moment and roaring like a tiger the next. Sunday, 1 a.m. Figures. The best punk show I've seen in years is by the three nellie queens in San Francisco's gay punk pioneers, Pansy Division. Venting about kinky boyfriends (“James Bondage''), the men north of the border (“Manada'') and right time alternatives to night time (“Horny in the Morning''), this trio puts out the most entertaining and energetic set of the week. Bassist Chris Freeman is in a skirt and flaming out all over the stage while guitarist Jon Ginoli (wearing a T-shirt that reads, “I Dream of Weenie'') this time plays it a bit more, uh, straight, offering an unexpected moment of seriousness in his solo tale of “Denny.'' What Is South by Southwest? By Thomas Conner 03/23/1997 The South by Southwest Music and Media Conference takes place each March in the remarkably hospitable city of Austin, Texas. It could take place in no other city, really — Austin is, per capita, the live music capital of the world. Conference organizers book about 750 acts (solo musicians, singers and bands) to perform one-hour showcases during five nights in 36 clubs around the city, mostly concentrated on Sixth Street downtown. (Every other club in town, though, books “pirate'' shows.) The purpose is to provide one-stop shopping for music industry talent scouts and journalists (and, oh yeah, fans) looking for the Next Big Thing. Among the scores of up-and-coming bands are scheduled shows by well-established artists — it helps draw the crowds. The event calls itself a “conference'' because it also includes panel discussions of music industry issues and a trade show, all of which helps to justify a week of listening to rock 'n' roll in bars. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Some artists touch us in the most extraordinary, unspoken ways. They craft their art almost unconsciously — making it look so easy — and while others merely reach out and titillate our glands, these rare artists reach out and massage the very muscle of our hearts. They transport us through all the barriers of politics, genres and all forms of identity to touch souls. It is here I will claim that Paul Buchanan — leader of a Scottish pop trio you've probably never heard of, the Blue Nile — is such an artist. I will not go about this objectively. I can't; I love his work too much. For those who amuse us with complaints about biased reviews (duh), I am hereby laying my biases upon the table. Buchanan's songs are the perfect balance between the melodic and the rhythmic, the spiritual and the physical, and I adore them. The Blue Nile has made three records in 12 years. That's 24 songs (none of them hits), an average of two a year — not exactly career momentum. After the debut record, “A Walk Across the Rooftops,'' appeared on A&M Records in 1984, fans of the album couldn't wait to hear what this band would do next. But wait they did. It took the Blue Nile five years to deliver the follow-up, the critically acclaimed “Hats.'' A fierce legal battle to free the band from a bad contract kept fans waiting another seven years for the third disc, “Peace at Last,'' which was released last month by Warner Bros. Still, the sound on “Peace at Last'' is so immediate and accessible, it's as if the band had been there all along. In a recent interview, Buchanan explained the band's anti-commercial pace. “After the first record, if we'd gone right back to work like others, we'd have made the next record in due course, but we weren't ready. We were insecure and we thrashed about for a while. We finally summoned the courage to play again for anyone who was still listening,'' he said. “I hope people don't think we're lying about in a swimming pool doing take after take after take. Nothing could be further from the truth. We got so caught up in the promoting and traveling and the one thing we overlooked was finding the time to go home at night and play the piano and let a song develop. We literally got off the plane one day and were told we'd be in the studio the next day. “We stoically went along with that for a while, but that's like putting a flower in a dark room and screaming at it to grow instead of giving it light and water and nurturing it.'' The new record turns to the acoustic guitar to prop up Buchanan's muted, ecstatic yearnings. The first record was a haunted, delicate clamor of eerie sounds — trumpet, guitars and keyboards — and every song is an excellent example of the value of space in a composition. “Hats'' carried forth the exact same lyrical imagery and emotional approach. There is nary a live instrument on the album, but seldom has studio technology been used to such a warm and personal effect. For “Peace at Last,'' Buchanan strived to maintain the music's sophistication and bring more live instruments into the mix. The result is a balance of all that is phenomenal about both previous albums. “I wanted to use wooden things. I wanted it to be a warm recording. I wanted to undo some of the notions about us,'' Buchanan said. “I felt mislabeled as being intellectual or cerebral or something like that. It isn't true for us at all. I wanted these songs to stand on their roots.'' The writing off of the Blue Nile as music for intellectuals is a bit of a farce. Buchanan's manipulation of empty space instead of 24 tracks of backing vocals, strings and atmospheric synthesizers sets sometimes sets a stark mood, and starkness is not a favorite aspect of mainstream culture. His lyrics rarely venture into anything intellectual. The joy of the first album is Buchanan's soul-less tenor crying out phrases