Three Grown Men

The amount of weirdness converging upon Austin this week for South by Southwest is too much for even a three-headed beast to devour. To better make sense of the insane scheduling, inescapable hype and impenetrable venues, Three Grown Men has adopted an alternative coverage strategy.

[All photos by Conor Kelley]

We compiled the list below to help us get our fill of bands, BBQ and booze. Maybe we’ll hunt down everything or maybe we’ll find nothing, but check Hidden Track every day at 1PM ET to join us on our exploits. You can also follow us on Twitter, and friend us on Facebook for all-day coverage. From March 15-20 we are SXSW scavengers.

• Find the youngest band
• Find five bands that don’t suck from five different countries
• Find the best street musician
• Find a famous person in a band
• Find a great funk band
• Find the best brisket in Austin
• Find the best singer/songwriter
• Find the prettiest guitar in Austin
• Find the drunkest dude at SXSW

READ ON for more of 3GM’s South by Southwest Scavenger List…

Seeing Soulive last Friday at Brooklyn Bowl during their 10-night run got us thinking about what a force the band is in the world of live music. Soulive appeals to the old and young, black and white, jazz-nut and hip-hop fan alike. We danced our asses off and left Brooklyn satisfied at 2:30AM. Below are our musings on the history of the funk/jazz trio and why 3GM officially dubs them NYC’s band, along with photos from the all-star lineup that took the stage last Friday, including Robert Randolph, Living Colour singer, Corey Glover, and many others. (Photos and captions by Conor Kelley)

[Legendary frontman Corey Glover (Living Colour) channeled his ’60s idols for an unforgettable guest performance, backed by the best possible soul/funk lineup going right now.]

Jonathan Kosakow on Soulive’s history:

My God, has it been 12 years already? I still remember rocking out to Get Down and Turn It Out like it was yesterday, driving my car through the twists and turns of Connecticut back roads, smacking the steering wheel and the dashboard along with Alan Evans’ drums and practically skidding off the road into the reservoir because Kraz was just wailing, man. Actually, wait, that does feel like 12 years ago, but those moments are still very much in my memory.

[Kraz shows pretty clearly that this was the highest-energy performance of Bowlive II so far and everyone in the house knew it.]

Another time, a friend and I were driving home from the Waterloo Village Music Festival in Jersey, sometime around 2001 or 2002, and needed some solid music to keep us awake through the stench of I-95 at two in the morning. We had just gotten through Medeski Martin & Wood’s Combustication and wanted to keep the groove going, so we put on Turn It Out, Soulive’s second release and first live album. Immediately, we knew something was missing: after the fullness, exploration, and ultimate groove of MMW, Soulive just wasn’t what we were looking for. The talent was there, but something else was missing. My friend ejected the disc and put on Slip Stitch & Pass, a never-fail. I was devastated. I loved Soulive, and I still do, but I had to concede defeat.

I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing until last March when I saw them absolutely destroy the Brooklyn Bowl during the first annual Bowlive.

READ ON for more from 3GM on why Soulive is NYC’s band…

The proper use of popular music in films is a delicate thing. Good music makes everything better and movies are no exception. It’s the reason why a subway ride or walk in the park seems almost cinematic when our headphones are in. However, a good song can easily be a crutch for a bad scene to lean on. The best placements of recognizable songs will supplement a visually arresting moment in a plot rather than distract the audience from it.

We enlisted the help of 3GM friend Kevin Coyle and started compiling a list of our all-time favorite “popular music + movie scene” combinations. We quickly noticed that two names kept popping up: Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. These two men have become masters of cinema by drawing heavily on pop culture to create poignant moments. Having acknowledged that, we decided to leave them off our list entirely to make room for some of the more forgotten scenes that we love. Here is our list…

Movie: Boogie Nights (1997)
Song: Jessie’s Girl – Rick Springfield/99 Luft Balloons – Nena

This is, plain and simple, one of the best movie scenes of all time. It was the moment where Paul Thomas Anderson became an original filmmaker with distinctive style. The performances are all spot-on and the tension is palpable. PTA’s choice to use these ’80s pop classics instead of a traditional film score during this overwrought drug-deal-gone-wrong is the key ingredient in creating the scene’s uneasy yet engaging feeling.

