Welcome to day one!
Why has it taken me this long to relive SXSW? Well, it hasn't really. I wrote this out a bit ago, but surprise, surprise - it's insanely long. Maybe embarrassingly long given there is documentation of four more days to follow. I couldn't tell. Whatever. I have now overcome my length inhibitions and am just posting it. Hopefully you survive! :D
After attending and experiencing the chaos that was last year, I had zero expectations for this year's Sasquatch. Once again I'd be working it - last year I was there under the 2:30 Publicity umbrella, this year I was there shooting it for Pitchfork. M.I.A. - my only real reason for going canceled a few days before, so my non-existant expectations were brought even lower, which is great because then they can only be exceeded.
My trek started at 7am when I missed my bus and caught a cab over to the Jupiter Hotel to meet up with my fellow travelers made up of Bill, Carrie, and Taylor and Rebecca of CMJ, though Rebecca was doing the words for the Pfork piece.
We headed out on the open road a little after 8 and guess what - we didn't make it there until 3:40! We went the wrong way for over an hour, so . . . yeah. . .
That means I totally missed the Hold Steady! When I started working for 2:30 in 2004, they were the first press kit I ever put together (followed by Les Savy Fav and Visqueen (who also played this year's fest)) - I still have a master copy in storage. Anyway - I have yet to see them! I am in love with their latest album and I am just so pissed I missed them! I'm also pissed I missed Blitzen Trapper as we listened to a track of theirs on the way there (along with "boner jams" as they referred to the the songs as - ie Bon Jovi, Guns N' Roses, and Billy Joel as well as Van Morrison).
And who else did I miss aside from those acts? - Viva Voce and The Blow! How I've been counting the minutes to see the Blow live, but it just wasn't fated.
I made it over to Electrelane and caught a bit of their set. Because I am "professional" (haha) I couldn't figure out why all of my photos of them were turning out like shit. It did not dawn on me until 3 hours and countless photos later that my white balance was still set on the Starfucker show I'd seen the night before.
Unfortunately I got zero cell phone service at the site, so I missed meeting up with Electrelane after their set which had been planned a few days previous.
Cue me approaching random people to use their phones. I traded a few people earplugs in return for the favor. So a lot of random people now have Aziz Ansari's phone number among others.
After that I walked to catch a little Neko Case and then back up to Yeti stage and asked myself - "What is that sound?"
It was Ghostland Observatory! My oh my - had never heard of them - but WOW!
'Silver City' Ghostland Observatory MP3
Sadly a few songs in I had to depart to happily run to meet up with Khaela aka the Blow.
Khaela was decked out in a fanny pack and pink visor. I LOVE HER! She is so awesome! So open, honest, and neat. I didn't ask about Grey's Anatomy, but after meeting her I understand why she said no and I'm happy she did. We had a chillaxin' story-telling good time for about an hour, discussing everything from castles to zits - seriously I think the only letters we didn't cover were A and B - no actually, I mentioned Belmont, so only A.
She assured me that she's playing PDX Pop Now too - so I will finally get to see her live.
Somehow we ended up on the fact that I find it funny that some people think I've just moved back to Portland, when I've actually been back since mid-March 2006. I call from that to March of this year my year of being dead as I didn't have a phone, I was always moving so I didn't have an address, I didn't even have a bank account - it was arranged so I was paid cash or on prepaid debit cards. I just existed on the outskirts of a life after being trapped in Glasgow Scotland for a year and a half. She totally understood that.
So amid our bonding she said she wanted the photos we were taking as her new publicity shots! I then told her how I actually had a million and ten concepts in mind already for her publicity shots, so we might be doing a location shoot at Chuck E Cheese's. Stay tuned.
Then it was down to the Easy Street signing booth at 6pm to meet up with Kevin as I was taking photos of him and Anita.
It was fun finally making the accquaintance of the Robinsons, but I had to dash to see Grizzly Bear, so we only chatted for a minute and took a few photos. I'm so glad I finally got to see them live when they opened for the Shins in February, which I never blogged about here, but did a post on Pitchfork about.
I mentioned that my first exposure to them was through the Portland Music Liberation magazine and we talked about our mutual love of that periodical for a while - discussing our favorite issues that were printed before it sadly folded. Then we talked about 2005's Lowlands Festival, which we were both at, but missed each other.
(Viva Voce Warrior Woundz - it's brutal being in a band yo)
So onto Grizzly Bear. Oh how I love my boys.
And if you read this blog way back when, you'd know that maybe I love them too much. Maybe to the point where I think they should file a restraining order against me. Their publicist Frank put me on the list for their late PDX show at McMenamin's Mission Theatre this past February, but I flew in from New York that same night and my flight was a bit late, so even in trying to get to the venue with all my luggage, I missed their set.
