We’re getting dangerously close to three’s-a-trend territory, people. Not two months after Jimmy Kimmel performed an entire episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live” in the guise of his late-night rival Jay Leno, Jon Stewart devoted the better part of Thursday’s “Daily Show” to an extended impersonation of his Fox News adversary Glenn Beck.

Mr. Stewart’s pastiche had all the familiar elements of a Glenn Beck broadcast: the ominpresent graphics, the precariously dangling eyeglasses, the spirited use of a blackboard and just a little bit of histrionic showmanship. If there was a slight fish-in-a-barrel quality to the performance, it is now only a matter of time before another late-night host loses it entirely, “Single White Female”-style, and decides that he or she is really someone else. Who’s next? David Letterman as Larry King? Craig Ferguson as Chelsea Handler? Charlie Rose as Mo’Nique?

AUSTIN, Tex. — Corporate sponsorship across SXSW is a given; it seems every company has more disposable income than the old labels.

The corporations are also part of the day parties that aren’t affiliated with SXSW but take place alongside it, giving people a second (and sometimes third, fourth, and more) chance to hear bands. Usually it’s a banner, a giveaway or an information booth.

But at the Eastbound afternoon party, it got more obnoxious. As Here We Go Magic, the Brooklyn band led by Luke Temple, began assembling one of its precise, pristine-turns-to-overwhelming patterns, the Harley-Davidson booth invited people to sit on its motorcycles and go VROOM VROOM.

No.

This is what intermissions are for.

AUSTIN, Tex. — I’m looking forward to the SXSW Saturday showcase of New Orleans bounce, the raunchy hip-hop variant that emerged there in the 1990’s.

I got a foretaste in an afternoon set on Thursday by DJ Jubilee — who, unlike some bounce notables, is not a transvestite. His set moved quickly from come-ons to his true speciality: the dance moves that DJ Jubilee listed, performed and urged on the crowd before quickly jumping to the next one among what became dozens.

Among them: the Dip, the Swerve, the Walk Like Thriller, the Monkey on a Stick, the Eddie Bauer, the Chuck D., the Get Some, the Jam-Rock, the Break Yourself Off, the Sissy-Boo, the Ya! (which includes a high whoop) and the Wiggedy Wiggedy (don’t ask me to spell the last few).

Those weren’t the only lists in DJ Jubilee’s songs. Proving just how local he is, he asked what school people went to, and went on to a roll call of New Orleans high schools. That could get much, much lengthier if he starts including out-of-town audiences.

AUSTIN, Tex. — The Bronx, billed as such, is a noisy post-punk band from East Los Angeles, crashing and squalling through hard-headed songs about outcasts and desperate people. But it has an alter ego: Mariachi El Bronx, which released an album last year and showed up Wednesday night at Emo’s in traditional embroidered mariachi costumes with traditional instruments, from trumpet to guitarron. It performs the Bronx’s repertory, but with long-lined melodies and the rhythms of Mexican rancheras and sones. It turns out that Matt Caughtran, the Bronx’s lead singer, don’t have to shout; he can carry a tune. And the Bronx taps a side of Los Angeles that many rock bands ignore.

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Dubstep, one of electronica’s deep-bass subgenres from England, has been around for nearly a decade, but after the thumpa-thumpa and boom-chick that most DJs still play — and that a new bunch of hipster electro bands are either reviving or satirizing (sometimes hard to tell) — it can still sound startling, as it did when the London dubstep DJ N-Type took over the booth in a small basement club, Barcelona. The bass is titantic, gargantuan, a mountain nearly blotting out the sunlight. It doesn’t march on the beat; it oozes and throbs from the subwoofers, close to a full-body massage. Above it, somewhere far away, are sporadic twitches of programmed snare and cymbal like pacemaker jolts. It was still propulsive and deeply visceral, but also mysterious and abstract–until, in the unfortunate English manner, N-Type was joined by an inane MC on a microphone to hype things up. The best the guy could come up with as a rhyme for “Austin, Texas,” was “Bless this”–and he repeated it as if he was proud of it. Note to rhymers: Don’t waste an “x.”