like “I am in love'' and “Yes! I love you'' with youthful thrill. There are no manifestos on Blue Nile records, only gushing emotions fresh from the end of a humbly tailored sleeve. “Happiness,'' the opener to “Peace at Last'' features a simple theme, “Now that I've found peace at last / tell me Jesus / will it last?'' followed by another smooth Buchanan falsetto moment of glee: “It's only love!'' By the time the choir comes in, your eyes have closed and you've already been transported to a better place. “If someone responds in that way, it's because we have those feelings and assume others have those feelings, too,'' Buchanan said. “Our job is regarded as recreating those feelings but not attracting attention to ourselves doing so. We trusted there are people out there who would react if we did something honestly . . . There's no angle here, no ulterior motive. We're not here to get a Cadillac. “I don't want to sound pretentious. I just think the songs are true, and if they're true, the people will recognize it.'' By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Thomas Anderson still gets the odd piece of fan mail from Hong Kong or Bulgaria. Regardless of the country of origin, the letters follow the same basic lines: they found the album, bought it because it was American, and after they studied the lyrics and translated them, they think he's the next Leonard Cohen. It's a definite ego boost for one of the most critically lauded yet efficiently obscure songwriters of the last decade. Anderson's humility is both deserved and appalling. He's not worried about fame. Really. “It's nice if you have worldwide acclaim,'' he said in a recent interview. “All you really need, though, is to know that people appreciate your stuff and that you can still make a living doing it. Tomorrow never knows — you could wake up tomorrow with the Tulsa World calling you for an interview or you could die on a park bench like Edgar Allen Poe.'' Either way, you get famous, right? Yeah, well. Despite most readers' probable unfamiliarity with Anderson, he's been a critics' darling since his first indie release — the cumbersomely titled “Allright, It Was Frank ... and He's Risen From the Dead and Gone Off With His Truck'' — in 1989. He's gotten rave reviews from Rolling Stone to Berlin's Tip magazine. Why do critics love this hyperliterate native of Miami, Okla., so much? It could be because Anderson is a music journalist himself. Anderson sandwiched this interview between calls to Billboard and Musician magazines about upcoming reviews. But it's much more than mere nepotism. The fact that Anderson makes a fair living by writing prose as well as poetry indicates his talent for eloquent expression. Critics love him because he's a word man, a penultimate storyteller, and journalists like to think they are, too. The lyrical subjects on his third and latest disc, “Moon Going Down'' on the slightly higher profile indie label Marilyn, are about par for Anderson's musings — several ghosts (“Sing You Sinners,'' “Jerry's Kids'') and many quirky characters (“Running With Heidi,'' “Last I Saw of Adam''). Anderson's stories are always haunted and his antagonized protagonists are usually on the road. He sings their tales with his nervous, thin voice in as folksy a manner as rock 'n' roll will allow. He's been compared to everyone from Lou Reed to Lyle Lovett. “The acclaim has not been worthless,'' he said. “It's really helped me, not in terms of sales but in terms of getting small labels interested. When somebody gets written up favorably, the small labels start calling. It opens a lot of doors, and it does sell some records.'' It got him to Austin, Texas, anyway, his current home. Anderson launched his first musical experiments from Norman, though, where he moved in the late '80s after graduating from Oklahoma State University. “There were two places in Oklahoma then where people were forming bands: Tulsa and Norman,'' Anderson said. “Most of the musicians I know in Tulsa were in cover bands. Norman struck me as the most open- minded scene. Stillwater had such a large old hippie enclave, and the music still reflected that. It was too isolated for me.'' Most of his friends continued south and settled amid the thriving local music scene in Austin, but Anderson stayed in Norman. He liked it. It fit. “It's a good place to go to form a band and get your chops together while you figure out exactly what you want to do. The scene is creative enough, but there aren't any pressures, which can be a good or a bad thing,'' Anderson said. “Norman is a little bit like Austin. I don't know if it will ever be as big a scene, though, simply because of economics. It can't support a lot of clubs. The spirit is there.'' Still, Anderson eventually gave in to central Oklahoma's indifference to original music and headed to Austin with the rest of the talent. “Not of lot of people were getting what I was doing,'' he said. “I'm this guy with an acoustic guitar singing some songs I wrote. People in Oklahoma City think that means one of two things: he wants to be Neil Young or he wants to be Larry Gatlin. So I came to Austin where they do get it. I'm not a huge star down here by any stretch of the imagination, but they do understand that there are people here like Vic Chesnutt who just have some songs to sing, and they'll listen.'' Indeed, he ain't no superstar. He is confident, however, that time will be good to him. “Something I've been learning over the years is that there are a lot of others like me in that respect — people slogging it out. I read somewhere