Early in Sonic Youth’s set, Kim Gordon, dressed in bronze lamé that looked like it had been dragged through a dirty New York alley, pushed her bass guitar around on the ground and then stood in front of a pile of black amps on stage. She appeared to be listening to them, those black boxes that regulate the noise, for the kind of mystic instructions that would make the writers of “Lost” proud.

For romantics of the rock 'n' roll squall, the Hollywood Bowl served up an evening of pummel and grace Thursday night. Each performance – No Age’s smart brutality, Sonic Youth’s artful bashing, Pavement’s elegant shambles – danced around noise. For No Age, who opened the show, that mission was explicit; for Pavement, the recently reunited headliner, less so. Sonic Youth, helmed by Gordon and Thurston Moore, the art-world godparents of feedback-laden wreckage, made a fine connective tissue.

No Age, the local duo of Randy Randall and Dean Spunt (and joined on stage by William Kai Stangeland-Menchaca on samples), wins distinction for perhaps being the loudest band to ever perform at the Bowl. At times, it was thrilling: For their closing number, drummer/vocalist Spunt did little more than issue a series of club-fisted lashes while the shell around the Bowl’s stage pulsed with light. At other times, some of No Age’s nuances were lost in the rubble. Spunt’s vocals, in particular, couldn’t find much expression or dynamic interplay.

Sonic Youth, on the other hand, has been at the post-punk game much longer and is more adept at countering the harder elements with guttural beauty. The lineage between No Age and Sonic Youth is clear, if only in stage presence; anyone could believe Randall is Moore, just some 25 years younger: same style of slouchy flannel, same curtain of hair that only sometimes parted for an expression of stupefied wonder on Randall or a Cheshire Cat’s grin on Moore.

The unsinkable Courtney Love comes to South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, with a re-jiggered Hole. They headline the Spin@Stubbs showcase on Red River at 5 p.m.

Just as fascinating as Mrs. Cobain, maybe more, metal gods Gwar will be interviewed for an hour in Room 18abc of the Austin Convention Center, starting at 5 p.m. "You think you've got it tough in the music business? Try establishing a career when you're from another planet!" the SXSW music book asks. Maybe that's their secret.

Feeling something completely different? Folkie Victoria Williams takes part in a 15-minute set at Jovita's (1619 S. 1st St.) at 5:45 p.m.

Sonic Youth shredder Thurston Moore (above) returns to Austin for a solo performance at 8 p.m. at the Red 7.

Local Natives are getting some excellent -- and much-deserved -- buzz here. They play the Galaxy Room on 6th Street tonight at 9.

Several blocks away, She & Him play the Lustre Pearl at 10 p.m. M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel are hard to miss here. Not only are they playing several shows, but Deschanel's eyes also peer from magazine covers all over the dirty streets of Austin.

Canada's answer to both Billy Bragg and Ryan Adams, Matthew Good, plays the cozy basement of Prague just south of Congress on 5th Street at 11 p.m. Good doesn't tour the States often, so if you missed him at the Troubadour earlier this week, this might be your last chance to see him in the U.S.

Mimicking the Beatles in a weird way, sorta, Sum 41 will bring its pop punk to the roof of Maggie Mae's at midnight.

Then, finally, if you couldn't get into the Spin party, Hole is playing a late-night (1 a.m.) show at the Dirty Dog Bar on 6th Street. If you don't want to end your night with some celebrity skin, you're missing the point of this grand melange of excess. Go rock.

-- Tony Pierce from Austin

Photo of Thurston Moore at the Mohawk in 2008. Credit: Tony Pierce / Los Angeles Times

In entertainment, as in real estate, it's all about your location.

As thousands of bands and their fans flock to South By Southwest this week and next, Austin, Texas, will be ground zero for a burgeoning technology called location-based services. 

For the uninitiated, here's how it works: Users broadcast where they are, either by turning on the feature in their cellphones or by explicitly "checking in" to a specific location, say Grauman's Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. Doing so lets them see who else using the service is nearby, for example, or what types of events are taking place around them.

One company, a start-up called Loopt based in Mountain View, Calif., currently lists more than 700 parties, talks, films and concerts a day in Austin during the SXSW festival. By telling Loopt where you are, the service serves up a list of events happening that day within 1,000 feet of you.

