By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World We've told the story of Leon Russell in these pages numerous times. Thus far, it's been a process of piecing together bits of well-known history and the accounts of those who knew Leon and hung around — or on — him during his beginnings here in Tulsa and his ultimate international fame. Not since Leon had a Tulsa address has he spoken with the Tulsa World or, for that matter, many press outlets at all. This week — since he's comin' back to Tulsa just one more time — the artist known almost as much for his shyness as his hit songs broke down and talked with us from his home near Nashville about his new album and his much-mystified roots and days in Tulsa. It was an eagerly awaited conversation that set a few records straight and shed new light on the shadowy mystique of the master of space and time. Home Sweet Oklahoma Russell spent his formative and most successful years in Tulsa, moving here in 1955 from Maysville, just west of Pauls Valley, when his father was transferred. He arrived at age 14, but that wasn't too young to start playing in local clubs. Things were a bit different back then. "In those days, Oklahoma was dry, and the clubs weren't supposed to have liquor. So a 14-year-old or anybody of any age had no problem working anywhere," Russell said. "I worked six or seven nights a week till I left Tulsa at 17. I'd work 6 to 11 at a beer joint, then 1 to 5 at an after-hours club. It was a hard schedule to do when going to school. I slept in English a lot. Then I got out to California, and they were more serious about their liquor laws. I about starved to death because it was so much harder to find work at my age." Russell remembers dozens of old Tulsa nightspots — the House of Blue Lights, the Paradise Club, the Sheridan Club, the Cimarron Ballroom — as well as his perennial stopover, the Cain's Ballroom. He said he also was partial to the hot goings-on along Greenwood Avenue. "There was quite a scene over there. They had classier shows than the other parts of town. There was the Dreamland, I believe, where they had big revues every night — traveling package shows with big stars. I saw Jackie Wilson over there when I was very young, I think at the Big 10. Saw Bobby Bland at the Dreamland. It was quite an experience." In California, instead of steady gigs in clubs, Russell found a lot of session work in recording studios, playing piano for other musicians and singers. The list of his contributions is nearly as impressive as his own three-decade discography, including work with the likes of Phil Spector, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan. Goin' Back to Tulsa After cutting his first, eponymous album, Russell returned home to Tulsa in 1972. First, he was just visiting, but the story goes that he and a friend were tanked up on psychedelics while in a boat on Grand Lake. A lightning storm came up, and the boat got stuck on a sand bar. Russell apparently found the experience so mystical that he took it as a sign to stay in Tulsa. "Yeah, that's not true, but it's a great story," Russell said. Russell moved his whole recording operation to the area, living in a big house in Maple Ridge and recording in a huge studio on Grand Lake. His presence here attracted numerous other big names to visit Tulsa, from Dylan to Clapton, and the excitement the scene generated in turn brought new local musicians out of the woodwork. Through his label, Shelter Records, Russell helped Tulsa-native talent like Dwight Twilley and the Gap Band reach a higher level of success. "That was the whole point, you know," Russell said. "There are so many talented people around — and Tulsa maybe has more of it than most places — but it's hard for the talented people to get a chance. The (music) business is largely run by accountants and lawyers. They hire people to tell them whether stuff is good or not. It's difficult for good, young artists to get someone standing up for them saying, `This is a great band.' I figured I could give some people a chance who deserved it. I mean, you know, the Wilson brothers (in the Gap Band) are some of the most unique talent in the world." Anything Can Happen Since that early '70s heyday of hits like "Delta Lady" and "Tight Rope," Russell his lived back and forth between Los Angeles, Tulsa and Nashville, and his career has meandered through different styles and varying levels of commercial success. 1974's "Stop All That Jazz" (which featured the Wilson brothers before they became the Gap Band) dabbled in funk and Afro-beat, and his 1992 comeback, "Anything Can Happen" — his first record in more than a decade — featured Bruce Hornsby and tinkered with traditional themes and island tempos. Russell's most noted stylistic side-step, though, is his occasional masquerade as a country persona named Hank Wilson. He first debuted Wilson in a 1973 album, "Hank Wilson's Back." It was an excuse for this rocker to purge his inherent Okie-born country leanings. "Hank Wilson came about on a road trip," Russell said. "I was bringing a car back from L.A., and I stopped at a truck stop that had about 500 country tapes for sale. I bought a bunch and listened to them on the way home (to Tulsa). I don't really listen to records very much, except for research. I liked some of that stuff, though, and thought it would be fun to do a record like that." Russell revisited Hank Wilson again in the early '80s, and a third Hank Wilson record is the reason for Leon's latest public presence. The new Ark 21 label just released "Legend in My Own Time: Hank Wilson III," a new set of country standards performed by Russell with such guests as the Oak Ridge Boys ("Daddy Sang Bass"), T. Graham Brown ("Love's Gonna Live Here") and longtime Leon pal and collaborator Willie Nelson ("He Stopped Loving Her Today" and "Okie From Muskogee"). Nelson and Russell still work together, performing occasional acoustic shows, but this album marks their first recorded duet since the 1979 "Willie and Leon" album. Ironically, the two collaborated musically before they ever met. "Somebody called me and said, `Joe Allison is working on Willie's album. Would you like to play?' " Russell said. "I went in and did some overdubs, some clean-up work, but I didn't meet him. Years later, I was sitting with Willie at his ranch in Austin. I said, `Listen to that guy playing all my stuff.' As I listened to it a little more, I realized I had played on those records. I didn't know it and he didn't know it." This Masquerade Harold Bradley, himself a legendary session musician who served as bandleader and production assistant for the new album, raves about the new Hank Wilson project. He said this album has finally captured Leon's true country spirit. "What I really like about this project is that we captured Leon totally," Bradley said. "In the other two albums, which I really liked too, I thought we had done really well. But in those albums, not really having done it before, we tried to make Leon go the Nashville way. On this album, we went Leon's way." Russell is equally excited about the results of the new Hank Wilson recordings. He recorded the vocals and piano in his home studio, then the musicians built on the framework he had established. Guest vocals were added later; Willie Nelson recorded his part in Austin while the Oak Ridge Boys made a visit to Russell's home. Twenty-four songs were recorded for this album in two days. "Nashville is full of master players," Russell said. "I mean you can go up to them and say, play this at this tempo, play it as a samba, and they can play it ... They're ready to play, and they're trained to play master quality at all times. It's great to be able to take advantage of that. I tried to do this rapidly, too. They get it right the first time about 95 percent of the time, and I tried to capture that. "The first time someone plays the tune, it's off the top of their head. It's somewhat more free and loose than if they'd practiced it 10 times. It gets confusing if you make a lot of takes and you start second-guessing yourself. You start arranging it in your mind. That first time, you play from the heart and it has a special kind of feel. Most of the songs (on this record) are first takes. Ten of my vocals are first takes, and in most cases I'd never sung the song before." Russell usually records his own albums at home, but he said he enjoys the chance to work with session players for these Hank Wilson albums because — with his own background as a session musician — he has such respect for them. "Those years I played in studios gave me invaluable experience," he said. "I worked with probably the best 200 or so producers and arrangers in the world. I learned so much from those guys. I can't imagine what it would be like not to have that." This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual conference and festival ...
© Tulsa World Musical Mardi Gras Spotlights Oklahoma's 'Red Dirt' Singing Poets By Thomas Conner 03/21/1998 AUSTIN, Texas — South by Southwest is a musical Mardi Gras, of sorts, but Chris Maxwell spent Thursday afternoon immersed in actual Mardi Gras beads. To draw some attention to his label, Binky Records, and its artists, Maxwell passed out Mardi Gras beads in the South by Southwest trade show. One artist, in particular, concerned Maxwell the most. In fact, it's an Oklahoman, and it's the whole reason Maxwell launched Binky Records. “I started this label a while ago after I met Tom Skinner and wondered why in the world this man didn't have records out all over the country,'' Maxwell said. Skinner is a popular performer in Tulsa and Stillwater, and he's at the apex of the group of songwriters that forge the “red dirt'' sound — Oklahoma's unique brand of singer-songwriter music with that good ol' boy touch. He and a few other immensely talented songwriters -- Muskogee's Greg Jacobs and Stillwater's Bob Childers — are featured on the Binky Records sampler that Maxwell handed out to every journalist and music industry mole that walked through the South by Southwest trade show. In addition, Skinner, Jacobs and Childers performed an unofficial showcase concert Thursday night at Austin's Waterloo Ice House. The bill also featured Green Country native Jimmy Lafave and area favorite Ray Wylie Hubbard. The Big Names: To seed the festival with exciting attractions, South by Southwest books a couple of unofficial headliners each year. This year's biggie: Sonic Youth. The announcement came just a couple of weeks before the festival, but word spread quickly because the lines to get into the show at Austin's La Zona Rosa wound around the block. Why the hoopla? Sonic Youth is a veteran New York quartet that — I realized upon hearing them again live -- created the entire sonic landscape that allowed grunge to exist. The carefully reined dissonance, the thudding guitar rhythms, the squelched noises and walls of distortion — it all opened the doors for modern rock's anger and angst. The band is still hot, too. During their long set Thursday night, they played mostly songs from the forthcoming new album on Geffen Records, “A Thousand Leaves.'' Actually, these experiences weren't just songs; they're compositions, sonic landscapes, carefully crafted noise. Hearing it live is breathtaking. Guitarist Thurston Moore closes his eyes and meditates on the music's off-kilter drone; then suddenly comes the inevitable change, a jerk in the song that turns Moore's guitar into a live transformer. He snaps the strings, scrapes them, even rubs them with a bow. Amazing. Another oldie act played Thursday night: Soul Asylum. The passe bunch of bores played songs from their new album, “Candy From a Stranger,'' due in May. Festival Highlight: Imperial Teen's Thursday night show was an appropriate follow-up to the Sonic Youth show. Here was a scrappy band from San Francisco taking the sonic expanse and reverence of dissonance that Sonic Youth pioneered on the other side of the continent and containing it all within head-bobbing pop songs. The same occasional guitar torture is there, and they learned their droning rhythmic lessons from Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon, but instead of crafting rock suites, Imperial Teen presses the same sonics into the mold of an accessible pop song. The results are exhilarating and smart. As the Austin Chronicle's Raoul Hernandez said, Imperial Teen is the Talking Heads as Nirvana was the Sex Pistols. It's the same shtick running backwards on the same rock 'n' roll road, and it's exciting. MMMSXSW: The Sheridans, a Pretenders-like Austin band, ran an ad in the SXSW program book that read, “In celebration of their third annual rejection from SXSW, the Sheridans are taking it to the street. Hey, it worked for Hanson!'' Indeed, Tulsa's own hit trio was discovered via SXSW in 1994. The brothers three didn't have a showcase; instead, they wandered among spectators at a music-business softball game, harmonizing for anyone who would listen. “You know, people were smiling at them cutely and laughing when they walked away. I don't think anybody really listened to their singing,'' Christopher Sabec told the Austin American-Statesman. Sabec was the one person who listened and realized the Hansons had hit potential. He rushed to talk to their parents about managing the boys, and the rest is history. Year of the Woman: Women dominated the annual Austin Music Awards this year, held on the first night of the SXSW music festival. One woman, in particular, Austin native Abra Moore swept the top awards, winning Musician of the Year, best album (“Strangest Places,'' Arista), best song (“Four-Leaf Clover'') and best pop artist. Shawn Colvin came in second behind Moore in each of those categories, but Colvin won for best songwriter and best single (both for “Sunny Came Home''). Other awards of note: best electric guitarist, Ian Moore; best female vocals, Toni Price; best male vocals, Malford Millgan of Storyville; best country artist, Don Walser; best alternative band, El Flaco (Sixteen Deluxe came in second); and the Hall of Fame inductees were Shawn Colvin, Doyle Bramhall, Daniel Johnston, Keith Ferguson and Jason McMaster. Respite From Rock: Thursday night's Daemon Records showcase provided the ultimate break from the rigors of other rock. Daemon is the Atlanta-based indie label started by Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls, and the star performer in the line-up was one Ray watched with intensity. Her name is Terry Binion, and her debut release, “Leavin' This Town,'' already has been reviewed by publications as diverse as People and No Depression. She's a lone singer-guitarist who warbles in that range-jumping singing style Nanci Griffith once dubbed “folkabilly.'' During her Thursday show, she played a song called “Dear Richard,'' which she explained was her ode to a night in the life of fellow Americana performer Richard Buckner. It was the perfect tribute, her reedy voice lurching between roars and coos much like Buckner himself. “Are these the songs that you write out on the prairie / with the moon over your genius head brightly shining,'' she sang. Band to Watch: The band of the festival that simply screamed “Next Big Hit'' hails from just up the turnpike from Tulsa in Stockton, Mo. It's Flick, a quartet of very green but hardy teen-agers with style and panache oozing from between their power chords. Oh, they've got their share of teen-age angst, but they radiate such spirit and energy that tames the whiny beast. Imagine the Smashing Pumpkins covering ballads by the Raspberries. Led by the Thornton brothers — Oran, 18, and Trevor, 14 -- Flick has a freshly scrubbed look and fuzzy rock sound that is destined to shoot them too high too fast. They're already writing songs for the radio; Flick closed its Thursday night set before a huge, responsive crowd with Oran singing, “This is my song for the radio / want the world to know.'' Flick's debut disc should be out in June from Columbia Records. Eyes of Texas: Every March, Austin experiences its own brand of madness By Thomas Conner 03/22/1998 AUSTIN, Texas — A shower would have ruined the whole experience. Straight from eight hours on the road — grubby, bleary-eyed, irritable and scatter-brained — we stumble into, of all places, the Bates Motel. It's Wednesday night in Austin, the first night of the South by Southwest music festival, a veritable flea market of new, young bands with a lot to prove (Flick, Sixteen Deluxe) and old, old bands begging for continued respect (Tommy Tutone, Soul Asylum). One such relatively new band with a lot to prove is Billy Joe Winghead, a quartet comprising slightly askew residents of Tulsa and Oklahoma City. At their official SXSW showcase tonight, they have to prove that they can draw a crowd and keep it — even people as bedraggled as I am, longing for fresh sheets and hot water rather than the club's stale cigarette haze and lukewarm beer. However, Billy Joe Winghead's lead singer, John Manson, is going into the gig with a different plan. “We like to have the opposite effect. We want to clear the room. Faster than pepper gas, if we can,'' he says, his maniacal grin stretching horrifically underneath his Uncle Fester bald head. With that objective in mind, he's not going to have much to work with. As the band takes the small, harshly lit stage, they look out over a paltry crowd of about a dozen disinterested faces. Again, it's the first night of the festival. All the industry people are across town at the Austin Music Awards, and the townies still have to go to work in the morning. But eventually, Manson's plan to evacuate the club will backfire. Of course, if anyone could clear a room, Billy Joe Winghead is the band to do it. Their kind of rock 'n' roll used to reverberate from behind a chain-link safety screen. They named their debut disc after a truck stop, and the distorted guitar chords don't crunch as much as they stomp. They sing songs about drug-induced car accidents, aging sex queens, crooked cops and tractor pulls. And they do it very, very loudly. But these are the desensitized '90s. Such topics don't frighten the gentlefolk anymore. Instead of clearing out the dingy little Bates Motel, Billy Joe Winghead fills it up. They start playing five minutes before their scheduled starting time (“We will now be the first band to play this year's South by Southwest,'' Manson declares as he starts “C'mon I Wanna Lay Ya''), and throughout the band's 40-minute set, people stream through the door. “Who is this?'' asks a smartly dressed Kate Winslet look-alike. I do my best