journal

09 april 2006

noise pop festival, redux

I don't have any pictures from my Noise Pop fun, so sorry, this won't be as fun as my SXSW redux.

Noise Pop this year was a crazy week. Especially just coming off SXSW. Noise Pop has traditionally been a couple of weeks before SXSW, but this year, they decided to move it to the end of March. I'm not sure if I liked it better that way or not.

This year, I was working for myself (getting interviews/station IDs, etc), for the Noise Pop Festival (to use the interviews to make a podcast for them, which I'll hopefully get done in the next couple of days), and with the Noise Pop Documentary crew, making sure the paperwork was in, helping with the videographers, and as a surprise last-minute bonus, doing interviews with the bands.

Monday was the Flaming Lips. Starting the festival by interviewing Wayne Coyne for 45 minutes with a crew of video cameras and photographers was really amazing. I also got to meet and hang out with his nephew, who's band was opening. The show was wonderful... it was especially good after seeing them at SXSW play their brief 30 minute set in that insanely hot venue - they played at Bimbo's 365 Club, which is a 750 person capacity venue that's all lush red velvet and wonderful sound. They played most of my favorites, and I was incredibly happy.

Tuesday, I was back at Bimbo's, but this time to see Youth Group, John Vanderslice, and Feist. The Botticellis opened, and I was impressed by them. Very poppy, lovely stuff - they'll be playing in town again opening for Mates of State later this month. We did a quick interview with Youth Group when we first arrived, which I think probably turned out like shit, because we were all stressed out, and the background noise was loud, so the sound probably came out like crap... but it's okay, because later in the evening we were backstage again, and a video guy filmed Jason and I (Jason was heading up the documentary filming) just hanging out and chatting with the Youth Group guys, and I think that came out really well. John played an incredible set, including my favorite song of his ("Exodus Damage"), and gave us a really great interview at the end of the night. Feist also played an amazing set, altho the main power to the sound board went out TWICE on her. She just stepped aside from the mic and played her heart out, without amplification. It was pretty inspiring. She (understandably) wasn't up for an interview after all that.

Wednesday I spent at Cafe Du Nord / The Swedish American Hall (the Swedish is upstairs from Du Nord, so it's easy to go up and down). Britt Daniel from Spoon played a solo show upstairs, with Laura Veirs, Martyn Leaper, and Meric Long opening (Meric was esp. good), and Tommy Guerrero was downstairs. Jason and I got a fun interview outside with Martyn, who was a really good sport, and then I interviewed Britt upstairs, with way too many people trying to watch/get in on it. He had me kick out over half the people in the room (don't blame him, it was ridiculous), and then I tried my best to get him to relax so we could get a good interview on tape... I think we did pretty well. :) It's really different to interview someone with a crew behind you and film and everything than it is when it's just you, them, and a little microphone and recorder. I interviewed Tommy Guerrero later on, when I was awfully drunk and probably shouldn't have, but once again, the background noise was so loud that I doubt it came out well enough to be usable. Ah well.

Thursday was my first night of crazy running around... I started at Bimbo's, where Rogue Wave and Aqueduct were playing. I got to see one Scrabbel song and one Octopus Project song between interviewing Rogue Wave and Aqueduct for the station. I then had to run, which made me sad, cuz I love Rogue Wave, and they won't be playing again for a long time due to various troubles. :( I hopped in my car and drove super fast to The Independent, where The National and Mark Eitzel were playing. I did a quick interview with a very sick Matt from the National, said hi to Mark, and left without seeing anyone perform, because I wanted to get to Bottom of the Hill in time to see Loquat. I missed them, but my zipping about ensured that I got to see all of +/-'s set, which made me happy, because they played a bunch of new songs, and I missed them entirely at SXSW (mostly because I planned on catching them at Noise Pop). Her Space Holiday was also good, except when Marc had some friend of his go and perform a couple of songs (as an "intermission"), and he sucked. Oops. We got a kinda crappy documentary interview with +/- (the sucky guy kept walking in and in front of the camera and then going to the backstage bathroom, which you can hear *everything* that's going on when you're in the backstage room, ugh), but I managed to get a better audio interview with them later for the station. I also got a quick interview with Loquat, and one with Her Space Holiday, so I felt pretty satisfied at the end of the night. After everyone left the bar, I was hanging out with all my friends that work there (I live just a block away and go there too often...), and they locked the doors, and we started drinking whiskey. Oy. I barely stumbled home an hour later, and really wasn't surprised at all when I woke up in the morning feeling a nasty cold coming on.

