Hard to tell whether Complete is real or fake, though I’m betting real. The Fort Worth/Austin duo’s songs consist of three simple barre chords with lots of reverb, sloppy 4/4 beats, and lyrics of the “Kiss my ass!”/”I don’t give a damn!” variety. Most of the songs could have been made up on the spot. To some folks, the band’s being chosen to play an officially sanctioned showcase at SXSW this year is the beginning of the end of the annual Austin festival — anybody dumb enough to take Complete seriously is not even worth bitching about.
But to other folks, Complete’s gig — on the first night of the festival, Wed., Mar. 18, at the legendary Scoot Inn on East 4th Street — means that South-by honchos are finally doing what they’re supposed to be doing: focusing on little-known bands, because the majority of every festival for the past seven-plus years has been made up of shows by bands already signed and often to major labels. But c’mon. Seriously. Even the hardest-core hipster has to think that Complete was chosen totally at random: Some South-by tastemaker merely dipped his or her hand into a pile of press packets and retrieved arguably the worst of the bunch. Can’t you just hear Joe South-by saying to his buddies, “Hahaha! Oh, dude. This band is so awful, we’ve got to have ’em play!” Couldn’t have been The Burning Hotels, eh? Or Calhoun. Or any one of a couple dozen other serious 817 artists. Anyway, we all can take solace in the fact that Complete is gonna flat-out perplex the Austin hipsters who file into the Scoot Inn to see the other acts: No Comply, The Homopolice, When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth, Easy Action, and rather famous headliners Lions. But never underestimate the power of Austin hipsters to be hipper than thou even in spite of themselves. Complete plays at prime time, too: 10 p.m. Check out www.myspace.com/completebarbed. … This weekend is shaping up to be full of tears and beers. Two legendary North Texas bands, Flickerstick and Black Tie Dynasty, are playing their final Fort Worth shows. I can’t say enough about Flick, one of the best bands/artists of any stripe ever to come out of North Texas, right up there with The Toadies, Doosu, and Robert Ealey. Flick’s going-away party will consume Friday and Saturday nights at The Aardvark (2905 W. Berry St., 817-926-7814). On Friday, The Orbans and Jefferson Colby will open. On Saturday, it’ll be Menkena and Stella Rose. And even though the Black Tie boys have been together for a while, about 10 years, they seemed to be just getting under way — they’re all young and have put out only two albums, including the recently released Down Like Anyone. But as frontman Cory Watson told me before, “It’s tough being in a band today. Touring is tough, the money is harder to make, and we were always hanging on — ‘It’s about to happen, it’s about to happen’ — but we realized it wasn’t going to happen.” The band’s bon voyage will be on Saturday at Longhorn Saloon (121 W. Exchange Ave., 817-740-9477), with The Burning Hotels, Radiant, Odis, and Always Ready. Visit www.myspace.com/flickersticktarantula or www.myspace.com/blacktiedynasty. Contact HearSay at hearsay@fwweekly.com.
