South by Southwest, Day 2

What I saw:

the daytime:
Loser’s Luck
Friends: Free stuff, but no music
Blind Pig: The Cribs (SXSW link), Nicolai Dunger (SXSW link)
Toof
Gorillaz Listening Party
Pedro the Lion (SXSW link)
Tegan and Sara (SXSW link)

the nighttime:
Film School (SXSW link)
Radio 4 (SXSW link)
VHS or Beta (SXSW link)
Best Fwends (SXSW link)
The Dan Band (SXSW link)
Minibosses (SXSW link)

Alright, so I decided that the last post took me way to long to write, and had a lot of lame material. So if you want to know more about the shows I saw, just ask me. Oh yeah, and Brian started a sxsw blog too. Looks like he lost steam by Saturday, but I’ll pester him to get the Saturday stuff posted soon.

Thursday was the longest day for me, Kat and I managed to get downtown by noon to start checking out the free shows and get some of the free stuffs (cds, stickers, pins, drinks, food, etc). The first place we headed to was the Vibe where we saw Loser’s Luck, from St. Louis. They were no St Lounatics. They did not “represent”. In fact, they sounded like your average “power pop” punk band with little Avril groupies who think they’re dreamy. But the real loser here was the sound guy at the Vibe. The sound was terrible through the whole show. I think there could be a future in a “auto-eq” feature on a soundboard. Then clubs could just use that to get decent sound as opposed to some burnout who can’t decide between his devotion to Ratt or Stryper so he just wears a Ratt T-Shirt with a Stryper jacket. We did get some free Mountain Dew “Amp” energy drink, which was the tastiest energy drink I’ve ever had and it will not make you sterile.

We actually made it out to a ton of the free showcases on Thursday. At Friends, we picked up some free cds and free chicken fingers, but since the bands were over an hour late, we gave up on the idea of actually watching any music there. From there we went to the Blind Pig and ate a whole lot of Nachos. The Cribs were ok, but I couldn’t understand a damn word they said (damn you cockney). Nicolai was boring and had feedback issues, so we went on our way. I had wanted to see Toof last year at sxsw because I thought the name was funny, so when I saw that he was playing in the day time this year, I wanted to check it out. Now the show was by no means spectacular, and the Toof guy himself is either really an asshole, or a very good bass player when he’s drunk (and incidentally a drunk asshole). But I have to throw out some real respect for the guy. He is the band that I want to be in. It’s just him, some kind of synth/drum machine/background music, a bass guitar and a distortion pedal. I’ve always liked the idea of being in a band, I just don’t want to be in a band with other people. The performance wasn’t great, but “tag” is a pretty good song. In keeping with the cover songs though, Toof did a cover song that I think exemplifies the tone of the rest of the show. He did a cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “Angel of the Morning”, only instead of the regular chorus (“Just call me angel of the Morning, angel; just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby”), he sang “Just give me anal in the morning, baby”. The rest of the lyrics included comments about females in the audience that he knew by name. Funny, in an obsurd kinda way. I’d still like to check out more of his stuff. The posts on his website are funny too.

After the toof show, we headed all the way across town to try to go to the Gorillaz listening party, which was supposed to include some free food and a chance to win an iPod. When we got there, the line to get in the door was already around the corner. We waited for a good five minutes before we decided we weren’t interested in waiting in line to listen to a cd. We headed all the way back across town to catch the middle of the Pedro show. I’m not sure what it is about Pedro the Lion, but I just haven’t gotten into it yet. I believe that I’m missing something though because EVERYONE I know likes them. Either way, we didn’t really give them a fair shot when we saw them because we were tired and sat way in the back. Same goes for Tegan and Sara. But they both did sound good enough that I think I should give them a good listen. Then I’ll probably kick myself for not having paid attention to their shows this time around.

This, sadly is when the day started to go wrong. Kat’s eye was starting to bother her and she couldn’t figure out what was wrong with it. When the nightitime shows started, we went to see Film School (SXSW link). I liked their sxsw song a lot. The show was good. They are on my list to check out now. Unfortunately, Kat’s eye problem was getting increasingly worse. She tried flushing it out under the sink during the Film School set for about 10 minutes with no luck. We left the set a little early so Kat could get outside and away from the claustrophobic club setting.