In other words, Loopt aims to answer the perennially vexing social question: What's near me that I can do now?

Wondering what you should do at SXSW? Try Plancast. If you're in the mood for a treasure hunt, Booyah has ginned up one, sponsored by ZonePerfect Nutrition Bars. Want to find a date to go with you to a concert at SXSW? Try Grindr (if you are gay) or Loopt Mix. If you're hungry afterward the show, Foursquare has teamed up with Zagat to serve up restaurant reviews near you.

Loopt, funded by Sequoia Capital and NEA, was among the first to dive into location-based social networking when it started in 2006. Since then, a rafter of other companies have jumped in, including Foursquare, Booyah! and Gowalla.

Yelp, a site where users review restaurants, among other things, also uses the feature. Twitter just flipped the switch on geo-location so users can share their whereabouts with their followers. Facebook recently announced it will add the feature in April so its members can update their status messages with not just  what they are doing, but also where they are doing it.

You can imagine all sorts of businesses salivating over the ability to know the exact location of their potential customers. If a service notices that you tend to sneak out at 4:30 p.m. on Fridays to a bar for some early Miller Time, it could send you a coupon at 4:00 p.m. from a nearby bar for a happy hour discount. Those are called hyper-local ads.

But wait. There's more. Media and entertainment companies have been experimenting with the technology to create buzz for upcoming events. At Comic-Con last year, movie studios and TV networks sent fans on scavenger hunts throughout San Diego to seek out clues that promoted their upcoming projects, including "Alice in Wonderland" and "Fringe."

These services have been percolating for some time, but until recently they've remained on the bleeding fringe used primarily by uber tech geeks. So why are they bubbling up now?

South By Southwest could very well be the place where location-based services start hitting the mainstream.

"This is the first year for this conference where almost everyone has a phone capable of location-based apps to help them find cool things," said Sam Altman, chief executive and co-founder of Loopt, which has 3 million registered users. "Secondly, there has been shift in public perception. When we started our company, everyone thought we were crazy. No one would want to share their location. That would be creepy. Now, they’re not afraid of that anymore."

-- Alex Pham

Follow my random thoughts on games, gear and technology on Twitter @AlexPham.

Photo: Compass by psd via Flickr.

Unruly sonic storms still form the heart of the veteran band's live show, even as it focuses on the present rather than the influential albums of its youth.

Sonic Youth has traveled far with the sounds of beauty and noise, stretching out its repertoire to include no-wave, alt-rock and wild experiments with the music of John Cage. After nearly three decades together, the band's open-ended approach is essentially unchanged and uncompromised, fueled on harmonic intensity not pop convention.

At the Wiltern Theatre on Saturday, Sonic Youth again harnessed a storm of melody and feedback, opening its 90-minute performance with the hurried guitar riffs of "No Way," as singer-guitarist Thurston Moore sang urgently of pain and temptation: "Renounce your lies sweet succubi . . ."

Three guitars hurtled forward as one, with sounds overlapping, cascading, crashing together in a tangle of chaos before soaring again with eccentric melody. "No Way" was from the band's latest album, The Eternal a collection that dominated the night's set-list and underlined the group's commitment to the present over past glories.

The song was followed by the opening clang of "Sacred Trickster," another new number that accelerated with the slashing guitars of Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon, who breathlessly sang: "Press up against the amp / Turn up the treble, don't forget . . . What's it like to be a girl in a band? / I don't quite understand."

The Wiltern concert was among a handful of regional dates by the influential New York-based act to make up for shows canceled in September after Ranaldo fractured his wrist, sidelining the chiming, fraying guitar that is a crucial ingredient in the band's intricate wall of sound. The players often appeared lost in the music, leaning into their amps for an eruption of feedback, while behind them hung tall backdrops of abstract, human-like forms torn from fabric.

The music was challenging but also fueled with enough warmth and strange hooks to be subversively accessible, though any suggestion of crossover appeal is a relative concept on the Sonic Youth scale. The band has enjoyed airplay and high-profile gigs from Lollapalooza to Lincoln Center, but few of the band's core elements fit the restrictive mold of too much radio rock.

"Anti-Orgasm" opened with a quick, sexy guitar hook, before drifting to long passages of shadow and restraint and ending with a final afterglow of throbbing feedback. "Walkin Blue," sung by Ranaldo, was gorgeous and forceful, while drummer Steve Shelley and new bassist Mark Ibold (Pavement) unloaded a tougher rhythm for "Poison Arrow."

