The Mutaytor - 3/16/06 - SXSW

a plane of rockstars and texas ranch owners, some complete with feathers in their ten gallon hats and suspected drawls. suze q, atom, victor, roo and buck sit opposite us and the rockstar antics are aplenty, pillow fights between aisles, random cow sounds. i haven’t stopped laughing since i woke up. i am also now in love with shaved black pomeranean dogs such as ‘boo’, the little bear cub thing that resides at porn and theresa’s house, our austin crashpad. we have family in every city, it seems… a family truly… roo buys me medicine, kj showers while i brush my teeth, clothes and tools are borrowed, the boys make bacon to rouse the others. we share grapefruit and blow up air mattresses all around the mighty grid of reason and order, the schedule that tells us the where, when and how of our travels and rockening, the measurements of stages, directions from home to crashpad to club and back, flyer images and timelines. brady and i find our way into closets and garages to make our crashpad nests. bedrooms are much coveted communal resting quarters. closets assure quiet. thursday’s show was at the ‘fox & hound’ in downtown austin, a very rock n roll place in an endless pub crawl of a town. standard red and blue lighting in the parking lot, humidity and ice chests making stains on the pavement. the sxsw festival had thousands of people in the streets going from pub to pub in search of new music to hear, to sign… a bunch of industry people and bands that flew from all over the world to be heard. 8pm hits and kid b rocks out… i stand in the back and watch people laugh in wonder at this man’s talent, a common premature reaction before they start losing their minds and jumping mad… bartenders stop in mid pour and smile thinking the sounds from kid b’s mouth must be some hoax… they look around and i smile… nope, it’s all live looping from our favorite beatbox freak. then mutaytor goes on… roo’s mom is in the audience sweating and cheering~ i put my arms around her and then continue on my mad search for new angles and full spectrum coverage… as soon as their set ended, i grabbed my gear for my next show… i showed up at ‘stubbs’ to shoot the dresden dolls just after beastie boys did an impromptu set there. i heard people talking about it on the streets and quickened my step in anticipation only to hear another band had taken the stage and i’d missed it… half hour til showtime, i wandered around the outside of the club, thru the crowd heading to various places and i saw brian from the dolls with emily the tour manager. happy to see friendly familiar faces, i blew them a kiss and went to the gate to collect my photo pass. i was escorted backstage where i went thru a rustic wood door to a courtyard… amanda was there in dim light under a tree alone. we hugged big three times and cuddled… “LOOK! STRIPEYS!!” i said and we made an X with our stripey legs. brian banged on couch leather. amanda stretched and i slipped out to scope out angles and trouble. various layers of caution tape led to a perfect spot overlooking the crowd, the stage, all of it. hesitation being the work of the devil, i shot a quick look left, right, a feigned whistle and up i went under the tape, popped in my lens, crouched down and the show began. 30 seconds into the first song and a tap on the shoulder. i point to my vip pass sticker on my shoulder, assure him it’s kewl and my busy clicky clicky made him go away finally. exhausting that angle i jump down, sift thru the crowd low, security is rough, the don’t want to let me into the photo pit. i climb onstage eventually, perching stage right and watch one of my favorite bands rock out just feet from me with an audience out as far as the eye can see. quick hugs backstage after the show as i head to rush to another stage. they were wiping sweat and make up from their tired faces. dates in japan and illness… we speak the same language of ‘too-busy-living-dreams-to-tailor-schedules-to-rebelling-human-suits’. on the way i meet up with brady who had been watching a band from norway called ‘hurra torpedo’, an industrial spinal tap, a junk circus… brady enthusiastically reenacted his favorite parts of that show, pretending to slam freezer doors as a kick drum and wail on laundry machines singing ‘total eclipse of the heart’ in a norwegian accent. they ended their set by saying “you were great. we were ah-sem!” which soon became the most recounted mutaytor slogan of the week. back at fox & hound i found mutaynts either drunk and wild on stage with other bands or tired and appeasingly hanging out after load out. particle was playing and i snapped a few shots before i did something unusual… i just stopped, put my camera down, and had a conversation with someone… a guy that was a dj at the radio station i managed in nyc was there. small world indeed. he had just gotten into art school and i showed him how to be a dj. from there he also took my job after i left at ridley scott’s company… he still lives in nyc but was in texas with the norwegian spinal tap guys… it felt so amazing to just sit…and talk… even though a stage was occupied. i might try it again sometime… 4am we get back to the crashpad and retire to our closet… i slept dead til a bit after dawn still mildly fighting my obscure plague illness… tried to work on photos on my laptop but instead went to visit the pygmy goats outside and had tea… went back to sleep… then a jacuzzi … my life doesn’t get more rockstar than a morning of pygmy goats and a bubblebath reading the marquis de sade thru sunglasses surrounded by fancy sculpted bottles of various soaps, oils and candles… … then to the enchanted forest to set up for the next show… ksea’s energy was all over that place and i found myself walking all around that supernature, lost in thought and exhaustion, following paths and ducking branches to sit awhile and breathe alone… at night we had massive amounts of fire in the show that reflected in a creek. i sat on rocks and leaves in a packed audience and scanned people’s faces only to see my smile reflected in them, wondering if they see what i see when i look on that stage. ksea sent many sweet forest people to welcome me. hugs as messages… the forest soon turned crowded and our toiling lit by rope lights and chiggers proved difficult. another late night and back to the house. i woke up and chatted quietly in the kitchen for hours with porn… about his childhood, about his rebelliousness-with-a-smile, about creativity… mostly about his awesome kids who were chiming in as i told them how much i respect the life he’s living… huge fancy house with skeletons and barn doors, a fun happy life, a solid burner family where the kids are used to many different kinds of people, very social and well-adjusted, playing sports and finding comfort in events and others… i just love this family… there is a one-eyed pitbull outside to guard the goats… they call her a pit-fish because she gets so excited when anyone comes to her that she wiggles her entire body like a fish. the goats, the pit-fish, beale street, the pedi-taxi, the dresden dolls, boo, the mutaynt laughter, the pillow fights on airplanes, the forest… just being somewhere as surreal as texas… it was just ah-sem… happy to be going home though… i’m tired… and i have 1,500 images i’m dying to tear into….