For day 3, I managed to get downtown again before 2pm, quite an accomplishment considering how well I did last year. I decided to skip the Stooges at KEXP, since I wasn’t too familiar with them and had no desire to deal with the crowd at their show. Instead I went to Emo’s to wait for the 4:30 Girltalk show. That’s right, I was willing to show up over 3 hours early to make sure I got in to see him.

When Brian and I walked in the door to the inside stage, Marnie Stern was playing. She was like a train wreck wrapped in a car accident wrapped in an enigma. Yes that’s right, completely nonsensical but at the same time when Brian said he had to hit the bathroom, he knew I wasn’t leaving until it was over. I think he felt the same way.

Marnie Stern is like that metalhead guy that you kicked out of your band in high school because he wouldn’t stop with the fucking hammer-on tapping solos. In this day of modern technology rather than giving in and succumbing to a life of pizza delivery for the rest of her life, Marnie recorded her entire songs onto her ipod and then proceeded to play along to her ipod and sing, sometimes with the backing vocals being as strong as her live ones. This gave off the unfortunate impression that she wasn’t actually playing the songs live, but rather just lip-syncing. I couldn’t stop looking. Halfway through the show a spacey hipster girl asked me about Marnie’s set up.

“Is she playing her music out of that ipod? That’s really innovative.”

Right, innovative. That’s exactly what I was thinking. I need to hear her cd though. I must.

After that spectacle was a couple of disappointments. The Ponys sounded like ass, partly due to a bass amp that was blown, partly due to the volume being much too loud, and partly due to unmemorable songs. We gave up after two. Rjd2 was next and I think we got through one entire song before we gave up on him, to much jam banding for me.

Next we went inside to catch Fujiya and Miyagi again. They played all the same songs we heard at the KEXP show, but since they had more time we got to see some others as well. Note to 120 days: go watch these guys, they are capable of playing a show while appearing to be disinterested yet don’t come off as total douches.

Menomena was the last band to play before Girl Talk. They are pretty good, but we were more interested in sitting in the bleachers than watching the show. And at long last Girl Talk started. The place was fucking packed, as I expected. He was fantastic. He is the biggest white guy nerd, but he loves his music and he has an ear to put it together better than anyone I’ve heard in a long time One thing to note though, don’t buy his old cds, they really suck. I guess we just caught him at the right time because Nightripper is amazing and the previous ones hurt my ears to think about.

After the dance party ended, we hit some Best Wurst before Amanda, Mike, and I headed north to see the special Beirut KEXP hour-long set. It was definitely my KEXP highlight of the week. Beirut are so talented and to get to see them in such a venue was definitely one of the highlights of my week. Phenomenal. Beirut was one of the three bands playing on Wednesday night in what was the most crowded show at Emo’s I have ever seen. The badge line must have been 100 people deep, which meant there was no way I was getting in to see the killer lineup - Beirut, Mountain Goats, Blond Redhead. Too bad. I will likely get to see Blond Redhead in NY though.

Unfortunately when we were leaving ACL studios this time we didn’t get lucky and catch a cab so we rode the bus. It was creepy and felt totally unnatural, but it saved us a mile walk. Back downtown, we caught up with Brian and had drinks at Mugshots. I didn’t have a show I wanted to see until 9:30, so we had time for plenty of drinks.

At 9:30 I went to Flamingo Cantina to see Monotonix. Their SXSW description said something about grunge and a guitar player that sounded like Mudhoney in a band for Tel Aviv. The description could not have been more right. They seriously rock like it is 1991 all over again. I took a million pictures and tried to explain the show to people, but I don’t think I did it justice. To start the show they lit the cymbals on fire for the entire first song, while the singer hid behind a trashcan, periodically spitting beer all over himself and the band. Then he pulled out a bottle of shaving cream which he rubbed all over his face and the snare drum, while he came out into the crowd and did his crazy singer thing, eventually climbing onto the bar throwing everything that could be thrown (napkins, cups, condiments) into the crowd all without missing a single lyric. At least not one I could distinguish. The end of the set involved bringing the entire drum set into the crowd and eventually hoisting the drummer on his bass drum over our heads so he could grab on to the rafters for some swinging action. Go ahead, follow the link and check out their songs on their myspace page.

Monotonix at Flamingo Cantina

After getting out I immediately headed over to Red7 to try to explain to Thomas and Brian what I just saw. I don’t think it worked. From there Brian and I headed over to Latitude 30 to see The Saturday Knights. Their show was also a dance party. Those guys rocked as much as I remembered them. I was right at the stage so I got to see all the action upfront. I ran into Kat’s friend Kevin and hung out with him for a while and caught part of the next show, they were good, but I can’t remember what their name was. I eventually just packed it in early as I had been thoroughly rocked for one day. I mean really, what are the chances that I would randomly find a show that rocked as much as those three?