Luv Doc Recommends: Hunter Darby Presents SXSW Showcase

SXSW runs until Sunday. Seriously. No shit. So if you get rat-assed retarded at the Vanilla Ice showcase on Saturday night thinking that the turd is in the SXSW swimming pool, think again. This soiree’s just getting started. Wird to ya mutha. Not only are there several hundred awesome after-parties you’re not invited to (you know the kind with really great food, bottles of Dom, and the record company’s name spelled out in cocaine on the coffee table), there are also the more private, hotel room affairs: just you and Ice chillin’, smoking crack, and watching a worn out VHS copy of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze. As Ice will tell you, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over, WTYM. What goes up must come down. Ride a painted pony. All that shit, yo. Thing is, just because Vanilla ain’t stilla bankin’ mad scrilla, doesn’t mean he ain’t illa. Hate on him if you want to, but you have to give Ice credit for dusting his ass off and jumping back into the frey. He could have retired at the peak of his game - well, maybe, if Suge hadn’t threatened to throw him off that balcony. In his own inimitably smarmy style, Vanilla Ice pioneered the way for other famous, wealthy white rappers like Eminem and Ali G. Only time will tell, but perhaps fifty or sixty years hence, when the teary eyed tandem of Dusti Rain and Keelee Breeze Van Winkle pimp across the stage to accept their father’s posthumous Lifetime Achievement Grammy, the ‘nilla will get the Respek he deserves. Or, maybe the only thing left to mark his blip on the music history radar will be some hoary old octogenarian Vanilla Ice impersonator…ice ice baby, too old. Will tribute bands still be hot come mid-century? Hard to tell, but here in Austin in the oughts, tribute bands are the shizzy yo, and Sunday night, just about the time you’re sick of hearing original music, Hunter Darby has put together a full night of cover over at Emo’s featuring the Diamond Smugglers, Austin’s world-famous Neil Diamond tribute band, Pudge Zeppelin, a bunch of fat guys channeling Zep, Big Balls, an AC/DC styled outfit; The Eggmen, a disturbingly accurate facsimile of the fab four, and the Dung Beatles, a scatological tribute band from Colonpool, Texas. If they can’t drop a turd in the swimming pool of SXSW, no one can.