I love Last Call. Let me explain why, in case you are my age but you have to go to bed at 10:00 on weeknights. The people and bands Daly showcases are original artists working on what seems to me to be the leading edge in their genres--people who need a break. “The average artist can’t get on a network and I want to be that beacon. Come on Last Call, [I’ll] give you the tape and you can give it to Jay Leno. To give artists a chance" By doing so, he lifts the veil enough that you can see the artist behind the art, and I find it fascinating. I would never have heard of the music/film festival South by Southwest (SXSW) that takes over Austin, TX, every year, had I not begun to watch his show. And it has apparently become a big deal in the last couple years. Last night they showcased a band playing at SXSW called Bomba Estereo, a mix of native Colombian music and electro. He introduced the video of them performing by saying it "will absolutely blow you away". And as usual, he's right. It actually reminds me of the next generation of music from the music in the Mexican rave scenes in Man on Fire, the Denzel Washington movie. (Which, by the way, I cannot recommend highly enough.)
Also featured last night, the makers of Indie Game: The Movie, a documentary about independent video game developers that was featured at Sundance this year. Director James Swirski has been a gamer his whole life. He and his partner Lisanne Pajot say they really connected with the subjects of their film because they were doing essentially the same thing the designers were doing--quitting their day jobs to pursue a passion. "No one is helping you make your thing, you're just making it to make it," she says. Their hearts and souls go into these projects. One guy featured in the documentary says "My whole career has been me trying to find new ways to communicate with people, because I desperately want to communicate with people, but I don't want the messy interaction of having to make friends and talk to people because I probably don't like 'em." It's this kind of raw, heartfelt honesty that makes me love documentaries, and I love Carson Daly because he gets that.
Last Call is an oasis of cool in my otherwise bland, lonely life. It's a half hour nugget that I cling to as my last, best chance to stay connected to the cool.
Here's where I get a little self-conscious: Is it cool that I find Carson Daly cool? Or does that mean I am a huge dork who is behind the times and is the last to know it? Is Carson Daly even actually objectively cool--is this stuff...pop?!? I'm so isolated I don't even know the truth, here. But what I do know is that when you connect with something so deeply as being cool to you, it's OK to just call it a day and declare it cool. Cool isn't a set of rules--it's where you find your heart and soul in what other people are doing. It's about how it makes you feel.
(Actually, in finally researching the show for this post, I have decided that Carson Daly is cool! The first thing I did was look up Lex Land, also on last night's show. It was then that I found out Daly is associated with the network show The Voice. Whatever that is. lol)
Via press release:
UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. – March 9, 2012 – NBC’s “Last Call with Carson Daly” announced that it will host its first-ever music showcase at the 2012 South by Southwest Music (SXSW) Festival, one of the world’s largest music industry events, in Austin, Texas on Wednesday, March 14 (8 p.m. CT). “Last Call” will partner with Sony Entertainment Network’s Music Unlimited Service to spotlight six artists, including Tennis, Roll the Tanks, Thee Oh Sees, Lee Fields and the Expressions, Bomba Estero and Cults, from the Red 7 Patio in Austin. Daly will serve as the emcee for the showcase and introduce each band prior to their performance.
Fuse: Carson Daly on the Last Call Showcase - SXSW
Rolling Stone has a short video of Daly playing drums with Thee Oh Sees from that showcase last week. Things didn't exactly go as planned, but he pulled it out.
Official trailer, Indie Game: The Movie
http://www.indiegamethemovie.com/
Thee Oh Sees 2011
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