to explain over the roar of the song “Peckerbelly.'' She looks and listens another moment longer and says, “They're so creepy. I love it.'' Indeed, this is the kind of sleaze you wind up wallowing in. My own whiny pangs for a respite from road weariness were satiated not by the meager comforts of hotel room isolation but by the bone-rattling thwacks of Tulsan Steve Jones' bass and Manson's glitter-green theremin (an eerie contraption that does as much to fascinate an audience as the band's own bawdiness). The music's tawdriness, boldness and spookiness fill a club with vibrations that relax the most exhausted road warrior, whether he be a truck drivin' man or a pop critic on the dole. Shower? Who needs it? We must revel in our revulsion. Whether tonight's exposure will reap the band any rewards remains to be seen. The band cleared the bar only when they stopped playing. The crowd included at least one booking agent and some industry types towed by Ray Seggern, music director at Tulsa's KMYZ, 104.5 FM, himself an Austin native. Manson is keeping a cool head. “I've been through this South by Southwest hoop before, and I'm not expecting miracles. The fact that we had time to set up and got to play right in the middle of the action is enough reward for me,'' he said. The band kicked around the rest of the week and was scheduled to play a wedding on Saturday. Yikes. A Tulsa Sampler By Thomas Conner 03/22/1998 AUSTIN, Texas — The bright yellow sign outside Maggie Mae's said, “Come hear the Tulsa Sound!'' It enticed the throngs of music lovers off the sidewalks of Sixth Street -- Austin's main drag and the heart of the South by Southwest music festival — and into the club featuring the first of several bills packed with Tulsans. Dave Percefull and Bud Barnes organized the festival line-up through Percefull's Tulsa-based music company, Yellow Dog Productions. The bill featured bluesy rockers Steve Pryor, Brad Absher and Brandon Jenkins, as well as a sister pop duo called Eden. For five hours late Wednesday night and late Thursday afternoon, the four acts rotated across the stage in the rooftop loft of Maggie Mae's club. The Tulsa Sound it was — Absher's smooth, loosened-tie blues; Pryor's hard-livin', cleansing blues of a true axman, and Jenkins' muddy wheatfield country blues. During Jenkins' first set Wednesday night, Pryor sashayed around the sparse room playing air guitar. He later commented, “Ever notice how the guys who can play the hell out of a guitar never get the record deals?'' It was a question intended to compliment Jenkins, but it spoke volumes toward the plight of these three players, each incredibly tight and accomplished musicians who have been slogging through the Tulsa club scene for years without any greater reward outside the city limits. But that's what these two showcases were for, Percefull said. “I can't think of anyone in Tulsa who deserves to have fingers pointed at them in front of record industry people quite like these guys,'' Percefull said. Percefull and Barnes landed the choice timeslots and location when another record company pulled its showcases out of the festival at the last minute. Percefull, who plays guitar with Jenkins' band and has been trying to grab a stage at the festival for several years, heard about the cancellation, contacted the organizers and gave a loud, “Ahem!'' That led to not just one night featuring four acts, but two nights in a row. “We lucked out, big time,'' Percefull said. Rounding out the Tulsa Sound was Eden, a haunting pop group made of sisters Sharla and Angie Pember. Sharla backs her sister's vocals with alternating piano and acoustic guitar, and the two blend their voices into evocative harmonies. Together, they sound like Sarah McLachlan's multi-track studio recordings, but they're creating the dreamy mood live with two voices. The Yellow Dog showcase got the most out of its location, too. Maggie Mae's loft opens onto a popular rooftop loft made even more popular by this week's warm weather in Austin. Plus, the bathrooms for the large club were upstairs, so eventually everyone at Maggie Mae's walked by the Tulsa players. Hey, they come down to here to be seen and heard, right? They'll take the exposure any way it comes. Prefab? Another Lennon Goes Into the Rock Wilderness By Thomas Conner 03/27/1998 AUSTIN, Texas — Saturday, at the South by Southwest music festival, was a hard day's night. After pundits debated the remaining relevance of Paul McCartney, Sean Lennon wowed a star-struck crowd with his meandering and pretty un-Beatlesque tunes. The young Lennon seems more interested in his parents' Beach Boys records than the records of his parents. Oh, there are flashes of “Revolver''-era John here and there, but Sean has carved out his own sound right from the start. It has more to do with jazz than John and it's more Pat Metheny than Paul McCartney. Unfortunately, like Metheny, it's not exactly captivating to a large audience. The club, Austin's Cain's-sized Liberty Lunch, was packed with eager fans at the beginning of Sean's Saturday night set, but many left halfway through. Sean and his backing band, the unusually subdued Cibo Matto, clumsily wound through some complicated material — a few breezy pop tunes (as breezy as the heavy bass and Sean's low-end guitar could get), a little post-Beatles electric R&B and a lot of roomy rock-jazz. When he played guitar, he sounded like the son of Santana, and when he sang he sounded like Red House Painters' Mark Kozelek -- soft, overly breathy and slightly out of his range. All in all, intriguing stuff that will demand careful listening (read: a sizeable cult following). John would be proud, surely, but John is dead. We know this for certain. McCartney we're not so sure about. Thus the Saturday afternoon panel discussion titled “So IS Paul Dead?'' which attempted to assess the relative worth of McCartney's checkered post-Beatles solo career. The panel, which included a spectrum of resumes from songwriters Tommy Keene and Vic Chesnutt to journalists Jim DeRogatis and Michael Azerrad, not surprisingly was evenly divided and came to few conclusions. DeRogatis, rock critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, led the charge by insisting that McCartney is “to 16-year-olds today, the one who put that damned 'Yesterday' song in the elevator.'' “To many kids, he's Sinatra. He's the target of rebellion. You play rock now to not be like him,'' he said. No matter how much support was voiced for McCartney's latest album, “Flaming Pie'' (and its one stunning song, the George Martin-touched “Calico Skies''), the discussion always came back around to “Ebony and Ivory,'' his sappy 1982 phoned-in duet with Stevie Wonder that he will never live down. It was uncomfortable watching this heated debate rage basically behind McCartney's back, but the very existence of the panel and the sparking of the debate did more to answer the question on the panel's title than any carefully crafted barb. The reports of his death, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated. Austin City Limits: A South by Southwest Diary By Thomas Conner 03/27/1998 AUSTIN, Texas — Four days, about 850 shows to see. Somehow this year, the crowds at the annual South by Southwest music festival were smaller and the shows were better, which probably goes hand-in-hand. Also, there weren't as many must-see bands on the schedule. That allowed for more wandering and exploring, which is the best thing the festival can offer. I tried to see as many cool new acts and veterans as I could, and I've got the aching calves to prove it. Here's a round-up of my subjective, serendipitous stumbles through the South by Southwest showcases: Sonic Serenade: With no bandwagons to jump onto this year, like last year's electronica buzz, the most interesting stuff being plied was experimental pop. The last-minute scheduling of Sonic Youth provided the perfect balance to trippy pop explorers like Imperial Teen, Apples in Stereo and the fascinating but doomed-to-obscurity Olivia Tremor Control. Even Sean Lennon veers away from his dad's succinctness and essays jazzier, more expansive sonic experimentation. Of course, his backing band is Cibo Matto, so he couldn't remain exactly accessible. Break on Through: 14-year-old Trevor Thornton simply drips rock stardom, from the tattered-but-swank floor-length fur coat he wore to the Friday night showcases to the completely green and vulnerable look on his face as he sings. He fronts the band Flick with his guitarist older brother, Oran. Together with their made-for-MTV looks and their immense sense of style, this Stockton, Mo.-based band is destined for at least 15 proverbial minutes. The quartet's Thursday night showcase was dogged by sound problems, but no one cared; they simply put on too enthralling a Big Rock Show. Imagine the Pooh Sticks with Smashing Pumpkins production levels. Get ready. Route 66 is nowhere near: Sporting an Australian ranger hat and a quite rugged red-plaid pullover, English folksinger Billy Bragg spent Friday pitching his latest project — an album of lost Woody Guthrie songs recorded with Wilco, due in June and titled “Mermaid Avenue.'' At his Waterloo Records in-store gig, he was introduced by Robyn Hitchcock, and he sang a tear-jerking politics-made-personal lyric that Guthrie had scribbled into the margins of a notebook, “She Comes Along to Me'' (“It never could have happened if the women hadn't entered into the deal / like she came along to me''). He still promises a Tulsa date on the fall tour in support of the Guthrie album. Save your pennies and pay whatever he asks. OK, Maybe It Does: Once the oldies licks being passed off as country finally oozes out of Nashville, the industry will discover that the roots of American country music have been kept alive in Oklahoma. Two nights of showcases at the Waterloo Ice House gave a sneak peak at the bands that are archiving these down-home sentiments. Red-dirt pioneers Tom Skinner, Greg Jacobs and Bob Childers spun their tales with more precision than usual. Michael Fracasso, the plains' answer to Chris Isaak, made up for his overly simple lyrics with astonishing subtlety and suppleness. Austin-based Okie Jimmy Lafave played a few of his bluesy-boogie classics. Finally, the Red Dirt Rangers capped off the fiesta with a typically satisfying set despite technical problems with multi-instrumentalist Benny Craig's steel guitar. And what a Texas following all these Okies have; the club stayed packed till nearly 4 a.m. each night. Also, Stillwater's Great Divide played an official showcase Thursday night at the hub for country music, the Continental Club. Look for the band's debut soon on Atlantic Records. Deluxe treatment: Their twisted, gnarled My Bloody Valentine kind of pop is sometimes difficult to digest, but the Saturday night show by Sixteen Deluxe was the most amazing spectacle. An intrepid projectionist ran four 16mm film projectors onto the band and the sheet behind them, providing smartly choreographed eye candy (explosions, shimmering water, sun flares, kaleidoscopic mouths) during the full-bore set. Near the end of the set, Robyn Hitchcock joined the band for a driving rendition of Lou Reed's “Vicious.'' Soon, lead singer and guitarist Carrie Clark was jabbing out her last guitar solo while crowd-surfing. Much mania and mayhem. They'll be here in April. Don't miss them. Visible Hitchcock: Oddball Brit Robyn Hitchcock was everywhere during this year's fest, from introducing Billy Bragg's in-store show to guesting with Sixteen Deluxe. His own shows are always fascinating. At Waterloo Records on Saturday, he played a delightfully trippy acoustic set with violinist Deni Bonet, including such standards as “Madonna of the Wasps'' and “Arms of Love'' plus two hilarious new ones: about Gene Hackman (“and when he smiles / it means trouble somewhere'') and “Viva Seattle-Tacoma'' (“they've got the best computers and coffee and smack''). A fan gave him a plastic tomato. “It doesn't say Texas on the bottom,'' Hitchcock said, examining the vegetable. “It says, 'Signs Point to No.' '' Get it? His new disc is due in September. He's Alright, and So Are the Kids: The Wainwright family was in town for the festival — and that's not a new sitcom bunch. Loudon Wainwright III was hyping his latest and most fully realized album to date, “Little Ship.'' His showcase before a packed university ballroom was witty as ever, focusing on the subject of families and kids and thus comprising a veritable Cosby-esque “Loudon Wainwright: Himself.'' Most of the topical material came from the new record (“Bein' a Dad,'' the moving “Four Mirrors''), but he took a couple of appropriate requests (“Hitting You,'' “Baby in the House''). He remains astonishingly underappreciated. Son Rufus Wainwright in the tradition of Ben Folds Five. And then there were ...: The windows of Maggie Mae's on Thursday night were coated with dripping, freshly hacked lung secretions. A ferocious punk band, Human Alert from Amsterdam, tore through a set of fierce noise and bravado, spitting on everything and everyone. One of the three lead singers wore a beaten leather jacket with the self-contradictory slogan “Master of Anarchy'' painted across the back. ... Fastball's “The Way'' already has conquered modern rock radio, but this Austin band has plenty more hit songs to come. They played many of them at an acoustic in-store show Saturday afternoon and their capacity show that night at La Zona Rosa. They also have going for them what Third Eye Blind somehow (and unfairly) missed: critical respect. ... Jonathan Fire*Eater is the best garage-club band in the country. Lead singer Stewart Lupton stumbled through his band's raucous set like a drunk Stanley Laurel, and he sang with such exciting desperation, as if singing was the only thing keeping him remotely lucid. Hot stuff. ... The theme nights this year were a bust. The only time eyes were smiling Thursday at Maggie Mae's Irish Night was during the Frank and Walters spunky power pop set. Japan Night, Friday at the Tropical Isle, was a dud compared to last year's mania. Also, Rock en Espanol at Maggie Mae's West was wholly indistinct. Each band was just another forgettable modern rock band who happened to sing in Spanish, like Miami's Volumen Cero. Bummer, compadre. Pop's Tops Flock to South by Southwest By Thomas Conner 03/28/1998 Depending on who you ask, South by Southwest is either the most important event in the music industry or the most embarrassing evidence of said industry's laziness and greed run amok. Both viewpoints are pretty much on the money. Being part of that evil liberal media to which the festival caters ever so kindly, you won't be surprised to hear that I vote the former. This annual bridal fair of pop music's best and burgeoning is still the only time each year when the bulk of the music industry and its press are gathered together to actually ask, “What's new?'' Deals are still made at this behemoth, and stars rise out of Austin every year. Here's a bit of call-and-response answering some of the questions and criticisms of the best time an expense account can buy: What the heck is this thing, anyway, and why does the Tulsa World pay it any mind? South by Southwest is, as Alternative Press editor Jason Pettigrew so wisely stated it this year, the spring break of the music industry. Journalists and music biz types go down to Austin for four or five days, spending someone else's money, talk a lot of crap and wear badges that grace them with a rarely bestowed V.I.P. status. And don't forget the endless buckets of free barbecue and beer. We wear out our trendy black shoes striding between downtown clubs every hour on the hour trying to see the latest buzz band or the most interesting confection. Hopefully, we see something worthwhile and we do what we do in our respective professions to help make some noise about it. It's all about making noise, from the actual music to this ink. Plus, if Tulsa bands are part of the fiesta, by God, I'll be there. No one actually gets signed or in any way propelled forward as a result of SXSW. In a word: Hanson. Tulsa's own mega-star trio proved that just being near the festival can be the first step toward taking over the planet. In 1994, the brothers three wandered among the crowd at an industry-only softball game, singing for anyone that looked remotely interested. This impromptu performance grabbed the attention of Christopher Sabec, who rushed to talk to the Hanson parents behind the bleachers. You know the rest of the story. If it can happen to three smooth-faced doo-woppers, it can happen to punk bands and performance artists. Need more proof? Here are some acts that were discovered — at least by the music press — at SXSW: Green Day ('93), the Toadies ('92), the Gin Blossoms ('89), Big Head Todd and the Monsters ('90), Lisa Loeb ('93), Ani DiFranco ('92) and Veruca Salt ('94). Each showcase is about 40 minutes long, and there are too many going all at once. How can any artist hope to discovered out of that? First, the actual showcase is not what helps your band. That's purely entertainment for the club-crawlers. South by Southwest is not about actually seeing music as it is talking about it. The deals go down in the convention center trade show, at the record company parties, at the chance meetings here and there. The priority is to meet people and — dare I say the word? — network. Learn from the Hanson experience. Just being there and being brave enough to stand out, that's what puts contracts on your tabletop. It's only for signed bands. Unsigned bands can't ever get in. Indeed, if you ain't from Austin, cowpoke, and you ain't got a record deal, chances are you ain't getting an official showcase. Unsigned bands are a rarity, but they're there (case in point: Tulsa and Oklahoma City's Billy Joe Winghead this year), and the bulk of bands are on indie labels, which still means no one likely has heard of them. Frustrated applicants should keep in mind, though, that South by Southwest aims for a level of professionalism a notch or two above your basic talent show. Also, if Tulsa bands want more clout in this kind of arena, someone's got to get off their keister and launch a credible indie label here. We've got to walk it like we talk it. How can they call it a new-music festival when they bring in such huge acts? If you booked a festival of 845 Billy Joe Wingheads, do you think it would attract more than 6,000 industry types and another 6,000 journalists? The harsh reality is that you've got to seed the thing with some known