On "The Eternal's" "Massage the History," Moore strummed an acoustic guitar with the band for several dreamy minutes, while Gordon's voice rose movingly from whisper to a wail on love and loss: "Here's wishing you were here with me / Here's wishing we could massage history."

The band did occasionally reach back to the '80s ("Hey Joni") and '90s ("Mary-Christ"). The encore included " 'Cross the Breeze" (from the band's 1988 landmark album "Daydream Nation"), with Gordon on bass.

Soon after, the night unraveled into a final cloud of stirring feedback, as band members pushed their instruments into sounds wilder and harsher. In the closing moments, Gordon stood center stage dragging her instrument across the floor, sending one more growl of sound echoing out across the theater.

-- Steve Appleford

Photos: Top - Kim Gordon (left) and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth in concert at the Wiltern in Los Angeles. Bottom - Thurston Moore on guitar. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times

A bit of backhand can seem so innocent in the moment, but then bam -- next thing you know, a date for the Austin City Limits Festival is canceled and the West Coast has to wait till 2010 to see you.

Lee Ranaldo, the fuzz-loving guitarist for Sonic Youth, has fractured his wrist playing tennis, causing the band to reschedule its upcoming West Coast tour to the following new dates:

Jan. 4 -- Tucson; Rialto Theater

Jan. 5 -- Phoenix; Marquee Theater

Jan. 7 -- San Diego; House of Blues

Jan. 8 -- Pomona; Fox Theater

Jan. 9 -- Los Angeles; the Wiltern

The Santa Barbara show on Sept. 26 has also been canceled and will not be rescheduled. Refunds available at point of purchase. 

In addition to a slew of European dates in October, Sonic Youth will still perform "Starpower" from "EVOL" on "Gossip Girl" come Oct. 12. Some things are just too sacred.

Ranaldo may fancy himself as the next Andy Murray, but we want him to stay as our "Teenage Riot" guitar hero forever. Speedy recovery and good rock 'n' roll health to Ranaldo and the rest of "The Eternal" crew.

-- Margaret Wappler

Photo credit: Hammer Museum

Authors crank the New York band and let the words flow. The result is an anthology of new fiction.

The origins of the severed hand in the park were uncertain. Some were convinced it was fake, an especially convincing rubber facsimile with elaborately painted muscles and tendons. Another thought it was evidence of a prank gone wrong at a nearby medical school, where corpses, students and alcohol might have added up to a grisly practical joke. Still more blamed an eager Labrador retriever or sea gull for dropping a find on the lawn, and one particularly morbid theory suggested a homeless man cut it off after his buddy's gangrene infection drove him to madness.

That mutilated limb in Katherine Dunn's short story "That's All I Know (Right Now)" doesn't appear in the Sonic Youth song that inspired (and shares a title with) her work. But those familiar with the famed noise-rock band's two-decade-plus career might nod in recognition at some of what the image conjures up: intrigue, antagonism, violence and the accidental poetry of the inscrutable.

"Noise," an anthology of new fiction inspired by the New York band's catalog due for release Tuesday, has many such uncomfortably commanding moments, but the collection also captures a particular cultural cross-pollination. Writers like Jonathan Lethem, Lavinia Greenlaw and even Stephen King seem ever more fascinated with pop music, and many ambitious songwriters are packing high-minded allusions and images into their songs (or, like Ryan Adams and John Darnielle, crafting books of poetry and novellas about Black Sabbath).

"You have this idea of the writer in their Parisian garret, but so many of them need something to stir them," said Peter Wild, the editor of "Noise." "When I can't figure out how to get from point A to point B, I always play music, and Sonic Youth is like a puzzle that offers many different routes for an author to travel."

"Noise" is Wild's third anthology of stories inspired by bands after similar collections based around cantankerous U.K. post-punks the Fall and swoony romantics the Smiths. What could have amounted to a very nerdy love letter to a group with a labyrinthine catalog is given extra literary weight by notable figures from the flintier ends of contemporary fiction like Dunn, Mary Gaitskill and Shelley Jackson. True to the joke that all writers are failed rockers, it's never been hard for Wild to solicit contributions to his series.