The brazen hip-hop-inspired dance of Santogold was one of the standouts of the South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, this year. Her self-titled debut is due April 29,and its mix of multicultural electronic noises, '80s synths and monster-movie sound effects should make Santogold a best new artist contender for the 2009 Grammys.
So it was a shame to hear her song "Creator" in a beer commercial. Granted, it's the norm for artists, especially new artists, to license out material for advertisements, so much so that it's really not worth mentioning anymore. But when it's in the form of a flavored macro-lager, one cannot keep quiet.
Listen to the song, but close your eyes.
OK, so to be fair, judgment on Bud Light's new lime-flavored beer can't be passed until it's actually tasted, but flavored beer is always worthy of some major warning signs (looking at you Miller Chill).
Bud's brew is in the midst of an apparent $35 million marketing campaign, so expect to hear plenty of Santogold over the coming months. Hopefully the aftertaste won't be too damaging, as this year, Feist rode a commercial all the way to a Grammy nomination.
Listen to the song -- an urban safari of warped electronic noises -- sans commercial:
If the Grammys attempt to honor the past year in music, the annual South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, hopes to foretell its future. So why wait for Recording Academy voters to (maybe) come around?
That's not to say there hasn't been overlap. Amy Winehouse was a SXSW buzz act last year, playing (and cancelling) a handful of shows throughout the event. And Grammy-nominated acts such as the Arctic Monkeys, the White Stripes, LCD Soundsystem and Lily Allen, among others, have all played SXSW. Here’s some of the best of SXSW, and, in a just world, what Grammy each artist would win. Photo: Autumn De Wilde
Once 10 p.m. rolled around in Austin, Texas, I started to feel like I was back in Los Angeles. The fourth and final night of the South by Southwest music conference in Austin, Texas, ended with an in-demand party thrown by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton.
Perez brought a bit of Los Angeles down to Austin, with fruity drinks, mini-cupcakes, gift bags (I didn't take one) and hairstylists offering free makeovers. If the music biz is hurting, the Perez biz is apparently doing just fine, and he kicked his self-proclaimed "one night in Austin" with the dance-pop of Robyn, a singer Perez called the most exciting artist in pop music.
Perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but it's hard to fault Perez's taste in pop stars. She took the stage in a flowing black outfit, which the Swedish singer used to strike a vampire pose. There was a charming simplicity to Robyn's synth pop. Dual drummers laid down easy-to-groove-to beats, and Robyn stood close to the mike, keeping the emphasis on her spunky vocals. A delicate guitar touch mixed with brimming new wave on "Be Mine," and she turned '90s hit "Show Me Love" into a sparse number carried only by her vocals and a light, spacious beat.
I stopped back by the party close to 2 a.m. Outside of Robyn, and a supposed surprise guest appearance from N.E.R.D., I confess to being unfamiliar with the acts Perez booked (Shwayze, Dragonette, UltravioletSound, among others), but the few minutes of the band I caught in the early morning was an upbeat, snythy new-wave act. When a stranger walked by and said I looked jaded, I decided to call it a night.
Some other noteworthy moments from Saturday night:
Kid Sister: The Chicago rapper, performing with her brother Josh "J2K" Young, will be heard from quite a bit in 2008, having her debut album due out on Warner-affiliated Downtown Records this summer. She took the stage 20 minutes late and copped to being drunk, but it certainly didn't affect her performance or hurt her smooth flow. The siblings ("We're a family band," Kid Sister said) raced around each other on "Beeper," with Kid Sister bringing a higher-octane contrast to her brother's more measured approach. All the while, producer A-Trak (Kanye West) gave her room to play with and kept the crowd dancing.