that if you keep doing this for 15 years then you get your legend card and people begin to notice you, start covering your songs and everything,'' Anderson said. “If you stick with something long enough, people will catch up with you. When I was at OSU, a visiting poet said that if you want to be successful you'd better hope you live a long time.'' Then Anderson started citing monumental examples of this theory. Leonard Cohen: “He's in his 60s and people are just now figuring out he's one of the best songwriters around.'' Richard Thompson: “The rock world certainly caught up with him. I see Thompson covers all over the place now.'' Elliott Murphy: “His new album has Springsteen and the Violent Femmes on it. He's been turning out quality work since the 1970s and he still hasn't got the respect he deserves. He may never get it. I may never get it.'' The logical thing to do here, of course, if he wants to get noticed, would be to sell out — write that hooky love-you-all-night-long song, pepper it with “baby'' and “oh yeah'' and collect the checks. Anderson's got the ability to write catchy pop — listen to “She Looks Like Ricki Lee Jones'' — but somehow he's too darn smart to write vapid lyrics, try though he has. “I've tried to sell out. I've made really half-hearted attempts at writing sell-outs, and I've hated myself afterward,'' he said. “I wish I had that kind of meteoric career where I shoot into the top eschelons of the business very, very quickly, but that's not how it seems to work with me. I just have to do what I feel in my heart and soul and win or lose on what I am.'' His one recent stab at success was a nomination for a W.C. Handy Blues Award. Yes, a blues award. Anderson wrote a song with blues singer Keri Leigh, a friend of his from Oklahoma. The song is called “Here's Your Mop, Mr. Johnson'' — a quintessential Anderson title — and it was up for best blues song fo the year. Leigh and her band, the Blue Devils, performed the song at the awards ceremony in May; alas, it did not win the prestigious award. “Moon Going Down'' is a success for Anderson, anyway. He said it's his “purest'' album. “This one is the closest to what I heard in my head,'' he said. “The songs I heard in my head this time I pretty much succeeded in getting onto the tape that way. We really nailed it this time.'' Someday he'll hit. Someday we'll be writing reviews of the Thomas Anderson tribute album on Columbia Records featuring Bettie Serveert, Giant Sand, King Missile and Aunt Beanie's First- Prize Beets. Until then, he'll keep puttering down the lost highways full of America's hidden relatives and just do his thing. Before we called him, he'd just spoken to a label in Sweden about cutting a mini-album. “You do what you can, you know?'' he said. “If the steps are only upward, even if they're tiny, it's better than selling tires.'' This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual conference and festival ...
© Tulsa World Tulsa Musicians Featured at South by Southwest Festival By Thomas Conner 03/17/1996 AUSTIN, Texas — Most people spend the first day of the South by Southwest music festival just getting their bearings. On Thursday, Tulsa band Epperley was just trying to get its equipment. The quartet drove to the Austin festival, and the trusty van broke down more than 20 miles outside of town. “At least we got that far,'' said guitarist Matt Nader. “We could be fishing on the Red River, you know.'' Epperley was scheduled to play Friday night at the Driskill Bar in the Driskill Hotel on Austin's club-lined Sixth Street. The van was towed to an Austin garage, and the band spent Friday extracting from it instruments and amplifiers and loading them into a rented U-Haul trailer. For Tulsa singer-songwriter Bob Collum, Thursday was a day of rubbing shoulders with heroes. Before his show Thursday night, Collum was jacked up by several chance meetings with admired musicians. “I bumped into Robyn Hitchcock right there at the trade show,'' Collum said. “He just turned and looked at me like this,'' whereupon Collum cocked his head and widened his eyes into a very droll, Hitchcockian expression. He also showed off an autograph from Mark Eitzel, former lead singer of American Music Club, who was scheduled to perform Saturday night on Sixth Street. Collum's name-dropping wasn't all blowing smoke, though. Before he began playing his set at the Coffee Plantation, Peter Holsapple came in and shook Collum's hand. Holsapple was in the '80s pop band the dB's and was in Austin to perform at the State Theater with his wife, Susan Cowsill of the Cowsills. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I'd come by,'' Holsapple said. Collum beamed. “You don't understand,'' he said later. “He's my biggest hero.'' That's clear when Collum plays his earnest, clever brand of acoustic pop. He took to the Coffee Plantation stage Thursday with his guitar and harmonica rack and proudly announced where he was from. “I'm here to report to you that the corn is still as high as an elephant's eye,'' he said and immediately launched into “Little Johnny Shotgun.'' He played eight songs in his allotted 30 minutes, including the four songs from his latest EP: “The Long Way Out,'' “Theoretical Girlfriend,'' “Prozac Yodel No. 9'' and “Writing on the Wall.'' He's a fierce performer. Other acts that followed him Thursday night were a couple of timid souls who looked a bit vulnerable on the stage with just an acoustic guitar between them and the audience. Collum, however, holds the stage with a startling confidence — one you don't expect after