Friday, I felt like crap. Yeah, shocking. I didn't want to go to any shows, I sat on my sofa trying to will myself out the door... it took a while. I finally made it up and out, and got to Bimbo's in time to see the Silversun Pickups, who I love (and damn, they sounded good at Bimbo's. Altho I kept hearing people comparing them to Radiohead, which I just don't get.) I stuck around for one Two Gallants song, before I left to head down to the Independent to see We Are Scientists. Unfortunately, I got there too early, and had to sit through half of Foreign Born's set. Damn, but they bore me to tears. We Are Scientists finally went on, and I ran into a couple of old friends that I hadn't been expecting to see, which made the show all the better. I heard some people say that they were a bit disappointed by it, but I wasn't at all. I got a quick audio interview with them afterwards, and they were really funny.

Saturday, I had my Indie Pop Rocks! Happy Hour show, as part of the Noise Pop Festival, at Thee Parkside. I went down to the Parkside at 2:30, because I'd told the bands to come at 3-3:30 to soundcheck (as instructed by the Parkside folks), only to discover a band's gear all set up on the stage, and a private party in progress. WTF? I complained until the bartenders talked to the band and convinced them to go on early, and then I stuck around until the Pale Pacific and the Invisible Cities had shown up to let them know they should just go get something to eat or something because they couldn't even soundcheck until after 4:30 (and Invisible Cities was supposed to go on at 5, ugh.) It all worked out fine, though, and the Invisible Cities managed to get on by 5:30... plenty of time to play almost an hour-long set, before the Pale Pacific went on at 7. Both bands played *fantastic* sets... and sounded really good, which is HARD to do at the Parkside. The Pale Pacific especially just floored me, they played so well. I had so many people come up to me and tell me how great they were, how talented they were, and how it was the best Noise Pop show they'd seen all week, I was just glowing with pride for them. (BIG THANKS to everyone who came to the show!) After about twenty hugs, I finally got in my car with Robbie (another documentary guy & friend), and we ran off to the Great American Music Hall, because the Velvet Teen and Xiu Xiu were playing. We got there just as Minipop finished their set (dammit, I love Minipop). The Velvet Teen played a really great set... it was good to see them again, it'd been a while for me... and it sounded good, there, too, which is hard with them (I think of all the times I've seen them, the sound was only good one other time). They played some new songs from their upcoming record, too (yay!). We then went downstairs, and chatted with one of the guys from Minipop for ages (I was really quite drunk at this point, having started drinking at the Parkside at 3ish when i was all stressed out and cranky... oops), and then we were supposed to interview the Velvet Teen, but the guys were always missing or the camera was missing, and finally we decided to just do an audio interview with Judah, who by then was *wasted*... it was probably the most depressing interview I've ever done. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. It might just have to go unused. Robbie and I decided to leave and see if Wolfmother was done at Bottom of the Hill yet... which they were, but only just. We walked in, and one of the camera guys told me that Lars Ulrich was upstairs/backstage, and that he'd told him he'd do an interview, but he couldn't get back there to do it (Wolfmother's manager was being a pain in the ass, and we didn't have signoff yet). So I went back, walked up to Lars, and started talking to him. I had just managed to talk him and the main Wolfmother guy in to doing an interview together, and they were just signing the paperwork, when the camera guy came back. (Seems Jason saw the manager come down, and as soon as his back was to him, sent the camera guy up, heh!) So we got a drunk Lars interviewing Wolfmother, and then me interviewing both of them. What an unexpected end-of-the-night bonus!

Sunday, I woke up feeling like complete crap. My cold had completely settled in, and all the alcohol and cigarettes had not helped one bit. Jason and I made our way down to the kids day show at Du Nord (featuring Smoosh and Two Seconds), where I nursed a beer for hours and sat and had very minimal conversations with the friends that were there. After Jason interviewed Smoosh, and then we left, and we both decided we were too sick and too tired to go to Vetiver that night, so we went home. I rented a movie, lit a fire, and had a cat pile on me all night. It was the perfect end to Noise Pop, cuz I was Noise-Pooped, as my friend Jeanne would say.