Los Campesinos! One of my favorite performances of the week was the second-to-last show I saw. The seven-piece from Wales was an absolute trip. With song titles like "This Is How You Spell, "Hahaha, We Destroyed the Hopes and Dreams of a Generation of Faux-Romantics," there's reason to be skeptical. But the band's pure zest and desire to fill every crevice of an arrangement with a hand clap or a smattering on the xylophone or a fragment of a guitar solo resulted in a pogo-worthy good time. Lyrics are loaded with pop-culture references but mostly just about breaking up, and guitar riffs cut out to let the violinist shred, recalling, at times, a more spastic and upbeat version of the adventurous, genre-hopping Mekons. All in all, it's like watching an entire band suddenly stricken with ADD, and the Los Campesinos are perfectly orchestrated chaos that ends up being irresistibly catchy.
The Virgins: Having liked the sleazy, dancey songs available for sampling on the act's MySpace page, I had been curious to check out the buzzed-about New Yorkers. I finally caught up with them at a 1 a.m. showcase and was surprised by how much more polished the band's sound came off in person. It was a bit disappointing. Although the Virgins strove for a Rolling Stones swagger, the band's bass-driven melodies and lower-register guitar notes at times recalled the Strokes but without the their knack for a hook.
As recently as four years ago, all the talk about a failing major label model didn't seem to stop the annual South by Southwest Music Conference in Austin, Texas, from sending hordes of A&R reps and journalists on the prowl for the next big thing. Yet this year, the event has felt more and more like a traditional festival, one where the music -- and not the deal -- takes center stage.
Perhaps there's a relatively simple explanation for this. At a Saturday afternoon panel about the state of A&R, this dizzying statistic was thrown out: In 2000, the major labels employed more than 400 A&R executives. As of the start of SXSW in 2008 that number has dwindled to below 70, according to panel moderator Rodel Delfin, an editor with trade publication Hits Magazine.
And the ones who survived, said David Ayers, an executive with the Chrysalis Music Group, are "70 guys out there who are terrified. " Added A&R veteran Berko Pearce, "It doesn't matter if he's making $800,000 or $50,000, any A&R executive is expendable at the moment."
In a climate where job security has become the primary concern, talk around the Austin Convention Center on Saturday focused heavily on new business models, be it the much ballyhooed "360 deal," in which a label sees a cut of touring, merch and licensing revenue, among other facets of a band's career, or increased Madison Avenue-style branding techniques.
Across the hall at a panel on the pros and cons of 360 deals, Frank Gironda, a VP with Nettwerk Management, shot down the idea of such an arrangement, arguing that they make little sense at a time when major labels are trimming staff.
"You may as well do a deal with UBS or Paine-Webber," he said. "They want a piece of your revenue streams, but are not doing anything to actually develop them ... Why should we try to bail [the labels] out when they're struggling in their business?"
Gironda used the example of Nettwerk-managed gypsy punk act Gogol Bordello, a group he said is currently without a record deal. He noted the Gogol Bordello makes the majority of its money on touring, followed by merchandise and licensing. "Record sales," Gironda said, "are not insignificant, but they're not driving the business ... It might make less sense to do a 360 deal as all our other revenue streams are very profitable."
Jeff Krasno, president of Velour Music Group (Kaki King, Jesse Harris), countered that a label is investing in much of what makes a band's career, including publicists, who could cost as much as $4,000 per month. Yet he seemed to hint that 360 deals may not be a model that will work for all parties.
"It's not an illegitimate argument," Krasno said. "I think it's a legitimate argument, but that's where this whole system may break down. We need a new model."
Earlier in the afternoon at a branding panel, licensing songs to commercials or corporate outlets was pitched as the new model. "A CD today is nothing more than a transferring device," said Jeremy Wineberg, an A&R executive with Invisible DJ Records, which began by placing hip artists in high-end clothing outlets like Ron Herman and Fred Segal, and is now directly signing artists.
While the panelists pointed out that adventurous rock act Wilco recently "got blasted" for linking with Volkswagen, Wineberg argued that the question of an artist losing credibility by partnering with a corporate entity is irrelevant.
"As major labels are wanting to partake in touring [revenue] via 360 models," Wineberg said, "they're taking more and giving less ... You're always going to lose fans [by doing an ad]. You're always going to gain new fans. But you can't, as an artist, turn down opportunities to bring in money."