talking to the sheepish, caffienated hero-worshipper offstage. He stands at the microphone like Green Day's Billie Joe, a little too far back so that he leans into it with a pigeon-toed stance and neck muscles straining -- along with his conviction. The coffee house audience included about 20 folks seated when Collum began, and maybe 30 when his set wrapped up. The members of Epperley came to support him. Holsapple left early to get to his own gig, but tipped an imaginary hat to Collum as he left. Collum wasn't thrilled with his performance, but you get the impression that he never is. It's not a false modesty, just a charming insecurity. The set was brief, sure, but Collum said he was glad he made the trip. “Sure, it's worth it to come down here, whether you get to play or not,'' he said. “I've gotten to talk to a guy with a New York label, plus I've handed out a bunch of tapes.'' It's all about exposure here. Every little bit counts. Collum, like everyone, had a lengthy list of performers he wanted to see that night, but he said he'd eventually wind up in a bowling alley. “There's this bowling alley next to my hotel,'' he said. “They serve breakfast anytime for, like, $2. That's where I'll be all the time, probably. Just watching old people bowl.'' Another band with a Tulsa connection also landed a gig at the festival. Acoustic Junction played Thursday night at the White Rabbit on Sixth Street. The band is based out of Boulder, Colo., and bassist Curtis Thompson is from Tulsa. The band came together two years ago when Thompson moved to Boulder. They have two independent releases, which together have sold about 40,000 copies. However, the band has yet to play in Tulsa. 20/20, a revived new wave band made up of Tulsa natives, spent Thursday warming up for their Friday night show. 20/20 was a fairly influential band in Los Angeles during the early 1980s, and two original members started writing and recording again last year with Bill Belknap, owner of Tulsa's Longbranch Studios. Friday's show would be the new 20/20's second gig since releasing its fourth record last year, “Four Day Tornado.'' They played at the Poptopia festival in Los Angeles last fall. “We've all got careers and families now, so it's not real feasible for us to get out and tour now,'' Belknap said, though the band may try some traveling this summer. Thursday, they were set up in member Ron Flynt's garage. “It's just like we're in high school again or something,'' said member Steve Allen, with a little excitement and a little amazement. 20/20 was on an attractive bill with the Posies and fellow early '80s new wavers the Plimsouls at Austin's Waterloo Brewing Co. Tulsa-Based Groups Wow Austin Crowds By Thomas Conner 03/19/1996 AUSTIN, Texas — Joan Osborne just wouldn't shut up. The Grammy-snubbed singer was featured at the South by Southwest music festival Friday night on the Outdoor Stage, which was poorly placed in the middle of the intersection at Sixth and Brazos streets in downtown Austin. She held her ground up there about half an hour longer than she was supposed to. Her laziness paid off for one Tulsa band, though. Epperley was scheduled to play at 9 p.m. in the Driskill Bar in the Driskill Hotel, which is right on that corner. Thousands choked the streets to see Osborne play her astonishingly boring set. As 9 p.m. approached, and Osborne was still going, Epperley went ahead and started their show despite a meager crowd of their parents, a couple of execs from their record label and a few bar flies. As they churned out songs, their driving rock attracted quite a crowd — people from the streets who found Epperley's hooks much more interesting than Osborne's aural barbiturates. The Driskill is not a huge place and is not arranged to be conducive to gathering around the makeshift stage, but about 60 people tried during the band's hour-long set. When the band finished “Nice Guy Eddie,'' two guys with justified beer guts whooped, “Now that's good stuff right there!'' They continued dancing throughout the show, to the added amusement of the rest of the crowd and to guitarist Matt Nader. Nader had been discussing the band's music the night before after watching another Tulsan, Bob Collum, perform at a Sixth Street coffee house. The festival was choked with a lot of bands that had listened to too much Nirvana, Nader had said, and he once worried that his band's original album, a self-titled release when the band's name was Bug, suffered from that same ugly comparison. He had made it a point, he said, to try and lighten things up a bit. That's obvious in the new songs written for Epperley's first album on Triple X Records — which is finally released this week after some delays — and is especially obvious when the band plays live. The music sometimes may grind a bit harshly and lead singer David Terry sometimes may whine a bit too piercingly, but the overall vibe is fairly light and someday may even be fun. Terry sings nonsense just as often as he tells an ex how low she is. Osborne finally sang “One of Us,'' left the stage and was escorted through the bar and into the hotel, whereupon Nader said, “Hi Joan!'' in the middle of a song. Then the bar really filled up, and from what I could gather, most were attracted by the music and not waiting for the next band, the Dragmules. Rumor had it that Tommy Stinson, bassist for the defunct Replacements, was there, but I've no idea what he looks like. Terry's mom, Linda, was there, sporting an Epperley T-shirt and beaming with pride. “It's so much bigger than a piano recital when he's 6-years-old, you