Austin Music Hall, April 9

Even though a crowd of 1,200-1,500 makes the Austin Music Hall look like Sixth Street on a Monday night -- practically deserted -- it's still a throng that at Liberty Lunch would have fire marshals going Keystone crazy. And they were there to see Tesla, no less, a metal band that not only peaked 10 years ago with their debut, Mechanical Resonance, but also was quite literally at ground zero when alternative music exploded because they shared a label with Nirvana. And it wasn't just a $5 cover at Babes or a $10 ticket at the Back Room. It was the full arena $20 -- plus some. But they were there, all right, and this was no stand-with-your-arms-crossed, art-rock pussy crowd at the Electric Lounge. This was a metal crowd, loud and proud -- demonstrative in a way that's not cool at Emo's. They came to rock, and rock they did, moreso than the band, really, which isn't to say the Sacramento quartet didn't try. They did. In fact, from Jeff Keith's androgynous frontman moves, and Frank Hannon's Flying V guitar, down to bassist Brian Wheat's UFO T-shirt, Tesla had it all down: a set anchored in that first album, and enough hits to remind just how much of an AOR radio staple this band was not six years ago. An hour into things, they even broke down into their famed "five-man acoustical jam" (well, four, now that guitarist Tommy Skeoch is gone), looking and sounding very Black Crowes, especially during the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Unfortunately, the band desperately misses a second guitarist, and, with a show clocking in at over two hours, they played a half hour too long. And we won't even go into the fact that most Emo's bands have more firepower and attitude in their $2 production than Tesla does in their lower-scale spectacle, because the truth is that not one metal moll or her man minded. In their hearts, minds, and wallets, metal lives. See you at the Kiss reunion.
-- Raoul Hernandez

Emo's, April 12

A tour with the Spinanes is usually not the best time for your bass amp to go out; when it happened to Versus' Fontaine Toups after "Deseret," their whisper-to-a-scream opening song, she asked to use another bass amp, and someone to my left murmured what I was thinking: "The Spinanes don't have a bass amp." But this tour was different, because the Spinanes' latest album, Strand, integrates bass into the duo's tightly woven web of guitar and drums, and to replicate the more-layered sound, they were touring as a two-guitar, bass/keyboard, and drums quartet. So, potential disaster was avoided, Toups apologized, and Versus uncoiled their intricate variations on soft-and-loud dynamics. Guitarist Richard Baluyut spun out a carefully articulated mix of fine-woven janglings and fierce rocket bursts, and was helped along by a second guitarist (this apparently being the "Expand On Your Lineup" Tour) who filled out the sound nicely and unobtrusively. The crowd, low-energy and collegiate-looking, swayed along to songs a lot of them seemed to know. The Spinanes, for their part, started sparse -- just Rebecca Gates and Scott Plouf on the cymbal-heavy and aching "Madding" -- and built in intensity from there. The auxiliary musicians, who clamored on stage halfway through the set, swelled the sound considerably, making Gates a frontwoman for a pretty great pop band. Yet the most compelling facet of their music is how hard Gates and Plouf have to work -- Gates running low notes against simultaneous chords, Plouf hammering out propulsive gallops -- to fill in all the spaces. They seem to know it, too. For the encore, they stripped back down to a duo, played the choppy "Manos," and then Plouf left, leaving Gates to wind down with the wistful, wispy "Entire," closing out a set of well-placed passages and witty banter. Sometimes, it's just better to rock smart than rock out.
-- Phil West

Texas Union Ballroom, April 11

Speech. Solo. What was meant to describe The Artist Formerly With Arrested Development nearly described the crowd instead. Perhaps a glimpse at the past of "alternative rap" lured the 20 people who bought tickets, although a last-ditch campus crusade by the show's organizers to give away tickets and save a blow to Speech's ego also failed to create a crowd any bigger than your average White Rabbit affair -- fitting, since much of the overworked funk of Speech's set felt a lot like Average White Band leftovers. And yet the problem wasn't so much Speech himself, who, to his credit, worked the scant gathering with the same "Jump!" and "Everybody scream!" charges he used to better effect on the Lollapalooza masses. The problem is that Arrested Delvelopment's 1992 multi-platinum debut has given rise to a truly alternative hip hop class (The Fugees, Spearhead, and the Roots), who emerged by mixing AD's positive rhymes and live instrumentation with less pretense and more soul. So now, Speech's live problems are compounded not only by the low material-recognition factor offered by the dismal sales of Zingalamaduni, the unpronounceable and unbought second and last AD effort, and his recent self-titled solo debut, but also by the surprising obviousness of just how antiquated Arrested Development's retro-hits now seem. Worst of all, the few old numbers that did work -- a more urgent "People Everyday," a slinkier "Raining Revolution," and the dancehall "Revolution" remix -- were too often sandwiched by lackluster solo Speech, much of which managed to come across even more clunky and funkless than the downright disappointing duo of dated AD anthems, "Tennessee" and "Mr. Wendall." By the end, the most interesting focus point may have been AD's leftover "Life Music" banner hanging behind the stage, which, just as "Mr. Wendall" was decaying musically, I'd swear had begun to read something much more fitting: "Half-Life Music"
-- Andy Langer

Sixth Street/Auditorium Shores, April 13

Auditorium Shores, April 14

It's beginning to smell a lot like festival season. Meaning, Sixth Street alleys begin sporting the distinctive stench of piss and vomit, though an alley stroll while looking for an entrance to the new Sixth Street home of Spamarama smelled more like heat-rotted Spam. A 1:30pm visit and $5 street walking fee yielded no Spam sports, no music, a slew of officially licensed and Hormel-approved apparel vendors, and a dozen or so beer vendors happy with a fenced-in market. And so what was once cheap fun at the Cedar Door parking lot managed here to be painfully overblown without any additional substance, lining up the bulk of the minuscule crowd for a crawling tour of a 60-foot Spam tent of bad pun foodstuff that's funny only at your virgin Spamarama outing (Green Eggs and Spam, Spam Benedict, Spamish Rice.) Only in Austin would they close a public throughway and charge people to partake in a celebration of a faux ham product, when a public park is, at the same time, hosting a sports/music event that's absolutely free. The ESPN sponsored X-Games Roadshow at Auditorium Shores smelled too, most likely from the vomit of festival-hoppers loading up on Spam and proceeding to skateboard, climb the rock wall, and bungee in 90-degree heat. Fortunately, ESPN provided an environment as flashy as the channel itself, with chewing gum, soft drink, and sporting good sponsors handing out enough swag so you couldn't help walking away profiting. The skate games themselves looked fairly safe, but one of the unexpected casualties looked to be Sincola's collective hands after a post-gig autograph session in the MusicLand tent. Equally good promotional experience was Prescott Curlywolf's stellar set, the kind of day-time wank `n' thank they'll need to break their Mercury debut, 6ix Ways To Sunday. The same venue reeked the next day too, for the Bob Marley fest. First, I thought the stench originated with the blunt `n' bong crowd, but as I made my way towards the stage I realized it was just the bad Rasta Robert Plant shtick of noted reggae performer Lisa Tingle. Still a bargain with only a suggested cover of two canned food items, the Marley Fest was clearly the weekend's best-attended event; the great spring weather probably accounting for the turnout rather than musical talent. In fact, by the time Natalie, a San Antonio artist described by the emcee as "the future of reggae," finished her Karaoke take on TLC's "Waterfalls," I was about ready to storm the box office and ask for my food back, thinking my Spam donation deserved a home with better entertainment. -- Andy Langer