in which our man in Austin runs down the best ways to enjoy this week's South by Southwest festival without spending a dime

For your reference: I live about five miles north of 6th and Red River. That’s South by Southwest ground zero. Up here, it’s all peaceful—birds, parking, lack of vomit in the street. So, though my daily news publication insists that the long economic reach of the behemoth SXSW Festival “spread[s] far across the city,” from where I live, you’d almost kind of never know it.  Except that, though I haven’t yet experienced a South by from these particular digs, I’m pretty sure that some portion of the thing will creep its way into this neighborhood.

Officially, like for the badge-having types who get all-access to the whole festival for somewhere north of $1,000, this might happen at the Nomad—a cozy bar just down the street. Unofficially, it could happen at someone’s house—in their backyard, at like noon. Bonus? Those shows often come with a keg. And you rarely have to dish out any thing for the privilege.

This is what stands in for the underground at SXSW. And though even this portion of the festival has been co-opted—see: the Levi’s Fader Fort, for example—you can still get in to see most of it with little more than an RSVP.

Here’s a quick run-down of just some of what you Austin-bound lucktards can look forward to not paying for. This is, by no means, a complete list. For that, head on over to Show List Austin, which’ll give you the full scope of this totally ridiculous week.

* Last time around, those Fader Fort duders brought out Kanye West for a surprise set. This year’s confirmed performers include YACHT, N.E.R.D., David Banner, Lykke Li, and, uh, 2 Live Crew. Food’ll be provided (we’re unsure about the freeness of this) by the capital area’s most overrated barbecue joint and one of our many purveyors of fine cupcakes. Trouble is that, if this is the first time you’re hearing about it, you’re already too late for an RSVP. Sounds about right for something sponsored by The Fader. This’ll happen between Wednesday and Saturday.

* NYC’s Other Music is sponsoring a two-day affair called the Lawn Party. Performers include the xx, Austin-locals Yellow Fever, Real Estate, Thurston Moore, D Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 âm Funk, Dengue Fever, and Talk Normal. You can still RSVP for this sucker on Facebook, but as far as we can tell, there’s no real need. This’ll happen on Thursday and Friday.

* I’m not quite sure how a free show can also be a benefit show, but Eastbound and Found is apparently just that. Performers here include White Denim, Danielson, Kid Sister, and THE FUCKING GZA. Just in case you missed it, this’d be your chance to see THE FUCKING GZA for FUCKING FREE. RSVP here. This’ll happen on Thursday.

* Want to know just how un-weird SXSW daytime action has gotten? Look no further than Cheap Trick’s free festival performance at Waterloo Records. This’ll happen on Wednesday.

* OK, so apparently, the GZA is playing two free day shows. This one’s the Brooklyn Vegan party at Emos, where he’ll be joined by the likes of the NYT-hyped New Jersians Titus Andronicus and Japandroids. This’ll happen on Wednesday.

* The Big Parking Lot show will feature performances from Videohippos, Zs, and Acid Mothers Temple. (Full disclosure: I am also performing in a band that will grace this stage.) This’ll happen on Thursday.

* I’ve been trying to steer clear of any pay shows masquerading as day shows, but we figure this one should make the cut: Thanks to the folks at Insound, $3 gets you unlimited beer and performances from the Liars and Vivian Girls (among others). It’s at Club Deville and it’ll happen on Thursday.

* Lest you metal people think you were left out: Full Metal Texas 2010’ll have Darkest Hour, Fair to Midland, a whole lot of other heaviness, and a special guest. Oooooooooo! This will happen on Thursday.

* The IheartComix, Jelly, and Mad Decent Carniville will have Major Lazer, the Walkmen, Diplo, Kid Sister, YACHT, the GZA (again), Japanther, D Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 âm Funk, and about a billion other awesome bands. This’ll happen on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

This, really, honestly, is just a sampling. Indeed, I’ve spent so much time staring at Show List Austin that it’s starting to look like a wordsearch. So I’m gonna stop.

-Since he's legally forbidden to perform comedy on television, Conan O'Brien is hitting the road this spring. He'll be in D.C. at Constitution Hall on June 8th.

-The Washington Post's Dave Malitz profiles four up-and-coming bands that will be visiting D.C. on tour. He shines some light on a few locals, too.

