MIA sabotaged my Thursday

How could I have forgotten that I saw Billy Idol close down Wednesday night? I did, he did. He looked fantasticily plastic there on the Stubb's stage, playing the acoustic guitar badly and shaking all to "Moni Moni," whose chorus I never knew contained the alternate lyrics 'hey, get laid get fucked' but apparently the rest of the crowd had been instructed, shouting along happily while glow sticks were passed around. It reminded me of the Adam Sandler retro 80s flick with little to love, The Wedding Singer, where Idol makes a cameo of himself being silly on a plane. Least frightening OG UK punker?

Thursday....

After some rad breakfast tacos at 'the indie taco stand,' which sounds funny if you don't live in town, these secret maps of local businesses claimed by Austin's sizable indie population, I went to see Kandia Crazy-Horse in a panel with Dave Marsh, Mark Kemp (editor, "Dixie Lullaby" author), Peggy Scott-Adams (pop/blues crossover), Otis Taylor (singer/songwriter) and Kevin Phinney (local radio guy)...panel about race, weirdly and truly had some flux to the question of whiteness as a 'marked catagory' with Marsh making somewhat over the top statements about how white people need spend their whole lives ripping the blinders off, etc.

We got in the car and headed east for the Arthur party, which was in a neighborhood with crazy renagade pinata salespeople. It was a Vice "do's" explosion in The Church of the Friendly Ghost, all big sunglasses and weather inappropriate clothing, whose side yard became a football field for friends of mine. We saw 1/2 of Jennifer Gentle, a band much on the lips down here, whose psych noodling wasn't nearly as impressive as their awesome Sub Pop album, then Wolfmother, who did the trashy Iggy Pop garage thing and got the kids going.

The evening went to shit unless you were one of the lucky few who got into the unsurprisingly popular MIA show. I went to see a Hawk and a Hacksaw, Jeremy Barnes from Neutral Milk Hotel's 'one man band' project gone Romani, full accordion and percussion blow out with a violinist double-stopping in time. He was frighteningly serious about his project and I couldn't help but get on the ethno hat thinking 'if you're going to do this eastern european gypsy thing, you need to get some nuanced inflections into the mix, not just drones' but that's only a half-formed critique.

After doing the dance of diss in the line for Louis XIV and The Futureheads (I might have stayed in line if there weren't a 'liinguiist from Shreeeveport, Luuisiaana' who 'just lovvvveeed language' cause she was 'insanely visual' in front of me skeezing on some online guys), I went to see Austin's Grand Champeen with Tim. They do this early Soul Asylum, winsome big melodic guitar leads and rackus pop thing pretty well, until the bass player steps up and unleashes his sideman songs. Yikes. It was good though to be in an audience full of people who really really loved their band, everyone was singing along.

While wandering around in the what's next phase, I saw a man playing that Bowling for Soup song '1985' while lounging on a park bench. He was being very soulful about it, it made me intensely happy.

Closed the evening with The Hold Steady, who were packed in this tiny corner of a bar obviously not meant to be a venue. Craig Finn was on point, waving his arms and caressing the mic while sprinkling the night with references to Minneapolis, Chicago, LA, Ybor City...a profusion of words of places near and far.