know,'' she said. Dean Naleway, a representative from Triple X Records, was there. He talked afterwards about the label's plans for Epperley. “These are memorable times, and this is step one,'' he said. “We've got 'em out here and people are listening to them. Now we've got to get the record in the stores and the Best Buys and the listening booths so people can start figuring it out. Pretty soon a lot more people will have heard of these guys.'' Naleway said a thorough tour is not very feasible at this point, but Nader said the band is itching to get on the road. “The only thing we were really looking for (in Austin) was maybe a booking agent, someone who could get us a lot of shows and get us a tour,'' Nader said. “We want to get out and start playing.'' As Epperley played, a true Tulsa mainstay, N.O.T.A., impressed a crowd of maybe 600 at the Back Room, a club a safe distance from the downtown mob. N.O.T.A. has been playing punk off and on in Tulsa since punk was an actual phenomenon at the turn of the '80s. N.O.T.A. member Jeff Klein said the show went as well as they expected. The crowd that showed up at least included some die-hard fans. “People were shouting out song titles from 10 and 12 years ago,'' Klein said, “so I guess we weren't completely forgotten.'' In all the years, N.O.T.A. had never played during South by Southwest, but the band is no stranger to Austin. They played there several times and were on an Austin label in the mid-'80s. While not label-shopping now, Klein said the show was really just to spread the word again that the band was around and to have a little fun. N.O.T.A. opened a bill that included Stiffs Inc. (another punk legend that Klein said “were pathetic'' and “dressed up like Gary Numan''), the Hickoids and the notorious Meatmen. Later that night, a band of erstwhile Tulsans resurrected themselves for a showcase at the Waterloo Brewing Co. in Austin's warehouse district. 20/20 was formed in 1979 when Tulsans Ron Flynt and Steve Allen moved to Los Angeles. The band had moderate success there and a lasting enough effect to pack the outdoor venue Friday night with fans eager to see the revived 20/20 — Flynt, Allen and Bill Belknap, owner of Tulsa's Longbranch Studios. The stage at Waterloo was outside the restaurant under a huge tent. L.A.'s the Delphines played before 20/20, and the huge crowd stuck around. The guys started with a song from their new album, “Four Day Tornado,'' then launched into oldies like “Remember the Lightning.'' Guitarist Allen sang lead on the first, and bassist Flynt sang lead on the second. Flynt's stage voice takes you by surprise — a fairly high and effected rock star vocal coming from such a subdued guy with a low, booming offstage voice. Allen's lead guitar was sharp and the solos peeled straight out of the '80s. “Stone Cold Message of Love'' from the new record was a delicious throwback to the days when arena rock and new wave were clashing — the backbeats pounded through the last chorus and a big, sustained finish with rolling drums and the whole sling-the-guitar-down crash at the end. The crowd bounced up and down and ate it up. SXSW Panel Beats Boredom by Exploring Dead Topic By Thomas Conner 03/21/1996 AUSTIN, Texas — In order to call itself a music “conference,'' South by Southwest organizes several panel sessions and workshops for musicians, press and the like. It adds an air of legitimacy to the three days of listening to rock 'n' roll in bars. Most of the panels sessions could sedate an elephant. “Covering Your Local Scene'' was a pointless exchange of egos between snotty reporters from Los Angeles and frustrated reporters from Texas towns of 6,000 people. “Why You Should Sign a Publishing Deal'' was a cavern of audible Valium — agents and publishing representatives droning on about the virtues of publishing your songs and the legal benefits therein. Zzzzzzzz. The only truly entertaining session came Friday afternoon. It was called “Were the Grateful Dead Really Any Good?'' The goal of the discussion was to determine whether the music of the Grateful Dead was really much beyond the average hippie garage groove or whether it was the sheer genius its fanatical followers claim it to be. As expected, it was a lively debate and reached about as many conclusions as your average episode of “The Jerry Springer Show.'' The panelists were these: Bill Wyman, rock critic of the Chicago Reader; Jim DeRogatis, senior editor at Rolling Stone; Ben Hunter, music editor at Swing Magazine; Michael Krugman, a freelance writer from Brooklyn; John Morthland, a freelance writer from Austin; and Paul Williams with Crawdaddy in Encinitas, Calif. When I entered the room, Williams was discussing his rediscovery of the band in 1978. He said that the Dead, because they toured and played so often, were not always great, but that one out of three shows was guaranteed to “blow your mind.'' “That's not good consumer value,'' DeRogatis quipped. “They've always been a (bad) rock 'n' roll band. They might be a good jug band.'' “But one of those nights will blow your mind,'' Krugman said. “And if they are a jug band, that's cool because you don't get to see jug bands in an arena.'' The fact that the Dead did not always have great shows was a continual hot spot. One man in the audience said he finally went to see the Dead at the urging of many friends, and he thought they were horrible. “Then (my friends) said, 'Well, you have to be in the right frame of mind,' and they said I had to take drugs to really get it, and that got really irritating.'' Another audience member