Parquet Courts. Photo by Amanda Hatfield
What began as as intimate little outlet for indie bands and the people who love them has famously become a giant Pepsi Doritos playground for household-name brands like Justin Timberlake and Prince and Green Day.
And since Music Mix has already given you the skinny all the JT and GD happenings of the week, it’s time to go over the festival’s undercards. Our SXSW staff has each selected some of their favorite moments from the week:
If you thought Justin Timberweek ended with Friday night’s Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, you had another thing coming.
Last night, seven days after he appeared on Saturday Night Live as both the show’s host and musical guest, Mr. Suit and Tie seized SXSW by putting on one of the festival’s most anticipated shows of the week. And while Timberlake’s Myspace showcase was this year’s Party To Go To for many, only a lucky few actually got to attend.
That’s because the event went down at Austin’s Coppertank Events Center, a small downtown venue that reached its legal capacity of 800 people so quickly, it seemed like the event was actually sponsored by the city’s fire marshals. Of course, that only enhanced the intimacy of the concert. In the end, the strategy paid off, with both Timberlake and the audience feeding of the night’s once-in-a-lifetime vibes.
The thrills (and shrieks) began the moment he walked out on stage with an acoustic guitar and performed the Justified favorite “Like I Love You.” Wearing a fedora, blazer, and one of those tuxedo-print novelty t-shirts that you thought were only worn by characters in ’80s teen comedies, the singer’s smooth stage presence suggested that he wanted to do more than bring sexy back — he wanted to bring JT back.
You know that old Texas saying, “Keep Austin weird“?
Well, Prince really helped that cause on Saturday night, when he took his massive band to Austin’s La Zona Rosa for the Samsung Galaxy showcase: they wore animal caps, danced with a circus ringleader, and capped off a long week of SXSW mania.
Fans were so excited about the show that they arrived at the venue at 9 p.m. and waited for two full hours before even the openers took the stage. (That would be A Tribe Called Quest, who were excellent.) Then they waited another half hour while Prince set up. At which point they were treated to two and a half hours of crazy fun.
So what happened? Below is a moment-by-moment recap of what must’ve been a thrilling/exhausting night for His Purple Majesty. (The guy is 54 years old. So much energy!) Here’s how it all went down.
12:30 a.m.: A very tall, gorgeous woman, dressed in a pants-free costume that makes her look like a pink circus ringleader, walks out on stage wearing a gold Mardi Gras mask. “It’s Naomi Campbell!” shouts the woman behind me. Sadly, this is not true. “Please welcome Company Play!” announces the Lady Who’s Not Naomi Campbell. And that’s when the animals arrive.
12:31 a.m.: From the very back of the room, a string of musicians marches toward the stage like a New Orleans second line, dancing while they play. The guys in the brass section are all wearing fuzzy plush hats that look like animal heads. I spot a fox, a raccoon, a frog, and a bear before I realize that there are too many to write down. The fierce-looking lady back-up singers, at least two of whom have shaved heads, are shaking tambourines. There are 22 people in Prince’s band. 22! READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Michael Buckner/Getty
“Welcome back!” Billie Joe Armstrong shouted to a capacity crowd — but he might as well have been talking about himself.
A massively energetic Armstrong led Green Day in a triumphant live performance return at SXSW music festival in Austin on Friday night. The evening marked the first major performance by the band since he had an infamous onstage meltdown during the iHeartRadio festival in Las Vegas last September and subsequently entered rehab. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Roger Kisby/Getty Images
It should’ve been obvious from the start. The lineup at the Fader Fort Presented by Converse yesterday listed the ’90s alternative favorites the Afghan Whigs as the headliner, even though they hadn’t put out an album in 15 years.
Beyond that, the Fader Fort typically closes out their events with rap and R&B acts like French Montana and Rick Ross — not aging Cincinnati rockers.
Don’t get us wrong — we love the Afghan Whigs, and their solo set (following performances from Atlanta rappers T.I. and Future) was pretty great. But when they began playing the beginning of Usher’s recent single “Climax,” we knew the jig was up.
And just like that, Usher came out on stage and played his first-ever SXSW, with the Afghan Whigs. After he and the band finished up a particularly rousing performance of “Climax” (Greg Dulli handled the vocals until Usher came out in time for the second verse), they launched into the Whigs’ “Somethin’ Hot.”
Whigs fans were happy, and it even kept the Usher-only sect of the audience happy — though, really, Usher could’ve sang the alphabet backwards and they would’ve been just as delirious.
Image Credit: Hutton Supancic/Getty Images for SXSW
“Some of you might not know who I am,” admitted Angel Haze on Friday night, as she performed in the Pandora Porch parking lot at SXSW. “But this is a night of f–ing dreams for me.”
Just a few years ago, it would’ve been hard to imagine Haze here. Born in Michigan, the 21-year-old rapper grew up in the Greater Apostolic Faith, which she once compared to living in a cult. Struggling within the church, she found the only way to cure her depression was to write.
“I wrote a freaking suicide letter, and it was kind of amazing to me,” she recently told the Fader. “I had to mature much earlier than everyone else.” When Haze was 16, a pastor threatened her mother, and they broke from the church. The next years were rough. She dropped out of school. She was homeless for a while.
But then Haze started making mixtapes and posting them online, and after a handful of her homegrown tracks earned critical praise, she signed with Universal Republic. Then last fall, a breakthrough moment arrived: Haze recast Eminem’s “Cleaning Out My Closet,” reworking it as a stunningly personal tale of lifelong sexual abuse that started when she was raped at age 10. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Christopher Polk/Getty Images
Have you seen Justin Timberlake recently? Better question: How can you not have seen Justin Timberlake recently?