The Radio 4/VHS or Beta stuff was uneventful. We saw VHS or Beta a while back (and I even posted about it: the 80s…) and the show wasn’t really any different. It’s funny how moving a show from a 300 person venue to a 3000 person venue can take some of the entertainment out of it. At this point Kat’s eye was really killing her and she was getting to the point of making the “am I going home and missing the rest of the night or am I going to try to tough it out” decision. Rather than going to our next planned show (the Dan Band) we headed to the Velvet Spade so Kat could sit down and really determine if she was going to be able to make it or not. While she was sitting there we happened to stumble across the Best Fwends (SXSW link). Any description I give wouldn’t do these guys justice. Just imagine, you walk into a club and you see the two guys from their website in all white flailing around and singing. Just listen to the songs on their website (but try to disregard the fact that most of the sound like they were recorded on a tape player). There were a bunch of us there that were just in awe. The only thought most people could put together was “what the fuck is this?”. People would just walk in, watch ten seconds of these guys and then say “uhh, who the hell are these guys? do you (stranger in the crowd) know anything about them?”. Their show was only like 15 minutes long. The background music was all in one big loop, so they had this odd sci-fi noise play between song during which they would stand next to each other and stare at the audience. They closed with a cover of Hall and Oates – “Out of Touch”. You remember the song, “You’re out of touch, I’m out of time, but I’m outta my head when you’re not around”. Insanely funny.

At this point kat really gave up on the idea of making it. Her eye had previously been watering a lot, but now it was starting to get really red and nasty looking. She opted to go home early, try to sleep it off and if it still hurt in the morning, go back to the eye doctor (who she ironically had seen the at 8am this morning) to see about getting it fixed.

I pressed on and went to the The Dan Band (SXSW link) show. I really wish Kat would have gotten to see these guys. She was the one who had recommeneded them to me and all of our friends that were going to sxsw. They were absolutely hilarious. As Kat had described them, they are an all male band that does “girl songs” but with some extra cuss words thrown in. Apparently they’ve been on the soundtrack for Old School and Starsky and Hutch, but since I’ve never seen either of those movies I wouldn’t know. Dan himself was a pretty funny guy. His interaction with the audience was good. A sample exchange with the audience:

Dan: What’s your name?
Girl in the front: Katherine
Dan: and Katherine, how long have you had your lip pierced?
Katherine: 4 years
Dan: Well Katherine, will you help me pierce my lip after the show?
Katherine: Yes.
Dan: That’s right you will baby, because you’re my lip-ringed ho.

Then the last show of the night was Minibosses (SXSW link). If you don’t know who they are, they are a band that plays covers of the music from 8-bit nintendo games. And the songs they come up with are really good too. Listening to them is like taking a trip back to middle school. They played the music from Rygar, which was insanely cool, since it was my favorite nintendo game. And these guys were really talented musicians. All of the songs had bass parts that I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to play without months of practice.

Alright, now I’m really tired of posting. And I have to get everything together for the party tonight. Stay tuned for sxsw days 3 & 4, my doppelganger, and the ultimate warrior.

It’s been a while since I posted, mainly due to the fact that South by Southwest was going on last week, so I took off a couple days from work and watched a bazillion bands play over the course of four days. I’m attempting to write up something about everyone I saw, but that’s proving to take a little too long. I did manage to finish my day 1 write up though. I tried to put links to both the band websites as the SXSW websites, because some of the bands have songs on the SXSW website that you can’t find on their individual ones.

South by Southwest, Day 1, March 16th

It was cold as hell all day Wednesday. I had to work until 3:30, so we didnt’ get downtown until around 4:30. We hit a couple of daytime shows before going to the night showcases. The theme for the first day was definitely cover songs.

The daytime:
Ghostland Observatory: Electronic pop-y dance music. Good for 2am drinking & dancing. Still entertaining in the daytime, but not like it would be late at night. The singer dances like a cross between Michael Jackson, David Lee Roth, and Maria Carey after she became a slut. A good start to the weekend.

Mono (SXSW link): I’ll save you the trouble with their personal website. Mono is from Japan, so going to their website pops up the annoying “install language packs” prompt. Once we got downtown we headed to Emo’s and saw some of the Mono set. They weren’t very interesting (as the name implies), so we gave up on them and headed down to Guero’s to see Matt the Electrician.