My love of Grizzly Bear was actually the subject on my very first post on this blog and last year's Sasquatch was my introduction to them. I went to the 2006 fest with Frank and in his apartment, in the car, and in the hotel room he played nothing but Grizzly Bear to the point where my dreams were probably sound-tracked to 'The Knife' and 'Colorado' . I love when people working with/for a band love the band that much - that's how it should always be!
So I sat up front shooting their set and it was during theirs that I finally noticed and adjusted my camera's white-balance. I sang along to every song which Throw Me the Statue's girlfriend totally noticed and mentioned to me once they finished.
(TMTS+gf)
As I was packing my crap up (my laptop, camera, viewmaster (?), . . .) I saw Frank and he waved me back. Patrick Wolf was chillaxin' with the Grizzly Bear crew.
It was dead enjoyable - I mean one of my favorite bands and my favorite solo artist (he's tied with Britney Spears circa everything until 2004). It was then that I met Throw Me the Statue and he lives only three blocks away from my mom in Seattle!
Frank is going to be working his record and they're shopping around for a label right now. I'm gonna be doing his publicity shots as soon as I get his music and can dream up some concepts.
A photographer from some skate mag wanted to do a proper photo-shoot with them, only one member of GB was missing, so Patrick got drafted in and they became Grizzly Wolf.
(Patrick decided he needed "a veil" to cover his face, but everything but that was done with it)
She didn't seem to thrilled about the collaboration. Especially when Daniel Rossen eventually turned up, but Chris Bear decided he needed an impromptu counseling session haha
After that I spied some Beastie Boys also backstage preparing for their instrumental set on the same stage.
They may have spied me too.
So I sat in the grass and uploaded the photos onto my Macbook that I had just shot when Ed came over to shake my hand. Before we'd just been casually talking about YACHT/David Shrigley/Tomlab without any introductions, but he'd just found out I was Nilina and came over to shake my hand and do a proper introduction. Do you even know how cool that was/is!!???!!! We've never properly met before and it was super sweet that he knew who I was.
Khaela also knew my first and last name even though we've never met - remembered from a blog collaboration. That was very neat.
And you know what's funny!!?!!??? Ed, Frank, and I stood/sat around discussing what a bummer it was that Pfork wouldn't be using any of the shots of them and P Wolf. Ed was like "You never actually worked on our campaign -- right?" So true - when at 2:30 this past summer and fall I only dealt with the PDX repped bands ie Hold Steady, Thunderbirds Are Now! and a couple others, but none from the NYC office ie M.I.A., Be Your Own Pet, and Decemberists or Frank's Seattle HQ - ie Of Montreal and Grizzly Bear. Still Scott was concerned about the conflict of interest so it was understood none of my shots of 2:30 artists would appear.
So I posted the shot to my flickr. And Brooklyn Vegan ran it, which was an immediate thrill until it caused some MAJOR DRAMA with me and Pfork as they ended up running it as well - which was unexpected. I sent the shots in just in case - as we (Ed and I) came to the conclusion that since they had Patrick in them, maybe Pfork would use them, but I wasn't betting on it.
Yeah.
Anyway, in a more sunnier spot, I am just so proud of Grizzly Bear and Frank. He's already done working their Feist dates and is now onto Maximo Park! So happy Warp is showing him further love - he deserves it - he is damn good.
After that I took off to have some food. Some members of the media got catered dinner this time (last year it was just water and potato chips), but when I got there the vegetarian option was all gone.
I then went to watch Arcade Fire who I was super super super looking forward to as I haven't seen them live in two years.
I hadn't been all that interested in them until I read the reviews of their ground-breaking Coachella 2005 set. I couldn't get into their album, but I was determined to check out their show. Finally I got the chance while at Lowlands August 2005. Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god! They blew all of my super high expectations out of the water just by stepping on stage and playing the first few bars of a song. I couldn't pull away even though I was getting calls from Art Brut's tour manager that I could shoot their set side of stage.
I then saw them the very next week when they supported Franz Ferdinand at the gardens in Edinburgh. Winn equated playing Reading Festival to playing an ashtray.
Seeing them live is like an awakening.
Do you even know how special it feels to watch people love what they're doing as much as you love it if not even more?
This set was just as fervent, though no helmets to protect against drumming on the head were worn.
They opened their set with grainy footage from a religious TV program and then they all took to the stage launching into 'No Cars Go'. Lucky for me, the third song they played was 'Haiti' which is one of my absolute favorites! It was thrilling being up front in the photo pit for that!
