SXSW DAY 2 - THE CRACK IS GREAT DOWN HERE

By Chris Faraone on Thu, Mar 13, 2008 1:24 pm

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Wednesday started innocent enough with two bloody marys (or whatever the plural of that is), three sixteen-ounce Lone Star brews and a joint thicker than your mother’s tampon. My man Bill at the Jackalope (which is named after some sort of odd hybrid creature that patrols the southern landscape) makes the cruelest bloody that I’ve ever slugged, complete with red-hot chili pepper sprinkled on the rim.

Speaking of spicy rim jobs, my second to last party of the night was Ron Jeremy’s birthday bash at The Music Gym – a fly new joint on Sixth Street owned by a white dreaded Bostonian named Rob. The only problem is that Mr. Jeremy was a no show at his own affair, which, in addition to being downright rude (people went through a lot of trouble prepping the party hats and nail the tail on the donkey games) was also disappointing. Luckily, the porn crazed post-adolescents who rolled up for a glimpse of the Hedgehog’s pole had a sweet and sexy two-time AVN award winner named Pennny Flame to ogle and sign autographs. Oh yeah – Boston favorites Lovewhip and Audible Mainframe rocked the spot.

I managed to catch the tail end of Audible’s Music Gym set, which is becoming sort of a trend this week – even though I’ve only been here for one day. The first show I tried to catch of theirs was a three o’clock set at the always-reliable Pure Volume Ranch, but I ended up getting trashed at P.F. Chang’s across the street an missing the whole damn thing. That’s right – in the land of micro brews, authentic Tex Mex cuisine and indie rock I hit up a corporate hole that I wouldn’t be caught sober in back in Boston.

On a quick side note, Austin is one of the few places on the planet where I always feel comfortable sagging my pants. Even in New York – my native city and the low-slung pants capital of the universe – I feel like people have a problem with my exposed crack. This place on the other paw is just a cornucopia of crack fiends; today I’m heading out in a g-string and some hip huggers.

My bad – did you think that I came down here to review music? I did, and I’ll get there in a minute, but first you have to hear about my running into Jackie “The Jokeman” Martling at a Canadian hip-hop show. Martling, who was Howard Stern’s joke writer and whipping boy for a good twenty years (think Artie Lang without the needle habit, or at least without the sloppy gut) actually looks a lot better than he ever has before. I wouldn’t have even recognized him if not for the name badge, but I’m glad I did because it turns out he knows my father from way back (a true story that’s too long for this space). Maybe today I’ll run into Paula Poundstone and discover that she was in a street gang with my mom back in ‘Nam.

Before checking out some evening gigs I headed to the super-chic Hyatt to interview British rap king Dizzee Rascal for The Source magazine. Homeboy’s new disc is dropping on the indelible New York indie imprint Def Jux, which is also home to El-P, Cage, and of course – Boston’s Mr. Lif. The twenty-minute one-on-one (that’s what we call it wiseass) went fairly well, but one thing was sort of strange: I had met a gaggle of British music critiques in the lobby before heading to his room, and they gave me a bunch of regionally specific questions to ask. But when I busted out “How come at the Shepherds Bush gig the crowd was full of girls from Richmond?” (translation: how come your new core fan base is rich white chicks?), he just answered as if I could have feasibly known that without having lived in the UK.

While I’m fairly sure that the Trinity Avenue near my Austin pad is not the same “Ave. of Trinity” that Fat Joe talks about, this has become a sick hip-hop Mecca in the past few years at SXSW. Last night brought one of the main showcases that I came to see: a collaborative effort between the California-based label Stones Throw and Brooklyn’s Duck Down Records. This wasn’t the type of abstract hipster-hop nonsense that usually gets highly propped at these festivals – this was crusty ass Sean Price getting rude in a public forum (i.e. – “I stuck my dick in her ass and my hand in her purse”). He did the unthinkable – something that few SXSW performers have ever done – by injecting a sense of humor into his performance.

Sean P was only outdone by Percee P – a Bronx hero who after twenty years of slinging mixtapes on the street was recruited by Stones Throw to record a proper album. Percee flung raw uzi raps that I’m assuming a lot of cats down here rarely get to see; the man simply doesn’t stop to breathe. For a long time fan like me who has bought numerous Percee P records outside of New York clubs and record stores, there was no greater joy than watching kids go up to him afterwards to cop product.

For all you people who would rather read about music, music, and more music than my charades and shenanigans, please stay tuned. I promise to deliver some of the most close-minded indie rock reviews in the history of entertainment journalism first thing tomorrow morning. I’ll also be spending a large chunk of Friday with Pharrell Williams and the N.E.R.D. crew, which should surely satisfy the full gamut.