READ ON for 14 more perfectly placed tunes in movies…

With Three Grown Men’s coverage of next month’s South by Southwest Festival quickly approaching, we decided to peruse the list of the hundreds of bands being showcased to weed out the acts we want to catch while in Austin. The alphabetical list of featured bands on the festival’s website is more than slightly daunting. What we discovered is, about 90% of the featured acts are brand new to us and lots of the band names are completely off the wall and ridiculous. 3GM decided to do an experiment in which we tried to guess what some of these bands would sound like based solely on their moniker and then actually listened to them. Take a look…

Jonathan Kosakow

Band name: Butts

What I think they’ll sound like: The simple and immature absurdity of this band name speaks to me in a way that not many things speak to me. And, it doesn’t hurt that when the band’s biography contains this sentence: “What started as a joke soon turned into something bigger as Butts exploded all over the place.” I’m going to wager a guess and say that Butts isn’t much more than a drummer farting on his snare and a fat man in a tight t-shirt jiggling across a tiny stage.

What they actually sound like: Two chicks – at least I think they’re both chicks – singing about being out of toilet paper over distorted guitar. I’m going to give myself half a point on this one.

READ ON to see how 3GM did identifying the music of SXSW artists Cheeseburger, Yiddish Cowboys, Fat Pimp and more…

February has been a month of heartache for music fans as breakups and rumors of breakups abound. First, the White Stripes amicably quit their courtship, then LCD Soundsystem announced they’d play their last show in April and there was even a rumor about the Gorillaz calling it quits at the top of their game. All of the tragedy aside, 3GM found it strange that these breakups, whether rumored or true, were uncharacteristically harmonious.

Conor Kelley on LCD Soundsystem:

It’s better to burn out than to fade away.

What could be more rock and roll than following through with that line? Although Neil Young is way past the age where he can burn out, and his new work shows absolutely no signs of fading into insignificance, his lyric is still a tried and true adage of the musician lifestyle. Going out while on top almost ensures a legendary reputation in the rock and roll record books.  It’s the George Costanza theory about leaving on a high note, and it works like a charm.

In the ’60s and 70s people would rarely leave the game by choice. It was mostly at the hand of drug overdoses (Hendrix), alcoholism (Joplin),  french hookers and baguettes (Morrison) or the occasional peach truck (Allman). These days people are hanging up their guitars for a different reason entirely: they see a project’s creative end in sight and walk away before it becomes stale. READ ON for more of this week’s Three Grown Men column…

With tonight’s premiere of American Idol – Season 10, we  will surely be finding something else to do. However, this season’s opener puts one of music’s biggest names in the judge’s seat. Steven Tyler has been in the spotlight for almost 40 years. He’s best known for his lips, his colorful scarves and a parade of hit songs that became radio staples. So is it any surprise that he’s joining American Idol?  Here’s what Three Grown Men have to say…

Kevin Smallwood:

Let’s be honest and call a spade a spade: Aerosmith has never been a cool band. They are like the jean jacket of the music industry. And like the jean jacket, they occasionally experience a cultural revival that is little more than a rehashing of novelty and nostalgia.

When this sort of sad decline takes place, you’ll often see either one of two things: 1. the lead singer will gracefully accept that his time in “that” spotlight is over and move on to other projects, good or bad (see: Robert Plant) or 2.  The lead singer will desperately cling to his fame by fighting his former band-mates, suing them and taking their songs on tour with a new band (see: Roger Waters, John Fogerty).

These are the generally accepted principles of aging classic rock stars. And Steven Tyler is not a classic rock star; Aerosmith may technically dip their toe in the classic rock genre because of Dream On and Sweet Emotion – but the majority of their career was spent on MTV with big hair and spandex pants.

READ ON for more of 3GM’s take on Steven Tyler…