South by Southwest, Day 3
Day:
Calexico (SXSW link)
Adult Swim Party: M.I.A. (SXSW link), Ratatat (SXSW link)

Night:
No Luck Club (SXSW link)
Bloc Party (SXSW link)
Kasabian (SXSW link)
Fisherspooner never happened.
Gram Rabbit (SXSW link)
Rainer Maria (SXSW link)

Kat went to the eye doctor in the morning and he found a speck of metal in her eye. OUCH! After getting ourselves up and around we headed to Emo’s to check out Calexico (SXSW link). Though they had been labeled as a “Latin Rock” band, they most definitely were not. I mean, the only latino they had was playing the trumpet. And they only had one song that sounded latin at all. But they were still good. Pleasantly surprised. We had to leave early though, because we wanted to see if we could get into the Adult Swim day party.

We walked all the way to the east side to go to Victory Grill, a restaurant/club that I had never heard of. When we finally got within sight, you could see a huge line formed around the end of the building. It wasn’t looking too promising. But we also spotted the Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters walking around the side of the building. We took some pictures with them (see above) which was pretty awesome. We had seen the characters walking around sixth street at night during the showcases, but they were mobbed with people. It was awesome to get the chance to take pictures with them when no one else was around. After taking our pictures, we headed back into the line to get into the party. After waiting a few minutes we ran into my roommate and her boyfriend and they got in line with us. Since the place was packed, we were starting to doubt that we were ever going to get into the club. The sun was shining and the line wasn’t moving, so we just about gave up. Then all the sudden people in front of us started leaving the line and people started leaving, so the line started moving at a decent pace. When I got in, I picked up my free stuff at the door (ATHF t-shirt, adult swim buttons, ATHF promo dvd, zorak air freshener) and headed into the club. It was fucking packed in there. There was almost no lighting, except a projector on the back of the stage. The person singing on stage had no other place to stand, so she spent most of her time in front of the projector. I later found out that it was M.I.A. (SXSW link) on stage. At the time though, I had absolutely no idea what was going on. This girl was on stage jumping around, singing in a language that didn’t sound like english to me, but most of the audience was singing along with every single song. People were crazy into her and the show was extremely high energy.

In addition to the free giveaways at the front door, the party had free beer and Tito’s Vodka. This was by far the best free party I went to. Since the vodka was free, my half and half vodka sevens pretty much knocked me on my ass at four in the afternoon. After M.I.A. finished people started clearing out a bit and we had some more room to breathe. Ratatat (SXSW link) came on next. They were completely instrumental, with a guitarist, a bassist, and a sync/drum machine for the background music. They somewhat reminded me of the wyld stallyns, but with updated drums and keyboards. I’d like to check out their album.

Since I was ripped after the Adult Swim party, we headed over to Hickory Street Bar & Grill to get some truckstop chili action. mmmmm…truckstop chiliiiiiiiii…. I had some drunk conversations with other drunks that I had planned on meeting up earlier, since our meeting up wasn’t going to happen and then we headed out to start the night time showcases. The first act we saw was No Luck Club (SXSW link), some DJs from Canada, eh. This shit was awesome, but once again, they were cursed with having the 8:30pm slot. I really think SXSW should have DJs do late night showcases rather than starting at 8pm. I believe at various festivals they don’t even have the DJs start playing until one or two in the morning. That would be awesome for SXSW. You could go to all of your regular showcases and then there would be another two or three hours worth of DJs afterward. It could work. Really.

After No Luck Club finished we headed back to Stubbs to see Bloc Party Bloc Party (SXSW link) and Kasabian (SXSW link). Both were alright, but once again, I spent most of my time hanging out with Abdiel and Brian, so I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention. We had originally planned on staying at Stubbs to see Fisherspooner, but that never happened and right as the New York Dolls were coming on stage we left, frustrated by the fact that there were no signs to tell us that Fisherspooner wasn’t going to happen, since we waited for them for nearly an hour. Now we had to struggle to figure out where we were going to go. I had a toss up between Pretty Girls Mave Graves and Rainer Maria, but the gigantor line outside of the Pretty Girls Make Graves show made the decision easy for me and I dragged Brian on to see Rainer Maria at some weird club (Pecan Street Ale House) that only has an alley entrance.

I had never been in the Pecan Street Ale House before. I’ve seen it a thousand times before, but as a rule, I prefer to stay away from bars that only have alleyway entrances. I’ve seen enough suspense movies to know that dark alleyway shortcuts are always bad ideas, no matter how much travel time they save. Pecan Street Ale House was this tiny ass club that apparently had no air conditioning. It was like a fucking sauna in there and it hit you immediately upon entering. Right as we got in Gram Rabbit (SXSW link) was finishing their set. I can’t remember what it was like at all, but I remember noting to myself that I wanted to check out some of their stuff because it might be interesting. The cool thing about this club was that it had a huge balcony that looked down directly at the stage, so pretty much no matter where you were, you could easily see the stage. I like that; I like it a lot. After 15 minutes of mic checks and requests for more of everything in the monitors (see Brian’s blog for more complaints about needing more vocals in the monitor), they finally started their set. I was absolutely blown away. I’ve been listening to their albums for a while now, but seeing them live really put it all together for me. Now I have copies of their cds available in my car which I’ll listen to about a thousand times until I’m absolutely sick of them. Or at least until some other new album that I really like comes along. After the show I wanted to ask the Rainer Maria peoples if they had any albums for sale. I waited patiently to speak with the singer (Caithlin), since she was the only one that was outside. The girl in front of me told some ridiculously long story about how she came to be at the show and how long she’s loved Rainer Maria, etc, etc, etc. I quickly lost interest, saw the guitar player loading equipment and interrupted him to ask about the cds. No such luck. He said they’d be back soon though, so I’m keeping up with the Emo’s website.