addressed the same issue. “The first 17 times I saw them, I was on acid, and it was fun. The 18th time I was not an acid, and it was a great show. They rocked out a little more, and I enjoyed it more because I wasn't so spaced out that I couldn't enjoy the show, or even pay attention to what was really going on.'' This led to the issue that never seemed to be resolved: Were the Grateful Dead more important for their cultural experience than their music? The drug factor came up repeatedly — people discussing how integral LSD and various drugs were to the enjoyment and understanding of the Dead's music. But that begged this question: How good is music if you have to alter your consciousness to find it interesting? “When you stop taking acid, you realize how boring they are,'' one woman in the audience said. Few denied the unique community that the band inspired among its dedicated followers. “The Dead were able to engender a great feeling among a lot of different people,'' Hunter said. “Some magical experiences came out of seeing the Dead, for whatever reasons. You can make fun of the scene all you want, but there is definitely something there that's not at your basic Better Than Ezra or Rancid show, and likely never will be.'' But there might have been other sides to that huge and infectious community, some said. One woman in the audience didn't think the mere fact that the band was so hugely popular was necessarily a plus. “America's Funniest Home Videos'' is also hugely popular, and that hopefully doesn't constitute artistic merit, she said. DeRogatis saw the huge community more as a marketing target for the band, a captive audience and insurance policy that the members didn't set out to create but didn't shun, either. “They were marketing community as commodity,'' he said. “It was just like Camelot. Camelot never really existed. It was like the Disneyland notion of '60s-Land.'' Here he began reading from a catalog selling Grateful Dead licensed clothing. “A great new line of Steal Your Face active wear,'' he read. “They just wanted to sell more ties!'' he cried. Krugman defended the merchandising. “Everyone sells T-shirts,'' he said. “Some of 'em even like to wear them.'' Another virtue was raised by an audience member: the Dead were not pawns of the record industry. In the last two decades, they made very few records and subsisted almost chiefly on touring -- consistently running the highest-grossing tours each year. “The great thing about the Dead was that they managed to piss off the record industry,'' one audience member said. “Their touring dwarfed their record sales, and the record companies couldn't get a hold on that. They weren't getting any money from it.'' Williams agreed. “No one in the whole indie movement did more to say you can screw the record business than the Grateful Dead. They showed us there is such a thing as going out and making a living playing music, no matter where you are on the Billboard chart.'' A music teacher in the audience found the only real, tangible advantage of the Grateful Dead's music. “The kids that I've taken to Dead shows learned more about world music than they would have otherwise. They were the first experimental music with mass appeal, and they turned a lot of people onto different styles of expression.'' Wouldn't you love to sign up for her class? This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual festival ...
© Tulsa World Faces in the Crowd By Thomas Conner 08/04/1995 Sen. Orrin Hatch was introduced by a young man who advised the audience which over-the-counter pain remedies effectively simulate a heroin high. The senator — an actor, of course — stepped up to the third stage and began auctioning off the national parks and the public school system to indifferent bidders in the crowd. His ranting was interrupted by protesters from the Elf Liberation Front. And the simulated high hadn't even kicked in yet. So you can see that Lollapalooza is more than just a music festival. Oh, so much more. Lollapalooza is a sampling of contemporary youth culture, or at least a parade of those masks the kids are allowed to rent. The ticket price alone can be earned by just watching the people go by at one particular sidewalk. You'll see every fashion mistake since the first World War out there. This is an age group that grew up parroting Billy Crystal's Fernando Lamas catch phrase, “It is better to look good than to feel good.'' They mean it; on July 10 at the Kansas City show, kids trudged through the near-100-degree swelter in wool stocking caps, flannel shirts and heavy boots. Other dedicated followers of fashion sport 'do rags, pierced noses, pierced ears, pierced navels, pierced lips (watch them try to eat the stir fry), toe rings, Brady Bunch striped T-shirts, jean jackets with anarchy symbols emblazoned with permanent marker, T-shirts that say “Kansas Zen Society'' (the oxymoron of the day), tie-dyed shirts, ballcaps in every direction, Dr. Suess hats, Tommy Hilfiger Golf Team shirts, postal uniforms, Stars and Stripes bikinis, every landscape of facial hair one can conceive, and tattoos tattoos tattoos! But not everyone in the crowd is a young'un. Fred Coombs, 38, of Olathe, Kan., stood out like a sore thumb in his button-down shirt and Dockers shorts at the Kansas City show. “I'm like that director on the old Dave Letterman show -- the blue shirt, the tan chinos, the brown shoes,'' Coombs said. “I just discovered that I had too strong a parental instinct to let my son come to this madness by himself.'' Coombs' 13-year-old son, Jay, said he was having