South By Southwest Day Five: Softball, Punk Karaoke And The Misfats

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

The annual South By Southwest Softball Tournament is held every Sunday to help wind things down, and I've batted leadoff and played shortstop for the Mixed Media Mongrels for the past few years. Our first game at 1 p.m. was against Record Companies, and the label guys were no competition, as we breezed to a 21-4 victory.

Our next game was against the defending champions, Print Media. We had blown a big lead over them the last time we played and went on to lose by one run in the last inning in a game that folks in these parts are still buzzing about. This time, we got out to a 6-4 lead before our defence had a meltdown and our opponents put eight runs on the board. In our last chance to pull out a victory, I came to the plate with a runner on first base and hit what looked like a sure triple down the line.

Unfortunately, it hit our runner who had just stepped off of first, which ended the game. While it was a disappointing way to lose, and Print Media went on to win the tourney with a lopsided victory in the final, it was tempered somewhat by the free shirt, ball cap, heaping plates of food and cold beer that they give participants.

My body was starting to feel the effects of the previous four days of almost non-stop club-hopping and partying, not playing ball since November and taking a bad hop ground ball which left a bruise on my shoulder, so an hour spent in the hotel hot tub talking to other SXSW delegates was just what I needed. I returned to our room and spent a couple of hours writing my report of Saturday's events until it was time to make one last run to the clubs.

Only a few bars hold SXSW showcases on Sunday, and hometown hero Alejandro Escovedo usually stages a benefit concert where he invites people to perform with him, but the lineup he assembled didn't inspire me and the Continental Club was a bit of a hike.

Instead I opted to go down the street from my hotel to the Creekside Lounge to meet some friends from an online music chat group I belong to called Postcard From Hell. Oddly, I hadn't seen most of them all week, so it was a good chance to catch up. And what made it even better was that the get-together had been co-ordinated to coincide with the bar's punk and indie rock karaoke night. I took part in group efforts on The Bottle Rockets' "Thousand Dollar Car" and The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog," and had the stage to myself for take-no-prisoners versions of The Cramps' "Human Fly" and Stiff Little Fingers' "Alternative Ulster."

Now that I had abused my voice almost as badly as my body, I led three friends to Emo's to see some guys guilty of committing much greater abuses to their systems: The Misfats, the world's fattest Misfits cover band. The drummer didn't look fat at all, and I'd describe the guitarist as quite pudgy, but not obese. But the singer and the bassist more than made up for their bandmates' shortcomings.

They weren't wearing shirts, and there were rolls and moobs falling out everywhere. And when a woman got on stage to remove the bassist's pants, things got even better (or worse, depending on your perspective). They wear The Misfits' horror make-up and throw lyrics about food into the longtime punk band's songs, and they were musically competent enough to get some punks pogoing at the front of the stage. My camera batteries unfortunately had run out, but you can go here to find out more and see for yourself, although the photos on the site don't do them justice and they're wearing shirts in too many of the shots.

After that spectacle finished, it was up the street to Beerland to end SXSW with Australia's Beasts Of Bourbon. The veteran punk and blues-based rock group are fronted by Tex Perkins, who was getting into his performance so much that he opened up a gash on his nose with his microphone.

The band drew loud cheers with their anti-George Bush and Australian prime minister John Howard proclamations between songs. Their regular drummer couldn't get into the U.S. because he apparently has multiple drug charges against him, so their sound man filled in and even got out from behind the kit to tune a guitar mid-set. There was a song that revolved around thanking people for all of the drugs and booze that they'd been given in Austin that closed the set at 1:50 a.m. But since they were the last performers of the festival, they were called back for an encore of "Ride On" and "I'm A Drop Out." The bassist drunkenly fell down during the first song and a roadie held him up so that he could play the last one, but it wasn't as much of an aural train wreck as you might expect. At the end of the set he stumbled up to the microphone and apologized, saying that a 44-year-old man shouldn't behave like that.

Then that was it. There was no more music, aside from the Midnight Special infomercial I watched upon returning to the hotel for a nightcap. I went to bed at 4 a.m. reflecting on how much easier SXSW is to get through when you don't have pneumonia like I did last year.

I woke up on Monday morning to hear that a wall had collapsed at an Amy Winehouse performance/party that I had thought of attending after 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, and that the Lee "Scratch" Perry show that I wanted to check out before that didn't end up starting until 2:45 a.m. and was shut down by police after two songs. So while I was happy I didn't end up going to either event, they got me thinking about the size that SXSW has grown to and questioning capacity and organizational issues.

While organizers are reluctant to release attendance numbers for shows, the Austin American-Statesman reported that capacity in clubs for the nightly sanctioned official SXSW showcases was about 20,000, and it estimated that total attendance at shows from Wednesday to Saturday was in the 120,000 range. While my media badge got me into everything that I wanted to see with little or no wait, there were some I avoided because I hate standing in lines, and people who had just purchased wristbands for well over $100 had difficulty getting into a lot of shows.Once you got inside, it could be hard to move, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for good music.

What I found particularly frustrating at times, however, were bands not starting on time and unnecessarily long soundchecks. SXSW used to be praised for running like clockwork, but that's no longer the case. When there are so many acts that you want to see in a short period of time, you don't want to be wasting valuable minutes at a venue with an essentially empty stage where roadies are puttering about and the bands are standing around instead of rocking out.

While the sheer variety and volume of music that SXSW has to offer (there were more than 1,200 official showcase acts and many others in town doing "pirate shows") make it so attractive, it may be time that festival organizers thought about scaling things back a bit or started focusing more on efficiency once again so people who drop a fair bit of coin to take in the action aren't standing around complaining.

And according to this email I received from SXSW publicist Elizabeth Derczo on Tuesday, that may be the case, at least to some degree:

"This year we had more media requests than ever and, as a result, over the next year we will be cutting back on the credentials we will be able to issue. What you have received in the past will not be the bar for what you receive in the future. In many, many cases it will be less."

As long as I get my credentials for next year, Elizabeth, feel free to cut back on other people as much as you want.