“They’re like every band in San Francisco right now,” smiled Jello Biafra dismissively.

He should know. No one canvassed the musical talent more thoroughly at by:Larm this past weekend in Oslo than the decade-old Norwegian music festival’s 2008 keynote speaker, who was everywhere, and always down front. He sang the praises of Oslo’s coastal neighbor, Bergen, but three young Finnish girls Ramonesing the “Blitzkrieg Bop” just weren’t melting the arctic circle off the professional raconteur’s Dead Kennedys heart. Much better, he touted, were Norway’s Cyaneed, four women doing what Sleater-Kinney did in three. And convincingly so, Scandinavian so: blindingly blonde.

Stalingrad Cowgirls, though, as black (hair) and white (complexion) as early Joan Jett (open the photo gallery above), multiplied their exuberant power of three into something more universal: exploding heart youth. They made you ache high school in all its struggling nonconformity. Henna Vaarala, whose perfectly cut features recalled the dark queen of Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, split the difference on bass between sisters Enni and Riina Kivelä, frontwoman and backbeat respectively. Finland’s tiny town of Salla kisses polar extremes by mere kilometers in its Stalingrad Cowgirls. Sing it:

“We come from the land of the ice and snow, from the midnight sun where the hot springs blow….”

The KLRU studio is a calming oasis away from the chaos of South by Southwest. Following R.E.M.'s Austin City Limits taping on Thursday, March 13, Seattle's KEXP broadcasts live from the studio for the remainder of the weekend. Below is the schedule of performances, which are free and open to the general public.

As the first installment of my new (hopefully) monthly spotlight on a local band, I wanted to take a look at the new generation of outlaw country, the Moonhangers. The local threepiece moonlights as one of our favorite gritty blues bands Chili Cold Blood (see "Chili Cold Blood Loves You!" Dec. 23, 2005), but as the Moonhangers, Doug Strahan, Ethan Shaw, and Matt Puryear swap dirt and growl for astounding musicianship, classic songwriting, and lots of history. Their sophomore album, The Last of the New York Sessions (on the band's own Bloodchili Records), is a testament to traditional country filled to brimming with sweet pedal steel, intricate axe work, and Puryear's well-tended drumming. It was an instant classic in my mammoth collection. And if you were wondering, the album was recorded at Analog Convergence Studios on Austin's New York Avenue. It wouldn't make much sense for this level of Southern blood to flow from the North, anyhow. Guitarist/vocalist Strahan and pedal steel slider/bassist/vocalist Shaw indulged some of my curiosities and compared their two oh-so-different yet kindred bands via e-mail.

Shut Up: Which came first, Chili Cold Blood or the Moonhangers? Or did they evolve at the same time?
Ethan Shaw: CCB came first. Strahan and I met playing country gigs with other bands around town. We formed a band called the La Salles in 2000, which (long story short) morphed into CCB. We had CCB gig, playing pickup country gigs on the side for quite a few years, but CCB got busy, and we had to quit the other gigs and focus all of our time on the Cold Blood.
Doug Strahan: When we were focusing all of our time/energy on CCB, we realized that we needed to play country music in order to be happy – that in a way we were denying a side of ourselves by focusing strictly on CCB. So we started cooking up the Moonhangers.

This past Tuesday, No Depression editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock announced that the seminal bi-monthly magazine will cease publication following its 75th issue in May. Launching in September, 1995 with Son Volt on the cover, No Depression covered a spectrum of music unrivaled by any other national publication. While the magazine was born of the 1990s alt.country movement, its tagline of “surveying the past, present, and future of American music” spoke to the broad reach of its interest and helped define (and continually confound) the amorphous genre of Americana. It was a scope embodied in the name itself, alluding to both Uncle Tupelo’s 1990 debut album and the Carter Family’s “No Depression in Heaven.”

Folks seem to often forget that the Carter Family tune carries a double-edged irony. It’s generally taken as an inspirational tune, a “glory-be-to-the-over-yonder,” as it were. That’s certainly true, bound in the hopeful chorus of: “I'm going where there's no depression, to the lovely land that's free from care, I'll leave this world of toil and trouble, my home's in Heaven, I'm going there.” But the lyric that's always haunted me from “No Depression in Heaven,” even as the song cast its joyous promise of redemption as sanctuary from the misery and poverty of the 1930s, was the closing verse:

“This dark hour of midnight nearing, and tribulation time will come. The storms will hurl in midnight fear, and sweep lost millions to their doom.”

That is some straight up Appalachian backwoods fire and brimstone.

Following Doug Freeman’s article “A Market of Multitudes,” which discusses in great detail the new indieconomics of the Long Tail, Off the Record pulled together a few of Austin’s more established music retailers to address the changes that have been brought on by the Digital Age.