The third night of the South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, brought much-hyped performances from the Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward collaboration She & Him, as well as Santogold, the New York-based dance singer who's earning comparisons to the globe-trotting electronic rap of M.I.A.
The band was taking the stage before Santogold, and I opted to see the Ting Tings and skip performances from sleazy dance rockers the Virgins and New Zealand pop act Ruby Suns to ensure I didn't miss the buzzed-about electronic artist on after the pair. Based on the strength of the Ting Tings' show earlier in the week, it didn't seem like a bad trade-off.
It wasn't, as the peppy pop duo shined on the big outdoor stage of Stubbs. With a debut album not yet released, the act's danceable power-pop -- brightened with sassy electronic loops -- proved to already be arena-ready.
The act's set-closer "That's Not My Name" could have gone on forever, a smashing arms-in-the-air sing-along number with a hip-hop brashness, a slinky beat and a booming grand finale. There's a new-wave influence in the group's electronic bounce, but little about the band sounds retro. Lead singer Katie White is a dashing burst of energy that demands attention, and drummer Jules De Martino gives her giant, spacious beats that let her have her way with the stage.
If I went home without seeing another band I'd be ecstatic, as the Ting Tings delivered the best performance I've caught at SXSW. In fact, I haven't been able to stop listening to the few songs on the group's MySpace pagesince returning to my hotel an hour ago. Having caught the band at an afternoon party the day before, the Ting Tings impressed, but the full-scope of the act's range wasn't apparent until seeing the members absolutely own a larger stage.
Other highlights from Day 3 of SXSW:
Worldly beats: For all the attention the nice but forgettable Vampire Weekend has received for bringing a world-music bent to indie rock, New York's Yeasayer did them one better, bringing to life a captivating rock 'n' roll safari at an afternoon showcase. Keyboards sounded like they belonged in a Peter Gabriel song one moment, and mimicked bird calls in another. The guitars give the act a bit of roughness, but some dizzying, chant-like harmonies soften things up.
Stage presence: The aforementioned She & Him was the last full-set I saw of the night, and actress-turned-indie rocker Deschanel proved to be the real deal. Like all of Ward's music, there's a timelessness to She & Him, and the band sounds like it comes from another era. Deschanel has a gorgeous, almost understated way of singing, handling Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home to Me" with a shy seductiveness, and gracing a more upbeat vintage-sounding rock ditty such as "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?" with a calm coolness. She turned to the keyboards for"I Thought I Saw Your Face Today," and laid down a strolling melody for Ward and his band to gradually build a mini-orchestra around her.
Hype, in perspective: There's a lot to like in Santogold. The producer-turned-rocker-turned-rapper already appears a seasoned performer, with a sunglass-sporting backing crew showing off some choreographed dance moves and bringing some extra power to her choruses. Her beats pop like bubble wrap, and Santogold can navigate a backing mix of multicultural electronic noises, '80s synths and monster-movie sound effects with a hip-hop flair and a rock 'n' roll punch. She'll surely be one of the most talked-about artists coming out of SXSW, but as long as the world is comparing her to M.I.A., the latter has more to say.
With a prime-time Friday night showcase, and second billing at Spin magazine's afternoon party, this was Vampire Weekend's day at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference to show what it can do. Indie rock's new superstars came to Austin, Texas, with a top-20 album and a "Saturday Night Live" appearance under its belts, a contrast to the hot bands of year's past.
Two years ago, rockers the Arctic Monkeys rode in to Austin with a nonchalant and disaffected attitude, tossing off their first major U.S. showcase. And last year, Amy Winehouse's will-she-play/won't-she-play talk dominated the event day in and day out. But there was no buzz or controversy surrounding the preppy New York-based indie rockers.
Having been christened rock's next big thing last summer, Vampire Weekend already felt like a veteran band by the time it took the stage today at 4 p.m., even though the group has only released one album. With the bloggers and the media (the band is on the cover of the current issue of Spin) already on board, there was little more to hype.
