The first day of South by Southwest offered up a lot of folks in corpse paint and people with dressed-up dogs. However, nothing really sums it up like the photo here.

Elsewhere, Greg Ashley of Gris Gris debuted his Medicine Fuck Dream Road Show at Club de Ville with Brian Glaze and friends on various instruments. And it smoked. Ashley's new solo album, Painted Garden, trumps his last, and he's playing a bazillion places this week, so go see him fer the lovva God.

Anyone else notice guys in bands are now dressing like something out of Oliver Twist?

Like Iron Maiden and Megadeth before them, Atlanta’s Mastodon spew epically proportioned tales led by the spiraling twin guitars of Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher, filled with the buzz-saw drumming of Brann Dailor. Bassist Troy Sanders recently ventured Into the Void to unravel the band’s latest saga, Blood Mountain, and explain the difference between ligers and cysquatches. Catch them 8pm Saturday, March 17, when they wreck Auditorium Shores.

Into the Void: The first song on Blood Mountain, “The Wolf Is Loose,” begins in “The belly of the whale/Refusal of return.” In what way is the story that is interwoven throughout this album a metaphor for the band’s struggle to write a follow-up to Leviathan and about the writing process in general?
Troy Sanders: It’s just the next step. Even though we found out several months ago where we stood, at the base of the next mountain so to speak, things had been gradually ascending for our band. We’re still at the footstep of a giant slab of Mother Nature that we’re trying to scale. The struggle and quest on Blood Mountain is completely metaphorical to our true life journey, struggle, and sacrifice to achieve our goals, to the new record, to our new marriage with Warner Brothers, to the next year and a half of touring, to many things.

I just discovered I was attacked by John Conquest in the March issue of his monthly bird cage liner, 3rd Coast Music. Getting a late jump into the fray that was caused by my Mandy Mercier review, he’s thrilled to call me a "wanker." Typical of Conquest’s nonsense, he even complains about a positive David Rodriguez review that ran in December. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t favorable enough. Then he runs the full attack quote that Freddie Krc came up with after the Mercier review about what I imagine myself to be, which was semifunny, only if you knew that I’ve never had any aspirations of being a musician or a songwriter. In reality, a concept Conquest has never been familiar with, the only things I can imagine today are that Conquest’s brain is flea-sized, that Krc will take the hint and buy a vowel, and that maybe some day Mercier will make some music worth hearing.

Sure, there’s that festival coming up, but this weekend allows one big local lick of the underbelly. Flip off those soccer mom-i-vans with the Keep Austin Weird bumpers stickers on your way to Salvation Pizza for the Noise by No Wave Musick Fest. Midori Umi, Primordial Undermind, Low Red Center, and the Devil Bat rock Friday night; Rotten Piece, Stephen Marsh, and the supremely bizarre Night Viking take over Saturday. The return of headliners Order of the Crimson Owl will no doubt involve some sort of ritual sacrifice. One of their spokespeople provided this potential situation of mass destruction:

“Shortly after the beast appears with an actual pig fetus, all hell breaks loose. The strobe light illuminates the owl and a struggle ensues between the beast and the ordained one. He slays the beast and evil is conquered by evil for no apparent reason.”

Dorkbot takes place Saturday at Brush Square Park off Fifth and Neches, a circuitous festival of hackers, junkers, robot makers, and singing tesla coils. You might even meet your soul mate and become the human masters of a new robot race.

If you’re still ready to rage, then head downtown Sunday night for the annual Yeast by Sweet Beast experimental soiree at Plush. The lineup boasts headliners A Pink Cloud, featuring members of Rusted Shut, Helios Creed, and one former Pain Teen. It also goes down Monday night with headliners Aurora Plastics Company, Moray Eels, Chromosome Damage, and many more. And if you stand on the corner of Red River and Seventh at just the right moment, you can almost smell the vomit.

If you have ghosts, Roky Erickson once posited, then you have everything.

I’m borrowing that lyric as the title for this bloggerly endeavor because we’ll be talking a lot about the ghosts of music’s past here – particularly the obscurities and curiosities that never got their due the first time around – along with an ephemeral frosting of everything else.

So let’s heat it and eat it, shall we?

Concord Music Group’s reactivation of Stax Records hits jamming speed Thursday night when Isaac Hayes, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, and Booker T & the MGs roll into town for the “Stax 50” SXSW showcase at Antone’s. It’s a shame Johnnie Taylor won’t be there with them.