After two weeks of doubts about the financial viability of the Broadway revival of “The Miracle Worker,” its producers have completed a new round of financing that will allow the play to keep running through mid-April in hopes of appealing to spring vacation theatergoers.

Dini von Mueffling, the wife of the show’s lead producer, David Richenthal, said in an interview Thursday that new promotional efforts would soon be underway to market the production for parents and children, particularly fathers and their daughters. Ms. von Mueffling said that the actors Jerry Seinfeld and David Duchovny recently took daughters of theirs to see the play, which tells the story of a young Helen Keller (Abigail Breslin) and her teacher, Annie Sullivan (Alison Pill). Read more…

Chad Batka for the New York Times Alex Chilton performing with Big Star in Brooklyn.

Among the stray details and remembrances of Alex Chilton, the rock musician of Box Tops and Big Star renown who died on Wednesday, that I couldn’t quite fit into the obituary for him:

• His wife Laura said that, though Mr. Chilton was never fully comfortable with the adulation he received for his work with Big Star, he was particularly proud of the records he produced for the rockabilly punk band the Cramps. “He would talk non-stop about it,” Ms. Chilton said, “to the point that I would tell him to shut up.”
• In addition to 1960s soul music, Ms. Chilton said, “At home here, he listed to classical Baroque. His favorite composers were George Frideric Handel and Georg Muffat. He got Muffat from watching MSNBC, and it was one of their theme songs. He’s like, ‘Wow, this really rocks.’ He would listen to that constantly.”
• Cecelia Chilton, the musician’s sister, said that the longstanding urban legend that Mr. Chilton spent part of the 1980s working as a dishwasher in New Orleans was indeed true. “He preferred pots and pans to any other dishes,” she said. “They were the heaviest. It was a macho thing.”
• Of course, there were other reasons why Mr. Chilton left Tennessee for Louisiana. “As our mother used to say, he was the only person who went to New Orleans to get off drugs and booze,” Cecelia Chilton said. “And he did.”

Mr. Chilton was also honored on Thursday by Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, in this speech which I’m guessing marks the first time the Replacements have ever been name-checked on the floor of Congress: Read more…

Reports from the South by Southwest film festival.

AUSTIN, Tex. – Moviegoers had to make room for music, which is still the main event of the South by Southwest Music and Media Conference and Festival. The catalog of musical events weighed close to twice as much as that for film; those lugging both guides in their SXSW 2010 tote bags invited sore shoulders. “Me can keep longing inside no more,” reads the thought bubble of its signature cartoon; more apt would have been “me can keep lugging no more.” Few did; festival participants ditched both bags and guides and instead used iPhones and Blackberries to keep apprised of times, acts, venues and where the lines were longest.

As movies began to be eclipsed by music on Wednesday, and despite competition from bands playing indoors and out and green beer served at pubs up and down Sixth Street, the last of three screenings for the feature film “Cherry” was a sellout at the Alamo Drafthouse.

The story of a college freshman lugging the expectations that spring from being the sole scion in a “long line of engineers” who just wants to take an art class and shed his nerddom, the film is reminiscent of wry, poignant sleepers like “Juno,” “Lars and the Real Girl” and “Little Miss Sunshine.” Read more…

Reports from the South by Southwest film festival.

AUSTIN, Tex. – Walkouts, cringing, looks of bewilderment: these have been a few of the reactions to Harmony Korine’s latest film, “Trash Humpers,” as it’s made its way through the festival circuit. It’s most recent stop was South by Southwest. Mr. Korine spoke about the process of making the film and the inspiration behind its characters with an unconventionally fond affinity for Dumpsters:

Read more…

Disney, Via Associated Press Fess Parker as Davy Crockett.