names or no one will come and chance upon the undiscovered gem. Gotta get used to riding those coattails. It's just an excuse for critics to get together and feel important on someone else's tab. And the problem with this is ... ? By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Someone just had to have the Dwight Twilley rubber stamp. She's probably got it by now, too, and is currently stamping all her correspondence, memos and personal papers with the old Dwight Twilley band logo. And she's happy as can be. The stamp is just one of many such vintage trinkets available for sale on Twilley's new web site (http:/members.aol.com/Twillex/), in the Twilley Store. Twilley — the Tulsa pop star noted for such hits as 1975's “I'm on Fire'' and 1984's “Girls'' — set up the site as a way to communicate directly with his fans and to clear out his inventory of rubber stamps, old stickers, Dwight Twilley pendants and classic posters. Oh, and records, too. “I've just always kept really good archives,'' Twilley said this week. “I was digging through some video stuff a while back and found some old films that I had transferred to video. One of them turned out to be a rehearsal film of the Dwight Twilley Band preparing for the 1977 tour. I think it was shot at Channel 8. It's real nice footage of us clowning around. That's a big seller. People have got to have that one.'' Yessir, to a certain segment of bright-eyed pop fans, Twilley hung the moon. He was, after all, a big-shot on radio for a good decade. He claimed Tom Petty as a close, personal friend. People in other countries know who Twilley is. Heck, he performed on “American Bandstand'' three times. So he must be a big, untouchable star, right? Probably just sits at home on a pile of royalty money, playing around with his web site. Nah. Since Twilley returned home to Tulsa a few years ago, he's let everyone know that he's just another Tulsa musician. He mostly sits at home writing new songs and enjoying the lift the recent resurgence in power-pop has given his career. He hopes to further prove the point with this weekend's shows — two in a row at Steamroller Blues and BBQ, with the raucous Brian Parton and his Nashville Rebels opening each night. “I like to get out every now and then and play, just like anyone else. It's not feasible to get out an play clubs every weekend, but I play when I can ... I kind of get jealous when my friends — all musicians — are talking about their Friday-Saturday gigs around town. I wanted one, especially because most of the shows we've been doing lately are the big Balloon Fest and centennial shows. I just wanted to get out and be one of the guys. I'm a Tulsa musician, too,'' Twilley said. The Twilley band this time around will include Tom Hanford and Jerry Cooper on guitars, Dave White on bass, Bill Padgett on drums and Twilley's longtime stand-by percussionist Jerry Naifeh. Fans ought to enjoy the live performances while they can. Twilley is currently considering a contract with a record label to record a new album. Since his rousing performance at last year's South by Southwest music conference perked up the ears of scouts, some major labels have been toying with the idea of signing Twilley. At this point, though, Twilley said he just wants to put out a record. “I've got a lot of songs building up,'' he said. “If this goes through, we'll probably be out from in front of the microphone for a while.'' Meanwhile, you can check out some of those new songs on the cassette packages available on the Twilley Store. And don't forget those key rings. And the imprinted vinyl editions. And the ... Dwight Twilley With Brian Parton and the Nashville Rebels 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday Steamroller Blues and BBQ 1732 S. Boston Ave. $5 at the door By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The story, as his old compadre Chuck Blackwell tells it, goes like this: Leon Russell and his close friend, Emily Smith, were cruising Grand Lake one afternoon looking at various pieces of property for sale. This was around 1972, and Leon's career was rolling. He'd been around the world with the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Joe Cocker, and his most recent solo album had just landed the revealing single “Tight Rope'' at No. 11. He was looking for someplace to settle for a while. The pair ran into a sand bar in the lake, and suddenly a storm came up. What would have been a mere nuisance to any boater took on a bit more significance to Russell. “Was that a deal! It was storming and thundering and lightning, and I think Leon had taken some psychedelics. He saw that lightning storm and thought it was a sign from above that he should settle here,'' Blackwell said. So he did. He found a lake attraction called Pappy Reeves' Floating Motel and Fishing Dock (“You could pull your boat right up to your room and fish right there,'' Blackwell said), bought it, and converted it into a recording studio. He did the same thing to the First Church of God at 304 S. Trenton Ave., which still exists today as The Church Studio (where everyone from Dwight Twilley to the Tractors have recorded). He also bought a Maple Ridge estate, the Aaronson mansion at 1151 E. 24th Place, and did what he came to do — he settled in. Russell had been in Tulsa before. He'd practically grown up here, which is why many say he felt like returning for a while at the crest of his fame. Most musicians agree, though, that Russell's growly drawl and piano pounding had an effect on local music that was instrumental in — possibly even the foundation of — the creation of the “Tulsa Sound,'' a subdued blend of country and blues. A handful remember Russell's early years cutting his chops in Tulsa beer halls, but many more refer to his mid-'70s stay and his Tulsa-based record company, Shelter Records, as a watermark of Tulsa music. Russell was born C. Russell Bridges in Lawton in 1941, but he migrated to Tulsa when he was just 14 to explore the bustling music scene here. “I got a lot of experience playing music. Oklahoma was a dry state at the time, so there were no (under-age) laws, and I didn't have any problems,'' he explains in the liner notes to his recent greatest hits collection, “Gimmie Shelter'' on EMI Records, written by Joseph Laredo. Blackwell and Russell both went to Tulsa's Will Rogers High School, but they met each other out playing music and eventually played in some roadhouse bands together. “I met Leon, I think, playing on a flatbed truck downtown. I remember him sitting up at the piano on a couple of Coke boxes. He wanted to get with me about forming a band,'' Blackwell said. “In the early '60s or late '50s, one of the first bands we had, the Starlighters, we'd play country in supper clubs — him, David Gates and myself. Leon was good at playing Erroll Garner and stuff, and then we'd rock when they were done with their meals. “We were playing once, opening for Jerry Lee Lewis at the Cain's (Ballroom). His band was kind of loose, and Leon was, too. We got offered to go on the road with him, and we played for him through Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. At one Kansas gig, we were in one of those hogwire places — this is back in the days when things were pretty wild. Jerry had appendicitis, and the doctor had to go out and quell the riot and tell people they could get their money back. Leon went out there and played Jerry's repertoire. He kicked the stool back and everything. Nobody wanted their money back.'' The chance to play with Jerry Lee Lewis was a pivotal offer in Russell's career. “I had a chance to go on the road with Jerry Lee Lewis,'' he said in the best-of liner notes. “I'd just spent three days, 12 hours a day, taking entrance examinations to Tulsa University, and I just thought, "Well, it's a waste of time, 'cause I have to study so many things I'm not interested in.' ROTC I had to take, and right away I knew that I didn't want to do that. I figured this was my chance to eat in a lot of restaurants and travel around, playing some rock 'n' roll music, which I decided was easier and better.'' In addition to Blackwell (who currently plays in Tulsa's Fabulous Fleshtones) and Gates (who went on to form the band Bread), Russell was playing with and absorbing the influences of other Tulsa musicians, including J.J. Cale and Ronnie Hawkins, a native Arkansan who was a big Tulsa presence at the time. But Lewis had an effect on Russell that's evident in the first singles Russell recorded in Tulsa, “Swanee River'' and “All Right,'' leased to the Chess label in 1959. The year earlier, though, Russell headed west to find work where all hungry musicians went: Los Angeles. He started selling some songs, and in no time, he was working as a session player for the likes of Phil Spector. Throughout the 1960s he racked up an impressive list of studio credits, playing on recordings for the Ronettes, Herb Alpert, the Righteous Brothers (“You've Lost That Loving Feeling''), Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Byrds (on their classic cover of Dylan's “Mr. Tambourine Man''), even Frank Sinatra. By 1969, he had hooked up with British producer Denny Cordell who took Russell to England to work on Joe Cocker's second album, from which Cocker scored a big hit with Russell's “Delta Lady.'' That year, Russell led the band for Cocker's notorious Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, a veritable circus of nearly three dozen players that included one-time Russell girlfriend Rita Coolidge and pals Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett. On a trip through Detroit with Cocker et al., Leon ran into old Tulsa pals David Teegarden and Skip Knape, who were playing the area as Teegardan & Van Winkle. (Drummer Teegarden's Grammy-winning association with Detroit's Bob Seger would begin a bit later.) “We were inspired,'' Teegarden recalled in 1994. “We thought, "Leon likes that gospel sound, so let's write our own gospel tune.'' The song they came up with was “God, Love and Rock & Roll,'' a 1970 single that became the duo's only Top 40 hit. At the same time “God, Love and Rock and Roll'' was riding up the charts, Russell's solo career was taking off. 1970's self-titled debut included some of his best songs (“Delta Lady,'' “Shoot Out at the Plantation,'' “Hummingbird'' and the now-standard “A Song for You''). The follow-up, “Leon Russell and the Shelter People,'' heralded both the foundation of Shelter, his record label, and the return to Tulsa. A few songs are backed by a group of Tulsa musicians Russell called the Tulsa Tops, though the song “Home Sweet Oklahoma'' (with the chorus, “I'm going back to Tulsa just one more time'') was recorded with “friends in England.'' At the height of his success, Russell came back to Tulsa. In July 1972, he bought the Grand Lake property, and by 1973 his land-buying spree had included 54 different pieces of property, including lots near 61st Street and Madison Avenue, in the 1600 block of South Boston Avenue and at the corner of 16th Street and Utica Avenue. The lake retreat was the crown jewel, though — 7 1/2 acres on a point so secluded that many lake residents didn't even know the five buildings (sound-proof studio, 3,500-square-foot house, swimming pool, guest apartments) were being built. It soon became affectionately known around the lake as “the hippie place.'' The house in Maple Ridge was the scene of parties of all sorts. Instead of the rock 'n' roll bashes you might expect, Russell's fetes usually were warm gatherings of friends. In June 1973, Russell's close friend (and still a Tulsa resident) Emily Smith was married at the house in a festive ceremony; Russell himself married Tulsa singer Mary McCreary a couple of years later. In July 1973, Russell hosted a benefit party to help the Maple Ridge Association raise money to pay the legal debt it tallied while blocking construction of the proposed Riverside Expressway. The church studio quickly became home of Shelter Records, the label Russell founded in Los Angeles and moved to Tulsa shortly after he returned. A lot of noted musicians came through to use Russell's studios, including Bob Dylan and J.J. Cale, but neither was built with money-making opportunities in mind; rather, they were simply retreats from the distractions of Los Angeles. An associate of Russell's at the time was quoted in the Tulsa World saying, “Leon just wants a place where he can record any time he feels like it.'' Russell chose not to utilize his fame only to lure big talent to town; he frequently used his musical muscle to push Tulsa musicians into the national limelight. Tulsa hitmaker Dwight Twilley got his first break through Shelter Records, as did the Gap Band, which Russell used as his backing band on his 1974 album, “Stop All That Jazz.'' Les Blank, a California documentary filmmaker, got to see and document the parade of talent through Russell's studios during that time. Blank got a call in 1972 from Cordell, Russell's producer, who pitched him the idea of hanging out with Russell and his teeming bunch of hangers-on, filming the whole scene all the while. Blank, whose grants on other films had run out, jumped at the project and spent the next two years in Tulsa, shooting film of the action. “It was kind of a continuous party,'' Blank said in an interview from his current California home. “There were recording sessions that would go all night long. There was a constant influx of people coming and going. I think the people were excited to have all the new play toys — things like computerized mixing panels. There was this sense of momentum that seemed to be feeding on itself as a result of the records and concerts doing really well ... People just felt like they were in the right place at the right time.'' Blank's cameras followed Russell's entourage nearly everywhere, from a weekend jaunt to see the mysterious spook light in northeastern Oklahoma to Russell's recording sessions in Nashville. However, you probably won't see the film that resulted from all that footage. Although Russell approved the project's beginning, when the film was finished he decided not to approve of its release, and Blank said he has yet to receive a concrete explanation why. Blank is allowed only to show a 16mm copy of the film for no profit. He showed it at the University of Oklahoma in 1991. “People, I guess, who have an image to protect are sensitive to how it's presented and perceived,'' Blank said. That's Russell to a tee. Rarely giving interviews (requests for this story went expectedly unanswered), Russell has guarded his privacy fiercely. In fact, though he returned to Tulsa to escape the bustle of Los Angeles, he ended up leaving Tulsa again because the pressures of fame were just as weighty here. Russell sold the Maple Ridge home in 1977 and moved back to California, but in two years he was back, telling the Tulsa Tribune, “I've decided I like Tulsa a lot ... I've got a lot more friends in Tulsa than I do in California, so I'll be spending a lot more time here.'' But he left again because of incidents like the one reported in the Tulsa World on Oct. 19, 1979. The headline read, “Top Rock Star Turns Tulsa Courthouse On,'' and the newsworthiness of the story seems quaint on reflection. All Russell had done was go to the courthouse to renew his passport. However, the story says, “No sooner had he taken off his mirror-lens sunglasses Thursday afternoon and sat down at a desk when gawkers gathered outside the glass-walled office. Bolder ones walked in quickly, asking for autographs.'' In a 1984 Tulsa World story, Russell reflected on that aspect of Tulsa living: “Tulsa wasn't used to my sort of reality. I went to the bank to borrow $50,000 and that prompted a story studying the finances of people in the music business.'' By then, Russell had moved to Nashville, a town that better suited him as a home and a musical headquarters. Russell always had drifted in and out of country, recording a straight-up country record under a pseudonym Hank Wilson in 1973 and a duet album with Willie Nelson in 1979. After a Hank Wilson sequel album, Russell laid out of the spotlight until a 1992 comeback with the Bruce Hornsby-produced record “Anything Can Happen.'' He still lives near Nashville today, but he comes back to Tulsa — just one more time — every year near the first of April for his annual birthday concert. This year's show, the fifth such event, took place April 11 at an old haunt Russell knows well, the Brady Theater (fellow Tulsa-native musician Bill Davis opened the show). Russell's son, Teddy Jack, now plays drums in his band. What Russell does next is anybody's guess. “Predictability,'' he has said, “is not one of my strong points.'' Leon Russell With Dwight Twilley, and Gary Busey as Buddy Holly When 7:30 p.m. Saturday Where River Parks Ampitheater, 2100 S. Jackson Ave. Tickets $10, available at The Ticket Office, Dillards and the Brady Theater box office By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Dwight Twilley Band "Sincerely" "Twilley Don't Mind" (The Right Stuff) Tulsa's own Dwight Twilley has more lives than your average alley cat. The latest reissue of the Dwight Twilley Band's first two albums is the fourth reissue for both since their original pressings in '76 and '77, respectively. Every few years, someone at an indie label discovers the records, their eyes grow wide as 45s and they begin asking everyone they know, “Why isn't this stuff hugely popular? Why isn't radio saturated with this guy?'' They think they've found a pop music gold mine. They have, of course. Trouble is, bad luck and delays caused people to miss these records the first time around and, well, it's hard to convince the masses of a second chance. Pity, because these two records, particularly “Sincerely,'' are examples of everything that is great about pop music. The songs are immediate but timeless. They spark with youthful energy without being base. They are utterly accessible but remain smart. “I'm on Fire,'' the opener to “Sincerely'' and Twilley's greatest hit with partner Phil Seymour, was recorded the night Twilley and Seymour first set foot in the Church studio here in town — their first time in a studio, period. “Let's record a hit record,'' Seymour said, and they did. The chugging guitars, the layered vocals, the infectious attitude — it's irresistible. “Sincerely'' brims with that immediacy and remains one of the most exciting records of my lifetime. “Twilley Don't Mind'' starts with that same eagerness (“Looking for the Magic,'' featuring Tom Petty's ringing guitar, is truly intriguing and unique) but slows down before the flying saucer “Invasion.'' (This “Twilley'' reissue, though, features the best bonus tracks.) Still, these records are more than mere echoes of Abbey Road — they are diamonds lost in the rough, but they still shine. