SXSW 2004: The Killers kill and ‘Dirty South’ finds its stage
Also, Metallica plays Stubb's for 'Guitar Hero' and makes an unpaid endorsement
It’s not really the Austin music scene during SXSW, so I don’t have much in my history books about the Monster of Mid-March. That’s a separate book. But here are the stories behind three sets to remember.
Killers at Stubb’s Spin Party
They’ve gone on to sell millions of records and tickets, but not many people had heard of the Killers or Brandon Flowers before they played SXSW in 2004, three months before the release of debut LP Hot Fuss. The Las Vegas-based band debuted at the Caucus Club (now the Mohawk) on Thursday March 18, then played the Spin party at Stubb’s early the next afternoon on a bill headlined by the Hives and the Von Bondies. The band’s Island/ Def Jam label paid Spin $10,000 to add them to the show, according to one of the party organizers.
It was worth it, as the early afternoon crowd of critics, club bookers and publicists were blown away by a set that was the midpoint of the Smiths, the Strokes and Interpol. We thought they were British, though Las Vegas also made sense. They were cheesy, but they lit it up. At one point Flowers sang while laying across the keyboards a la Liza with a Z.
With label CEO L.A. Reid scheduled to attend, the band wanted to do something special at the Spin party, so they recruited a group of local gospel singers to recreate the "I got soul, but I'm not a soldier" choir hook from “All These Things I’ve Done” to end the set.
The band’s agent Kirk Sommer of William Morris Endeavor found Williamson county family group the Durdens through Stubb’s gospel brunch series and was on the way to help organize the day-of-show rehearsal when he received a phone call that one of his elderly family members had passed away. “I wasn’t sure if I should be in a car to the airport or on my way to Stubb’s in the rain,” recalled Sommer. Duty took him to the venue, just as the choir members started trickling in. Contacted on short notice that Friday morning, some brought their children.
Stubb’s production manager at the time, Huston Powell, who now books Lollapalooza worldwide, recalls “a chaotic scene” at the rehearsal and a game-time decision on whether to scrap the gospel segment. “Thankfully Mark Needham (who mixed Hot Fuss) was in town, and he started working out all of the elements with these beautiful people,” Sommer said. The Killers and the Durdens pulled it off magnificently onstage that afternoon. Beaming from the front of the stage was L.A. Reid. “I’m not entirely certain the sun came out during the refrain of the song,” Sommer says, “but that’s how I remember it.”
The Killers in 2004 at Metro in Chicago.
HIP-HOP SPIKES AT A BEACH VOLLEYBALL SETTING
South by Southwest has become a Hip Hop Mecca in recent years, with seemingly everyone from big names to rising artists coming to Austin every year for the pub and the party. An unknown Kendrick Lamar played in a white tent in the back of a Rainey Street bar in 2012, but triumphantly returned in 2013 with the No. 1 album in the country. Rap artists saw SXSW as a showcase for discovery, and then a place to strut.
But that wasn’t always the case. “We’d hear the same thing every time we called New York,” says former SXSW booker Matt Sonzala. “’Why should I send my act to your hippie music festival down in Texas?’” But things changed in a hurry.
You have to credit Kool Keith’s Ultramagnetic MC’s, who came down from the Bronx in 1990 to play Raven’s (a country music club that would evolve into punk haven Emo’s), with paving the way. Then, Homer Hill’s Catfish Station, the only soul club on Sixth Street, fostered an adventurous breed of hip hop artists, such as Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Atmosphere and Hieroglyphics, at the beginning of their careers. In 1995, a guest artist from Dallas called Erykah Free performed “On and On” with Heads-N-Dreads and everybody lost their shit.
But if you’re looking for one entire show that started the rapfire in Austin in March, Sonzala says it was the 2004 showcase at Aussie’s featuring Bun B, Dizzie Rascal, Paul Wall, Chamillionaire, Michael 5000 Watts and more. “I pitched SXSW on a Murder Dog (magazine) showcase, with all the big Southern rappers,” recalls Sonzala, and I got back a email from Craig Stewart (of SXSW) that included only the subject line, ‘Do you really think you could do this?’” Although “Dirty South” hip hop, with its “screwed and chopped” remixes had exploded all over the world, there was no live tradition of the form. “These guys from Houston never played on a real stage before,” says Sonzala. “They might do a set at a car show or some shitty disco, but a music festival? What’s that?” The crowd at Aussie’s was about 50% white and about 20% badges- and the response was emphatic.
Sonzala says the late addition of London “grime” pioneer Dizzee Rascal to the bill added a lot of heat and solidified hip hop’s international status. “Dizzee’s people didn’t want him on a showcase with rock bands, so when they saw that there was a bill with Southern rappers, especially Bun B of UGK, that’s where he wanted to be.”
The show at Aussie’s was outdoors on a beach volleyball court, far from the SXSW epicenter, “but Bun B has said that show opened up the whole world for him. I think it was the first time they saw what kind of impact their music was having.”
METALLICA REHEARSES IN A U-HAUL
If SXSW was a supermarket, during the 2009 campaign you could go down the dairy aisle and buy a tub of I Can’t Believe Metallica is Playing Stubb’s! This was a few years before Prince played La Zona Rosa, and other mega-stars came down to the ATX to make a splash.
The late announcement seemed like a radio stunt at first. Metallica at SXSW?! Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that the President is going to do a comedian’s podcast. But it was real. The metal superstars were brought to SXSW by the “Guitar Hero” video game franchise to promote an all-Metallica version. A lucky 2,100 fans got in to see the band play a mix of their classics and material from new CD Death Magnetic. But many who’d been gathered around the perimeter of Stubb’s all day, just for the chance to hear the metal godheads, had actually been just yards away from Metallica playing and didn’t even know it.
“Metallica always warms up backstage before their gigs,” says Darin Klein of SXSW. “There is plenty of space at the stadiums they play to set up a ‘practice room.’ But no such space existed (at Stubb’s).” The solution was to rent a box truck, park it on 8th St. behind the stage and have the band warm up in there. “I didn’t believe that they would actually use it, but I saw video footage of these legends warming up in a U Haul,” says Klein.
A rock and roll kid on 8th Street: “Dude, that U Haul has the most kickin’ sound system I’ve ever heard.”