Taylor died of a heart attack at Dallas’ Methodist Charlton Hospital in 2000 at age 62. Although he was born in Crawfordsville, Ark., Taylor lived in the Dallas area for many years and was a DJ on Soul 73 KKDA-AM. In Texas, that’s more than enough to claim an artist as our own.

You could see Anthony Kiedis standing some 20 feet below the wide, flat, uncluttered stage, watching, waiting, less for his entrance cue than out of a sincere curiosity in what his three bandmates were gonna come up with last night.

Flea, in a purple Lakers jersey, stage right, prowled 'round his space, mostly looking back at drummer Chad Smith, who was rattling his drums awake. John Frusciante stood at the lip of the stage, tap-dancing gingerly across a sidewalk-long pedal board. Everything working, he needled his guitar a bit before turning back toward the drum riser where waited Flea, with his bass cocked toward the cavernous AT&T Center ceiling. Championship Spurs banners stood their ground. San Antonio screamed.

For the past two years during South by Southwest, I’ve made it a point to stumble into Room 710, the void where the Relapse Records showcase goes to die, to catch Cephalic Carnage’s piss and grunt routine. It wasn’t the grindcore innovators’ neck-breaker Anomalies that intrigued me at the time but the prospect of finding suit-and-ties huddled in a corner together, fumbling with their BlackBerrys, and deciding whether or not to lift their devil horns in salute. I was seeking confrontation, a turf war, the battle between “us” and “them” that unites all metalheads beneath proud flags of Iron Maiden and Metallica.

Thankfully, such was not the case. Both times the venue was practically empty, save for some hardcore fans who formed a small pit, giving me a much-needed opportunity to get primitive. This is exactly why SXSW is a blessing in disguise for metal fans. The music conference continues to attract some of the most renowned acts in the genre (see forthcoming interviews with Boris and Mastodon) and spotlight-deserving local talent (see next week’s Into the Void for more), allowing for rare and occasionally intimate performances while the rest of the industry chases the next Tapes 'n Tapes and the dudes who normally pick fights at shows are stuck at home.

That said, here’s a quick look at how this year’s festival will paint things black.

The general view is that South by Southwest remains a kid's game in search of the Next Big Thing. It's just as likely, however, that there are some oldsters participating, hoping to use the event as a springboard to jump-start their career or get in front of some tastemakers who will take the buzz home with them.

Nearly every genre is represented: Sixties stars like Sam the Sham, Terry Reid, Chip "Wild Thing" Taylor, and Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las; punk godfathers the Stooges; folk and country queens like Pam Tillis, Eliza Gilkyson, and Paula Cole; Seventies punk remnants the Buzzcocks, plus the Hoodoo Gurus, the Saints, and Beasts of Bourbon, all from Down Under; Eighties band leaders gone solo like Peter Case (Plimsouls), John Doe (X), Hugh Cornwell (Stranglers), and Bob Mould (Hüsker Dü, Sugar). And in the maelstrom of more than 1,000 acts with names like When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, they may be overlooked by the younger set.

Gone are the days where you'd get up early, hit a couple of day parties, and then stay out past closing time, seeing 15 or more bands in a day. Now it's eat a good meal or two, see a new band your friend from out of town recommended, stop by the Yard Dog for a beer, and make sure you get to a venue early enough to get a seat. A couple of rare appearances worth seeing, seating permitted: Jandek, Peter Holsapple & Chris Stamey (a tease of the dB's reunion), and Public Enemy.

People love to worry – live to worry. It’s innate.

Last year, Feb. 26, they worried that Sigur Rós at Bass Concert Hall would be too … staid. Too controlled. Neutralized, compromised. That UT’s grand-sound cathedral, last bastion of symphonic and classical coagulation, would somehow suck the life out of Iceland’s snowcapped instrumental amalgam. Melt their glacial grandeur. If a show's seated, it must be a snoozer - waking hell for the somnambulant. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. In that environment – no smoking, no drinking, no talking, nothing but sitting and paying attention, listening – experiencing Jon Thor Birgisson lead his crew through unexplored galaxies of guitar was like witnessing Roger Waters tear down the wall.

Explosions in the Sky last night, at UT’s Hogg Auditorium, was no less a natural wonder.