Mojo - The Music Magazine

Dateline: Wednesday March 12
State of mind: hardcore

THE JOURNEY FROM LONDON to Austin, Texas is long and, thanks to the catering on Continental Airlines, at times a hazardous one. Some 24 hours after leaving Blighty on Tuesday we find ourselves still awake and slightly delirious, and eating a Thai meal on 6th Street – the main artery for South By South West’s three-day orgy of music and industry schmoozing. Tonight, however, the street is quiet, with few hints of the waves of humanity that will course through it over the next few days. Jet-lagged and discombobulated, we head to what will be home for the next five nights, the Hyatt Regency.

Wednesday morning dawns early for MOJO, and after a swift visit to Austin’s legendary emporium, Waterloo Records, where the discovery of three albums by South American lost psych adventurers The Traffic Sound are met with great delight (and swift investment), we prepare for the first show of the day. This is a show with a difference. It features one of our own: MOJO’s Contributing Editor Sylvie Simmons, making her performance debut. On the ukulele!

The show itself is billed as ‘the sixth annual bandango’ and takes place in the rear garden of a local art gallery, The Yard Dog, which displays work by contemporary rockers who include Tom Russell and Tim Kerr. Having cruelly re-named Ms Simmons Seasick Sylv, we arrive to find her showing off her uke to anyone who’ll listen. The press release that accompanies the bandango asks: “You’ve read her work for years, but have you heard her play the ukulele?” Nope, but we’re about to. Although not before we’ve watched a couple of other performers on the bill.

The first is Malcolm Holcome, a gravel-throated singer-songwriter from North Carolina, and English indie-crooner Ed Harcourt. The latter’s set is fraught with sound problems but Harcourt is a cult hero in the States whose dedicated following have turned out to witness his spirited 25-minute set.

“Can someone please unravel my pick-up lead!?” snaps Sylvie as she prepares herself to follow Harcourt. MOJO’s publisher Stuart Williams obliges and Sylvie scurries on to the stage, sitting down to face a curious audience.

A fake picked intro to Stairway To Heaven bamboozles us briefly before she moves into her first track, Sylvie’s Blues – a slow, mournful ballad filled with heartbreak. While we are undoubtedly biased (and while there is something incontestably surreal about watching someone you know so well in so unfamiliar a role), her sparse picking and weathered vocal style (somewhere between Francoise Hardy and Marianne Faithfull) quickly beguile. When she’s finished smarting from the subsequent backslapping, Sylvie will be writing a blog for this site about her SXSW experience. Expect it to come with additional video footage shot by MOJO’s own Lady Of The Lens, Piper Ferguson.

Next we head to The Mohawk – back across 6th Street – where hotly-tipped British indie-folk poet, Johnny Flynn and his band The Sussex Wit are making their own SXSW debut. The show is attended by the massed ranks of Lost Highway label execs who, having signed Fionn Regan at SXSW last year, are looking to add another name from across The Pond. A blistering performance is met with a rapturous reaction from all present. The ink may be dry on that contract by the time you read this and, judging by the crowd’s approbation, Flynn’s post-Pogues shanties could strike a nerve in America, a nation obsessed with its roots.

The evening presents a dilemma: R.E.M. at the 2500-capacity Stubbs or The Black Keys at the 1000-sized EMO’s? Both will mean braving unimaginable queues – making femme-punk legends The Slits, playing goth club Elysium at 11pm, a more attractive option. The presence on the bill of Texan punk heroes The Dicks is almost too thrilling to contemplate.

Ari Up insists we join her in impromptu outbursts of tribal chanting and bares her arse to us by way of farewell. Perfect.

First, however, we arrange to meet up with Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed and his band The True Loves. MOJO’s highlight of last year’s SXSW (along with Foals, Stephanie Dosen and Bat For Lashes), Reed is here for a second year to hopefully bag himself a UK deal. Such is the 24-year-old Bostonian’s dedication to the cause that tomorrow morning he and the band are due to perform in the Four Seasons Hotel lobby at the unearthly hour of 9am for a radio broadcast. Already a seasoned soul veteran despite his relatively tender years, Reed reveals that he won’t be warming up his vocals for the performance; he will simply “get up, eat breakfast and be ready to go”. We wish him well, agree to go record shopping for soul seven-inchers on Friday, and, as time marches on, decide to take up our Slits option.

It says a lot for Ari Up and her newly reconfigured group that, 30 years since they formed, they can still appear so radical. Their mix of post-punk and reggae still sounds fresh and chaotic. Ari insists on the audience joining her in impromptu outbursts of tribal chanting and bares her arse to us by way of farewell. Perfect.

From The Slits, Piper and I tramp seven blocks to crash a Domino Records showcase in time to catch The Kills. We arrive just as VV and Jamie Hince amble on stage and kick off their set with their current single URA Fever. What follows is 40 minutes that underline just how far the duo have come in the last 18 months. The set – featuring a large dose of latest album Midnight Boom – is a razor sharp display of post-JAMC rock’n’roll with a serrated pop edge and the requisite posturing from the sultry VV to match.

The Kills’ all-conquering performance leaves us hungry for more duo-styled action and leads us all the way back to The Black Keys. But with a queue that snakes down 6th Street, it’s a futile exercise and no furious bartering from photographer Piper – who shot the Akron duo in their hometown a few weeks ago for the next issue of MOJO – can convince the doorman that our presence is anything other than an impossibility in what is a capacity-filled club.

This rejection, however, turns out to be our salvation as we trek back to Elysium to find The Dicks already onstage. It is hard to overstate the importance of this Texan outfit. Covered by Mudhoney, worshipped by David Yow and lauded by The Butthole Surfers (hear their homage to Dicks singer Gary Floyd on their 1985 debut album), The Dicks are part of US punk lore.

Their return over the years has been intermittent but tonight they prove that time has not dimmed their remarkable power. Tonight, the wonderfully rotund Floyd – whose post-Dicks’ outfits have included Sister Double Happiness – is his typically engaging self, sporting a minuscule pointed party hat which, cocked to one side, gives the impression of a single devil-horn. His fetching blue skirt is offset by a black T-shirt provocatively emblazoned with the slogan ‘Tell Your Wife’, while his southern-styled roar remains the defining element of a band unafraid to match classic rock sensibilities with their overtly politicised brand of hardcore thrash.

The Dicks’ unrelenting attitude is exemplified by bassist Buxf Parrot’s pronouncement following the rapacious No Fuckin’ War. “You like that one?” he sneers. “Fuck you! You don’t like that one? Fuck you!” The band’s closing salvo is the seminal Dicks Hate The Police – their very first single back in 1980. It solicits an outbreak of furious slam-dancing that leaves at least one ageing punk injured and several more clutching their noses. Away from the eye-of-the-stomp, it leaves MOJO grinning inanely before joining the rush at the T-shirt stall.

We leave the Elysium safe in the knowledge that we have just enjoyed a truly momentous performance. The time is 2.15am. Whether it’s the jetlag, the alcohol or The Dicks that have made our head spin with giddy glee, it’s hard to tell, although the Hyatt beckons invitingly. We will however be back tomorrow…

Check out Piper Fegerson's Day 1 photos in our exclusive gallery!