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The bands that best uphold the traditions of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are those that don't holler about it. Your basic '80s hair metal band was no doubt a staunch purveyor of that triumvirate of debauchery, but how subversive can your fans feel about the experience when you're waving your fist in the air at every opportunity and giving away the game with a whooping, "Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roooooooooll!''? The warm, wily wash of the Dandy Warhols' trippy roar is more comfortable — and truly subversive. The sex in the feeling of these songs isn't employed as a domination strategy. The rock 'n' roll has less noise, more melody and, as Tom Wolfe might write, O! the kairos! the vibrations! The drugs are, well, definitely a factor — though the Warhols' hot single, "Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth,'' and particularly its garish, "Price Is Right'' kind of video, presents a more poignant case against heroin than anything the Partnership for a Drug-Free America could stick on your television. This is, after all, a band that takes its cues from the Velvet Underground and T. Rex — and they may be the first band of the '90s to claim those influences and genuinely deserve the prestige they transfer. Last week, Eric Hedford got on the phone to shed some light on the Dandys experience. Hedford is the band's drummer and occasional Moog noodler, and he cleared some of the haze surrounding the band's talent for mooching, its troubled effort making the current album ("The Dandy Warhols Come Down'' on Capitol Records) and its chance defiance of categorization. Thomas Conner: You're in Portland (Ore.)? How did you score this rare moment at home? Eric Hedford: Three weeks in sunny Portland, then we go out for another three months ... We'll be concentrating on the South, because it's winter. Smart, huh? Last winter we were touring the north, and we broke down in 70-below weather outside Minneapolis. We fired our road manager on the spot. We plan to hit Florida this winter in bathing suits. TC: How's the tour been going? EH: We put 30,000 miles on our van. Someone told me that's once or twice around the whole planet. We've played with Blur, the Charlatans, Radiohead, Supergrass, Spiritualized ... TC: Those are all British bands. I thought you were trying to avoid being called Brit wanna-bes. EH: There aren't too many American bands we're compatible with right now. Our mission is to find an American band to tour with. The closest we got is this Canadian band we've got with us next. I can't remember their name. (Note: It's Treble Charger, the opening band for the Tulsa show.) TC: Do you enjoy life on the road? EH: It's a trippy way to live. We've got a contest we play called Guess What the Date Is. I never win, and I've got a watch with the date on it. TC: What's different about this tour and your first jaunts with the debut album, ""Dandy's Rule OK''? EH: Well, since we just went around the world cramped in a van, not much. For this next leg, though, we've got a big, rock tour bus. I'm hoping it's going to have some big, cheesy eagle painted on the side. TC: Courtney (Taylor, lead singer) frequently confesses to the band's winning ability at mooching. Isn't that one of the great fringe benefits of being a rock star? EH: All I know is that people are always giving us stuff. I don't know if this happens with every rock band in America. Maybe we just attract people doing this. The people who really count are the ones who give us things like clean socks or fresh food. Those people become our friends. They'll get invited onto the bus. We get plenty of beer and stuff, but it's those things we don't get from home that win us over ... Someone actually gave us socks once after a show. We thought that was the coolest thing. We threw away our old ones. TC: Is there an art to mooching? EH: Don't take advantage of the small people. Go after the corporates, the ones with deep pockets. When we started getting courted by the record companies, we took full advantage of the thing. We didn't say no to a single person. Every label in existence was flying us back and forth to L.A. and New York, buying us these ridiculous dinners and trying to impress us. You have to jump on that because once you get signed the label doesn't give you anything. Then you have to sell a bunch of records before they even send you a bottle of champagne on your birthday. TC: Wow, a spirit of hedonism in a band — how refreshing. What happened to that hedonism in rock 'n' roll? EH: A lot of bands just turned into a big bunch of pansies. I can't figure it out. But then, we think we party a lot and you look at someone like Fleetwood Mac — and, man, we're nothing compared to that. People back in the '70s, like Elton John, they were crazy. They knew how to live. We work hard, too, though. We're pretty good at rehearsing, and we play relatively sober, saving the fun for afterward. TC: How responsible of you. Well, if this reckless spirit is creeping back into rock 'n' roll, does that mean grunge is dead? EH: The mentality lives on, though, as far as that do-it-yourself spirit goes. I mean, the grunge people were pretty good at not being pretentious at first, and I liked how most of them had a good sense of humor. Those are the things we stole from it, and we grew up around it in Portland. We just never dressed like that or tried to think we were cooler than everyone else. TC: Did you consciously try to avoid being like the then-hot grunge bands? EH: We started when grunge was still around. It was the opposing force for us, and we just tried to distance ourselves from it — not because we didn't like it, really, but because it just wasn't us. Grunge died out and then we realized that the rest of the world thinks that if you're from the Northwest, you're a grunge band. They don't realize that there were a lot of different styles going on here. TC: There was some trouble in the making of the new record. What happened? EH: We had a false start. We got done with a big tour (after the first record) and didn't have enough material prepared. We thought we'd just go into the studio and do an experimental record. It didn't work. Some of us were stoned all the time, and some of us didn't care. Capitol heard the record and didn't think it had any songs on it, so we basically canned it. We still have the option of releasing it. I don't know if we will. We went on tour again and wound up focusing on writing good songs. We still used some of the experimental things we'd learned and just applied them to the new songs for this record. It worked out well. It's got new angles -- it's not just 12 pop songs. The video helped make the single ("Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth'') pretty big, but now we've got all these people coming to shows expecting them to be all pop. We usually start a show with a trippy, psychedelic jam, and those people stand there not knowing what the hell is going on. We like to take people on a trip — bring them up, bring them down, make it move a bit. We don't have a set list. We just get a feel for what mood the crowd is in and start picking songs. Sometimes that (screws) us up, and sometimes it's incredible. TC: You're a club DJ there in Portland, too, right? EH: Yeah. I was doing that Halloween night. I'm still hungover from that. TC: How does DJ-ing relate to what you do in the band? EH: When I'm a DJ, I don't have a set list, either. You just read the crowd. Also, a lot of my drumming comes from a DJ perspective. I like that monotonous kind of groove. I'm not a big rock drummer who likes to do big crashes and solos; I like just sitting in the background and grooving out. As a DJ, I got into that monotonous thing. And everyone's saying that electronic music and stuff is going to be this next big thing, but I don't like seeing the bands live. They're boring. I do, however, love seeing a DJ live. TC: Does the monotonous groove come from the Velvet Underground influence? EH: I haven't listened to them a lot myself. Courtney and Zia (McCabe, keyboardist) listen to them. It's that same idea, though: the three-chord mentality and not a lot of changes in the song. You just sink into that trippy groove. Plus, a lot of it comes from the fact we're just not good players. We're quite basic, and we admit that, but there's a lot you can do with the basics and still have fun. That way, we're not up there worrying about the big, complex chord change that's coming up. TC: And the Andy Warhol allusion in your name? EH: It's just a cool name. That whole pop art scene was amazing, though. We're notorious for nicking things out of other decades and throwing them together, and that's what the pop artists were doing -- taking what people recognized and presenting it without pretension. You can steal everything and put it together and say it's a brand-new creation. Then sit back and watch people run around trying to categorize you. TC: Been there, done that. EH: What, the categorizing? TC: Yep. It can't be done anymore, though. I don't think there are categories anymore, at least not on the scope for mass culture. EH: Wow. See? You just come to our show and let all that fall away. Fall, fall away. Dandy Warhols With Treble Charger When 7 p.m. Sunday Where Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets $5 at the door By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of a mountain or the petals of a flower. To think otherwise is to demean the Buddha -- which is to demean oneself. David Byrne, it seems, is a machine. He's moving around the stage like a plastic doll in some art student's stop-motion short film, like two successfully fused halves of the mechanized mannequin parts in Herbie Hancock's "Rockit'' video. He stepped onto the Cain's Ballroom stage Thursday night upholstered in a pink, feathered suit, thick and bulky like the white one in the quintessential video for one of the disaffected anthems of his former band — the song he's opening the show with, Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime.'' His voice is clipped and cold, same as it ever was, and this old, cyclical lyric spews forth the same questions — where does that highway go to, and, my God, what have I done? — that none of us gathered for this otherworldly, Harlan Ellison kind of display have found time to answer. He must be a machine. He hasn't aged. By the time the programmed jungle rhythms for "The Gates of Paradise'' (from his latest album, "Feelings'') begin tsk-tsk-tsking out of the timid speaker stack, Byrne has stripped down to a baby blue jumpsuit that outlines a very svelt and fit 45-year-old. Grasping his guitar as the chorus riffs, he plants his feet firmly just inches from the front row of wide-eyed, cautious onlookers. He's so close that the peghead of his guitar nearly smacks the hat off the head of Don Dickey, the cheshire-grinning singer of Tulsa's own Evacuation of Oklahoma. Byrne is right there in front of us. Two nights previous, barricades and burly security goons kept a crowd of fanatics a safe distance from Morrissey, a performer claimed by fans to be coursing with real, palatable passions and, thus, to be esteemed as utterly human. This David Byrne model requires no protection. He is a machine. He must be replaceable. The five people on this stage are machine components, anyway. The keyboard player is merely pulling stops and turning knobs to allow the samples and programs to speak. The drummer plays a live snare and two cymbals; the rest are computer pads. The plucking and strumming of the bass and Byrne's guitar are only the beginnings of the sonic impulses, which — after numerous devices have encoded the frequencies — are emitted as wholly new and unreal wavelengths. Even Christina Wheeler, a dancer and backup singer, takes her turn playing not an instrument but a portable station of sound processors and compressors that capture her voice and utilize it as the breath of a larger, more layered sound. The machinery is co-opting the energy of humanity for its own artistic goals, the kind of live-vs.-Memorex dichotomy we've seen this year mastered by Bowie and muddled by Beck. But this is Byrne, and he doesn't seem to let the technology control him. If I dashed back to the sound board right now and severed the power cables with a quick hatchet chop, I'm convinced Byrne would still be able to make his music. He wears a headset microphone and dresses his new songs in doo-dad drapery, but there is a deeper and more fluid sense of art in this display than in Beck's synthohol or Bowie's ice crystals. Of all the classics to revive, Byrne starts playing the Al Green song that gave the Talking Heads the first sign of a human face, "Take Me to the River,'' and the cold, jerky Devo concert atmosphere begins to thaw. For "Daddy Go Down,'' a roadie who had just been adjusting microphone cables reappears on stage with a fiddle and balances the martial drum machine with Circean sawing. For "Dance on Vaseline,'' Byrne bops back to the stage wearing a black T-shirt and a red, plaid kilt (his third costume change thus far and, for many, the most titillating — a young woman shrieked, "He's wearing tighty-whities!'') and chuckles about the, um, slipperiness of love. People are bellowing, People are bouncing. People are bobbing. Byrne, the efficient showman — show-man -- smiles and shakes and sweats. Machines can't do that. The music swells and glows, like oceanic phosphorous — pouring through the sensual balladry of "Soft Seduction,'' foaming with the borderless joy of "Miss America'' and flowing swiftly through the righteous riffing of "Angels.'' Finally, the set ends with a song based on that live snare drum, another Talking Heads anthem -- "Road to Nowhere'' — recorded at the dawning of the derision of the post-boomer generation and written as a reductio ad absurdum argument against the prophesies of our detachment and cyberization. No, we may not know exactly where this highway goes to, but with Byrne running in place and the rest of us unconsciously jumping up and down on the Cain's spring-loaded floor, it's clear that the road leads somewhere and that Byrne is as good a piper to follow as any. In fact, he raises us to such cheer and wonder that we won't let him go. We call him back for an encore. He returns, this time in the most astonishing costume I've seen on a public stage: a full-body skin-tight suit, with only eye and mouth holes, illustrating the body's underlying muscles and bones. Like an alien child of the gimp in "Pulp Fiction'' and educational television's Slim Goodbody, Byrne sings a slow, eerie version of "Psycho Killer'' while climbing across the stage in slow motion. After folding himself into a yoga posture, the band bows, exits, and the crowd demands more. Byrne returns in another tight jumpsuit featuring flames from toe to chest. The rhythm festival cranks up for "I Zimbra.'' After a shouting, dancing frenzy, the band bows, exits, and would you believe Tulsa demanded a third encore? Exhausted and hoping to settle us down so that we'll let him leave, he returns and plays the new lullaby "Amnesia.'' In our newfound calm, we discover we are at peace. It feels good to be alive and to be human. David Byrne, it seems, is very human. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World The only logical place to go after Tuesday night's Morrissey concert was the Fur Shop, a downtown watering hole just blocks from the Brady Theater and owned by several fellow Morrissey fanatics. One of them, Mike Aston, floated through the bar wearing a dumb grin and one of his dozens of Smiths T-shirts, boasting that he actually touched his hero at the edge of the stage. The stereo attempted to play Morrissey's "Kill Uncle'' album, and the crowd just glowed. Collegiates and curmudgeons alike maintained airy, blissful faces as they guffawed about the particular moments of the show — "Did you hear him introduce the band as a Tulsa band?'' "He couldn't stop touching his hair!'' and "Look! I got a piece of a stem from the flowers he threw out!'' Complete strangers stopped at our table to discuss the concert. These were Morrissey fans being ... gregarious. Bring on the millennium. The show was short but stunning — and I say this not solely because I am a lifelong fan of the former Smiths leader. I had entered the Brady Theater with trepidation, steeling myself for a letdown. He's so pompous and so British, he'll hate Tulsa and make fun of us, I thought. He's pushing 40, he's been looking tired — the publicity photos for the current album have been nothing short of embarrassing — and he'll have lost his spark, I thought. By mid-show, I thought, I'll be throwing back into his face his own lyrics from a song called ""Get Off the Stage'' ("You silly old man, you're making a fool of yourself, so get off the stage''). But from the first song, ""Boy Racer,'' when he licked his palm and criss-crossed his chest with it, all fears were allayed. Clearly, the man who introduced sexual ambivalence and ambiguity to the mainstream of popular culture maintains a surprising sex appeal. The spark is still there, and as the show progressed it grew hotter and hotter. The crowd, estimated at 1,800 and from throughout the region, was putty for the next hour. For a tour that is intended to support the new album, "Maladjusted,'' he nearly ignored that batch of songs, performing only the single, "Alma Matters'' (which has more much-needed umph in concert), and the laborious street-crime dirge "Ambitious Outsiders.'' Instead, Morrissey and his crack band tore through material from his last three solo albums, concentrating on 1994's "Vauxhall and I'' (seven of the 11 tracks). And then came the Smiths songs. Having not performed the songs of his old band in several years, the appearance of one Smiths song — let alone two — was reason for intrigue. Perhaps Morrissey simply missed singing some of the old standards. Perhaps the recent royalties lawsuit against him from the Smiths rhythm section — a case that he lost and is none too bitter about — inspired the brief retrospective. His lone encore, "Shoplifters of the World Unite,'' alludes to the former possibility, but the other choice, "Paint a Vulgar Picture,'' surely indicates the latter. This was the moment midway through the show in which Morrissey's real passion surfaced. Until then, he had been dashing and suave, but his much-revered noble chin had been twisted in more than a few smirks and possibly derisive comments to the audience ("Thank you for pretending to know any of these songs''), which screamed and trembled with as much mania as any Morrissey audience I have encountered. For "Paint a Vulgar Picture'' (which he introduced as a Glen Campbell song), though, any provincialism fell aside and we watched the Morrissey of our heady days of youth — mildly bitter, endlessly clever, worthy of pity and simultaneously biting and flip. "Paint a Vulgar Picture,'' from the 1987 posthumous Smiths album "Strangeways, Here We Come,'' was the first song in which Morrissey abandoned his lyrical ambiguity and went straight for the jugular. Its ridicule of the entire music business, as well as the fanatical fan adoration that feeds him, still rings alarmingly true after 10 years — and it still backfires, turning the ridicule more on himself than others. But if the lawsuit was indeed the catalyst for the kind of passion he poured into this old invective Tuesday night, perhaps he should be dragged into court before every tour. But the substance of this show wasn't as titillating as the style, particularly for a majority crowd that likely had never seen him live before. (This is Morrissey's first-ever appearance in the Sooner state, and on this tour he's strangely avoiding Texas, far more populated with Morrissey fans.) The mere presence of the godhead before the masses incited the usual frenzy. Beefy security men fought a hard battle to tear away desperate young men and women who had managed to crowd-surf onto the stage and wrap themselves around their hero. It happens at every single Morrissey show, and he hardly misses a note anymore. After one particularly boisterous girl had been pried off his person, Morrissey sat down on the stage and actually seemed to marvel at the occurrence — amazed that it still happens, even in Tulsa, Okla. At least he still marvels. When he takes it for granted, that's when I start singing "Get Off the Stage'' in earnest. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Let's take a song from David Byrne's latest CD, "Feelings,'' as an example of our post-postmodern everything-and-the-kitchen-sink era of art. Knitting together the unabashed, knee-slappin' country-and-western chorus are delicate, jittery jungle techno rhythms. Sounds absurd, but it works beautifully. Or "Daddy Go Down'' — a Cajun fiddle see-saws on a playground of droning sitars and tell-tale scratching. Walk into your local record label office and pitch that to a talent scout. See what kind of looks you get. David Byrne is used to strange looks. In the 20 years since the debut of the Talking Heads' first album, he has led that band and his own solo career through a series of unbelievable and harrowing stylistic twists and turns, and every time he pitched one of his art-student ideas, he met numerous odd looks. He's racked numerous successes — personal (a wedding — at which Brave Combo played -- and a daughter) and commercial (you know the hits — "Once in a Lifetime,'' "Wild, Wild Life,'' "And She Was,'' etc.) — in those 20 years, though, and there's no good reason to stop now. "I'm used to the look of bewilderment,'' Byrne said this week in a telephone interview from a tour stop in Florida. "I just have to explain that I'm from the same planet you are — you just don't realize how strange it is out there. You're living in some TV dream world.'' Fortunately, Byrne has reached a position from which he can act on his whims with relative freedom. For instance, his record label, Luaka Bop (a subsidiary of Warner Bros.) signs and produces artists from around the world that normally wouldn't get looked at twice by American labels. It cuts out the middlemen and those looks of bewilderment. "Look at the new Cornershop record. It looks like it's making some kind of impact, but if you went to someone and said, 'We have this band with an Indian singer and their single is about Asha Bosley, this woman who stars in Indian musicals, and we think it's a hit record,' they'd look at you like, 'What planet are you from?' But it worked. Every now and then one of them clicks,'' Byrne said. Cornershop found success for the same reasons Byrne continues to astound listeners: they both realize the patchwork potential of pop music now. They mix styles. They bridge the gaps between musical genres. They play to our expanding awareness of the world. It's not intentional, of course. Byrne doesn't hunker down next to his wall of gold Talking Heads records and plot ways to better communicate with today's collage minds. His consciousness is a collage, too, so the music comes out that way. Upon the release of "Feelings,'' Byrne explained it this way: "We all seem to have these musical styles and reference points floating around in our heads, things we've heard at one time or another that rub off on us — sometimes in small ways, as a feeling in a melodic turn of phrase, other times in the overall style of a song. There's a subconscious cut-and-paste going on in our heads that doesn't seem strange at all. It seems like the most natural thing in the world. It's the way we live now ... borrowing from the past and future, from here and there.'' It's the way Byrne lives, anyway, and he said the ideas for style-melding sneak up on him. "It doesn't come when you have your forehead furrowed, figuring out what to do with a song. It comes when you're not paying attention, when you're making coffee late in the afternoon and there's a record playing in the background,'' Byrne said. " 'The Gates of Paradise' is an example of that. I had a jungle record playing while I was in the kitchen, and my ear caught something. I realized that the rhythm I was hearing was the same basic beat of the song I had just been working on.'' In the making of "Feelings,'' those moments came with greater frequency, Byrne said, because of the way the album was made. The songs were recorded with musicians and producers all over the world — the dance trio Morcheeba in London, the Black Cat Orchestra in Seattle, Devo in Los Angeles, Joe Galdo in Miami and Hahn Rowe in New York City. No big studios, either — everything was economical, in home studios. That contributes largely, Byrne said, to the natural, relaxed gait of the songs. Nowadays, with advancements in technology and lower prices, home recordings sound as good or better than those from big, complicated studios. This is not breaking news to musicians, but it's a new dynamic to the musical marketplace. "All artists have gone through this — you make a demo at home that sounds great, that has this intensity and feel and spontaneity, and it gets scrubbed clean in the studio. They listen to the final product and go, "There's something missing here. Why doesn't this sound as exciting as the demo?' That's an old story,'' Byrne said. "Now we're coming around to where if you take a little more care when recording the demo, you can release that as the record.'' That's what Byrne did this time around. The result is an album that packs a suitcase of musical styles that ordinary musicians wouldn't be able to carry across the room, but the disc holds together with a surprising fluidity and coherence. It may be the most enterprising effort Byrne has tackled since the heady days with his old band. "In the beginning, the Talking Heads were always kind of beat-oriented. Always in the living rooms and the loft there was R&B in the air as well as experimental music and rock stuff. That resulted in the same fusion that I think I still capture from time to time,'' Byrne said. "It's a natural tendency to end up putting together the different things in your experience. You act out what you love. That's how different music comes into being. What we call rock 'n' roll is a patchwork of many different things. It's not like Elvis Presley had no roots.'' Byrne prefers continuing on his own path, too. The other three members of the Talking Heads reunited last year without him, calling themselves simply the Heads and using different vocalists for each song on the resulting CD "No Talking Just Head.'' Bad blood still exists between Byrne and his former bandmates, so his part in the reunion was never an issue. "Years earlier I had tried to talk to them, and they didn't want to even talk to me,'' he said. "It's been going on for a very long time. It just finally got to the point where I realized I was not in this as a masochist and that I don't need to be whipped and berated. Music should be a joy. It was time to move on.'' Even when Byrne gets venomous or angry, though, his music somehow maintains an air of cheer, optimism and hope. Even with a foreboding lyric like that in "Daddy Go Down,'' the song's rhythmic momentum instills a crucial air of confidence. In fact, it's that rhythmic element that pulls off that trick, Byrne said. "You can dance to it,'' he said. "For me, you can say something very bleak and pessimistic, but if you counter it with a groove, it implies that the human being is going to persevere and survive. At least, that's what it feels like. Despite what ominous clouds gather, the groove and the life force is going to pull you through.'' David Byrne with Jim White When: 7 p.m. Thursday Where: Cain's Ballroom, 423 N. Main St. Tickets: $20 at the Ticket Office at Expo Square, Mohawk Music, Starship Records and Tapes, the Mark-It Shirt Shop in Promenade Mall and the Cutting Edge in Tahlequah By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Up, up and away ... yada yada yada. There are lots of reasons to check out the Gatesway International Balloon Festival this weekend, but one of the best barely has been mentioned in the advertising and the hubub: the festival features a fantastic line-up of local music acts. For all those harping into thin air about how much Tulsa would benefit from a music festival of all-local rock acts, this is it. On Friday evening and all day Saturday, two stages at the festival will be packed with the creme de la creme of local bands — from hot pop and rock on the Z-104.5 FM “The Edge'' Stage to more down-home and bluesy sounds on the KVOO Stage. Rocker Dwight Twilley is scheduled to headline the festival on Saturday night, and it's a rare opportunity to see this underappreciated pop master burn up a stage. Twilley, whose top 20 hits were 1975's “I'm on Fire'' and 1984's “Girls,'' currently is enjoying the revivalist crest of the power pop movement. Those two hit singles are popping up on compilations around the world, solidifying Twilley's importance in rock 'n' roll history. “It's great. It kind of let's these songs take their place in history in the pack with all the ones being remembered,'' Twilley said this week. The first two albums from the Dwight Twilley Band, “Sincerely'' and “Twilley Don't Mind,'' are scheduled for rerelease in October from The Right Stuff record company. Twilley, though, is no nostalgia act. Saturday's show will feature a good chunk of new material, songs that Twilley has been writing since he moved back to Tulsa last year and then raised eyebrows with his showcase at the South by Southwest music festival in March. “We've got a lot of new songs that we'll be doing this weekend, stuff we'll be trying out before the centennial show in September,'' Twilley said. Twilley and his band will open for Leon Russell on Sept. 19 as part of Tulsa's centennial homecoming celebration. Twilley's band includes guitarists Pat Savage and Tom Hanford, plus the rhythm section that doubles for two other Tulsa bands (Crown Electric, Brian Parton), bassist Dave White and drummer Bill Padgett. “I came back (to Tulsa) because I wanted to create another band of Tulsa musicians,'' Twilley said. “I think this is the best band I've had since the Dwight Twilley Band,'' which included the late Phil Seymour. Also on the bill, the Mellowdramatic Wallflowers have a full set of shimmering new pop songs in advance of a new CD due any time now. Jenny Labow, formerly of Glass House, is still supporting her solo debut CD of breezy acoustic pop, and Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey once again steer their ever-winding wandering around the country for another hometown gig. Jify Trip is returning to form, too, after some juggling of guitarists. After losing their original axman, Steve Francen -- formerly of Mellowdramatic Wallflowers — sat in with the band, but his current project, Flapjack Cancer Co., didn't allow the extra time. A sharp, award-winning player from Oklahoma City, Tony Romanello, will be playing with the band for the balloon festival. He's a great player, worth checking out. The styles run the gamut, too, from the slightly wacky rock of the Cactus Slayers to the intelligent jazz of the Jazzbos. The festival's music schedule offers a fine sampling of what's going on around town every weekend right under your nose, and the event benefits the Gatesway charity. What's to lose? Gatesway International Balloon Festival When 3-10:30 p.m. Friday, 6 a.m.-10:30 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m.-2 p.m. Sunday Where Occidental Center, 129th East Avenue and 41st Street Tickets Admission is free Parking Available near the sight; plus a shuttle bus will be running from the sight to Expo Square and Broken Arrow High School 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. El Vez vivos // What Started as a Dare Has Become a National Pastime. El Vez Is in the Arena!1/10/1997
By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World So hush little baby, don't you cry You know that your Elvis was bound to die but as just as long as there are Elvis fans who are paying we'll keep playing! — El Vez's "Mexican-American Trilogy'' It's Elvis's birthday week, and El Vez is a busy man. This week and the whole month of August — around the anniversary of the King's death — keeps El Vez hopping like a crate full of Mexican jumping beans on the back of a bucking burro. "This time of year is full of business to care of,'' he said in an interview last week. There are many Elvis impersonators out there — men, women, children, pets — but few pack a punch quite like El Vez, the Mexican Elvis. Merging the hysteria of Elvis worship with a fierce Hispanic pride, El Vez reinvents Presley's power and mystique from a socialist Hispanic perspective. His shows are entertaining and empowering, regardless of your cultural background. As El Vez is fond of saying, "When you come to an El Vez show, you walk away proud to be a Mexican. Even when you're not.'' It all started innocently enough. A struggling musician in San Diego and Los Angeles, Robert Lopez was an accident waiting to happen. After stints with noted California bands like the Zeroes and Catholic Discipline, he wound up working in a Melrose art gallery. In 1988, the gallery produced a show of Elvis-related folk art, and Lopez — having conceived similar themed openings for other artists — came up with the idea of an El Vez performance to kick off the show. "It was a full, intense month of Elvis,'' El Vez recalled. "We were showing art and films all about Elvis, and those were my first steps of my submersion into Elvisness. That was the turning point.'' On a dare, Lopez took the new persona one further. He booked passage to Memphis during the King's birthday celebration week and landed a slot at Bob's Bad Vapors — the Mecca of Elvis impersonators, a club where a different Elvis performer is on stage every 20 minutes. "It was just a one-shot thing. I figured I'd go out there where nobody knew me so nobody would see me,'' he said. No such luck. When Lopez returned home, a story of his appearance was in the Los Angeles Times, and his phone was ringing. El Vez's second public appearance was on national television, NBC's "2 Hip for TV'' kids' show. A career as the Mexican Elvis slowly took shape. "I started out doing this book tour for I Am Elvis, a directory for Elvis impersonators. There were several of us on the tour, and I ended up being the ringleader. The lady Elvis, the mayor Elvis, all the kid Elvises — they were all attracted to me because I was getting notoriety,'' El Vez said. The career fumbled along. Lopez asked various friends to be the Elvettes, his backup singers, and the Memphis Mariachis, his muy caliente band. Somewhere along the line, though, it ceased being purely a knock-off romp and became a more serious venture. Lopez realized there were people listening to him, so he started saying something he thought was worth hearing. "I started getting into social commentary because I thought I could get some points across about things like Chicano culture, history, safe sex, politics. With an agenda in mind, it became more interesting and more of a challenge,'' he said. El Vez songs are rarely mere covers and are never apolitical. His rendition of "Mystery Train,'' for instance, became "Misery Tren,'' an all-Spanish ditty about the train to liberty for Pancho Villa and his Zapatistas. "Viva Las Vegas'' became "Viva La Raza,'' trumpeting a Chicano empowerment group. Both songs are from El Vez's latest album, "G.I. Ay, Ay! Blues,'' which is subtitled, "Soundtrack for the Coming Revolution.'' The revolution El Vez is championing — at least initially — is one of conscience and of ethnic understanding. "I'm heralding the Chicano point of view,'' he said. "You don't have to be a white man to be part of the American dream. I'm taking songs and superimposing Latino culture on them, showing people that it works. "I didn't think many people would get it when I started. I thought it would be at least a southern California thing, but then I got pretty popular out east, and I figured it was just the Peurto Rican population in New York doing that. But then I played this show in Denmark, and they loved it. I went to Berlin and these Turkish kids came up to me and said that they loved (my song) 'Immigration Times.' They said, `It's about us.' These ideas that I thought were just this southern California experience became something new, took on this global idea. That's what I mean when I say my show can make you proud to be Mexican, even when you're not.'' That kind of mestiza consciousness is evident and aided by Lopez's vast knowledge of American musical history. Most El Vez songs make direct references to other pieces of music, if not fusing them together completely to make his uniquely skewed point about his Hispanic heritage. The latest album includes hilarious allusions such as these: — A crowd-charger, "Say It Loud! I'm Brown and I'm Proud,'' with all the energy of the James Brown tune — Lennon's "Power to the People'' starts with the riff from "Jailhouse Rock'' and peaks with the solo from Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love'' — In his earnest and fuzzed-up tribute to labor leader Cesar Chavez, El Vez cries, "Well, I ain't gonna pick grapes on Maggie's farm no more,'' echoing one of Dylan's signature tunes — "Taking Care of Business'' is a faithful cover of the Bachman Turner Overdrive original, save the lyrics that bemoan the low pay of menial jobs ("Takin' care of business, we're the maid / Takin' care of business, and getting underpaid / work out!'') — "Si I Am a Lowrider (Superstar)'' is an hysterical hybrid of "Jesus Christ Superstar'' ("Lowrider, superstar, are you as cool as they say you are?'') and "C.C. Rider'' ("Oh si, I'm a lowrider'') to sing the virtues of custom cars. "It's the end of the century, so there's a lot of looking back at and borrowing from the past,'' El Vez said. "I steal licks here and there and put them into a collage that works. One bit makes you think of something else; it helps link the ideas.'' The bonus is, it works on any level you want it to. If you don't tune into the revolution rambling, an El Vez show is still one of the most entertaining around. It's a big show — Elvis is the focal point, after all — with numerous, jaw-dropping costume changes, from the bright orange bell-bottomed jumpsuit made of Mexican blanket fabric to the red-white-and-blue one with the Mexican eagle and serpent to the traditional and obligatory gold lame. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Beck looked out at the pogoing, crowd-surfing bunch gathered at the Cain's Ballroom on Saturday night and asked, "What would Bob Wills think of y'all smashing each others heads?'' Then he and his ace band — two of whom sported cowboy hats — eased into the country-fried "Lord Only Knows.'' Wills was smiling down on the party from his crusty portrait over the stage, and the smile could have been somewhat genuine. Back in the '30s, he was throwing parties like this on the very same wooden dance floor almost every week, and at times things got just as crazy, if not crazier, as "these kids today,'' smashed heads and all. Wills probably would dig Beck, not only for his frequent dips into prairie-born strum and twang but for his exceedingly populist campaign of good, good fun and music. Beck is the ultimate entertainer. His recorded music is one thing — a brow-raising and astonishingly fluid synthesis of funk, country, rock and blues — but his live show illustrated to a sold-out Cain's Ballroom this weekend what that music is all about. "It ain't about all that (bull),'' Beck repeated throughout the evening, it's about rocking the beat and having fun. Rarely has a performer connected with a Cain's audience the way young Beck did Saturday night. Actually, there was no connection to be made; Beck took the stage and launched "Devil's Haircut'' with the link already established. He was clearly a peer, not an artist high on yon pedestal. Just because there were squads of beefy security men keeping us from joining him on stage did not mean Beck was going to exclude us from the party (say par-TAY). He spoke to the crowd freely and in earnest, frequently referring to Wills and not mumbling "Hey, it's good to be in (tonight's city here).'' He broke into a few spontaneous dance moves, his favorite being the stop-motion, Herbie Hancock robot dance. He led the audience through every vibe, every nuance of the exciting songs. He was with us, and nothing spoke to that fact more than the absence of projectiles hurled at him. When bands are on those big stages at Edgefest or wherever, or if they themselves establish the barrier between performer and audience as a line not to be crossed, then the reckless audience tries to make that connection by lobbing lighters and cups and anything else at the players. When someone like Beck mirrors a jumping good time, then the only thing to throw is the funk. That is success in art, especially the debatable art of pop music. Beck's range is as amazing as it is entertaining. He rolls out sharp hip-hop, like "Devil's Haircut.'' He pushes the funk in hit singles like "Where It's At,'' which he played halfway through Saturday's set. (His music is so in debt to black styles, so why was the audience so uniformly white?) He screams frightening songs with vocals so distorted they sound like four minutes of, "I am the God of hellfire!'' He plays cool, traditional country, with a woeful steel guitar, in songs like "Road Hog'' (Wills was smiling for that one, surely). He even plays sincere guitar folk. He let his band take a break after "Pay No Mind'' so he could play a solo acoustic number and one that was simply him and his wailing harmonica. By the end of the set, when he declared that "tonight, Tulsa is make-out city,'' the whole ballroom was dancing, even the shy ones back by the bar. Definitely a good time had by all. Dirty Three — my personal raison d'etre at Saturday's show — opened the bill with a stunning performance of incredibly evocative instrumental music. By my earlier conclusion, we could say that this trio was perhaps not as successful at connecting with an impatient audience because they did dodge a few cups, ice cubes and what-not. (One more flying bit and drummer Jim White may have surrendered to his rage, leapt over his kit and walloped a few brats.) For those who listened, this performance was unparalleled in emotional fervor. Warren Ellis announces songs with quips like, "This is a song about waking up thinking you're Elliott Gould, but you're really Burt Reynolds, so you're (screwed).'' Then he hunches over his violin like a troll from the family tree of Robyn Hitchcock, playing much of the time with his back to the audience so that all we see is a black T-shirt, a disheveled mass of brown curls and the whipping hairs of a frayed bow flailing about one shoulder. With a kick from White, the jerky tempo of a Dirty Three song can suddenly go to warp speed, and then we see more of Ellis. He jumps up and down like a maniac, sawing at his violin as if it just won't die, and in a fit of pique — like a startled cobra — he spits at the ceiling. This was the greatest entertainment for the bored pre-teens waiting for Beck. During such a frenzy in "Hope,'' one particularly juicy loogie was flung at the ceiling and then, unbeknownst to Ellis, who was lost in his art perilously underneath the spot, gravity began to pull the syrupy substance back down. It stretched about two feet before breaking off and falling next to Ellis, much to the audible dismay of the crowd. When the song was over, Ellis realized what had happened and said, "Well, I'm glad we can provide some entertainment for you.'' He spit again during "I Remember a Time When Once You Used to Love Me,'' and this time it hit the mark, dripping back into his hair, and one wondered if Ellis hadn't positioned himself just right that time. If that's how he must suffer for his art, so be it. His music, although unfortunately placed on a tour with the wrong audience for it, is some of the most interesting of its kind. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World A few violin players might complain of the occasional bad back, but a very select few complain of severed nerves as a result of jumping off a drum kit. Warren Ellis is among the select few. When we caught up with Ellis last week, he was nursing an old war wound, aggravated again by another animated performance a few nights before. "I took a fall off a monitor up in Boston,'' Ellis said. "I fell on my knee and brought back an old injury when I dove off a bass drum and severed a nerve. I'm nursing that a bit.'' You might not expect such madness from a violin player, especially when his band is an instrumental setup, but Ellis shatters every stereotype with his music and performance. His band, the Dirty Three, plays the most evocative instrumental music currently in the rock idiom. Ellis' violin breaks your heart, and if you can listen to the band's latest disc, "Horse Stories,'' without tearing up at least once, you have no heart. This is not chamber music, mind you, unless your chamber happens to be a garishly decorated boudoir full of lonely hearts brooding and reminiscing in the twilight. Jim White's astonishing drums and Mick Turner's manic-depressive guitar gives breath to the songs, and Ellis uses his violin to sigh — sometimes harsh and scraping like John Cale's most frenetic Velvet Underground moments and sometimes sweet and weeping like the most masterful Stephane Grappelli ballads. (Turner's history delves into the scummiest of Australian rock, from the Sick Things to Fungus Brains, and White emigrated from The People With Chairs Up Their Noses — a band name I could not resist printing.) It still rocks, and Ellis' off-the-handle live shows are not the stuff of stuffy concert halls. He often lightens the mood with long, rambling stories of lost love involving such characters as Meatloaf, Siouxsie Sioux and "that little chap from New Order.'' The concert reviews from around the country have been paragraph after paragraph of gaping jaws. All this from an instrumental band — and they're opening for Beck. What will the restless young ones in that crowd think of instrumental music? "Some people think instrumental music is a bit of a chore,'' Ellis said, "but you can never tell, really. When you're doing support spots, people came to see the main band. It's much nicer that way because then I can just go out and play and let completely loose. It's different than playing in a club where all the people came to see you and are expecting a certain thing. This way nobody's really expecting much from us, and we really divide the audience. They either love us or hate us.'' Like any youngster with a burgeoning interest in rock music, Ellis started playing guitar. Meanwhile, he was studying classical violin for eight years. About four years ago, he'd been hearing about electric violins, and he decided to try it out. He attached a guitar pickup to his violin with a rubber band and began playing. "People began bringing me different effects pedals to try out. We just sort of plugged them in and turned out this music and saw what happened,'' Ellis said. Dirty Three formed shortly after that. Ellis' reputation as a startling musician spread quickly, and he began working with other artists, as well. Most notably, he worked with Nick Cave on the music for the film "The Passion of Joan of Arc'' and a recording of the dark theme to "The X Files,'' which opens the television show's tribute disc, "Songs in the Key of X.'' One reason for the expressive quality of the songs may be the result of one of Ellis' rules: no practicing. "We never practice,'' he said. "I've never understood bands who practice for 18 months in a rehearsal room. It probably destroys any intuitivity about the thing, you know? Music is about communication. You should be out playing it to people.'' Ellis communicates quite well. When he drizzles his bow over the strings in "Sue's Last Ride,'' you can almost picture Sue as she looked to Ellis's character the very last time he saw her. You don't have to see the title of "At the Bar'' to know that here Ellis and the other players are exploring the depressant qualities of fermented grains. These melodies and countermelodies communicate just as much as a fluid line of poetry if you listen carefully. "The kind of music that inspires this is stuff with really common themes — having a bit of a broken heart and such — things that are very basic to our experience. That's our sort of medium for communicating. We don't have fireworks or pyrotechnics to draw people in, and we don't wear makeup ... "I guess whatever you do is an extension of yourself, a way of expressing yourself that maybe you can't do verbally. I guess that means I'm kind of squawky and out of tune inside.'' By Thomas Conner
© TULSA WORLD After their first or second album, U2 skipped across America and performed a show in Oklahoma City. Halfway through the show, Bono asked if anyone in the crowd would come up and sing a Neil Young song while he took a breather. A young Tyson Meade volunteered, jumped on stage and began crooning for the crowd as U2 backed him half-heartedly. Meade, however, didn't really know the words, and he sounded less than honey-throated. His first taste of fame was cut short when Bono planted his boot in Meade's backside and abruptly returned him to the madding crowd. But Meade has a knack of re-emerging from the crowd. A few years later he was back onstage with his own band, Defenestration, and when that minor local legend dissolved, he re-emerged in 1990 at the microphone with the Chainsaw Kittens. With the Kittens, he's been beaten up and sneered at, but no one is kicking him off the stage, and when the band's fourth album is released this fall, he's likely to be kicking off the stage his own gaggle of groupies. The whole reason Meade formed the Chainsaw Kittens was to stand out, he said — not in the manner of whoring with the media, more like rebelling against the troubling trend of being normal. “I was sick of the Reviers and Guadalcanal Diary ... tired of the T-shirt and jeans thing,'' Meade said in a recent interview. “It seemed to me that rock should have some sort of face, not be faceless and nameless. Hootie (and the Blowfish) is so homogenized I just want to puke. We wanted to do something really raucous and a little dangerous.'' Meade's conception of raucousness and danger was dead-on: A cuddly longhair in Norman, Okla., he began wearing dresses and makeup. This raised the ire of many of our less open-minded brethren and resulted in a few skirmishes. “I used to do all kinds of stuff to get a reaction from people,'' Meade told us two years ago before a Tulsa gig. “I don't do so much anymore. Now we're focusing on playing our music. That's what we really want to try and do now.'' Those old Kittens shows at Norman's Hollywood Theater five or six years ago were the real stuff of youth. Crowds packed that dank, stained movie house and watched four hometown guys rip out hard pop sounds that were almost as exciting as the sound was bad. They jumped around, putting on an incredibly exciting live show, and everyone left absolutely convinced that Norman would, in no time, be the next Athens or the next Seattle. Norman (sigh) has not become the next anything, but the same cannot yet be said of the Kittens. They have, indeed, hung most of the dresses back in the closet and lately focused solely on the music. The upcoming Kittens record is one more step in the transformation of the Kittens. OK, not a transformation — more a refinement. The band members have spent the last several years working on solo projects and honing a slightly more stripped-down, focused sound for the band. In the last couple of years, Kittens guitarist Trent Bell has concentrated on his own projects and productions in his Norman studio, Bell Labs, while Meade has crafted his own solo records. “Motorcycle Childhood,'' his solo debut, was released in January on Seattle's Echostatic label, which also will release Meade's ambient record in January 1997. “I don't know that I was trying to prove anything to anyone but myself with the solo stuff,'' Meade said. “I really wanted to know that I could fly on my own and do it and put it out and take the heat by myself.'' “Motorcycle Childhood'' was an easy-going labor of love for Meade. The disc is extraordinarily simple, sweet and beautiful, uncomplicated songs written from various vignettes in Meade's pleasant existence and recorded in several living rooms. Meade said he took his time and let the creativity grow naturally. “I felt really good when I was doing it,'' he said. “Something like (the song) `Off With You,' was as simple as hearing a friend of mine playing this piano piece and thinking, `I could put words to that.' She said that would be cool, her boyfriend taped it, and it was completely spontaneous. Isn't that cool? After the majesty of that song, Meade made another serendipitous song, the brief pivot point on the record, “Reverse Nelson-Inside Crotch.'' He was at Bell's studio one day and heard a riff that Bell had taped and set aside, thinking it awful. Meade began clapping along and thought it held promise. He added some “Valium guitar and crazy organ'' and — voila! One more track. It's a much more accurate picture of Meade and his family life, much of which hearkens back to these parts. The album's cover photo shows a young, barefoot Tyson and his mother both on motorcycles in the family's Osage County apple orchard. “In summer, I picked apples for people and charged $5 a bushel. That was enough to buy a New York Dolls record,'' Meade said. Meade acknowledges the curse Oklahoma residency can be on a rock 'n' roll band, but he's not ashamed of his homeland. The new Kittens record will be called “Speedway Oklahoma.'' “We never worry about that kind of thing,'' he said. “We've never sold a lot of records, so maybe if we mention something really taboo, like where we're from, that'll be controversial enough to get people to buy it ... It definitely has a rural kind of weirdness to it — a go out and drink by a bonfire kind of thing. You can put it into a Trans Am and crank it up.'' The band easily could have moved to Los Angeles or New York when they signed their first major-label contract with Mammoth Records in 1990, but they chose to stay in Norman. Meade said it keeps them grounded and free of the sometimes corrupting influence of too much going on. Being in Oklahoma also makes them hard to find, though some rather big names have made the effort. When the Kittens' first record, “Violent Religion,'' had been out a few months, Meade got a call one day from a fellow aspiring rocker, Billy Corgan, who was starting a little band called the Smashing Pumpkins. Corgan was calling to gush over the Kittens' record and to voice his hope that his band would be able to make a record half as cool. Corgan now floats across MTV and cashes royalty checks from his platinum-selling albums. Meade, meanwhile, still kills time working at Shadowplay Records in Norman and grows peppers in his garden. Both are happy, but local fans tend to wonder why the deserving Chainsaw Kittens haven't become huge stars. “Some people strive, like Billy Corgan wants to be a really huge rock star. That's cool, but me — I want to strive to make albums I'm going to be proud of when I'm 60. I've reached that point, and I'm happy I did,'' Meade said. “Being famous seemed really cool at one point. I'm doing lots of things I love to do, though.'' Corgan himself wonders at the Kittens' lack of peer status. Early this year, he told Out magazine that the Kittens were “a quintessential pop-rock band'' and said, “There are certainly songs that they wrote that could have been pop-rock hits. It's kind of a mystery why they haven't.'' They've certainly got the names to drop. The Kittens are friends with the Smashing Pumpkins, which led to the Kittens signing to Scratchie Records (a Chicago label started by two members of the Pumpkins), and they're also tight with the Counting Crows. Butch Vig, of all people, produced the second Chainsaw Kittens album, “Flipped Out in Singapore.'' The new record — at the risk of raising those hopes again -- may be a significant step up for the band. After leaving Mammoth because the label didn't publicize the third record satisfactorily, the Kittens landed on Scratchie, which recently was acquired by Mercury Records. “Speedway Oklahoma'' was due for release in the spring, but the new marketers at Mercury delayed it to Oct. 15 to give them time to prepare a proper buzz. The disc steps back from the metallic edge that got more serrated as the Kittens progressed. Meade said every song uses strings, and the arrangements loosened up as the songwriting got tighter. “It's still really rockish, but it fills out a little more. We didn't depend on the guitar standard to carry it as much,'' Meade said. “People who follow us will think its back to where we were at 'Violent Religion' but more mature or something ... It's kind of like my record, but definitely more rock 'n' roll. It just doesn't sound like we're playing in a stadium.'' Also, watch for the Kittens' contribution to an upcoming tribute album to Cheap Trick. They cover “Dream Police.'' Tyson Meade discography: With Defenestration -- “Defenestration'' EP (Slow Iguana, 1986) “Dali Does Windows'' (Relativity, 1987) With the Chainsaw Kittens -- “Violent Religion'' (Mammoth, 1990) “Flipped Out in Singapore'' (Mammoth, 1992) “Angel on the Range'' EP (Mammoth, 1993) “Pop Heiress'' (Mammoth-Atlantic, 1994) “Candy for You'' EP (Scratchie, 1996) “Speedway Oklahoma'' (Scratchie, due out Oct. 15) Solo -- “Motorcycle Childhood'' (Echostatic, 1996) If this isn't around town, call Echostatic to order at (206) 322-7366. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World First, I couldn't get anyone to go to the show with me. "Who are the Plimsouls?'' my poor friends would ask. I could feel age advancing upon me like a Monkees fan. Then I arrived at Ikon and greeted Davit Souders, the club's owner. He said, "You'll feel young when you get inside. Three kids came in and asked for their money back because they said the crowd was too old.'' Indeed, I was a pup among dewey-eyed fellow geeks stuck somewhere between the uplifting label of boomers and the targeting label of Generation X. Some of them had brought their kids, and all of them restrained themselves from dancing. The Plimsouls are relics from that brief period in music history when pop and rock merged quite fluidly. Now 15 years after their original heyday, they held the Ikon stage on Monday night with all the presence of ROCK STARS — flashy, brash, hard-worn purveyors of the teen beat. Nobody in this quartet is pin-up material (when they make the film, Eric Stolz will gain several pounds and play lead singer Peter Case), but they rock in the purest sense. They're not out to change the world, they're not willing to sell their grandmothers to be the next big thing and they have a freakin' ball. Case has one of the most unpleasant, scratchy voices in rock 'n' roll, and he uses it to an incredibly appealing effect. Without the sniggering attitude of a young Paul Westerburg, Case leads his band through music perfectly balanced between the jangle of the Byrds and the serrated stab of Blondie. It was around bands like the Plimsouls, the dBs and early Joe Jackson that the term "power pop'' was born. This is pop — unselfconscious, unpretentious songs about bad luck and getting even and missing your other half -- charged with the desperation and kick of serious rock 'n' roll. As the band charged through its lengthy set (rarely stopping for more than a breath between songs), the guitarist cycled through about eight different guitars while drummer Clem Burke — of Blondie fame — reminded us how cool drummers can be. n occasional offbeats, he would raise a drumstick high in the air, his eyes following it, then drop it with a crash and a wince. He wore a D.A.R.E. T-shirt. (When they make the film, Dana Carvey will have his role.) This was no nostalgia show, either. As Case sang, "Time goes by so fast / I don't want to live in the past.'' The set included the standards (yes, they played "A Million Miles Away'') plus a Who cover and several new songs, "Playing With Jack'' and "(Too Much) Satisfaction,'' which are just as hot as the originals, maybe better. Another band of power popsters from the L.A. scene opened the show, 20/20. These three guys are Tulsa natives, though this was their first Tulsa show. The group's two founding members came back together last year to make another album with Bill Belknap, owner of Long Branch Studios. Now the three kick around the country playing infrequent gigs, wherever they find a festival or an audience of new wave nostalgists. Despite that occasional playing schedule, this trio is amazingly tight. Guitarist Steve Allen worked a lot of sound out of his lone guitar, and Belknap pounds the drums with shocking ferocity. Ron Flynt, the gangly bassist, loped around the Ikon stage flashing his curious expressions of bliss and confusion. His songs of tarnished innocence and childlike reconciliation reflect his visage, from the set opener "Song of the Universe'' through 20/20 classics like "Remember the Lightning,'' "Nuclear Boy'' and "Yellow Pills.'' I'm no old coot, but somehow I become Grumpy Old Man when talking about my new wave heroes. Those three kids should have stuck around. This "old'' music feels so much younger. By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World Plimsouls fans have long lamented the failure of their favorite band to take over the world. Listening to the band's pinnacle album, 1983's "Everywhere at Once,'' they certainly sound like they could have — charged guitars and a hoarse singer that preceded the height of Husker Du and the Replacements. Lead singer Peter Case is the first to fess up as to why the Plimsouls died an early death. They were slackers, he said. "We didn't have it together at all,'' he said in an interview last week. "We were talking last night about our behavior during various tours. We weren't ever focused. You've got to be willing to sell your grandmother to go far in this business, and we weren't. We had the music and the drive and the commitment, but we didn't have any common sense.'' For instance, Case said he hired the band's first manager simply because the guy had cool clothes. One bad decision led to another, and soon the band faded away. But that's not the end of the story. Case — a consummate songwriter who had polished his sense of perfect pop in another short-lived band, the Nerves, before charging the Plimsouls — laid down his electric guitar when the Plimsouls dissolved and picked up his acoustic. For the next several years, Case painted a portrait of the artist as a hip, literate troubadour, complete with baggy suit and felt fedora. His folk approach wowed critics but still escaped widespread attention. Now he's back with the Plimsouls. The band reunited two years ago and rode the same wave of Los Angeles new wave nostalgia that brought 20/20, a band of Tulsa natives, back together. The revived Plimsouls now ride that wave across the country, playing to venues packed with people who claim they've loved the Plimsouls all along. Funny how that happens. "Stuff changes through time,'' Case said. "I definitely remember nobody listened to Big Star when they were out. I had the third album on tape and took it everywhere. No one knew who they were. Nobody gave a s--- about the Velvet Underground, either. Now everyone's realizing how important they were.'' The Plimsouls were sucked up by a late '70s record-label hunt to find the next Knack. But don't tell Case that. "We didn't have anything to do with that, with new wave or anything,'' he said. "The first big Rolling Stone article about us was headlined, 'L.A. Look for the New Knack.' It's insulting to be called a throw-off of the Knack. New wave was a polite way of saying punk at the time — no one knew what anything was called. We didn't mind being stuck with the label because it said 'new,' which we liked to think we were, but it still just meant something I didn't understand, like 'French cinema.' The Clash called themselves new wave, you know? I mean, let's wait and see what 'alternative' looks like in 15 years.'' After an independent debut that raised a few eyebrows, the Plimsouls signed a huge deal with Geffen and released "Everywhere at Once,'' the album that spawned the one song that can truthfully be called a hit, "A Million Miles Away.'' Case growled on that record long before Greg Dulli's desperate rasp came along in the Afghan Whigs, and the band's aggressive spirit recalled the harmony and power of "Beatles VI'' without losing its independence. But alas, it was not meant to be. Case said they just didn't have the gumption to take over the world. "We were lazy, and we were stupid in terms of career choices,'' Case said. "We worked hard, but I'm just not able to connect in that way. Maybe it just wasn't our fate. I mean, Tom Petty and those guys did 72 takes of 'Refugee.' They killing their drummer, and it worked. We were really just a garage band. I've had a great career. I'm not complaining. You can be a great artist, and that doesn't mean you have to make a fool of yourself on MTV's 'Sex Secrets of the Stars' or something. But try to explain that to anybody.'' Case didn't really want to walk away from the band, but he said he felt he couldn't do both — the solo work and the band. The band finally did reform and start playing gigs again. Case said he now has the best of both worlds, but he's not so sure how the Plimsouls fit into the current music scene. "We played last night at this festival with Jewel and different assorted alternative rockers. The average age of the crowd was about 12. They were moshing and jumping around on each other. I don't really see myself as the spokesman for the 12-year-olds,'' he said. Drumming for the Plimsouls now is Clem Burke, who played drums with Blondie. Case called him "the best drummer in the world.'' The Plimsouls with 20/20 When: 7 p.m. Monday Where: Ikon, 606 S. Elgin Ave. Tickets: $10 at the door 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? By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World I haven't been in Jify Trip's rehearsal room for five minutes before lead singer Justin Monroe whirls around and asks me, "How do you feel about cottage cheese, man?'' "Why?'' I ask, being too cautious. "Do you use it in your show?'' "No, I just wanted to know how you feel about it,'' he says. Strap in and secure the knives — it's going to be a woolly night. It's December 21, 1995, a cold, murky night on the verge of a new season, and sleet is pelting the half dozen or so cars that swarmed like ATF agents on this modest log cabin on the north edge of Bixby. An hour after sundown, all the technology that gives Jify Trip its venerable voice has been flung into trucks and "sport vehicles.'' The four members of the band and a handful of hangers-on have sought shelter from the cold inside a shed behind the house. The members of Jify Trip and their entourage look like any burgeoning rock bunch. There's guitarist Brent Coates, a handsome everybody with bangs just long enough to confound any idea that he spends one weekend a month in the Army reserves. There's drummer Scott Rouse, the oft-but-lovingly picked-on blondie in flannel shirt and baggy trousers, both easily three sizes too large. Bassist Tommy Niemeyer is the first to joke about his appearance; being half German and half Thai, he is used to being mistaken for every conceivable ethnicity ("I'm the Afro-American-Asian-Arabian-Indian member of the band''). Then there's Justin. Justin looks like the offspring that would result from Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland being caught in baby Bear's bed with Goldilocks. His pink features are framed by a terribly trendy goatee and two long, wavy, blond pigtails. "A horse's ass on both sides,'' someone teases. We're not due at the club for another hour, so time is marked for killing in the carpeted shed. There's a mock stage in the shed, bracketed by a leering Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison poster on one side and a black and white shot of the members of Pearl Jam striking a Guns N' Roses guitar pose on the other. Seeing these choices for decor, I quiver at the thought of an evening of Doors-Pearl Jam inspired music ahead. My fears will soon be allayed. • • • Behind the stage is a polished piece of wood in a sun shape, and mounted on it is a colorful, lacquered puzzle of some kind of mandala. "That's an ancient, medieval Ouija board,'' Tommy says. Over the door to the shed, the phrase "It's the most...'' is stenciled on the jamb. It seems one of the groupies, Russell Becker — the one by the piano with the purple and green court jester hat on — uses the phrase a lot, as in "It's the most cool place'' or "It's the most smelly sofa.'' Russell smiles sheepishly, and I get the impression there's more to it than that. Upon learning that Good, the band scheduled to play before them, won't be playing, Justin and Brent sit down on the stage to add some songs to the set list. Tommy suggests the song "Bite,'' and others in the room call out the name. Justin responds, "Where?'' Jify trip's manager, Mark McCullough, is loitering with us, making lots of managerial promises. "I'm gonna do my damnedest to get you guys signed in '96,'' he resolves. The band mutters things like, "It's about time.'' Even the mere two years Jify Trip has been together have wrought a tinge of cynicism on the band. Finally, someone says, "Let's go to the club,'' and we're piling into S-10s and Broncos to rumble to Eclipse. Jify Trip is on a bill at the club tonight before a Kansas City tribal sensation, Billy Goat. On the ride there, Mark and Tommy reminisce about the band's humble beginnings. Like Spinal Tap, Jify Trip has been through a few drummers, but when Scott joined up exactly one year ago, everything clicked, Tommy says. "He just fit right in, the best of anybody,'' he says. "And he's flourished so much in the last year.'' Mark is clearly pumped up about his new progenitors. Mark formerly managed Tulsa's bastion of ingenious-but-unsigned music, the Mellowdramatic Wallflowers. After a good part of a decade with the group and still no success, Mark bowed out and picked up Jify Trip, which he thinks is much more in-tune with modern rock success. "These guys have so much going on,'' he says, gesturing for emphasis. "They are easily the most marketable band in town, and I think they have a real shot at getting out there.'' We get to Eclipse about 7 p.m. and mill around for a bit while club-owner K. Rahal devises a game plan for the equipment set-up. Scott and Tommy clasp each other's hands and waists and begin waltzing to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill'' playing over the sound system. I look around the Eclipse and enjoy a rare, smoke-free glimpse of the legendary club. The Eclipse is a second home for a band like this. K.'s club desperately caters to young, original bands like Jify Trip, and the members laugh about that period — familiar to most young bands here — when they were playing Eclipse practically every weekend. Jify Trip's first gig, though, was at the late Windjammer club in east Tulsa. "I was scared to play there,'' Justin says, and the recollection of the event illicits laughter from the other members, but it's a proud, survivalist laughter. "The band before us actually did the hair-swinging thing as they played.'' "And don't forget the girl in white playing pool all night,'' Brent adds. Once Scott's drums are set up and other amps and gear has been tucked out of Billy Goat's way, the entire entourage crams into a weathered, white Ford Bronco in search of sustenance. I have no idea whose Bronco it is, or who is driving, and white Broncos have macabre connotations for me now. We wind up at the Hideaway pizza place on 15th Street, flustering the waitstaff about a table for 10. Brian Hartman — the wide-eyed friend and "fifth member of the band,'' Justin proclaims — is delighted that the restaurant has Pente board games. He seizes one at once and threatens everyone with a game. Once seated and orders taken, the band begins to talk about its illustrious and blooming career. Jify Trip has played the gamut of Tulsa nightspots — the Dugout, the Rhythm Room, Xenophon, TU frat parties — as well as Norman, Oklahoma City and Stillwater clubs. Promotion involves photocopied fliers stuck on phone poles and handed out at shopping malls, and lots of word of mouth. Justin proceeds to illustrate the tireless promotion of a local rock band. He catches the waitress as she begins to walk away with the orders: "Hey, what are you doing about 9:30 tonight?'' She promptly ignores him. He wasn't trying to ask her for a date. It's just another way to spread the word about the band, and it's worked before. Waitresses (and waiters, Brent is a bit too quick to add) from the evening's supper have been known to show up at gigs. Brent works at Chili's and has convinced several of his cohorts to attend. "We just basically play our music,'' Tommy says. "That in itself has gotten people to come back and spread the word. That's how it works, just like the old shampoo commercial: they tell two friends, and they tell two friends, and so on and so on. "Basically, Jify Trip is a cult,'' Justin says. "Everyone is welcome.'' "But nobody comes,'' Brent adds. He assures me it's a joke and promises a substantial core following. "When we started, we had no idea what we were doing,'' Justin says. "It's really funny, man, the growing process we've gone through.'' "We grew, then we got stale for a while,'' Tommy says. "We didn't change our underwear for, like, three months.'' "But now we rock!'' Justin says. "We create from