KPSU Staff Picks from South by Southwest

The KPSU staff has just returned from the South by Southwest in Austin Texas. Some of us have assembled a list of our favorite bands we saw down there.

Andrew

• The Rodeo Carburettor - super great fine Japanese rock-and-roll with bass lines that told me to kill people.
• Shout out out out - two drummers, two bass players, an ass load of synthesizers, on guy writhing about on the floor twisting knobs and a lead singer who loves him some high kicks. That, and through a strange twist of fate, I got picked up by one of the band member while hitchhiking in Austin.
• Kristen Kissling - I got off the plane in Austin bitching about singer song writers (WTF are they doing playing in the airport?) but man this girl can sing.

Austin

• Roky Ericson & The Explosives - Psyche / Rock god returns to stage for a handful of songs
• Friends Of Dean Martinez - Indie psyche / mellow chillout... FANTASTIC)
• Auktyon - Russian Prog / Art Rock by a band that's been touring for over 20 years
• Sir Richard Bishiop Member of the Sun City Girls, an AMAZING guitar player who did a solo acoustic set of beautiful songs with humor and heart
• Rhys Chatham's Guitar Army - Art-Rock Guitar Orchestra with Thurston Moore in the lineup
• Oxbow - Weirdest and Coolest Metal stuff around
• Polysics - Japanese New Wave
• Zolar X - Glam Rock from Pluto... The Planet Pluto
• Mr. Quintron & Miss Pussycat - Organ and Drum Machine Swamp Rock
• Dungen - Swedish Psyche Rock
• King Louie's One Man Band - Dirty Swamp Rock about girls and booze and food
• Saviours - the band that opened up the Label Party Myron, Monte and I went to.

Monte

• Jad Fair and Lumberrob - shivery sweet pop with one-man-band sampling-machine as backup...mixed with psychedelic mind F#%K
• Tony Conrad - the most satanic music ever performed in a presbataryan (sp) church
• Hot 8 - New Orleans street band...horns and drums and stuff
• Refugee All Stars - by far the most unpretentious event that took place at SXSW, Sierra Leone Civil war refugees getting all groovy and rejoicful about solidarity under very extreme circumstances...made me cry
• Roky Erikson - need I say more?
• Notekillers - only caught the last song by these philedelphian spazzy old timers, a punk "massacre"
• Mr. Quintron and Miss Pussycat - quin-pussy-TASTIC!!
• Auktyon - winz my prize for best surprise mind-melter...VERY Russian punks kicking out the jams...with a Tuba too!!
• Tim and Cody performing their impromptu rendition of some Little Mermaid song
• Saviours - old school metal with all the harmony-riffage...pretty badassed
• Sir Richard Bishop - smoking with a capital wow
• Rhys Chatham (Guitar Army)

Myron

• The Rodeo Carburettor - Japanese Punk/Rock
• Shout Out Out Out Out - Canadian Rock Electro
• Caural - Sweet IDM from New York
• Lady Sovereign - Queen of Grime UK
• Dunyen - A Swedish Timeship from the Sixties "...more flute music."
• Genghis Tron - Extreme Metal Band with a Drum Machine
• Drop the Lime - Genre Jumping Electronic Dance with Grit

Tim
These were the most stunning performances I saw at SXSW (I'm limiting myself to only one performance from each night).

• Wednesday: Rhys Chatham and his "guitar army" (up to seven electric guitars, a bass and drums playing a wall of sound) reached some kind of new divinity with their sound.
• Thursday: Cindy Cashdollar and Redd Volkaert dueled with pedal steel and telecaster, respectively, in a honky tonk showdown ending with no blood shed.
• Friday: There was nothing more remarkable The Jumper in the Age of Transformation, which was a play by Daniel Lanes with dancing characters like The Seahorse, The Jumper, and The Mechanical Pencils. The show was on a stage in a public park and fell somewhere between choreagraphed yoga moves and homestrung community theater. It was totally bizarre and it was so incredibly genuine.
• Saturday: This one is tough. Was seeing Lyle Lovett with a cello virtuoso in tow the tops? Or was it the subtle Nick Drake-ish tunes of Jose Gonzalez? Was it Buckwheat Zydeco playing fire on his accordion? Was it the Dirty Dozen Brass Band? Was it country collectivea Ollabelle? NO! It was Austin's very own Palm School Choir! About thirty elementary school kids backed by a rock band! They performed Flaming Lips' "Race for the Prize" during soundcheck. The show was all self-penned music and they spoke the truth that "One Good Rock Show Can Change The World."