As most sentient humans now know, JT is dropping The 20/20 Experience, his first album in almost seven years this Tuesday, and he hasn’t been slacking in the promotion department. His latest appearance has actually been the worst kept secret in music for the past week or so: He just announced that he will indeed be helping to close out the South By Southwest Festival on Saturday night, March 16 in Austin. Timberlake will headline the final MySpace Secret Show with Roots drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and producer RJD2 providing undercard assistance.
It’s the latest in Timberlake’s headline-grabbing blitz in celebration of his new album. In the past week alone, we’ve seen the album’s streaming premiere at iTunes, the announcement of a co-headlining summer stadium tour with Jay-Z, a ratings-grabbing turn as both the host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and a week-long residence on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
And he’s not done: This Tuesday, the same day as the album’s official release, he’ll preside over a televised album release party that will air on the CW. The special is called (deep breath) Target Presents the IHeartRadio Album Release Party With Justin Timberlake. It looks like it’ll all work out for JT; industry experts are already predicting first-week sales in excess of 500,000 copies for The 20/20 Experience, which would put him in rare company.
EW’s intrepid SXSW crew will be on hand at Timberlake’s Saturday night show, so watch out for reports from the ground in this space. (And check in all weekend for continued coverage of the — literally! — thousands of non-Timberlake happenings in Austin this week).
Read More on EW.com:
Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon bring sexy back, barbershop quintet-style — VIDEO
Justin Timberlake streams ‘The 20/20 Experience’ on iTunes. Worth the seven-year wait? — The EW Review
Justin Timberlake boosts ‘Saturday Night Live’ ratings
Warm weather and cool music mingled like old buddies at EW’s Music Lounge yesterday in Austin. Hosted at 219 West, the party starred more than piles of sliders, tater tots by the bucket, and pop-culture-pegged cocktails (“Pretty in Pink” margaritas, “Tainted Love” vodka tonics); there were some musical delicacies as well — specifically Gold Fields (above) and the Lone Bellow, which each put on a set for the bustling room.
The Lone Bellow kicked things off with their stripped-down folk-country, powered through tracks from their recently released self-titled album and commandeered the attention of even the most appetizer-obsessed partygoers (when you hear them sing a number like “You Never Need Nobody” and mean it, you’ll put down your slider and shut your greasy mouth).
Image Credit: Rahav Segev/Getty Images
The bill at Wednesday night’s Vicemagazine “style stage” was two sides of one sexy coin.
The showcase (sponsored by Vice‘s music channel Noisey and Garnier Fructis, complete with an on-site mini hair salon, because why not?) brought together the atmospheric Canadian group Austra and the hard-partying Swedish electro duo Icona Pop. It was an interesting combination.
Canadian trio Austra, whose 2011 debut Feel It Break cemented them as one of the leaders of the darkwave scene — dreamy, brooding synth bands reviving and reinterpreting the likes of Depeche Mode and Kate Bush — came on first and unleashed their not-so-secret weapon, frontwoman Katie Stelmanis’ otherworldly voice. Last night, that voice hovered over the music as the band worked through Feel It Break favorites like “Lost It” and new, unheard material from their upcoming second album, Olympia.
If the live show was any indication, Olympia will be a very mellow affair. Austra’s set was chill, sometimes to point of hypnoisis, and for a while, it was easy to forget you were at a music festival and not daydreaming on a blanket.
Icona Pop, however, did not want you to sleep; they want to crash their cars into bridges and watch it burn. They don’t care — these are ’90s bitches.
Those (paraphrased) lyrics come from the duo’s breakthrough single “I Love It,” which you’ve most likely heard by now. But hearing is one thing — seeing them play it live in front of a sea of screaming, crowdsurfing, screaming again young women is another thing. They were jumping at each other, throwing drinks at the stage, going all-around nuts. It was like a F—-d Up show, but with an exactly opposite girl-guy ratio.
The rest of the Icona Pop’s set, it turned out, was basically a dubstep party. Almost every song wound up having the kind of huge chub-wub-wub bass drops that literally shake the roof — there was debris falling on the heads of the unlucky revelers by the stage’s perimeter. Yet while the kids loved it, a certain, several older members of the crowd suddenly felt an urgent need to smoke a cigarette or make a phone call outside.
As I overheard one such guy put it to his friend, “SXSW is wasted on the young.” But, hey, it is spring break.
Read more:
SXSW: Yeah Yeah Yeahs premiere new songs, new look — VIDEO
SXSW: Billy Bragg debuts songs from new album ‘Tooth & Nail’
SXSW: British buzz band Palma Violets bring fake IDs, real ruckus on their first trip to Texas
There were so many decked out college kids at the MTVU Woodie Awards on Thursday, you’d think a ModCloth warehouse exploded somewhere nearby.
There were girls with neon face paint smeared across the bridges of their noses like hippie warpaint. There was a guy with a turtle shell strapped to his front and a stuffed Yoda doll hanging off his back. Someone was holding a giant pinwheel high in the crowd, and someone else was dancing with plastic flowers woven into her hair.
Everyone was getting hopped up on Mountain Dew. And no one had any patience for the slow songs. They wanted high kicks and laser lights and fog machines and, above all, somebody—anybody!—to shout, MAKE SOME NOISE!
