Doug Van Pelt

SXSW.08.05

Tuesday was a pleasant day. I went to an artist roundtable, where the room full of us talked about the line between good and evil, appropriate versus not, secular and sacred. Many film makers of faith were tossing the question about where to draw the line concerning content (profanity, nudity, etc). The concept of the Bible itself clearly being R or even NC-17 rated was brought up right away. The Song of Solomon, for example, is not really kiddie/Sunday School fare. It's all about context, was the consensus. The Bible has incredibly graphic violence and sex in its narrative and poetry, but it's in context.

Having fellowship with creative people and, I hesitate to say it, like-minded people, is always refreshing and edifying. Now, to clarify about the hesitation: there is great diversity in a room like that, but we're all endeavoring to fuse our faith with our art ... and THAT is the common ingredient that notches the edification factor up by 10.

Heavy Metal In Bagdad
This movie was an outstanding experience. Like many an indie film, it was an up-close and personal film that showed a rare glimpse of the Iraq War. It began with the director putting on a bullet-proof vest, underscoring the very real danger he faced making this documentary. Anyone speaking English on the street and anyone looking Western was a target over there with insurgents. Another early attention getter was the bombastic and thundering metal grooves and riffs raging through the sound system, cut in with real bombs and rockets going off. It was a metal video editor's dream come true, but it was perfectly contextualized with real footage. Nice.

The only metal band to exist in Iraq is called Acrassicauda. They're actually pretty good ... and darn powerful. Their lead guitar player, Tony, has feel and speed -- a great combination. The whole band has a real good sense of heavy groove. They don't want to be "a pretty good band for a bunch of Iraqi refugees, they want to be a good metal band, period." They are well on their way. I'd imagine that someone from the multi-million dollar tax bracket of Metallica would see this film and be moved to adopt them. The film makers (a guy from Vice Magazine, which one of our former interns from Canada has worked at for many years) tried to stay aware of the line of separation between the filmmaker and its subjects, but they crossed it and helped the band record a 3-song demo after they'd fled to Syria (the same country that a family had fled to in another documentary I saw, Full Battle Rattle), as lots of Iraqui's are fleeing there every single day. The band is currently in Instanbul, Turkey.

Having the director present after the US Premiere screening was great, as usual. He dished out plenty of information. The band grew up and evolved in a musical/cultural bubble, influenced only by music they could get their hands on, which was obviously limited to bands like Slayer, etc. Anyone wanting to help the band can donate to a paypal fund, found at their website, heavymetalinbagdad.com, or their myspace page. This movie will have a limited theatrical run in May; followed by a DVD release in June. At one point in time, the director (Suroosh Alvi) said, "this generation in Iraq had a 100% literacy rate," which very few countries can say about its young people. That revelatory bit of information was interesting to hear in the Q&A afterwards. Many misconceptions about Iraq are blown to bits by this documentary. When asked if there were other film crews risking life and limb in Iraq, the director pointed to another film called Dreams Of Sparrows.

What was so amazing about the film was that it was a raw inside perspective of the Iraq War. These guys had interaction with the American forces shortly after the invasion, but relations made it dangerous to keep that kind of interaction later after the insurgents brought a full-blown civil war to the country. The point is that these guys are not anti-American. We see their hardship upclose and personal. Very insightful. As an artist of "Western style" music, they are not really embraced by their culture, though they'd get 300, 400, even 500 people to their shows, which have been very rare (about 6 in their 5-year history). At the end of the movie, one of the guys in the band unleashes a rant full of rage to his better-off metal comrades in the West, cursing at them for being able to turn a channel or switch off the hardship they deal with daily. It's quite an eye-popping film. Wow.





Daniel Lanois
I went over to this crazy new safar-type club to catch part of Daniel Lanois' set. It was super dreamy and atmospheric (surprise, surprise!), and sounded just great. Lots of pedal steel guitar and groove, complex yet laid back drumming.










Dan Dyer
I hustled about a mile away to see Dan Dyer play at Momo's, only to discover that they were operating on "Momo's time," which seems to be awfully late/behind (every time I go there, it seems). Another Southern Rock-ish/Blues driving band was onstage. I stared at the singer/guitarist, just making sure Dan had not gained considerable weight and grown over a foot of hair since I'd seen him last. I wrote a note to the doorman, asking him, "Where is Dan Dyer?" (wondering if the set had been cancelled or was running late). He wrote back on my pad of paper: "Red bandana, no pants." (laughter) I wasn't interested in finding him and talking to him (though I did bring some copies of the issue #110 that featured his "So & So Says" interview), and I wondered if he was going to perform semi-nude or something. Thankfully, that was not the case. Dyer and company did not take the stage until 12:50am, only 10 minutes from the start of Jon Foreman's set that I wanted to see about 1.5 miles away (gasp!). Frustration aside, he sounded good. Very different than the slicker sounds of his ...Of What Lies Beneath album (produced by Lenny Kravitz). This all sounded more stripped-down and sparse -- even spacing out some of the vocal phrasing. "Red Alert" started things off, which slightly altered lyrics, I think. The oboe added a nice vibe to the song, as did Dyer's acoustic guitar, electric guitar and drums. "Stereosonic" came next, which was also slower and spaced apart. A new song (I think) about sand castles was next. It had a nice groove, with electric bass instead of oboe. A guest female vocal (Suzanne Choffel) accompanied him also. I left after the fourth song, which was about "Playing On." Ironic twist.










Jon Foreman
Jon was in his element, telling stories, relaxed, joking around, and sounding just awesome vocally. I had heard that it was slightly rough at first, but the last 3 or 4 songs I heard were just spot-on and sounding real good -- high notes being hit with accuracy and feeling. A guy named Keith accompanied Jon (with acoustic guitar in hand) on oboe, making for a nice segue for my personal club hopping experience. I was surprised to hear him do "24" from his Switchfoot catalog. He explained that he'd written it the day before he turned 25.