Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 9:55AM Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I have nothing to say about the holiday, really. It is, however, an excuse to show the KidVid Tournament 2007 Champion, Captain Bogg & Salty's "Pieces of 8ight."
Regardless of whether you've never seen it or seen it a hundred times, it's worth your four minutes.
Arrrrrrr, mateys.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 10:25AM Man (or this man) at least cannot live on live music (and bottled water) alone. He must also have amusing videos featuring frisbie-throwing human-sized dogs and deers grilling at the barbecue.
Oh, yeah, a Carmen Miranda-style headpiece never hurts.
Here you go, the latest video from New York's The Jimmies -- "Spanimals."
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 3:16AM While in Austin, I ignored my e-mail from Amazon saying that the new They Might Be Giants kids' CD/DVD, Here Come the 123s would now be released February 5, a period so far in the future the major political parties might have already selected their 2008 Presidential candidates.
Sigh.
Oh, well, not all is lost, They Might Be Giants fans. The band has noted this video which, for many reasons, warms my heart.
Monday, September 17, 2007 at 1:28AM You know, by the time you've been listening to music for about 20 hours in a 36-hour period, your focus tends to wander. Yeah, yeah, drums. Yo La Tengo, sure. Where the heck is that water bottle?
But I came here to Austin with a job to do and I'm going to do it. After all, I'm a professional.
Actually, no, I'm not.
But I'm here.
In any case, Day 3 here at the Austin Kiddie Limits stage and I'm without Miss Mary Mack, who slept in until 9 AM this morning and is relaxing back at the (metaphorical) ranch with her grandma. After filing my Day 2 report at the press tent, I dashed over to the stage, just in time to catch We Go To 11... pose for pictures. Sorry, guys, maybe next time.
Anyway, now I'm liveblogging the Farmer Jason set. I suppose "liveblogging" is probably stretching it, seeing as the stage isn't wireless-enabled I won't post this until Monday morning. But, yeah, I'm at the Austin Kiddie Limits stage without a kid and with a laptop on top of, uh, my lap.
I am such a geek.
Jason is doing some of the songs he did yesterday, some new stuff. He did perform "Forest Rhymes" again -- he was given the challenge of rhyming "triceratops" in the song, which really didn't work at all, and was not, as far as I'm aware, not really a forest animal. But, hey, the crowd seemed to appreciate it.
The sounds of Yo La Tengo are drifting over, and I wouldn't mind walking over to see them, but I'm waiting to catch a brief interview with Farmer Jason. And I don't want to miss the Jellydots. So hear I stay.
... So, after a brief interview with Jason, I head back to the front of the stage just in time to see Doug Snyder and the rest of the Jellydots walk on stage. There's a sizable crowd there, many of whom appear familiar with Doug. They turn in "Hey You Kids!," "Mister Gloom," and some other song I don't remember because I stopped actual notes yesterday afternoon (oh, wait, it was "Race Cars Go!," which ends with a tiniest bit of guitar shredding). They also played a new track, "Sunshine," which will be on their forthcoming CD, which Doug mentioned as having a Nov. 25th release date. As they launched into "San Diego," another new track, I took my leave and headed back to the shuttle bus.
OK, I wanted to catch one song from the Broken West. They led off with "So It Goes." Great song, especially live. So now there are two sets I really want to see that I'm having to miss.
So now I'm, yes, liveblogging from the shuttle bus. Talk about devoted. (That, and talk about how little time I'm going to have to blog this when I get back after escaping from household and most parental duties for 4 days.)
In reading (and writing) these posts, I've noticed just how... sequential these daily recaps have been. I heard this band, then did this, then collapsed from the heat. I'll have one more post soon with random thoughts and memories from the Festival.
I'll also have a recap of the Family Music Meltdown, so stay tuned.
Sunday, September 16, 2007 at 2:13AM OK. It's 11:15 AM Sunday, and I'm in the press tent. I am -- of course -- sweating like a really sweaty dog. The kid-band We Go To 11 start in about 15 minutes, and I'm probably about a 14-minute walk from the AKL stage, so, uh, I'm going to be brief. (Well, probably not, but briefer than I otherwise would be.)
Miss Mary Mack and I had a leisurely morning on Saturday. Since the Bummkinn Band and Jambo were playing the first two sets on Saturday and we'd seen 'em on Friday, we took a pass. (The fact that we'd be watching music until 9 PM thanks to the Family Music Meltdown also, uh, played a role in the decision here.) So we got to the Austin Kiddie Limits stage a little into the Sippy Cups' first set of the day.
The Sippys had the most impressive stage setup of the day. Banners on the side and bright day-glo costumes to rival Bjork's for long-distance visibility. The crowd was definitely bigger today than on Friday. Must be something about that whole school is on Friday thing. Their first set was mostly covers, finishing with their reworking of "I Wanna Be Sedated," changed into "I Wanna Be Elated." Can you call it a mosh pit if nobody's actually bouncing off one another, just bouncing up and down?
For their second set, the Sippys mostly did their original songs off their latest album. The band sounded really good, but I need to highlight the Sippy Whose Name Escapes Me who does all the juggling, unicycle riding, costume-wearing, and rhythmic gymastic flag-waving. The Sippys sound good on disk, but their live show has a visual component that makes it lots of fun to see. By this time, the crowd had definitely grown even further, including a fair number of young PWOKs, or, as lead singer Sippy Paul defined them, "People Without Kids." They seemed to be on the youngish side, as if they weren't too far removed from the Sippys' target demographic. And they were to be disappointed as Austin Kiddie Limits producer and MC Tor Hyams had to make no less than 3 announcements telling them that Ben Kweller, scheduled to the special guest, had a sore throat and had to cancel.
The 3:30 set was from Farmer Jason, who rocked the crowd solo-style. Jason, "twin brother" of Jason Ringenberg from Jason and the Scorchers, was probably the most interactive of the performers, turning his "Forest Rhymes" into a 20-minute song where the kids were encouraged to tell him animals (in secret) he then turned into a rhyme (where kids have to guess the animal. Yes, he did indeed have to use the word "peyote" as the key rhyme for "coyote." (After that marathon song, he played an old Jason and the Scorchers song as penance for making the adults sit through a 20-minute-long song.)
Andrea Echeverri came up and played a guest set at the end of Farmer Jason's set (bringing along a good 100 fans to hear some Colombian folksongs, but by that time Miss Mary Mack had had enough of the heat and humidity, which, believe it or not, was even worse than the day before. And we had a Family Music Meltdown to get to.
Gotta run. More music to hear today (including the Jellydots!), then a drive back to Dallas and a flight home and a wife and son to reconnect with...