Fess Parker, whose television portrayal of Davy Crockett, the American frontiersman, catapulted him to stardom in 1954-55 and inspired one of America’s greatest merchandising fads, in which hundreds of thousands of children wore coonskin caps, died on Thursday. Mr. Parker, who went rustic once again in the 1960s and played Daniel Boone for a new generation of young television watchers, was 85.

His death was reported by CNN, citing a statement from Mr. Parker’s family that did not give a cause of death.

Mr. Parker was a handsome, rugged but obscure Hollywood actor when he was discovered by Walt Disney, whose company was about to produce a Davy Crockett series for “Disneyland,” his new American Broadcasting Company television show.

“The Ballad of Davy Crockett” was introduced on the very first episode of “Disneyland” on Oct. 27, 1954, and was dashed together in about 20 minutes by Tom Blackburn, the script writer for the series, who had never written a song before, and George Bruns, the head staff composer for the Disney organization. Mr. Disney himself suggested that the words of the song be used to move the plot along. “The lyrics will pick it up for the kids,” he said. “It’s what I call a comic-book approach.”

A full obituary will be posted soon.

AUSTIN, Tex. — While we were waiting for Spoon to take the stage at Stubb’s for a much chatted and Twitted about set, Ana Marie Cox of GQ magazine introduced us to Mac McCaughan, a founder of Merge, Spoon’s label, and more famously, a founder of Superchunk, which remains a fetish object and prototype of indie rock even though its last full-length studio album came out in 2001.

Mr. McCaughan said that he’s not sure that Superchunk would have been such a big deal if it was just getting started now.  “There are a million bands and a million songs, all kinds of clutter, so it is very hard for anyone to get noticed,” he said, standing near the stage. “In our day, we used to release a 7″ record and everyone would pay attention. I’m not sure that would happen now.”

Not that he isn’t thinking about a new album. He’s told fans as much but he’s not sure they believe him. “Nine years after our last record, they still ask, but I don’t think they really expect an answer,” Mr. McCaughan said.

Authors will temporarily give up the writing life for the speaking life when PEN American Center launches its weeklong Voices Festival of International Literature on April 26. Familiar literary stars like Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie (the festival chairman) are part of the lineup, as are musical performers like Patti Smith and Natalie Merchant, who have recently tried their hands at book writing.

A few of the writers are pairing up to interview each other: Ms. Smith and Jonathan Lethem, Colum McCann and Roddy Doyle, and Shirley Hazzard and Richard Ford. Mr. Ford will also be appearing with Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Philippe Djian and Barry Gifford to talk about how their books were made into films. Sherman Alexie, who won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature in 2007 for “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” is delivering the Arthur Miller Freedom Lecture on the responsibilities of writers in the digital age.

Other popular events are back, like the Translation Slam, which pits contestants against each to as they translate a single work into a different language, and the PEN Cabaret, with Ben Okri, winner of the Booker prize, Ariel Dorfman and Ms. Merchant. Read more…

Nas/Damian (Junior Gong) Marley: Surprise! Bob samples galore.

L’Orchidée d’Hawaï: Surfin’ Rhône-Alpes. Absolument charmant.

Sharon Jones: “Soul phenom.” Time machine?

Broken Bells: Dreamy comfort, sleepy pace.

Spoon: Effortless lordship, small kingdom.

Jon Pareles/The New York Times The inside of Hauschka’s piano.

AUSTIN, Tex. — Minimalism had an impish side with Hauschka, a pianist and composer from Düsseldorf who performed with a string quartet at the hushed Central Presbyterian Church on Wednesday night. Hauschka, the stage name of Volker Bertelmann, builds his repeating structures with a Romantic ear — pensive minor chords, inviting melodic lines, slow-cresting dynamics — and, sometimes, a foundation of rock rhythm. Even with their echoes of Philip Glass, the pieces were ingenious and exquisite.

Hauschka often played prepared piano, with bits of paper, plastic, wooden dowels and duct tape on and between the strings. Sometimes he applied an E-bow, the little hand-held device that strums a string, to
sustain selected tones. Read more…