Vampire Weekend's Friday afternoon performance, therefore, should have been a victory lap for the band. Instead it felt more like a picnic in the park, a pleasant enough affair but one that failed to resonate once the set ended.
Vampire Weekend is more bashful than cocky, and when lead singer Ezra Koenig introduced "One (Blake's Got a New Face)," he asked the crowd to join in for some call-and-response ... yet quickly noted it would be cool if just "one out of three" were willing to participate.
Such tentativeness works for and against the band. The galloping rhythm and in-and-out keyboard of "Mansard Roof" make for a skip-along-the-sidewalks pop number, and the minor-key sparkle, whistling keyboards and shout-outs of "Hey! Hey! Hey!" make for a short and punchy number in "A-Punk." Yet for all the band's worldly influences -- check the Caribbean beats of "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" --Vampire Weekend could do for some variety.
It wasn't more than three of four songs in that Vampire Weekend's minimalist arrangements were lost in the light Texas breeze. If only a few songs inspired the crowd to shake it, the rest lacked any sense of tension. Indeed, songs such as "Campus" and "M79," with light guitar twinkling and easy-going vocals, were better fit for background music at a tea party.
Photo: Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend (Jack Plunkett / AP)
Ticketmaster CEO Sean Moriarty said the ticketing business is likely to move more and more to a dynamic pricing structure, and defended the company's service fees that are added to the cost of a ticket at a Friday afternoon panel at the South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. The conversation grew heated toward the end, when Moriarty was asked to break down the distribution of service fees to Ticketmaster, the promoter and the artist, and then asked to justify why customers are charged $2 to print their own ticket at home.
The panel, moderated by Ethan Smith of the Wall Street Journal, focused heavily on the decision by concert promoter LiveNation to start its own ticketing service rather than renew its relationship with Ticketmaster. Smith estimated that Ticketmaster would be losing $120 million from the decision, and while Moriarty wouldn't confirm the number, he said Ticketmaster was indeed losing approximately 15% of its business.
Moriarty said areas of growth in North America include ticket auctions and re-sale services. As it stands, Moriarty estimated that the North American ticketing business is worth between $3 billion and $4 billion, and said the popularity of auction and re-sale sites is leading the concert business to one centered on dynamic pricing, in which the cost of a ticket could potentially change from its on-sale date to the time of the event.
"It's going to take another five years to get very fluid dynamic pricing applied to wide swaths of inventory," Moriarty said. "The technology is there ... I don't think there's any downside. The perceived risk would be that with greater transparency -- if people look at a show and a show appears to be a dog -- it reflects poorly potentially on the artist, potentially on the promoter, potentially on the venue.
"Ultimately," Moriarty continued, "when you look at what a ticket is -- a license to sit in a specific seat at a specific time -- and recognizing how much the value may fluctuate, it lends itself to a marketplace approach."
The answer raised the question of transparency, a topic that then dominated the discussion. Moriarty said the average cost of a ticket via Ticketmaster in 1996 was $36, and it carried an average of a $6 service fee at that time. In 2006, he said the numbers were $48 and $8, respectively.
During a question-and-answer session with the audience, the Chicago Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis called on Moriarty to break down how Ticketmaster distributes its service fees, which Smith noted is split evenly between Ticketmaster and the promoter, a distinction the consumer often does not notice. DeRogatis offered the hypothetical of a $17.50 service charge per ticket at an arena concert, and pressed Moriarty to explain what makes up the charge.
Moriarty said, "I don't think it's appropriate in a world where we have 9,000 clients, Jim, to expose the particulars of any individual client deal and summarizing or making a sweeping statement is probably not something that is appropriate."
Yet the question cut to a larger issue that DeRogatis pointed out: Does Ticketmaster take the rap for the promoters and artists who receive a portion of the service charge but would prefer Ticketmaster to be perceived as greedy?
"Certainly that's part of it," Moriarty said. "If people think Ticketmaster is hanging onto every penny as pure profit they're woefully mistaken ... It's easy to be reductive and talk constantly about rising prices, but it actually takes a little more work to understand the issue in full context."