fun despite having his dad around. “He's a pretty good sport,'' Jay said. This conversation took place in the shadow of a giant condom, mind you. An AIDS awareness group had, er, erected the 12-foot device over its information table. That was next to the Planned Parenthood table, where you can get free goodies if you hop on one leg while saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Lolla Land: A Self-Help Guide By Thomas Conner 08/04/1995 Whatever you do, don't forget the tanning lotion. And here are some other factoids and tips for the Lollapalooza virgin: — “Lollapalooza'' is an actual word defined in Webster's College Dictionary as “Slang. an extraordinary or unusual thing, person, or event; an exceptional example or instance.'' — The festival began in 1991 as the farewell tour for Jane's Addiction, the influential band fronted by the festival organizer, Perry Farrell. He wanted to do something special to honor the band on its final go-round, so he hooked up with agents Marc Geiger and Don Muller, added seven bands to the bill as well as food, vendors and art displays, and pulled off an extravaganza unlike any promotion ever attempted before. Still going ... — Number of people who attended the festival last year: 969,554. — Water, water everywhere: Most venues will allow one bottle of water per ticketholder through the gate. You'll want to ration it when you see that a cup of ice water costs $3 at the concession stands, but be sure to get your proper fill of nature's lifeblood. Number of people treated last year for heat-related illness: 203. Near some restrooms there will be showerheads for public dousing, and the festival sets up Rain Rooms for your relief — tents full of water spray through which you are herded like cattle through a car wash. Number of gallons used in last year's Rain Rooms: 154,801. — Plan for the shopping. The cheapest T-shirt for a main-stage act is $20. A meal from one of the worldwide food vendors will average around $5. And the vendors! — Number of pounds of carrots consumed by artists during last year's festival: 2,365. — Dollars donated to charity from last year's festival alone: 856,437. Tour planners hope this year's charity hat will push the five-year festival total over $2 million. — Number of kids who crowd-surfed to the front of the main stage last year: 6,533. — Number of bottles of Evian consumed backstage during last year's tour: 25,800. — The Starplex can be Mosquito Central around dusk. Throw a bottle of Muskol or some kind of insect repellent in your hip pack. Sonic Youth - Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon - and Courtney Love's Hole Head a Truly Ensemble Lollaplooza By Thomas Conner 08/04/1995 Beck bounced off the Lollapalooza stage like Tigger just out of rehab. He bounded over to two humble Midwestern journalists eager to interview the artist — about his work, his schemetic aural creations, his interpretation of the sociopolitical state of modern rock music — and he grabbed them by the shoulders. “Yes. No. Maybe. Never. Only after meals, and I refuse to answer that one on the grounds that it's too damn hot,'' he said in a frightening, Pee-Wee-on-meth crescendo. He then dropped his water bottle, cursed, and skipped away to a waiting, air-conditioned bus. It was that kind of day. The Tulsa World attended the Kansas City date for Lollapalooza, July 10, in order to experience the madness and thus warn those of you making the trek to the Dallas show on Aug. 10. And for those of you waffling on whether or not to make the journey, we feel it necessary to — right here, in front of your boss — testify to your weakening condition, how we have heard that raspy cough, how pale you've been looking (i.e., call in sick and hit the road!). Now ensconced as an annual institution, Lollapalooza lumbers around the country this summer with its fifth and best bill ever. The Kansas City show nearly sold out the Sandstone Amphitheater in the suburb of Bonner Springs, Kan. The Dallas show, at the Starplex, is expected to sell out, at least by showtime. (The reserved seating is gone, but early this week Ticket Master still had general admission available at $31.25 a ticket. Call (212) 373-8000, and expect a lengthy hold.) This year, the Lollapalooza name may be as big a draw as the headliners, who get a rare chance to play for a filled arena. The festival's founding philosophy of showcasing new talent has been relegated to the second and third stages this year, which actually is more conducive to the tastes of the most diverse crowd you'll ever see. Many acts on the main stage have been around for a while — the main headliner act, Sonic Youth, has a greatest hits album out, for instance — but this is still a cutting-edge festival, a chance for an urban and college-town culture to visit the suburbs and spread the freak power far and wide. The day on the main stage begins with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, a ska-punk act with a social conscience that wound up stealing some of the day in Kansas City. The first and last slots on the bill are the worst for bands; everyone's arriving and getting settled in during the first band, and a lot of goobers pack up to beat the traffic during the last band. The Bosstones, however, opened the festival with a roar and wound up reprising their set on the second stage late in the evening. Frontman Dicky Barrett sweats all over the stage, leading the band in a frenetic swing that inevitably catches up the crowd. Jesus Lizard is next. Here's some advice: Get there early, drop your stuff, enjoy the