Dr. Dog fan Lou Reed at SXSW
By Dan DeLuca

Inquirer Music Critic

AUSTIN, Texas - Lou Reed loves Dr. Dog.
Reed's keynote address at this year's South by Southwest Festival
took the form of an interview/conversation with the Philadelphia-
reared record producer Hal Willner. Reed - who's here to promote
Berlin, the movie directed by Julian Schnabel of 2006 performances of
Reed's classic 1973 album - was asked what music he was listening to.

Reed mentioned the Japanese noise-rock band Melt Banana, the Toronto
electro-dance band Holy F-, and "the one I really like is Dr. Dog."
The West Philly band took part in a Reed tribute at the Fader Fort
here Thursday.

The often-droll dialogue between Willner and Reed ran the gamut from
what instrument Reed wishes he knew how to play (saxophone,
because "I'm in love with Lee Allen") to the Velvet Underground's
early music-making verboten list ("No R&B licks, no blues-guitar
licks") to the nefarious rumors that he once worked as an accountant.
("I was never an accountant. I was a typist. My mother said take
typing in high school, so you have something to fall back on.")

Reed, who plays the Electric Factory on April 19, had tips for bands
starting out in the music business. Record labels, he said,
are "always going to say, 'We want the publishing.' And you must
always say no. That's where the money is."

And as an audiophile, he held forth on the MP3-ization of the
listening experience.

"With MP3s, there's a lot available, and it sounds bad. It's like
David Lynch talking about the iPod: 'Here's a movie the size of a
postage stamp.' Here's your song, reduced to a pin-drop. People who
like good sound are going to be looked on as some sort of strange zoo
animal soon. It's like the technology is taking us backwards. It's
making it easier to make things worse."

Identity theft. The nerve of some people. First it was Rocco DeLuca,
who sang with Daniel Lanois Wednesday night in Austin - and sounded
great, I'm told - and had the temerity to stay in my hotel last year
at SXSW. Then it was Dan DeLuca, the weary-eyed actor who played the
academic paired up with the great character Howard "Bunny" Colvin in
Season 4 of The Wire.

And now it's DeLuka, the four-piece band from Birmingham, England,
who played the Tap Room at Six on Wednesday. I kind of wanted to hate
them, what for stealing my name and spelling it with a k. But it
turned out I couldn't, partly because they've got good taste - their
roadie told me they call themselves that "just because it's a cool-
sounding name." And, mainly, because they came off in a 40-minute set
like a hard-rocking, less arty, totally credible spin on the Yeah
Yeah Yeahs, with a touch of glam courtesy of the silver-shoed
guitarist and singer Elli Innocenti's - now there's a name - banshee
wail.

Not a travesty after all, even if they don't know how to spell.

South by Smoke in Your Face. It's funny, it used to be that you came
to SXSW in the springtime for a breath of fresh air. The weather's
been sweet this week in Texas, I'm not complaining. But the smoking
ban in Philadelphia and elsewhere has so transformed the live music
experience - for the better, it must be said - that, if you're
standing next to the wrong exhaler at Stubb's or the Mohawk Patio or
Club DeVille or any of the other outdoor venues in Austin, you now
get something into the bargain that you're no longer used to at a
rock show: smoke in your face.



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dan DeLuca continues to blog from the SXSW Festival: http://go.philly.

com/inthemix


----------------------------------------------------------------------
contact music critic Dan DeLuca at 215-854-5628 or
ddeluca@.... Read his blog, "In the Mix," at
http://go.philly.com/inthemix.