This marks the first time I have ever taken public transportation in Austin. It’s a bit of a walk from 6th street to South Congress, so we took the bus. It was really uneventful for a landmark occasion. No crazy homeless people. No colorful characters. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves never even showed up.

El Sol y La Luna: For those of you who don’t know, El Sol y La Luna is a traditional Mexican restaurant in Austin. Once we got to South Congress, we had some time to before Matt the Electrician started, and since it was painfully cold we went ahead and got something to eat before the show started. El Sol y La Luna is tasty. Nothing could get my night started better than the Cuban platter. Plantains, rice and beans. I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

Matt The Electrician (SXSW link): After finishing up with dinner, we headed over to Guero’s in time to see Matt the Electrician’s set. It was still cold as hell, so that wasn’t awesome, but they put on a great show. It isn’t the style of music that I would have playing around my house all the time, but seeing them play live was entertaining. And to top it all off, he did a cover of Danzig – “Mother”. Awesomecross.

The nighttime:
Knife Party (SXSW link): Listen to their song on the sxsw website. The recorded version is much better than the live version. Apparently they failed to complete the “learn to play your instruments” portion of being in a band. Also, from reading their website, their keyboard/synth got stolen. I suspect someone was trying to send them a message. We gave up 15 minutes into the show when they keyboard player started to end the show and the drummer said, “hey man, we’ve only taken up 15 minutes.”

The Talk (SXSW link): After giving up on Knife Party, we stumbled across these guys by accident. They put on a pretty good show. Sake on Sixth is a small place, so it was really full. The lead singer was probably a bit too tanked, but they were a huge step up from the Knife Party disaster.

J.A.M.O.N. (SXSW link): Despite being named ham, this guy was a really good DJ. I really liked his set, but I felt sorry for him because there was no one at his show. I mean no one. Kat, Abdiel and I consisted of 3/5ths of the audience, and we left 30 minutes early to get into the Mike Doughty show.

Mike Doughty (SXSW link): You probably don’t know the name, but Mike Doughty is the former Soul Coughing singer. This show was crazy packed. Abdiel tried to get into the show, but that definitely was not happenening as he was badge and wristband-less. There was a line around the corner of people that were waiting to pay cash. I was lucky to get there thirty minutes early because five minutes after I got through the relatively short line, there was a badge line that was probably 30 people deep . Doughty only did one Soul Coughing song (Soft Serve), which was awesome and the rest were all from his solo stuff. Really good overall. And no show would be complete without a cover song. Mike threw out Kenny Rogers – “The Gambler”. I’m a sucker for cover songs. The only thing that bothered this show was that it was at buffalo billiards and for some reason no one could sit still for thirty seconds. So I never really got to listen to an entire song without someone trying to push their way to the front or the fucking Jack Daniel’s girls giving away free shit (but no t-shirt for me) to people in the crowd. It made no fucking sense, they were pushing their way to the front to give away free drinks. Not cool. Give away your free shit in the back of the club. The people near the stage are the ones that want to see the show. I know it sounds complicated.

Micah Green (SXSW link): After the Mike Doughty show, we stayed around Buffalo Billiards for a while to rest and then decided to go straight to The Drink to see Duncan Sheik, Micah Green was playing before him. I had no expectations for the show, so I was pleasantly surprised. Micah’s voice is a bit strange, but he makes it work. There was one new song that he played that didn’t work so well, but I think he just needs to spend some time arranging the vocal harmony better. The terrible thing was when we were trying to get in the door.

Duncan Sheik (SXSW link): Duncan Sheik was the surpise Wednesday show for me. I had no idea who he was beforehand, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Apparently he’s the guy who wrote the “I am barely breathing” song from my sophmore year of college. Duncan was a great performer. He didn’t play the barely breathing song, but his entire set was good. In keeping with the cover song theme, Duncan did a cover of Oasis – “Wonderwall”, the perfect sing-a-long song. Unfortunately, no one, including Duncan, could remember all the lyrics so there were parts where he just backed away from the microphone until he remembered the lyrics. Solid.

After Duncan Sheik we passed out for the night. Kat had a 8am eye doctor appointment and I was feeling a bit tired myself.