Bosstones, then do your settling in during Jesus Lizard. This band fuses whiny rants onto hard-rock riffs and has been doing so for six years without making any impact. Vocalist David Yow announced in Kansas City, “I have sort of an upset tummy,'' then launched into a song about his urine. Ex-Scratch Acid guitarist David Wm. Sims wields his axe like an assault weapon, but this is still a great opportunity to scout better seats and grab a smoothie. The bouncy Beck takes the stage in third place. More appropriate for a sizzling street corner than a sizzling arena, Beck's Juice-O-Matic approach to music doesn't wilt in the heat. With a '60s-vintage effects box and vocals that sound like Tom Waits transmitting from Jupiter, Beck screeches all over the stage and swings like few blond kids in knit caps can swing. In Kansas City, his hometown, he played “Pay No Mind'' “heartland style,'' and he previewed two eerie pieces from his next disc, including a slow grinder called “Black Hole.'' And yes, he satisfied all the frat boys who were there to see “that guy who sings `Loser.' '' For that hit, he was joined onstage by the S7Ws, two men in sailor suits who stood guard at the corners of the stage like Public Enemy's X Men. “Take it easy,'' he said before bounding off stage, “and have a good picnic.'' The fourth act in Dallas will be Elastica, a hot new pop group from the other side of the pond. They take the place of Sinead O'Connor, who left the lineup because she's pregnant and the heat was a bit too much. It's a tragic loss; she was the turning point of the Kansas City show. Her fans were rabid, screaming like banshees when she came on stage and not stopping until the last chords of “Fire on Babylon'' were off to the stratosphere. The pregnancy explains why she was so subdued, walking around the stage barefoot, looking comfortable and laid back like Michelle Shocked or Carly Simon. Elastica started filling clubs in and around London two years ago. Leader Justine Frischmann left Suede before that band hit it big. The band's self-titled U.S. debut (another Geffen band on the bill!) collects 16 short-but-sweet tracks from independently released EPs. “This is music to be brave to,'' Frischmann has said. Their sing-song squelch should fit right into the festival. The coolest new band on the bill is Pavement, a band of upstarts who offer a refreshing — gasp, even melodic — pop sensibility amid the dissonant lineup. Bringing its crooked reign on stage, Pavement prefers to sound as if its songs just fell together — melodies are there but tentative. Lead goofball Steve Malkmus shifts between sleepy-eyed cool to yelping exasperation while wearing silly hats. The bulk of the Kansas City crowd just didn't quite get Pavement, though. The band ambled on, coughed, tuned up, joked among themselves and plowed into herky-jerky numbers like “Father to a Sister of a Thought'' and pop gems like “Kennel District'' and “Range Life'' while dazed breadbasket babies stared blankly at the stage and applauded politely. Ah well, gotta pay those dues before you pay the rent. When Pavement modestly leaves the stage, the stage managers go into high gear. For Cypress Hill, they hustle out a giant gong, a giant bong, DJ posts flanked by towering (simulated, surely) marijuana plants, and a 20-foot gold Buddha with a pot leaf on his belly. So begins this one trick pony's act — endless pro-marijuana rap. They certainly have guts. Before “I Want to Get High,'' lead rapper B-Real lights a joint on stage for the screaming glee of the crowd. He slides along with his annoying voice — like Bill Cosby imitating his children — and rants about the virtues of marijuana legalization. Despite the thinness of the group's one-topic set and B-Real's habit of calling everyone in the audience “mother f—-ers,'' Cypress Hill does get the crowd on its feet — a surprising hunk of which came especially to see them. Holding to the festival tradition of foul language and her own knack for tastelessness, Courtney Love stepped out onto the Kansas City stage next to sneer, “I'm going to abuse you because you deserve it, you f—-ing sh—s.'' The widow Cobain then lead her band, Hole, through some of the tightest and well-built pop of the day, over which she warbled like a drowsy sheep. Most of the band's latest album, “Live Through This,'' was covered, with sharp interpretations of “Gutless'' and “Softer Softest.'' Wearing a stark white dress and made-up like she was bruised and battered, she picked fights with anyone she could see in the crowd who wore a Pearl Jam T-shirts. Many of her stage antics are just a little too difficult to attempt to explain in a wholesome newspaper. Finally, Sonic Youth held everyone into the head-for-the-parking-lot timeslot with the expected confidence of the only band to transcend the typical underground, art-or-popularity quandary. Drawing on a history stretching back to 1982, Thurston Moore matter-of-factly introduced the songs, many of which were unrecorded ones. His lyrics were more audible, which is a real plus and reflects the heightening of that awareness on the band's remastered greatest hits package out last spring, “Screaming Fields of Sonic Love.'' |
Thomas Conner
These online "clips" reproduce a self-selection of my journalism (music etc) during the last 20+ years. It's a lotta stuff, but it only scratches the surface. I do not currently possess the time or resources to digitize the whole body of work. These posts are simply a bunch of pretty great days at the office. Archives
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