Baltimore City Paper profiles cosmic-voyager Dam Funk, who will be performing tomorrow at 411 New York Ave. NE.

-SPIN has made all of its back-issues available via google books. I particularly enjoyed this article, where critic Robert Christgau and Matador Records founder Gerard Cosloy argue over whether Royal Trux has the right to exist.

Anyway. Over-under on the number of cast members who show up at this years’ Ultra Festival? We’re gonna go with three. For starters, this thing is at the beach, and those folks sure do love the beach. It’s also packed with the sort of bubble gum electronic music that might get Pauly the DJ all stoked: Tiësto, Carl Cox, Oakenfold, etc.

(Also, this is kind of off-topic, but we’d like to point out that these Ultra Music people are kind of on par with hardcore and metal bands when it comes to logo obsession.)

Anyway, fist-pumping douchebags or no (but we’ll pretty much guarantee you that attendance at this thing will put you face-to-face with some fist-pumping douchebags), the Ultra Music Festival happens March 26 and 27. Two day and single passes are still available in both VIP and regular.

MusicNOW Festival 2010: After four years of super solid line-ups—featuring the likes of Bang on a Can, Bill Frisell, and the Books—Chamber Music Cincinnati’s MusicNOW festival is bringing in Joanna Newsom. We know that this makes sense. Chamber music. Harp. Yeah. We get it. And we know that some of you think that Newsom is this totally adventurous creative thing, and that her high-pitched whine doesn’t really bother you all that much. But whatever: We here at Festival Watch are going to call bullshit. We think Newsom is kind of terrible. And totally boring.

For those of you that don’t, the MusicNOW Festival is scheduled for March 30, March 31, and April 1. Tickets are still available.

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010: Back when we here at Festival Watch enjoyed the luxury of office space at City Paper HQ, we found ourselves faced with the challenge of word-processing with XyWrite. This was no pleasure. But we made do—even when we had to type in numeric codes every time we needed to put in an accent mark.

This brings us to Dam Funk. We wonder: Will our editor have to type in some </#345> shit to make the little hat appear above the ‘a’ in Dam? [I'll let it slide this time -ed.] Does he have to do this every time some jerkwad wants to write about that duder?  [Yes. Same with Tiësto. – ed.]

Point is, Dâm Funk’s been added to Pitchfork 2010. Like as of today. Other late additions include Broken Social Scene, Panda Bear, El-P, John Spencer Blues Explosion, Freddie Gibbs, and CAVE.

Festival-length passes are sold out, but you can still get single-day tickets. It happens July 16, 17, and 18 in Chicago’s Union Park.

I'm pretty sure I tried to call Merriweather Post Pavilion "Record of the year" back in January, when I reviewed it, but City Paper managing editor Andrew Beaujon argued that this statement might be a tad premature, given that '09 still had 11 months left to go. But here we are in December and it's still great.

Mi Ami
Watersports
Touch & Go/Quarterstick

From a sort-of-embarrassing-but-earnest blog post that I wrote after attending three Mi Ami's shows last March:

But yeah, they really dropped the A-bomb on me. I had seen them before–when they were still a duo and then last February when they came through DC–and I liked it, but thought it just sounded liked a more stripped down version of Black Eyes. This time though, I don't know, it really clicked. The good shows had the same energy as some of the Evangelical church services that I went to back when I was writing the Service Industry column. The kind of thing where the band doesn't play hymns so much as they act as a foil for the preacher's gradually intensifying emotions and everything just gets crazier and crazier until some old lady passes out in the isle. Except at the DC show, it wasn't an old lady, just some tragic punker kid who had a septum piercing and smelled sort of like salami.

More after the jump:

Love of Diagrams
Nowhere Forever
Unstable Ape/Remote Control

The Melbourne, Australia trio graduates from scrappy post-punk to expansive space-rock that's one part shoegaze uplift and two parts Flying Nun Records-style skronk. The Northern hemisphere slept on Love of Diagrams this year, big time.

Phoenix
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Glassnote

French pop band reaches for the stars, benefits from not being American.

Deleted Scenes
Birdseed Shirt
What Delicate Recordings

Sad, uplifting, and bizarre in just about equal measure, Birdseed Shirt is probably the best record anybody in D.C. put out this year. It really deserves that spot in Black Cat's jukebox.

