South By Southwest Day Five: Softball, Wing And Tragedy
Tuesday March 18, 2008 @ 05:00 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Tragedy

ChartAttack news editor Steve McLean just returned home from his annual pilgrimage to the South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas. Here's his report from day five:

I felt surprisingly athletic after three hours sleep, and my hotel suite host Jeff Cohen and I were on a softball diamond by 12:30 p.m. playing for the Mixed Media Mongrels in the annual SXSW Softball Tournament. I batted first and played third base throughout the tourney (except for two innings at shortstop), and we coasted to an 18-5 victory in our opening game against the SXSW Staff And Volunteers to set up a semi-final game against our arch-rivals, Print Media. We've met them in the past two semis and lost by a single run each time, only to watch them go on and win by 20 in the finals, so our coach was treating this one like a championship game. The tables were finally turned, and we came away with a nail-biting 10-9 victory to put us in the final against Clubs/Talent Buyers. Things looked good when we jumped out to a 9-0 first-inning lead and were still ahead by nine and on the verge of invoking the 10-run mercy rule after five innings. But then our bats fell asleep and our opponents chipped away at the lead until it was tied going into their last at bat in the final inning. They scored and we lost our third one-run heartbreaker in three years.

After consoling myself with free barbecue and beer, returning to the hotel, a therapeutic session in the rooftop hot tub, depleting the beer supply in our fridge and some typing, I strolled down to Emo's at 9:30 p.m. to see the incomparable Wing. She's a 50-ish oriental woman from Auckland, New Zealand who has a unique high voice and sings to cheesy backing tracks. She stands pretty far back from the microphone, which is probably a good thing, and claps for herself after every song. She's somehow released 14 albums, and her eclectic set list included "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," "Back In Black," "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" (her pronunciation of kaleidoscope was quite amusing), "Nine To Five," "Without You," "I Want To Hold Your Hand" and "Danny Boy." The crowd of assembled indie hipsters was right into it, and one young woman even jumped on stage to hug and kiss Wing in the middle of her set, which I don't think I wanted to end. Wing definitely belongs in the "so bad it's great" category and, if you don't believe me, check out her website.

I went inside to Emo's Jr. to see an Austin quintet called Diagonals. Their pretty much straight-ahead indie rock mixed up tempos, with one more angular song bearing a large Interpol influence. The singer joked that they'd just been signed to Casablanca Records, and then pointed to me for being the only person in the audience who seemed to get the reference.

Back outside, Tragedy, A Metal Tribute To The Bee Gees opened with "Night Fever." The singer said, "No applause necessary, we know we're awesome." And they were. The all-male New York/New Jersey band members were dressed in tight, white '70s disco garb, with a couple of cute female backing singers wearing metallic mini-skirts. Two go-go boys would occasionally come on stage to dance and bring towels for face- and cock-wiping. White Cowbell Oklahoma would have been proud. There was lots of gay and incestual banter between songs, and the set list was packed with hits: "Nobody Gets Too Much Heaven No More," "More Than A Woman" (introduced as a song about "chicks with dicks"), "You Should Be Dancing" (which had a Spinal Tap-like "Stonehenge" interlude where one of the singers told a lengthy tale about pagans who were "hung like breakfast burritos"), "How Deep Is Your Love," "Stayin' Alive," "Tragedy" and a tribute to the late younger Gibb brother, Andy, with "Shadow Dancing." I'd be shocked if this band doesn't either spark or rekindle your love for the Bee Gees. The magic obviously wouldn't be the same if you didn't see the group live, but they have an album called We Rock Sweet Balls And Can Do No Wrong and you can have a listen on their MySpace page.

I went back inside for Totally Radd!, who were all decked out as cyborgs, gladiators, or something like that, to continue the night's novelty theme. They had a heavier rock sound, but with two keyboards, and I only heard two songs. Earlier, however, I stood between two members at a urinal trough and they claimed to be "pissing kryptonite."

Karaoke Apocalypse, with a band supplying the music, was next. I was looking forward to belting out an old punk number, but none of the friends I was expecting showed up, and most of the singers were doing hair metal songs instead of the more punk and new wave-leaning songs that were available to choose from. So I walked out into a light rain down an almost deserted Sixth Street, where nondescript blues bands in a couple of clubs weren't enough to draw me in.

I bought a couple of pizza slices and returned to our hotel suite for a nightcap before calling it an early night just past 2 a.m. Monday was transit day (Austin to Dallas to Kansas City to Toronto), and I was back in front of my computer at home just before midnight.

SXSW is over for another year and, while I might not have liked every band I saw (especially among the new ones I wanted to explore) and sometimes became frustrated with groups starting late, it was a great time once again. Will I go back again? Keep on visiting this site and you'll find out in about 51 weeks.