chillville.com Blog

I know I met some Yahoo! people at South-By-Southwest’s Interactive conference last weekend, which may explain this article about how to cure the modern hangover running at their site this morning.

Or it may be sheer coincidence.

So I bumped into Amy Winehouse in the lobby of the Radisson waiting for our interview with West Indian Girl.  Seemed nice enough.  Then we did the deal with W.I.G. and Ms. W is still lingering.  So I go into stalkerazzi mode and see if she’ll grant us an audience. 

“I don’t think so. We’ve gotta stay on schedule, y’know.  Maybe next time, Love.”

In general, I take rejection poorly, but she did call my “love.”  Sweet.

So then Monty and I head out front, pretty much cussing her.  Schedule, my ass! 

Then, not two minutes later, she rolls out with big-ass security guys in tow and hops into an Escalade and rolls back into the bowels of downtown (establishing that A) she really was, seemingly, trying to be somewhere on time; and B)while she may be as big a diva/bitch as reported in the Brit press, I cannot in good conscience use this experience to perpetuate any of that.

My cell-phone started buzzing on the coffee table first thing this morning and it was Monty telling me to drive straight to my nearest Austin Chronicle stand and look at the results in the 2006 Austin Music Awards.  We did extremely well, taking second place in the category “radio music program,” and third place in the category “radio program.” 

I’m obviously proud of the show, and therefore pleased with our showing, but I’m going to need some time to process this.  Thanks to everyone who voted and who has supported Chillville along the way.

I actually took today off from conventioneering and took my wife and kids to Fiesta Texas.   Instead of describing that event in great detail, I’ll just send you back to the library to spend some time with Dante’s Divine Comedy.  Better yet, take the online test to figure out exxxxxaaaaaaactly which level of hell is most appropriate for you: Dante’s Inferno Test

OK, usually South-By-Southwest’s Film and Interactive conferences are mostly done by the time the good music rolls into town.  Sure, the film festival is still rolling, but my experience has been that it’s a real rarity to pull off the SXSW trifecta in a single night, but that’s pretty much what happened last night.  OK, technically the reunion by the Toadies wasn’t a sanctioned event, but I had been looking forward to it for awhile.  To get it all to work together was one of the more deft displays of power-conventioneering I’ve put on in a while.  Usually it’s a bit frustrating when things are scheduled opposite each other, but not last night.  I started off at the Paramount for the world premiere of Knocked Up, which is Judd Apatow’s follow-up to The 40-Year-Old Virgin (and which stars Paul Rudd and Grey’s Anatomy’s Katherine Heigl).  Sure, it’s formula fare, but it certainly has its fair share of gut-busters.  From there it was off to the Toadies, and on the way I stopped by a couple of Interactive events.  I was intrigued by this 20X2 event, where 20 celebrities rant and rave about a single topic for two minutes.  I walked into the Parish in time to hear Fastball’s Miles Zuniga riffing on the topic du jour:  ”What If?”  Then, still en route to the Toadies, I stumbled into the Ritz to catch about a bit of the Heather Gold show.  She’s a comedian from San Fran and the 15 minutes I watched were interesting and contained an explicit moment of inspiration (remind me to tell you about dude “jewing out”).  I finally made it down to Stubbs just in time to hear the kick-drum check for the Toadies.  Cold War Kids was (were?) playing over the P.A.  Can’t wait to see them this week.  Toadies were solid, if something short of spectacular.  I was a bit dismayed to see that original bass player Lisa Umbarger was not part of the reunion line-up.  They started with “Mister Love” and pretty much knocked out one great memorable song after another. It amazes me how many great songs these guys had (have).  Like I said, solid but unspectacular.  Songs aplenty were dutifully performed, and let’s be honest:  we ain’t got that many Toadies shows left in this lifetime.  (Remind me to tell you some time about taking Toadies into the first ever 101X music meeting back in 1995 and the response I got…lack thereof really.) ’Bout 50 minutes in, concluding my all-time fave “Tyler,” I had heard all my favorite Toadies songs expect for “Backslider” and “Possum Kingdom,” so I jetted back to the Paramount for the new film by Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation).  Oh man, that is some funny stuff.  Smiley Face is the first stoner movie I’ve seen that comes from the female perspective.  Niiiiiiice.

I’m a bit of a dork about all these interviews I hunt down at SXSW every year.  Today, though, may be the highlight of all time, as I inteviewed both Gregg Araki and John Sayles in the span of two hours today.   If I get hit by a bus on the way to my car, I can go a happy man.  OK, maybe overstating a bit there, but I do have immense respect for both these guys.  Audio posted soon (I hope).

If you heard Chronicle writer Darcie Stevens on the air this weekend talking SXSW, you can hear the whole spiel here in the AV Vault.  Darcie’s great and she really gets the kind of music we play on the show (and really, doesn’t “Darcie’s Dish” sound like a helluva name for a recurring feature on the show?)

Did I spell “spiel” correctly?