nothing,'' he adds, mystically. "We're absolute music,'' Brent says. Justin, who earlier failed to sell the band on calling the music "hydraulic music,'' says, "I don't get that.'' "We play music for the sake of music,'' Brent explains. Justin laughs. "You caught us on a good night. We're usually at each other's throats. We're all dicks.'' "That's not true,'' says the stong-silent Scott. "Tommy's a nice guy.'' The waitress returns, diverting his attention. Justin tries to make up for the previous misunderstanding. "I wasn't trying to ask you out,'' he says. "I just wanted to know if you'd be interested in seeing a band tonight called Jify Trip.'' "I heard they sucked,'' the waitress says. Tips are reclaimed from the money pile. • • • Back at Eclipse, clubbers are starting to drift in, and the Marlboro haze already has defined the spotlights and slide projections. Justin paces through the tables and chairs with heavy sighs and clenching fists, denying that he's nervous. By 9 p.m., Mark is equally nervous as he scans the sparse room. "I just can't figure out where all the people are,'' he says. "I guess people aren't used to seeing bands here on Thursdays.'' Eclipse usually schedules open mic nights on Thursdays. He's not worrying from his wallet, though. The band, I find out from Mark, is playing tonight's show for free. My jaw drops. "This is your idea of the Christmas spirit?'' I ask. "This is my idea of getting good exposure,'' McCullough says. "I wanted to open for Billy Goat, a strong, popular regional act. It's always good to get a tape in their hands, find out who books their shows, etc.'' Tommy is crouching behind his amp to smoke a cigarette in peace. Brent kneels on the stage tuning his two guitars. Brian sets up the retail arm of this project with a box of Jify Trip CDs at a table near the bar. The crowd has picked up by 9:30 p.m. — the usual Eclipse throng of shaved-head and flannel-laden hipsters dressed like they just came in from the fields around Poznon, Poland circa 1908. All the seats and tables are filled, anyway, and a chummy bunch of high school (at most) girls with braces and bobs sit cross-legged on the floor before the stage. At 9:35 p.m., the band gets the word to get onstage. K.'s cheeky announcement booms out of the speakers: "We have for you tonight, Billy Goat! And first, a great Tulsa band, we love them -- Jify Trip!'' The beat and strums fall at the same instant, and the sound slams forward. Justin grabs the mic and shakes and wails as if he'd just caught hold of a wire pulsing several thousand volts. From this moment through to the encore, Justin is no longer with us. He stares forward with glazed eyes in an eerie trance, like a deranged sleepwalker. He shrieks like a 12-year-old Billy Corgan being choked and moves around the stage like Riff Raff doing "The Time Warp.'' The crowd watches with a nonchalance that would ruin bands of lesser conviction. The first song is "Help the Mustard.'' Since there is no sound check before showtime, this is it. When the sound finally dies away, Justin calls to K., "Can I have some monitor? I don't have any.'' During the second song, "Wool,'' which involves a lot of screaming, his vocals cut out several times from the sound system. It's a learning experience for everyone, every single night. Brent gnashes a wad of gum while he slashes his guitar, a stream of flawless chords punctuated with the occasional sharp fill. Tommy's deft dancing up and down the frets of his bass suffers from an unjust mix. Scott's drumming is fervent and pristine; he sometimes even smiles. Jify Trip plays carefully wrought guitar-pop, excellent melodies and rhythms supporting Justin's banshee wails. The girls in front of the stage are up and dancing right away, but they are the only ones moving to the music. A few people against the Van Gogh wall are mouthing the words, but most simply stare. Justin is unfazed; in fact, he approaches them. Pulling on his mic cable, he wanders into the crowd, sometimes getting a good 20 feet from the stage — about halfway across the club. Drifting among frat boys standing near the bar and neohippies flopped on the couches, he takes his shtick to the masses, convulsing and conjuring things from his mic while those near him try to act casual. He's almost oblivious to the crowd — drawn to them, but still off in another dimension of higher sonic beings. During "Nothing Artificial,'' Justin is on top of the speaker stacks. K. comes to the edge of the stage wearing worry under the bill of his Triple X Records cap. Justin hangs upside down off the stack, then stands and spreads his arms out like a plane (or a Christ figure, heaven forbid). While the band takes off on one lick, he dangles the mic and cord from his crotch and swings. When the song ends, Justin chants as if hypnotized, "Us. Us. Us. Us.'' The crowd dares him to jump. "Isn't this great?'' McCullough says behind me. He looks like he's just seen his first snowfall. "Now do you see why I wanted to push these guys?'' The last song is an Adorable cover, "Homeboy.'' When Justin teeters toward the edge of the stage in preparation to leave it, the crowd, to my delighted surprise, begins shouting, "One more! One more!'' Justin looks up, as if the voices of adoration have pierced a pinhole in his trance. K.'s voice again booms from the darkness: "C'mon guys, they want one more song. How 'bout it?'' Justin hardly moves and says, "This song is called 'Ides of January.' It sucks because we suck. Thank you. Yes, we suck. Thank you.'' Tommy straps his bass back on and they dish out one more screamer. • • • When Jify Trip makes its hasty exodus from the stage and Billy Goat members begin setting up their gear around 10:30 p.m., the band members scatter through the crowd in search of girlfriends. Justin can't seem to find his, and he natters unconvincing assurances that this was a good show. He snatches a handful of the band's CDs and begins passing them out to the crowd — giving them away. When asked if this was a good show, Brian, our Pente champ, turns thumbs down. He's not slagging the band; he's slagging the crowd. "Nobody did anything,'' he says. "Usually we've got people jumping around, going crazy. Everybody's lazy here tonight.'' They weren't lazy when Billy Goat came on. Jify Trip regrouped outside to cool off, then filed back in once Billy Goat's beats started shaking the walls. Billy Goat, a funk-a-go-go band now out of Kansas City, keeps the crowd on its feet during its whole set. Jify Trip stays for most of the show, as enthralled by the band as anyone — likely moreso. When Billy Goat leader Mike Dillon really started going on his hand drums, Justin scans the club. "Where's Scott? He's gotta see this!'' During Billy Goat's "Old School, Jam 23,'' Justin is up on someone's shoulders, waving his arms like he's at a Dokken show. Scott was, indeed, there, staring typically calmly at the two drummers' precision timing. An hour into Billy Goat's set, Jify Trip files out to the sidewalk and huddles in the cold. Tommy's eyes are still wide from the Billy Goat experience. "Jeez, did we even play?'' Justin asks. "They are the only band that's ever played after us that just completely kicked our ass,'' Tommy says. With everyone screaming in the cold, it's decided to return to Tommy's to consume mass quantities. "So this is Jify Trip,'' Justin said. "Hope you liked it. See you at the top.'' By Thomas Conner
© Tulsa World We caught up with Marilyn Manson in New Orleans. It seemed like the ideal town for someone as dark and sinister as Mr. Manson, so we asked what sights he'd been seeing. "Well, last night we went grave digging,'' he said. Oh, jeez. Here we go. "There's this old cemetery around here, and the weather has deteriorated the ground — it's just this big mud puddle,'' Manson explained. "There are pieces of coffins and corpses lying around, and no one seems to care. So we kind of went shopping at the bone flea market. It's not something I'm really into, but our bassist likes to put them in his hair.'' Such is the grim but happy life of Marilyn Manson, the heart of darkness from the terminally happy state of Florida, and the rising messiahs in the cult of death metal. Granted, rock is filled with bands who enjoy turning the notion of good taste upside down, but Manson's is a particularly putrid strain, specializing in songs about blood, disease, rape and abuse. But don't be too quick to judge. Manson's mission has less to do with advocacy of these evils and more to do with reflecting them back in our faces. Mr. Manson, as the band's leader is hailed, blames us for creating him. It's best to let him explain. "Anyone who misunderstands Marilyn Manson right off the bat and takes it for the shock value only — thinks we're glorifying anything — is just feeding into the very trap that we're all about,'' Manson said. "If you're disgusted by us, then you should be asking yourselves why you're disgusted and why you created this possibility in the first place.'' Fliers broadcast about to promote the album feature a searing open letter "to whom it may conform'' from Mr. Manson. It is decorated with the typical skulls, bugs, syringes and pieces of candy. Some highlights: "Marilyn Manson is the harvest of thown-away kids, and America is now afraid to reap what it has sown. You have spoonfed us Saturday morning mouthfuls of maggots and lies disguised in your sugary breakfast cereals. The plates you made us clean were filled with your fears. These things have hardened in our soft, pink bellies ... It's too late to take it all back. This is your world in which we grow, and we will grow to hate you.'' Gulp. The band is Manson's vehicle for getting his message across. The band has barely cracked sales of 50,000, and the debut disc, "Portrait of an American Family,'' is not likely to go platinum. "I still don't think I've gotten across to enough people,'' Manson said. Still, here they are getting written up in our own placid community. The message is getting out. And Manson chose his medium well. Before the band came together five years ago, he considered being a writer, but he figured music got into more people's heads than any other form of communication. "Music is the most powerful form of expression in America,'' he said. "That's where the great tyrants and anti-Christs, the people who want to make some sort of big social change, are talking. If Hitler were alive today, he'd be a rock star.'' You can just hear Bob Dole quivering, can't you? Marilyn Manson is the perfect target for a campaign ad: Manson himself is the creepiest visage on the continent, strewn with Alice Cooper raccoon eyes, vicious tattoos and blood often trickling over his deathly pale skin. He's bound to be spotted soon in a campaign commercial, frightening old housewives while a serene voice tells them that this is the state of all rock music today and, if you don't vote for Candidate A, your children will be under direct orders from Marilyn Manson to pillage the countryside. Oh — and the music? Well, yes, there's music at the heart of this, too. "Portrait of an American Family'' is the first deal with Nothing Records, founded by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor. His hand in the album's distorted, edgy production is obvious. The guitar riffs and song structures are nothing terribly unique musically, but the vocal effects and Manson's ranting are uncomfortable and scary. But is that all there is to Marilyn Manson — a freaky gimmick? Most of the bands Manson claims as influences used the lipstick and bodily secretion fixations strictly to sell records. "I get a lot of flak from people who think that what I do isn't me, that it's just an image we put forth to get attention,'' Manson said. "I'm sorry if I'm a little more creative than Hootie and the Blowfish, but I'm not doing this for anyone else. I want to be the things that made me happy when I was a kid. Everyone has an image, even if it's a bland, regular-guy image. I make myself happy being this way. I do this for me. "We're in such a bland, politically correct era where music is such a product on TV. It doesn't matter if you sound like the band last week — in fact, that's even better. I'm bored with that." 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.'' BY THOMAS CONNER
© TULSA WORLD Matthew Sweet has been all over the map — literally and musically. He's come a long way from that seersucker jacket and wallflower gaze on the cover of his first LP, 1986's "Inside," to the black leather and devilish grin on the back of his current chartbuster, "100% Fun." Geographically, he's come to L.A. by way of New York City; Athens, Ga.; and his homely home state of Nebraska. Musically, he's come to the seventh level of power-pop heaven by way of synthesizer anesthesia and look-Ma-I'm-on-a-major-label overkill. And like all travelers, he is better and wiser for his journeys. "My whole concept, though, hasn't changed that much," Sweet said. "As long as I have a room with a multi-track (recorder) in it, I can make music." The multi-track is key. Sweet is one like many across the country: a goofy Midwestern boy who spent his formative years locked in his bedroom with his first four-track, writing silly songs for the kick of it and experimenting with sound like a Merry Prankster aboard Ken Kesey's Day-Glo bus. Sweet just happened to creep ever so slowly into well-deserved national notice. Sweet spoke with the Tulsa World last week from the office of his Los Angeles record company, Zoo Entertainment. "I don't work and work on songs," he said. "They come instantly or they don't happen. Sometimes I'm just blowing off steam, getting moody and weird, and I get my guitar and just muse on it. It's therapy, and for a long time — really, all the time — it was totally that until `Girlfriend' came along and made it a career thing." "Girlfriend" was his 1992 release and the one that pulled him out of cult status and into that realm of "modern rock" praise that's just enough to pump your ego and get your name in the paper but not enough to boost you from renting the house to buying it. But on that album, Sweet found his niche — his literal and musical home. The success of "Girlfriend" also accomplished one major feat: it got Sweet out of the house. " 'Girlfriend' gave way to my first real live outing. I didn't play live much at first because I was doing a lot of multi-track stuff and was playing almost everything myself, so it wasn't very feasible to go out on the road." Sweet said his music — with mostly guitars and drums — translates to live performance pretty well. "It's a pretty basic combo. We don't do a lot of the harmonies and stuff because that would mean I'd have to have background singers or something." This cracks him up, but he recovers. "No, the live shows are a little more intense, more rock. We're also trying more acoustic stuff this time." Some rockers complain about touring; some can't wait to get on the road again. Sweet said he's in-between. "I remember at first I was so unprepared for that kind of life. It's a real strain to try and stay healthy and keep going, and you miss things like your wife and house. “But these days I'm into getting out and playing guitar. It's a great chance to get out and have fun with some songs, kick around a little more." Before Sweet hit the road to tootle to the multitudes, he was a nomadic, bright hooksmith moving around the country. Out of high school, Sweet was determined to get to Athens, Ga., the late-'80s harmonic convergence of innovative rock. "There was a real magical feeling in Athens. It was really encouraging," Sweet said. "But as time went on, Pylon broke up, R.E.M. pretty much left and the scene got nastier, and just like everywhere else, it turned out to be a bunch of greedy, nasty musicians and hangers-on." He bailed, and he didn't take with him much of the jangly Southern rock sound from Athens. ("I've never made the Athens claim," he said.) But he did take the connections. As a result of his tenure there, Sweet can name-drop with the best of them. Starting as lead guitarist for cult-faves Oh-OK with Lynda (sister of Michael) Stipe, Sweet landed his first solo record deal with Columbia, which produced "Inside," featuring Sweet with Aimee Mann ('Til Tuesday), two Bangles, Jody Harris, Mike Campbell (Petty's Heartbreakers), Valerie Simpson (Ashford and ...), Chris Stamey, Fred Maher and others. The album was produced in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and London. A smorgasbord of talent made for a nice first record, but the work thereafter suffered from synth-itis. Not until "Girlfriend" did Sweet find his groove. "At the beginning of my career, I kind of didn't know what I was doing," he said. "I tried some different things until some certain ones clicked." A little bit of that, a little bit of this until he was 100 percent Matthew Sweet. The latest album, "100% Fun," capitalizes on Sweet's strong suits -- guitar, guitar, guitar. His versatile formula is melodious and monstrous, especially the album's first track, "Sick of Myself," which reached No. 9 on Billboard's modern rock chart last week. It's a catchy crunch of electric strings alongside Sweet's vital vocal: "But I'm sick of myself when I look at you/Something is beautiful and true/In a world that's ugly and a lie/It's hard to even want to try." The lyrics do not exactly conjure the title "100% Fun." Sweet's songs are not depressing, by any means, but he's not retreading "Walkin' on Sunshine," either. The album title, though, smacks of a little sarcasm. "When my last album ("Altered Beast") came out," he said, "people kept telling me how dark and weird the songs were. So I told everyone I was going to call my next album `100% Fun.' Now I'm hoping the title will predispose people to think the record is more pleasant than it really is." "Altered Beast" actually featured some of Sweet's finer songcraft, but the subjects were black and the characters were creepy, not unlike R.E.M.'s "Monster." "I came to think of it as creepy because I think that's cool," Sweet said. "I can be wacky, but sometimes those things aren't as important to me. "Though ('100% Fun') deals with the more human side of life, there are also some songs that have a weirder, wackier perspective. I'm really into sci-fi monster music, and I think those songs help give the album an added kick." The tour kicked into gear this week. Sweet said he hoped the band would be into a groove by the time they hit Tulsa. |
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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