Polvo
In Prism
Merge

Hey, not everything has to be like Star Wars. Sometimes your heroes take ten years off, come back, and really kick ass.

Obits
I Blame You
SubPop

Obits guitarist Sohrab Habibion called me out on Black Plastic Bag (R.I.P.) because I made fun of him for wearing shorts onstage at SXSW. In hindsight, I was being a lazy critic and a bit of a jerk. We got it sorted out, though (I think), but even if Habibion and his bandmates hate my guts, I'll still listen to this record.

Kurt Vile
Childish Prodigy
Matador

Philadelphia songwriter and mega-producer Daniel Lanois are privy to the same secret: If you take the music of the baby-boomers and run it through a ton of effects, it sounds cool again. Hey, don’t laugh, it worked for Bob Dylan on Oh, Mercy. And it works for Kurt Vile, too.

Blues Control
Local Flavor
Siltbreeze

The ultimate soundtrack to the final beer of the evening.

Dam Funk
Toeachizown
Stones Throw

Dam Funk has the chords of eternity at his fingertips. Yeah, that sounds like a cheesy Jim Morrison lyric, but when it comes to synthesizers, the Los Angeles-based modern-funk pioneer really does have the touch. "[I'm trying to get] the best chord that I’ve ever heard in my life. It can hit your heart strings," he told me during a Q&A last May. "Not that Lil Jon effect–those are the devil chords. I’m trying to get the beautiful chords, to get to something inside." His debut, Toeachizown, is crammed with just those chords.

Records that I probably enjoyed just as much, but was too lazy to blurb:
Omar S Fabric 45
Dirty Projectors Bitte Orca
Flaming Lips Embryonic
True Womanhood Magic Child Digital 7"
Fresh & Onlys The Fresh & Onlys
The Clientele Bonfires on the Heath
Circulatory System Signal Morning
The Points Beat In Hell 7"
Real Estate S/T

Lindstrom + Prins Thomas: "Rothaus (Groove Edit)"
Norwegian disco producers Lindstrom and Prins Thomas have always looked to the past for inspiration, but this time they're looking further back than usual. Where they were once content to tune the way-back machine into the '80s, to better feel the pulse of italo-disco, their second collaborative record, Lindstrom + Prins Thomas II, knocks off another ten years, going all the way back to the krautrock-era. "Rothaus" is more than a little jammy, with a handful of keyboards randomly gurgling over a steady rhythm, recalling the more transcendent moments of fusion-era Miles Davis or Ash Ra Tempel.

Animal Collective: "Summertime Clothes (Dam Funk Remix)"
Animal Collective's much loved Merriweather Post Pavilion proved once and for all that the Baltimore-bred trio could make decent use of bottom end. But getting all of those newfound bass frequencies into the pocket? Well, they aren't quite there yet. Perhaps that's why the band commissioned smooth-sounds maven Dam Funk for this remix of "Summertime Clothes." The Los Angeles-based producer scrapes off the atmospheric gook and rolls in the analog synths, re-shaping the song into something tight and slinky enough to fit comfortably on Prince's 1999.

The Dead Weather: "Treat Me Like Your Mother"
Speaking of Prince, since when did Jack White become alterna-rock's answer to The Purple One, jumping from instrument to instrument, and from band to band? "Treat Me Like Your Mother," by Dead Weather–White's new super-group with Kills singer Alison Mosshart–finds him serving two roles, drummer and hype man.
Doing both simultaneously must be a bit of a task, given the song's jagged and bombastic rhythms. But White nails it here with impressive dexterity or, possibly, just a few overdubs. Never the less, for a guy who's on his second side project, this isn't too bad.

Dam Funk will perform Thursday, May 7, at 930 Club with Peanut Butter Wolf, James Pants, and Mayer Hawthorne.

Washington City Paper: What appealed to you about this type of music, late '70s and early '80s boogie and funk? What about it inspired you to make music?

Dam Funk: You mean, where does my music come from? I just want to give people music that feels good, certain types of chords. Stuff from the early 80s had that type of sound. It's still funky, but not cornball. When I DJ, boogie is what I play out. But modern funk is what I record.

WCP: Is this a DJ tour, or are you performing your music?

DF: Both. The set will consist of me dropping some of the rare wax stuff that I have, you know, to give the audience a treat. Then I'll be sharing some of the songs from album and singing on top of the tracks. I wanted to do something different than a DJ spinning records.

