night one winners: the besties and phosphorescent at sxsw
A frontman is a frontman is a frontman, as I believe Gertrude Stein said, and the Besties have got them a frontman. Rikky Walsh rocks the Billy Crudup-as-Prefontaine 70s ’stache, and he’s comfy onstage, flanked by the two Besties ladies, and backed up by their absurdly happy drummer (even for a drummer, this guy was happy) and topped off with a trumpet player who makes the word ‘gangly’ seem inadequate. What the Besties don’t have, in Austin anyway, is much of a following, so I found myself in a sparse crowd at Maggie May’s to start my night on Wednesday. But who cares? They’re a great show, weird sugary fuzzed out rock, like the B-52s without being, you know, annoying. I hope to hear more of them. My advice to them would be to drop the graduate school humility and go ahead and be a rock band: follow that front man. Play the game. (And let the Lady Stage Right sing more…)
Otherwise my Wednesday started to shape up like a wash: I wandered around, ate bad pizza, waited in line at Paradise with all the beautiful people to hear Harlem Shakes, although after a few songs it was still unclear why we were all so excited to be there. Maybe the beautiful people are more prone to group psychosis than the rest of us.
I dragged my dispirited self to Club De Ville, and thanks be to the lord that I did so, because Phosphorescent tore the night apart. His whole band seems to be engaged in a beard-growing competition, which makes them all look terribly glum, but you can’t argue with the music. I had forgotten that of course he was going to play tracks off of To Willie, his Willie Nelson tribute album, and sure enough, he played nothing but. This goes over well in Austin. He closed with a raw and wild version of The Party’s Over: “Let’s call it a night/the party’s over/and tomorrow we’ll do the same thing over again…” He left the stage, stepped into the crowd, threw his arm around some dude, and cheered on his own band as they ripped through the crescendo. Never seen that trick before. Phosphorescent wins night one.
I wasn’t on board that early with Phosphorescent; he was already on his way when I threw my all-powerful support behind him, but I was early enough that I feel a certain amount of pride seeing him make good. He’s on top right now. Go see him if you can.
Anyone checking in here for Who To See Next, these are some of my ideas: many of these day shows are free…