Moriarty then justified the $2 cost for consumers to print out their own ticket via the home printers as maintaining wi-fi networks in thousands of arenas in the U.S. Moriarty said the fee also ensures that consumers will be able to reprint their tickets if needed.
Moriarty said, "It's easy to be reductive and say, 'Gosh, I don't understand why this should cost anything and it should be free.' We'd all like to live in a world where everything is free, but if you peel it back and actually understand that electronic delivery has been made available by investments of millions and millions of dollars and requires constant operation, you may come to a different conclusion."
Smith countered that isn't that simply the cost of doing business, having to invest in new technology? He said: "Everyone has to upgrade their infrastructure."
"It's a question of where you charge and how you charge," Moriarty said. "Standard mail is a free option ... I guess you can debate that until the end of the day. We know there's a lot of work that can be done and we certainly are committed to providing a very good service to our consumers."
Moriarty also noted that Ticketmaster would look at wrapping the cost of a service fee within the price of the ticket. This way, the service fee would not suddenly be added to the cost of the ticket when the consumer checked out. "Inclusive pricing is something we ought to consider," Moriarty said. "People feel much better about paying $25 per ticket rather than $18 plus $7."
But Moriarty noted that Ticketmaster has no interest in expanding into the label business, a la LiveNation's mega-deal with Madonna. "There's a lot of opportunity that we see out there," he said. "I don't know if that's a model for us ... From our perspective, we very much believe in the live category, and we think there are huge changes under foot."
It's hard to imagine there is any performer at the South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, more delightfully weird than Anti-'s Tim Fite.
Fite is where my evening beginning, and when all was said and done, he provided the most captivating performance of the night. That's not to say there weren't other highlights. German dance duo Boys Noize inspired crowd surfing with its rock-laced techno, the Evangelicals delivered hauntingly mesmerizing psychadelic rock, Bon Iver offered up lushy adult pop, Genghis Tron was electro-heavy metal worthy of laser light show and Canada's Holy [Expletive] performed heavily textured and surprising catchy keyboard-driven instrumentals.
The second night of SXSW offered headlining performances from Yo La Tengo and My Morning Jacket, and since I've seen and like both of the aforementioned acts, I used the evening to attempt to club hop. It wasn't always successful, as 20,000 or so thousand music attendees mean getting into venues is not the easiest of tasks, a lesson I still haven't learned after four trips to Austin.
While snythy-rockers MGMT has a larger outdoor showcase on Friday night, I have 27 acts circled to see on March 14, and had hoped to catch the band on Thursday. The group's hard-to-resist single "Time to Pretend" opens up upcoming film "21," and should help the act continue to find a wider audience in 2008. It's Thursday showcase, however, was held at a Mexican restaurant, and a 100-plus attendees were left stranded in line, although watching kids hop the fence to sneak into the establishment was entertainment enough.
Some highlights from Thursday night:
Tim Fite: With facial expressions and stage antics for fit for a carnival show, Fite and his brother Greg are hilariously entertaining. Dressed in orange pants and suspenders, Fite is part Pee-Wee Herman and part Tom Waits, with overly cartoonish expressions and some between-song performance-art antics (the video screen flipping through crayon-like drawings of "things [Fite] lost but never found" had much of the crowd laughing}. Yet all of this would be meaningless if the tunes didn't hold up, and here Fite delivers. Fite showcased songs from his upcoming "Fair Ain't Fair," which appear to bring more pop textures to his appealingly odd mix of folk, hip-hop and electronic loops.
The Evangelicals: The band lost a point for being about 25 minutes late to taking the stage, but won it right back after lurching into ghostly psychedelic rock songs. With a vintage garage rock base, the Evangelicals soon veer off into more atmospheric territory, where a voice is used as another instrument. Vocals hover over walls of guitars, and a heavily melodic bass cuts through the haze to define the band's hooks.