WCP: Your music is almost all programmed into synthesizer and drum machines. Is it hard to coax machines into being funky?

DF: Oh, no. It just depends on the chord that you hit. That’s why I liked synths instead of keyboards with patch sounds. You can change the sound, allow the sound to be created. It’s the analog equipment.

WCP: You keep mentioning certain types of chords. What kind of chords are you talking about, what kind of chord are you trying to get?

DF: The best chord that I’ve ever heard in my life. It can hit your heart strings. Not that Lil Jon effect–those are the devil chords. I’m trying to get the beautiful chords, to get to something inside. But, I mean, it's something you can still roll to, something that's still urban. I keep the bottom hard, that’s the key.

WCP: You recently posted a bunch of songs on your Myspace that you made when you were still a teenager. What made you want to share those early recordings with everybody?

DF: I posted that just to show other people that you can start off a certain way, but you can come to a level where you feel confident about making music. Back then I was messing around and making tapes for my friends.

WCP: How has the way you make music changed since then?

DF: I was using the same stuff that I’m using now. All that stuff that you hear right now, it’s all part of the equipment from back in the day. Nothing has changed, it's all coming from the same place. It’s just that now it got, like, straight and narrowed out. I know what I’m doing now, I have a more confident approach. There’s a direction I have in my head that I’m going to try to will out for the people to enjoy. I want them to feel how they felt when they rolled in their cars at certain time. It's not just about the past, though. It's more like memories from future. You're moving toward the future, but you don’t forget about the genuine times you had with your family and friends, or anything you want to keep inside when you get older and find out about what a harsh world this is. I wand people to know that it's not just a strip-bar stuff out there. There’s another kind of urban music. It’s there. I’m just trying to crack the cement and let the flower.

WCP: When you say another kind of urban music, what are you in opposition to? What's the other side?

DF: Like, a lot of the autotune strip-bar music, that type of stuff. It’s fun, but there’s more than that. What’s wrong with making a 10-minute instrumental? What’s wrong with having that on an album?

WCP: Not a lot of people are still making funk music, at least not in the same sense as they used to. Do you feel like funk and boogie were abandoned when hiphop arrived?

DF: Some people did [continue making funk]. It was the major labels that kind of did it in as well, because they jumped on the cardboard boxes. They were like, "Let’s go strictly hiphop." People did it too, though. I was one of those cats. I loved Run DMC. The golden-era of hiphop was one of the best times ever. Tons of records you can’t deny. Then the avalanche of new jack swing came and really rung it in. I think that over the years funk did get abandoned. The mind state, not just music. I mean, funk was a mind state. It was about freedom. There were no baby-oiled-pecs-in-the-mirror, like 50 cent.

You could be anything you wanted to be. Everybody is so stuffed in a box now–you gotta be hard. But you don’t have to always represent that part of urban experience. I mean, when I saw Prince–idiots now would probably say that he looked like a bitch–but it was a fantasy. People like that gave you an escape from things. I want to give people a fantasy, not the guy down the street. Other genres of music are doing that, so why can't this?

That’s what makes the whole boogie thing great, record collectors are involved. It’s almost like collecting baseball cards. It's like, "You got that one, well what about that one?" I know hip hop has some of those aspects left too, but everybody's so serious. The boogie and funk scene, I hope it never gets to that.

WCP: Do you communicate with any of the DC boogie and funk collectors?

DF: Oh yeah, Andrew Morgan (founder of Peoples Potential Unlimited and Earcave), Max Dunbar, a few other cats. We’re all down with each other. We talk about the music. I can’t wait to meet these cats face to face finally. Andrew Morgan, I'm actually releasing a side-project of mine on his label. It's called Wavelength. But Beautiful Swimmers and those cats, they’re doing some good work.

I mean, it’s just a great time. People don’t realize what’s happening and what’s about to happening. It’s like you’re on a road and it gives people a chance to get off at this exit. And there’s all kinds of carnival rides there. And people, they can stay long time, if they want to. I know I’ll be at the carnival for a while. But if they want, they can get back on the road. Funk is not a fad, it’s a way of life. Get off the freeway for a minute and check out this incredible scene that’s going on and try to nurture it and grow it.