Off the Record: What is a record store's role in the new digital economy?
John Kunz, owner of Waterloo Records: A record store's role in the new digital economy is the same as it's been in the brick and mortar economy: To help people find what they're looking for; to help direct people to what they don't yet know that they will be looking for; to be a filter for the best music out there; and to be an exciting bridge between musicians and their fans.

Dan Plunkett, co-owner of End of an Ear: I think there will always be a good-sized customer base that wants to have the actual product – vinyl, CDs, 7-inches. It seems a lot of folks that shop here tend to use the Internet as research, as in ‘I downloaded this track and now I want the album.’

Bernard Vasek, owner of MusicMania: We have to strengthen our strengths. We sell a lot of rap, so we stay on top of that and try to offer things that aren’t available for download.

Charles Lokey, owner of Encore Video: We feel that our knowledge and expertise in a genre such as metal will act as a guide to our passionate fans. We hope to direct them to products that they feel will satisfy their desire.

My birthday was this past weekend and this geezer is feeling a little bit older these days. What’s taking the sting out is the reissued 30th anniversary edition of Nick Lowe’s debut, Jesus of Cool. Hard as it to believe it’s been that long since Lowe’s power-pop classic first hit, it still holds up remarkably well. Originally released in the U.S. as Pure Pop for Now People – the first title offended his record company for some reason – it’s a masterpiece of rival styles from Beatleseque to bubblegum, glam to new wave.

At 21 tracks, the reissue combines the original and U.S. versions of the album – along with a new title, the U.S. version sported a different sequence and track list - and includes all material available on either release. So what you get is the original sequence and seven bonus cuts, including the original, much smoother version of “Cruel To Be Kind."

There are also fresh liner notes from Will Birch (a Lowe contemporary and member of the Records) and discography info that reveals his bandmates from Rockpile - guitarist/vocalist Dave Edmunds, guitarist Billy Bremner, and drummer Terry Williams - played on Jesus of Cool, as did members of Elvis Costello's Attractions, Graham Parker's Rumour, and Ian Dury's Blockheads, making this a true pop masterpiece.

Friday at the Hole in the Wall, Elizabeth McQueen, Eric Hisaw, Mandible, and local Lowe cover band the Lowelies pay Basher tribute, and benefit Anthropos Arts.

“Maceo, blow your horn!”

James Brown hollered that famous refrain nearly 45 years ago and Maceo Parker hasn’t quit blowing since. By now, most music fans know Parker as the funkiest saxophone player who ever puckered, the man with the golden résumé. Parker spent more than 15 years playing with Brown including a stretch in the late 1960s and early 1970s when that outfit was the best around. Period.

He boarded George Clinton's Mothership in 1975 and played with Parliament Funkadelic during the group's creative climax. Throw in seven albums with Prince and 15 on his own and you’ve got a career and discography that reads like the history of funk. Parker’s latest is Roots & Grooves (Heads Up), a live double-disc recorded in Europe with the WDR Big Band. In advance of his Feb. 26 gig at Antone's, Bump & Hustle spoke with Parker from his home in Kinston, North Carolina about the new album and his long musical journey.

Bump & Hustle: You’ve been touring for nearly 45 years. How do you manage that?
Maceo Parker: Well, I was at a crossroads in my life at the very beginning. I was right out of high school and after a year or two of college I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I decided I would enjoy traveling and performing, and I do. As I reflect back on it I think what makes it easy for me is that I decided that I wanted my life to be centered around music. When I know I have a flight that leaves at six o’ clock in the morning, I smile and say, “OK, you decided this a long time ago, so smile again and do what you gotta do to make that plane.”

Quite simply, Liars killed Saturday night. The capacity crowd swelled to anxiety-attack levels after L.A. duo No Age's sonic set, but thank heavens Mohawk upgraded its sound system. When Liars opened for Interpol at Stubb's last fall, the sound was muddy and their tribal incantations seemed to confound a crowd ready to be lulled to sleep by the headliners.

What a difference relocation makes. Lanky frontman Angus Andrew contorted and heaved through the whole set list, which included a handful from last year's self-titled as well as a few noisier, screamier gems. Andrew knows how to rile the crowd by riling himself, and he did it all in a salmon pink suit. Smoked.

There’s no moment in the day right now that isn’t inflated with importance, so that something as benign as playing with the dogs fills me with guilt. Everything takes a back seat to working on the Austin Music Awards, hitting deadlines for South by Southwest, and anything the Texas Film Hall of Fame folks need me to do. That last job is a lot of fun and allowed me to spend an entire day picking scenes from Urban Cowboy and Mike Judge’s work. It also caused me to go around for an entire day with the neck of my shirt pulled over my head, confronting my family with, “I am Cornholio!”

The polling is done and ballots are counted and tallied into top 10s. When that happens, an entirely new level of organization occurs within the show. I write the winners and performing bands on index cards and lay them out in rows. Then I shuffle and move them around while muttering to myself and trying to keep the dogs off the bed. After a while, it feels right and I gather the cards up to enter the show order in a schedule.