They rotated instruments at lightning speed and at one point one of them fell off the stage. God I love them! To be that into it - it really feels like a privilege to watch them live and it is just so amazing that they seem to treat playing live as a privilege the audience has given them.
They closed with 'Wake Up', but another definite highlight was 'Black Wave/Bad Vibrations'.
I bumped into Patrick Wolf again who had just gotten stung/bitten by some sort of bug. I kept swatting his hand away as he continued to pick at it. We had a bit of a gossip fest, but he swore me to secrecy back at Grizzly Bear in regards to the topic.
After that I became Patrick's keeper of sorts for a bit as his band-mates Nick and Marcello later viewed me as the Patrick compass asking "where's Patrick?" To which I'd reply, "With Jess," or "Getting CDs out of the van."
I then skipped down and got some Ice Cream Man ice-cream and then down to the photo pit for Bjork's set.
I have never been a Bjork fan. I've listened to at most 3.5 or her songs - nothing ever really grabbed me. The Sugarcubes - that's a different matter. I was in Echo park in LA when I first heard their song overhead at a TV on the Radio concert, but Bjork, not so much.
Well - when she took the stage to 'Earth Intruders' I knew that was gonna change.
To make it short, I am in love.
I LOVE some of the lyrics she has going on. In fact I recited a few of them to my mom just last night - specifically 'Wanderlust'.
'I Miss You' could easily be a personal anthem of mine, and I also really got 'All is Full of Love'.
Her Icelandic girl's choir was decked out in neon with orange flags attached to them and it was a set of sound and bouncy energy on behalf of all on stage.
She closed with 'Declare Independence' which was TOO good!
After that I trekked it to the campsite. I had the cash on me to pay for camping, but no one was checking so I moseyed on in and set up my tent and got cell phone service for the first time! Hells yes! I got a text from my mom so I called her and we chatted and then I turned on Starfucker before falling asleep to the most subdued festival campsite I have ever slept at! I remember my first festival was Roskilde in Denmark and it was during the Euro championships of '04 so at all hours of the night people would start shouting drawn out "Goooooaaaaalllllll"s which others would join in on and it'd pretty much be thousands of people yelling that all night long.
The music and chit-chatting at Sasquatch really didn't even contend.
Saturday was a very beautiful day in my life. It felt like the culmination of everything I have been working towards for the past six years since I got my first pass at 15.
I got a good night's sleep of four hours before I was back up and ready to tackle Sunday, but not before listening to some more Starfucker :)
I'll eventually get around to blogging about Sunday which was fairly epic as well.
My million-and-one photos from the fest can be found in this flickr set and I still have tons of photos to add to it, which I'll continue to do.
My (and Matthew Solarski's :) Day One Pitchfork Post
Let's go on a myspace field trip!
An insider bit about the Blow:
You know that show Grey's Anatomy that really blows bands up and has actually earned a spot in my heart due to them being cool enough to play a Chalets song -- multiple times? Yeah? Well they've come knocking on The Blow's door! And guess what? They're home, but just not answering. Apparently Khaela doesn't want "to sell out."
I have mixed feelings about this as a general topic. I'm now of the school where I want bands to gain as much exposure as possible, and earn a little money at the same time. Musicians that can actually afford to feed themselves off their music and have a little security? I totally support that.
And because I just mentioned them, here is:
'Nightrocker' The Chalets MP3 (though it's been 'Love Punch' on Grey's)
On Friday Panther sent out a bulletin wondering if anyone was going to Pierced Arrows' show at Ash Street on Friday. Jason Simms and I were there covering it for Willamette Week and Harp Magazine (breaking my self-imposed week of social exile for an assignment)
In between his sentences of excitement about the show, he happened to mention:
"i haven't been out for a while cuz ive been working super hard on the new record with A DRUMMER joe fausten kelley, the new jams are super super different,lots of dirty cello loops and weird guitars!!! cant wait till our first show together june20@ berbatis"
That should be interesting!
I do however take issue with "haven't been out in a while" :) He's everywhere! Just a couple weekends ago I was scaring him half to death yelling at him and Maggie from a moving car on 34th and Hawthorne on the way to Jonnie's BBQ.
Meanwhile, he has new vinyl out on Gold Robot Records. The single can be bought here.
Hunter who runs Gold Robot Records also does the blog Macktronic. Go right-click-save-as (or if you're like me option-click) a Secret Lawns mix MP3 in this post.
And while you're at it, pick up the latest issue of Skyscraper Magazine pictured above. A couple of my Panther photos run alongside the interview feature. Panda Bear, Explosions in the Sky, and Graham Coxon also feature in the issue.
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