Austin Adult Entertainment: Spilling Beyond a Festival’s Main Courses
A song licensed for a soundtrack or a commercial, one way musicians still get paid for recordings, needs to register clearly and directly; the same goes for music heard live, as musicians’ careers tilt toward performing rather than sales of recordings. Lingering over music, both in the recording process and as a listener, may turn out to have been a luxury from the album era, now disappearing. And while pop simplicity can be a fine corrective to self-indulgence, it can also grow shallow.
Still, one of the best events at the festival was one of the most basic: a showcase of New Orleans bounce, the raunchy, local hip-hop style that developed in the 1990s but is only now escaping its hometown. The beat is fast, syncopated and relentless, and bounce fans know exactly what it’s for: shaking rumps at high speed. Katey Red, a tall transsexual in a black sequined dress and high heels, rattled off rhymes about sex and prostitution. No subtlety was necessary.