Genghis Tron: Turning the corner at 6th and Red River in Austin, the machine-like guitar riffs of Genghis Tron didn't catch my attention. But when the noise suddenly stopped and the songs opened up for some trip-hop-like keyboard effects, I turned and headed back. Genghis Tron ups the tension by alternating its grinding guitars and growling vocals with spacey keyboard solos and some left-field synthesized rhythms.
In a sort-of indie-rock version of a lifetime achievement award, Moby, Yo La Tengo, My Morning Jacket and Thurston Moore, among others, paid tribute to Lou Reed late Thursday afternoon at the South by Southwest Music Conference (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. The coronation went down at an afternoon party sponsored by the Fader, with lines at one point stretching two blocks long to get in.
Yet like a tribute at the Grammy Awards, the well-intentioned event went on far too long, in this case more than 2 hours. In fact, the entire first hour could have been chopped.
Opening with Arizona rock What Laura Says Thinks and Feels, the set got off to a faithful, if uninspired beginning, with the band delivering a passing-grade version of "Run Run Run." Indie rockers Oh No! Oh My! and Paper Route were on par, but when the folksy Ezra Furman & the Harpoons butchered "Heroin," paranoia set in. Sub Pop's recent signees the Fleet Foxes also had an afternoon gig, and it was starting to look like the wrong choice was made.
Thankfully, Yo La Tengo arrived in time to get things back on track, delivering a delightfully textured low-key version of Reed's "She's My Best Friend," and then the Velvet Underground's "I Heard Her Call My Name." The fuzzed-up edition of the latter was carried by guitars that scurried around the vocals like city rats.
Elsewhere in the set, Dr. Dog offered up a version of Who Loves the Sun," sneaking in a baroque breakdown in the middle, and My Morning Jacket delivered a honky-tonkin' take on "Head Held High."
Moore and his backing band the New Wave Bandits provided a scorching version of the recently-unearthed "I'm Not A Young Man Anymore," with guitars screeching like a subway train tunneling off the tracks.* The show ended with Moby, who played guitar, and was joined by Reed for an extended, slow-build of "Walk On the Wild Side."
When the song concluded, Reed held up his arms like a prize fighter, and said, "I love punk rock, and I was the first one," maintaining the attitude he had at the Thursday morning keynote.
Reps from the Fader noted that they plan to make the full Reed tribute available online.
*I apologize for the Second City-like metaphor in this post.
With the Lou Reed keynote at South by Southwest (SXSW) out of the way, it was time to hit 6th Street in Austin, Texas, and scope out the plethora of afternoon parties, in the hope of catching up on some bands that were missed last night.
Plans to get in the NPR party with Yeasayer and Vampire Weekend went nowhere, with lines stretching down the block, but an A&R exec had recommended San Diego's The Grand Ole Party with a Keren O comparison, and that was enough to sell them to this writer, even though it violated my rule of not seeing Southern California bands in Austin.
The trio follows the lead of singer/drummer Kristin Gundred with some wire-thin guitar lines and a surprisingly groovy bass, at times recalling "Bankrobber"-era Clash. Tied to the drum kit, Gundred's vocals only hinted at their full range, but she has a vampy punk bit down pat. With songs that rally against taxes and trust-fund kids, she could turn a chorus such as "We are all going to do" into a jubilant refrain, and when she shouted "I am s-a-n-e" for about 60 seconds straight, one would have been crazy to doubt her.
From there it was time to follow up on another recommendation to see U.K. rock duo the Ting Tings (pictured), a seemingly simple power-pop act that won the crowd at the Fader House over with a pep-rally cheeriness. The band's short bursts of high energy were colored with a hint of backing loops that made the band sound much bigger than it was, and all of it leading to shout-out choruses.
Then it was off the Onion party to find out what time Tokyo Police Club would be performing, only to find out drummer Greg Alsop would be turning in a brief stand-up routine. This writer stuck around for about five sort-of jokes about Stephen Hawkings' sex-drive, homeless models and playing sudoku after being buried alive. And it wasn't funnier if you were there.
